Robinson Talking Points & Gas Grunts

Candidate Gets Key Endorsement - Republican Nominee now a Lock

2012-02-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

Some cutting, insightful comments from a prominent Republican who gives the key endorsement at the end of these quotes.
Via Hot Air:

“I’m just hoping that whatever is in the White House next year is a Republican. I can’t bear to watch what’s happened to our great country. Everybody’s got their head in the sand. Everybody in the industry is like, ‘Oh, Obama’s doing such a great job…’ I don’t think so. Not from what I see.

“Looking at the Republican candidates, I’ve got to tell you, I was floored the other day to see that Mitt Romney’s five boys have a $100 million trust fund. Where does a guy make that much money? So there’s some questions there. And watching Newt Gingrich, I was pretty excited for a while, but now he’s just gone back to being that person that everybody said he was – that angry little man. I still like him, but I don’t think I’d vote for him.

“Ron Paul… you know, I heard somebody say he was like insecticide – 98 percent of it’s inert gases, but it’s the two percent that’s left that will kill you. What that means is that he’ll make total sense for a while, and then he’ll say something so way out that it negates everything else. I like the guy because he knows how to excite the youth of America and fill them in on some things. But when he says that we’re like the Taliban… I’m sorry, Congressman Paul, but I’m nothing like the Taliban.

“Earlier in the election, I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable. Also, just watching how he hasn’t gotten into doing these horrible, horrible attack ads like Mitt Romney’s done against Newt Gingrich, and then the volume at which Newt has gone back at Romney… You know, I think Santorum has some presidential qualities, and I’m hoping that if it does come down to it, we’ll see a Republican in the White House… and that it’s Rick Santorum.”

My friends, let me present you the prominent Republican and former heroin addict who made these statements:

Dave Mustaine, co-founder of Metallica and leader of Megadeth looks like an angry white male to me, which I guess most metal-heads are, so, his views can be discounted by the elites of our great nation.
And here is a video of Megadeth at their rip-roaring best. Great drummer and Mustaine is a great guitarist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm175LWTka0

I am not going to argue here for Santorum. Just to point out that prominent metal monsters are for Santorum. Sorry Paulbots, but Dave echoes my view of Ron Paul. All remaining Republican candidates have serious warts to go along with their good points. I'll go along with whomever is nominated. Dave just settled whom that will be.

The Slow Transformation Of America

2012-02-14T18:23:00.007-08:00

(A short poorly put together post. ) I did not know that stuff like this was happening today.

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.

Hotair has a piece on this also. This is the type of tyranny that democratic nations have to fear: like an overbearing and protective parent that suffocates their kids with too much love and concern. I am reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." And Alexis Tocqueville: "It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other."

Also the military is being infected with political correctness of the type that enable the Fort Hood Islamic terrorist to exist in the ranks of the military:

The school where bomb technicians from all branches of the U.S. military learn their craft has been ordered to remove the unofficial motto "Initial Success or Total Failure" from its classroom walls.
Rear Adm. Michael Tillotson told school leaders this month that the motto could be viewed as disrespectful to the hundreds of Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians who have died in the line of duty.
"The motto itself holds potential insensitivities and implies that our fallen and wounded EOD Warriors have somehow failed," Tillotson, who is based in Norfolk, Va., said in a memo to the Florida school.
"Throughout history many EOD techs from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, other U.S. government and civilian agencies, as well as foreign partners have lost their lives or been wounded in the line of duty. To imply that they failed is insensitive and disrespectful. We owe our fallen warriors and their families honor and dignity for their heroic service," the admiral said in a prepared statement.

Like the word "fair", "insensitive" is a code word that is symptomatic of the decline of America. (I personally hate the word "fair" very much.)

While these news stories might not seem like a big deal, they show the slow and creeping transformation of America. This transformation is happening so slowly that it is hard to notice.

Obamneycare And Religious Freedom

2012-02-11T17:36:00.001-08:00

The government is trying to force Catholic institutions to go against their religious beliefs by making them provide contraceptives and birth control to their employees. I am not aware of all of the details of this issue, but from what I have heard from several commentators it seems to be a power grab by the government and an infringement of religious liberties. I have not heard any good arguments in favor of it. I don't see what the problem is with birth control--quite frankly a lot more people need to use it. Mark Steyn draws a parallel between this issue and the main reason that the first European settlers came to America:

The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day supreme governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims “the King’s Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England.”[...]

Welcome to Obamacare.[...]

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius, and many others believe in one-size-fits-all national government — uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment — and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.

Obama has walked back from requiring that religious employers provide birth control by stating that the insurance companies must provide it. Rush Limbaugh seems to think that this not really walking back or caving in and relates this issue with the broader lost of freedom in America:

The Associated Press has learned. The administration instead will demand that insurance companies will be the ones directly responsible for providing free contraception." And we're supposed to applaud this? We're supposed to think that we have emerged with a big victory here? Obama can mandate that we buy insurance, and now Obama can mandate what insurance companies must offer -- and after mandating what insurance companies must offer, then Obama can mandate what insurance companies can charge for it? [...]

Since when...? I'm gonna ask this again: Since when does a president have the power to threaten to issue a rule gutting religious liberty and then claims the power to make compromises on that issue? This is how, folks, we lose our liberty. This is how we lose the Constitution. The suggestion that Obama has the power to alter that which he doesn't have the power to do in the first place, is simply unacceptable. The first thing he does he doesn't have the power to do. He doesn't have, constitutionally, the power to mandate that religious organizations provide -- free of charge or otherwise -- any abortion-related service with which they disagree. He doesn't have the authority. Then to supposedly correct it, he then engages in more authority that he doesn't have![..]

From violating religious rights where there is no power permitted to do so, to mandating the purchase of products, to now mandating insurance companies sell certain products at a price that's also mandated, from czars, to denying the right to travel, it's all here. We're living in a country that's becoming unrecognizable!

If the government is the entity that is providing people's health care and controlling 1/6 of the U.S. economy, then the government has every right to have all of these mandates that violates people's and religious institution's most fundamental rights. This is the slow creeping danger to people's fundamental freedoms in Obamneycare. People can't have the government provide everything for them and have freedom at the same time. The sad thing is that the Republican party is flirting with nominating a candidate who implemented a version of Obamacare that actually had a similar mandate for religious institutions. America's leaders ,to include Republican leaders, are selling the American people into slavery and bondage to the state. People need to wake up and get informed, especially republicans that are voting for Romney in the primaries. But as history shows people won't wake up until it is too late, I am reminded of the condition of the German people after being seduced into following a charismatic leader that resulted in loosing WW II and having tens of thousands of their women raped by Russian soldiers and their cities destroyed.

Obamneycare And The Future Of America

2012-01-30T18:50:00.000-08:00

It looks as if the Republican party is not offering an alternative to the current president when it comes to transformative issues such as health care. (While this post isn't about Newt Gingrich, it should be noted that he is no conservative and has called himself a progressive and stated his admiration for Franklin Roosevelt.) It looks like the Republican party is flirting with nominating a candidate that is very hard to distinguish from Obama. The current front runner in the Republican presidential primary Mitt Romney's health care plan the he implemented and steadfastly defends is basically the same thing as Obama's health care plan. This issue was brought to light in one of the recent presidential debate where Rick Santorum challenged Romney on this issue and was told that this is nothing to get angry about. If the fundamental transformation of our society's culture and our country is nothing to get angry about then I don't know what is. Hot Air notes that having a republican candidate that supports government will run health care will be a big public relations win for the left:

Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:
Via the lefties at Think Progress, a video salute to Mitt’s cavalier assurance at last night’s debate that there’s nothing to get angry about when it comes to health-care mandates. Get ready for a long, long line of liberal attack ads in this vein once it’s clear that he’s the nominee: Even if they end up losing the election, the PR value to the left of having the Republican standard-bearer mimicking O’s rhetoric on ObamaCare is incalculable for the repeal battle ahead. That was always one of the greatest pitfalls in choosing Mitt — at a minimum, the right will have to temper its criticism of mandates during the general election — but darned if we’re not poised to go ahead and choose him anyway. And as Peter Suderman at Reason notes, this clip doesn’t even exhaust the similarities between RomneyCare and its much larger younger brother:
During last night’s debate, Romney also defended his plan from charges that it resembled ObamaCare by arguing that in Massachusetts, “there’s no government plan.” He’s used this line before, but it’s never helped distinguish Romney’s health overhaul from Obama’s: There’s no “government plan” in ObamaCare either, or at least no more of one than there is in RomneyCare. Both ObamaCare and RomneyCare rely on a regulated market and an expansion of Medicaid. Nor is Romney the only one to point this out in order to defend the structure both plans share: In his State of the Union address earlier this week, President Obama touted the fact that “our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program.”
In the end, Romney only ended up reinforcing the similarities between his plan and President Obama’s. It’s hard to make a convincing case that the RomneyCare is somehow dramatically different from ObamaCare while relying on virtually the same arguments employed by ObamaCare’s most prominent defender.

Michael Tomasky agrees with Rick Santorum that nominating Romney will be giving up the issue of Obamacare in this years election:

The moment was, of course, the exchange between Rick Santorum and Romney when Santorum was aggressively challenging Romney about health care. Romney was going through his standard defense of his health-care plan, saying it was right for Massachusetts but not for other states. Santorum wasn’t buying it: “Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama ... You are going to claim [about the Affordable Care Act], ‘Well, it doesn’t work and we should repeal.’ And he’s going to say, ‘Wait a minute, governor. You said it works well in Massachusetts.’ Folks—we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom ... It’s going to be on your ballot as to whether there should be a government mandate here in Florida. According to Governor Romney, that’s OK.”[...]
On the substance, there is virtually no difference between the bills. Well, OK, there are two differences. No. 1 is that Romney did not vastly expand Medicaid in constructing his bill. No. 2 is that Romney did not raise taxes to pay for his bill. Now, both of those differences sound like they reflect very well on Romney—he didn’t expand a big-government program that most people associate with poor folks and therefore do not like, and he didn’t raise taxes.
But why didn’t his bill do either of those things? It didn’t expand Medicaid, because governors have no right to expand Medicaid. And he didn’t raise taxes because—ready?—the federal government paid for about half of it ($385 million, largely in Medicaid money). And the federal government paid for about half of it largely because of the efforts of ... Teddy Kennedy, Romney’s great ally in putting the bill through. Jon Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist who worked on Romney’s bill, has said, with only slight exaggeration: “They’re the same fucking bill. He [Romney] just can’t have his cake and eat it too. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying. The only big difference is he didn’t have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes.”[...]
So Santorum was right Thursday night. Nominating Romney is giving up the issue, especially if the Supreme Court upholds the mandate. Obama probably can’t win the argument, but if his campaign handles the issue artfully, he can plant doubts in conservative and swing voters’ minds about Romney’s actual beliefs on the matter, which will play strongly into what presumably will be a key Obama theme of Romney as the say-anything candidate. Obama should even use Pawlenty’s little portmanteau. After all, it’ll be no loss to him if voters think of the plans as similar; making conservatives gnash their teeth is the point. [emphasis mine on the bold part]

Socialized medicine in the crown jewel of socialism and the welfare state. Health care is one sixth of the U.S economy, and with the passage of Obamacare the government is on track to slowly gain control of the vast swath of the economy and people's lives. Having this new entitlement will have a corrupting effect on the character of the American people by turning the society into an entitlement society. All one has to do is to look at the riots in Greece to see what a society that looks to the government to provide all of their needs leads to. If one agrees, like Romney, with the premise that government should be providing people with health care, then the government is justified in telling people what they can or can not eat and a whole list of other lifestyle choices. Nominating a candidate who supports government run health care would be a disaster for staving the tied of socialism in America and the end of the Republican party standing for personal liberty, limited government, and free markets. I believe the Republican party has already stopped a long time ago being the party that stands for these principles. Americans no longer have a choice in the direction the country is headed. This years election is shaping up to only offer Americans only with the choice of the speed that we are headed towards the socialist-welfare-state. I can not vote for Romney.

China's Perspective

2012-01-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

The American Interest blog references an article in the New York Times that extensively quotes Chinese President Hu Jintao and his worries about the American threat. A good look at what the world looks like from the Chinese Communist Party's perspective.

President Hu Jintao of China has said that the West is trying to dominate China by spreading its culture and ideology and that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the assault, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week.

The blog itself states:

More, our strategy for dealing with communism in China is more or less the same as our strategy for dealing with it in the Soviet Union. It’s what Lincoln and the Republicans wanted to do to slavery in 1860: keep it from expanding, and wait while the forces of history destroy it from within.

Lincoln then and Americans today don’t think of this as an aggressive strategy. Changing the political structure of China is not on anybody’s to-do list in Washington today. The CIA isn’t hatching plots to overthrow the Chinese leadership. Lincoln swore up and down that he wouldn’t abolish slavery where it stood, and would have accepted a constitutional amendment making that position clear.

But Jefferson Davis and his fellow southerners weren’t fooled. They knew that Lincoln’s program to contain slavery was a plan to destroy slavery and, worse, they were sure it would work. Cotton exhausted the soil; sooner or later, if slavery couldn’t expand into new territory, plantations wouldn’t pay and when that happened the whole system would fail. Moreover, the North was growing faster than the South; increasingly the South would be outvoted and turned defensively in on itself.

Hu and some of his fellows seem to be thinking like Jefferson Davis. They believe that America’s project (it isn’t as definite as a plan) to undermine communism in China will work in due course. They fear the historical forces Francis Fukuyama identified in The End of History, and they fear that those forces march to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner.

Note that, though Hu claims this is a conscious effort by the West, this cultural assault that Hu fears is happening without any conscious effort by the West. It is one of the things Fukiyama was talking about when he wrote about the "end of history" (a bullshit concept to me, but the point about the inevitable dominance of Western Culture inherent in the spread of democratic capitalism has merit).

The blog also says:

Americans, contemplating our policies in Asia and our ideological approach to Chinese communism, see us as promoting a stable status quo that ought to appeal to the Chinese. President Hu and many Chinese leaders see things very differently: the status quo is a dagger aimed at China’s heart. Our very moderation is a sophisticated form of aggression.

It's kind of saying that there's nothing China can do to turn this around. Mao was able to block all contact with the Western world, but try as he might, Hu can't do that, in fact, now needs that contact to market China's goods to the world.

We'll see what happens. As long as he can keep money pouring into China and standards of living rising, Hu and the Communist Party can ride the tiger. If the export economy stalls, he'll have hell to pay as the Chinese see what the developed world has (freedom-wise and wealth-wise) and demand a system of government that allows them to get it.

Iraq Falling Apart And Islamist Take Charge In Egypt

2012-01-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

Almost immediately after American forces left Iraq the security situation and the fragile Iraqi government started to fall apart:

Faster than anyone expected, barely a month after the last U.S. troops left, Iraq's government appears to be coming apart, prompting fears that the country is headed for another round of sectarian strife.[...]

In the midst of the political squabbling, insurgents, possibly al-Qaida, have carried out attacks , killing at least 250 civilians in Baghdad and other cities in the time since U.S. forces left, giving the country a security scare.

The article also points out how that the situation in Iraq is possibly being unjustifiably portrayed in America as a success:

The Obama administration, which trumpeted the U.S. troop withdrawal as the fulfillment of a campaign promise, views the internal conflict as a real crisis and a big problem for future relations.
The United States has "repeatedly" told Maliki and other political leaders that "our relationship, all the things we want to do" depend on "a resolution through constitutional means," a State Department official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
Less clear is whether the U.S. can help restore stability. With no military forces on the ground, Washington's leverage is meager.
President Barack Obama may have made things worse last month when he hosted Maliki in Washington and hailed him as the leader of "Iraq's most inclusive government yet."
"Iraqis are working to build institutions that are efficient and independent and transparent," Obama said.
The speech enraged Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni who is a deputy prime minister.
"What I heard from Obama was deceiving both for Americans and Iraqis," Mutlak said. "Obama is telling Americans that they were victorious in Iraq, they liberated the country and Iraqis are now very well situated, and the hero of Iraq, the prime minister, has made an inclusive government in Iraq. But it is the opposite."
So he gave an interview to CNN in which he denounced Maliki as a "dictator."
"I wanted to let Mr. Obama know that what he's telling his own people is not correct. And I wanted to tell my people that I have waited enough, and it's time to tell the truth of what's going on inside the government. If Maliki stays in power, dictatorship will be more concentrated."

It seems that in a haste to withdraw from a long and unpopular war, America leaders might have made an early withdraw at the expense of America's long term national security interest in Iraq and the region. While most Americans might not care what is going on in Iraq and might support leaving Iraq, there is a very real concern of the possibility for Iran to exploit the political chaos and power vacuum to gain influence in Iraq as this article points out:

Military analysts and Middle East experts have spent years warning about the growing influence of Iran in Iraq. A group of Texas National Guardsmen watched it firsthand.

As one of the last U.S. units to deploy to Iraq, the Texas Army Guardsmen told congressional lawmakers in late November the Iraqi army still struggles to disseminate intelligence and manage logistics, leaving their soldiers vulnerable to outside influence. Iraqi soldiers spend weeks by themselves, without supplies or relief, on posts dispersed across the Iran-Iraq border.[..]

Iran is flooding Iraq’s markets with goods at much cheaper prices than other imports, leading other countries’ suppliers, in places such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, to not bother to sell in Iraq. Those supplies allow Iran to control southern Iraq’s markets and thus its stomachs.
“It really means more than you might think,” Smith told Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, a member of the Armed Services Committee. “It’s really going to be a big problem for them in the future.”
The Iraqi army also continues to struggle to set up its intelligence network, Spurgin said. The soldiers don’t have an effective, decentralized system to spread information securely and efficiently across the country.
When asked by Conaway if the Iraqis could protect their borders from an external threat such as Iran, he bluntly said no. Spurgin told the congressman the Iraqis could not defend against an invading force.
“Operationally, the Iraqi Army has the ability to provide internal security of their own country, but they’re not ready to defend their country from an external threat,” Spurgin said.

If Iran does end up with considerable influence in Iraq, a very real concern by some American leaders, then the Iraq war will have been a wasted war and effort from my perspective. What would over ten years of American effort at the cost of 850 billion dollars, 4800 dead, and 32000 wounded been for?

The results of the Arab Spring are also creating the potential to weaken America and the West's long term interest. Middle East the Arab Spring that was suppose result in the flowering of democracy in the Middle East has resulted in Islamist winning seventy-five percent of the Egyptian parliament:

Final results on Saturday showed that Islamist parties won nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliament in Egypt's first elections since the ouster of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, according to election officials and political groups.The Islamist domination of Egypt's parliament has worried liberals and even some conservatives about the religious tone of the new legislature, which will be tasked with forming a committee to write a new constitution. Overseeing the process will be the country's Mubarak-era military generals, who are still in charge.A coalition led by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood won 47 percent, or 235 seats in the 498-seat parliament. The ultraconservative Al-Nour Party was second with 25 percent, or 125 seats.

But there is nothing to worry about according to our government because"... top U.S. officials from the State Department have recently met with the Muslim Brotherhood's leaders, who have in turn assured Western officials that they respect minority rights and support democracy". The Muslim Brotherhood is the party whose spiritual leader wants to kill Jews from his wheelchair, there is actually a video of this guy (who gave a speech to millions of Egyptians shortly after the Egyptian uprising) saying this. Also taking a look at the early history of the Muslim Brotherhood is illuminating and will make you view things through a different prism.

Overall, America's long term nation interest in the Middle East being achieved doesn't seem likely.

Save this blog! Stop SOPA!

2012-01-18T13:06:00.000-08:00

The new SOPA bill is confusing. It has some good intentions; stopping piracy and preserving intellectual property, but has the power of too much regulation.

It could even harm RTP!

According to Chris Heald, a programmer (why his opinion matters, I'm not sure, but he sounds intelligent):

"Section 102(a)(2) permits the attorney general to take action against foreign sites (i.e., sites that do not fall under U.S. jurisdiction) if 'the owner or operator of such Internet site is facilitating the commission of [copyright infringement].'"

"Since copyright violation is ridiculously easy, any site with a comment box or picture upload form is potentially infringing. Furthermore, DMCA Safe Harbor provisions are no defense. You, as a site operator, become liable for copyright infringement committed by your users, even if you comply with DMCA takedown requests."

This means us!

Do your part and write your congressman to stop this legislation. I did.

This is Rock

2012-01-12T14:53:00.001-08:00

I never really paid too much attention to ZZ Top. I knew they made some decent music but I have developed much more respect thanks to youtube. I came across this video, along with others, from a show in 1980 in Germany. Their image and stage performance is pretty awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c7d8BYJy8I&feature=relmfu

Obama The Prosperous

2012-01-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama's accomplishments:

Killed Osama

Brought democracy to totalitarian Libya

Ended war in Iraq

Ended DADT

And....wait....what the....boosted employment?!?!

Now that Ron Paul's election chances have diminished and Mitt Shmomney will likely represent the GOP, the chances of beating Obama are are disappearing. Especially since it is believed that the economy and employment are headed in the right direction. Or are they?

"If the size of the U.S. labor force was as large as it was when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.9 percent. But since so many people have gotten discouraged and stopped looking for work– and thus disappeared by government statisticians — the jobless number has been artificially depressed. A better gauge of the jobs picture is the broader U-6 rate, which includes part-timers who would rather have full-time jobs. It stands at a whopping 15.2 percent. "-(Drewmusings)

Basically, I'm fearing that the ignorant voters from 2008 will vote again for Obama based on a bunch of bullshit. The accomplishments of the above list are either not accomplishments at all or they occured based on circumstances that Obama had nothing to do with. He'll spin it to his benefit though.

The Government Has Gained An Authoritarian Power

2012-01-04T03:13:00.000-08:00

The government has gained the ability to detain a U.S. citizen indefinitely for no reason:

I can't believe that nobody's talking about this: The thing Obama signed on New Year's Eve, the new Defense Authorization Act. I don't know if people don't know what's in this or if other things take precedence. Well, it is being reported because I saw it. I saw it reported. Obama signed this thing, the new Defense Authorization Act on New Year's Eve. Folks, you know what this thing does? It allows the United States military to detain anybody for no reason! They don't even have to charge you. I mean, this is specified. This is not the Patriot Act. This is way beyond. This is total authoritarianism. This is the kind of stuff that exists in Third World banana republics. The government can detain anybody! All they have to do... They actually don't have to do anything.

They just have to say they suspect you of terrorism.
They don't have to prove it. They don't have to have any evidence. They can charge you. They can put you away in a jail. You are not allowed a lawyer. You are not allowed habeas corpus. It's the most amazing thing. Obama even issued a signing statement with it in which he said: Don't worry, I'm not going to do this. Don't worry, I'm not gonna do it. Well, he can, as can anybody in the military, as can any future president. They can just decide to detain you.

As noted Obama has put in a statement saying that he disagrees with this, but it was he who wanted this put in the bill:

Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
The latest claim is even more insulting. You do not "support our troops" by denying the principles for which they are fighting. They are not fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. The "American way of life" is defined by our constitution and specifically the bill of rights. Moreover, the insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.[...]
For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.

I have not heard any good justification for this law. Not long ago I probably would have said that this is necessary to fight the war on terrorism, but this appears to me to be going beyond fighting the war on terror and violates the Constitution by being a power grab by a government that is led by "rulers" who have authoritarian inclinations. The ability of the government to detain people indefinitely for no reason is a salient characteristic of an authoritarian government. I don't expect the government to immediately start rounding people up, but this does set a new precedent for the use of government power that does not have very well defined limits: it depends on how you define terrorism. I know that when you start talking about authoritarianism and the government gaining too much power that this will cause some people to immediately dismiss this as a conspiracy theory or crazy talk, but the unwillingness of people to overcome normalcy bias and to contemplate things outside the realm of their experience is how governments are able to slowly acquire new powers like this.

Maliki Kalikimaka RTP&GGrs!

2011-12-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

And Happy New Years too! 2012 looks to be an exciting year as we see whether our country can turn around or whether the Mayan End-of-the World prophesy comes true.

We're off to Hawaii to see Decoy & Candy Cane. See you next year!

Best Small Government-Big Freedom Wishes to all RTP&GGrs

16,400,000,000,000

2011-12-29T18:09:00.000-08:00

The new debt limit is sixteen point four trillion dollars or 1.64X10^13.

The Obama administration will ask Congress to raise the nation's borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion this week, marking the third and final increase from a deal negotiated over summer.[...]

In August, Congress and the administration agreed to raise the borrowing limit by $2.1 trillion in three steps. The deal was reached hours before a potential default on the nation's debt and only after the parties also agreed to cut more than $2 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years.

Those two trillion dollars in "cuts" are not real cuts.

Both parties tell us that the debt-limit deal includes $2 trillion in spending cuts, and the national media dutifully reports that those cuts are severe, yet the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tells us that we are still on course for the national debt to increase by $8 trillion over the next 10 years. Why doesn’t the discussion over the federal budget, spending and debt in Washington make any sense?

It is called baseline budgeting. Here is how the hocus pocus works. The CBO assumes a “baseline” for federal spending over the next 10 years that includes federal spending increases of $9.5 trillion over that time. Any increase in those 10 years of less than $9.5 trillion will be reported by CBO as a cut in federal spending.

Also the government just released some numbers

That professionalism is evident in the GAO analysis of the net present value of the Social Security and Medicare promises Washington has made to Americans. “Net present value” means the total that would have to be set aside today to pay the costs of these programs in the future. The government puts these numbers in appendices, rather than in headlines. But the costs are real.
In fiscal 2011, the cost of the promises grew from $30.9 trillion to $33.8 trillion. To put that in context, consider that the total value of companies traded on U.S. stock markets is $13.1 trillion, based on the Wilshire 5000 index, and the value of the equity in U.S. taxpayers’ homes, according to Freddie Mac, is $6.2 trillion. Said another way, there is not enough wealth in America to meet those promises.

Bottom line: the nation is headed for a debt crisis, the Republicans have failed to cuts spending as promised and there is no viable Republican candidate for president that plans to cut spending of the magnitude necessary to prevent the looming debt crisis, and there is extremely little possibility of the debt being reduced in the future as to do so would mean a depression.

We Have A Commie In Our Midst

2011-12-24T14:01:00.000-08:00

I come to you today to declare and warn you that we have a communist, red, socialist in our midst. I levy this most unfortunate charge after much consideration and research over the course of several years. Whether it is supporting international organizations, such as the IMF and the World Bank that were created to advance socialism throughout the world-- indeed these organizations were founded and shaped by a socialist and a communist so it is no wonder that these organizations help to promote world -wide socialism; the spirited defense of such organizations using well crafted attacks used by free market detractors, namely asymmetric information and perfect competition (he even had me fooled); allaying our concerns over these organization's growing powers saying that "... IOs are good because the only ones that have succeeded or will succeed will be in our net interest", but we have seen how this turned out; supporting the government gaining control over the internet through the FCC regulations ; his love for rock music and his well crafted support for ending the drug war; this man has been slowly advancing with Karl Marx through his long, corrupting march through America's institutions--to include this blog-- helping to corrupt the very foundation of our free society and our belief in the free market of those of us on this blog. This man is none other than MelMarx codename Melkor. This case will be laid out over the coming year/s.

Commentary from Berlin on the Republican Primary

2011-12-20T19:58:00.000-08:00

I think this pundit has a good handle on the state of the Republican primaries:

Click on the YouTube button to see it on big screen. It's not funny unless you can read the subtitles. Hitler bags on the Tea Party too much, but otherwise, spot on.

Commenting Policy Change

2011-12-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

Our few annoying commentors have left us, and Blogspot now has an annoying problem with gmail accounts, so I am enabling unmoderated commenting for now. We'll see how it goes. Comments on two week old or older posts will still be moderated, just so we'll be aware that someone is posting.

Silly Ron

2011-12-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

As of right now, I am a Ron Paul supporter. I believe that he would be the best president out of the field of candidates. His electability is more in question to me because of this Hot Air article. Pay particular attention to the second bold paragraph which talks about his "racist comments". In his newsletter named Ron Paul Political Report, it was quoted to have said, in regard to the 1992 LA riots, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” There are also some other racy quotes in the article.

Paul's electability was already in question because of his radical ideas. His opponents are certain to disclose his newsletter's comments if Paul makes it to the general election. This almost garauntees Obama's 99% black vote (exaggeration) to go to 100%.

I will still vote for him because I think he is the best candidate. I would bet all my money that he won't get elected. After all, who wouldnt elect a man like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&list=UU67f2Qf7FYhtoUIF4Sf29cA&v=igQlbesF0zA

Asian Ascendency continued

2011-12-18T18:40:00.000-08:00

An article in The Australian discusses India's reaction to China's rise and its threat to India. More argument to the idea that China is surrounded by powerful rivals.

Cops getting too much power?

2011-12-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

Fool! Resistance is futile!

Cops arrested a "separatist" family for not turning over cattle who wandered on their land.

I don't like this. I guess it is inevitable that local law enforcements will start using UAV's against their citizens. I don't like it though. The war on terrorism is turning our country in to a police state.

If this article is accurate on the alledged crime, I don't blame the family for doing what they did. If someone's cattle came on to my land then I should be able to do what I want to it. If my neighbors chickens start digging, eating, and shitting in my yard, I should be able to kill and eat them.

I'm not sure, but the local law enforcement could have violated the Posse Comitatus Act. According to Wikipedia, the Posse Comitatus Act " limits the powers of local governments and law enforcement agencies from using federal military personnel to enforce the laws of the land." I thought that the predator drones were designated for terrorists and smugglers across the borders.

Asian Ascendency?

2011-11-23T12:49:00.000-08:00

Chinese Naval Vessels in South China Sea

As all RTP&GGrs know, one of the US's biggest foreign policy worries is the potential for China to become the dominant player in East Asia and the Pacific.
Now, it appears that the Obama administration is responding to that threat. I'm not sure what 2500 troops are supposed to do in Australia practically, but I'm sure this is a good symbolic statement that we don't intend to vacate the Western Pacific.

Investor's Business Daily may be overstating how positive this move is taken in by other East Asian countries, but I bet not: just as the famous observation went during the Cold War: "the Soviet Union is the only country in the world surrounded by hostile communist states", so China is the only nation in the world surrounded by hostile Asian states (OK, they're not the only one). And most of the Asian nations surrounding China are pretty powerful in their own right too. The important point is not the number of troops being forward-positioned, it is the fact that the East Asian countries are eager for our support, both in the trade agreements and in the military posturing. They look to us, not China to secure their economic and military safety.

The fact that we did this in spite of the heavy reliance we have on China to finance our debt shows that the Obama administration is a little more bold than I expected, or that our debt financing by China is not considered too significant a leverage over us by our government. An interesting move. Lots to quote from here, all good:

On his visit to Hawaii, Bali and Australia, Obama announced that 2,500 U.S. troops would be stationed in northern Australia, a move welcomed with open arms not just by Australia but across the Pacific.

Obama also announced that the "broad outlines" of the Trans-Pacific Partnership eight-nation free trade zone were advancing, with major new nations — Japan, Canada and Mexico seeking entry — a big vote of confidence in America from a region that accounts for 60% of world trade. The State Department, meanwhile, announced a big, generous aid package for flood-ravaged Thailand.

Coming on the heels of Obama's signature on the U.S.-South Korea free trade treaty, the signal is unmistakable: America's back after a long period of neglect, and "We're here to stay," as Obama said.

No wonder Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, couldn't conceal her delight.

This article shows that there is much more than this forward-basing of troops going on that could be perceived as aggressive from China's point of view. Read the whole thing, and it's good to see we still have a bit of a spine.

School Sucks

2011-11-21T21:03:00.000-08:00

The republican students at Cal Berkley (yes, they exist) held an interesting little experiment on their campus. They do it in protest of the proposed bill Sb 185. The bill would base tuition rates on race for UC Berkley. Watch this video and see the treatment that they recieve from their student body and faculty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_5WnMgkUVY&feature=related

I witnessed something similar on PSU's campus. A guy named "Shawn the Baptist" was preaching at the school's park. He was cussed at by some hippies even though Shawn was being totally peacefull. But these hippies can peacefully put on their homosexual parades on campus without any negative feedback. They can Occupy streets on campus and stop traffic while people applaud them...disgusting.

Saber Rattling: Is it time for the next big Mid-East Confrontation?

2011-11-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Hmmm...: Within the space of two days, all these articles come out:

From Israel:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to rally support in his cabinet for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

From the UK:

Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme, the Guardian has learned.

The Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government.

And from rightcheer in Amurrica:

As the International Atomic Energy Agency prepares to release its latest report on Iran's nuclear program, an Obama administration official said Thursday that the Islamic regime has a credibility problem.

"Iran, over many years, has been unable to demonstrate the peaceful intent of its nuclear program," Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes told reporters in Cannes, France, where President Obama was attending the G20 summit."

Middle East Update: So Much For The Flowering Of Freedom And Democracy

2011-10-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

(A short poorly put together post.) Recent developments in the Middle East do not appear to be good. Muammar Gaddafi was killed by the Libyan rebels. While it is a good thing that he is dead the government that will be replacing him won't be such a good thing.

The transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil called on Libyans to show "patience, honesty and tolerance" and eschew hatred as they embark on rebuilding the country at the end of an 8-month civil war.

Abdul-Jalil set out a vision for the post-Qaddafi future with an Islamist tint, saying that Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified.

In a gesture that showed his own piety, he urged Libyans not to express their joy by firing in the air, but rather to chant "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great. He then stepped aside and knelt to offer a brief prayer of thanks.

As noted in earlier post, some of the Libyan rebel leaders are actual terrorist that fought against America in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Islamists have won elections in Tunisia. And America is pulling its ambassador out of Syria.

America will be completely pulling out of Iraq, thus creating a political vacuum that Iran will take advantage of :

With Syria in turmoil, Iran on the march, a more isolated Israel, and Turkey’s ever-more ambivalent policies, now is the worst time to see a diminished U.S. influence in ensuring continued progress in Iraq. A total troop pullout will leave Iraqi security forces much more vulnerable to terrorism, sectarian conflict, and Iranian meddling, and it will leave them much less capable of battling al-Qaeda in Iraq and pro-Iranian Shia militias.

The Afghanistan president said that if there were a conflict between America and Pakistan, that he would side with Pakistan.

It looks like things aren't going so well in Egypt

In the eight months since the Egyptian Revolution, radical Islamic groups are rising to power, the army seems unwilling or unable to stop a growing rash of sectarian violence and the long-standing friendship between the U.S., Israel and Egypt is in serious question.
“I am the enemy of democracy,” Hesham al Ashry said in an interview with Fox News in his Cairo tailor shop. The devout Muslim is a main organizer in a group called the Salafists, which is working to bring Shariah law to Egypt. They, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have risen quickly in the past eight months to fill the power vacuum left in post-Mubarak Egypt.
The past eight months have given a scary preview of what al Ashry’s opportunity might mean. It was a Salafy Cleric who called for the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cario, the rocket and suicide bomb attack on a southern Israeli highway which killed 8 and injured more than 40 was launched from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and it was the Army which intervened in a peaceful Coptic Christian protest killing more than two dozen.

“They (the army) are completely frantic, they are (overwhelmed) by these every week demonstrations…the country is going bust. The economy is going down. They are unable to get it to rest (stop),” Sawiris, who says there is only a 20% chance of next month’s election producing a liberal or secular Muslim government, said.

And it looks like the Vatican has been infected with communist. They are calling for a world central bank to help solve the unfair distribution of wealth around the world

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a "global public authority" and a "central world bank" to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises.[...]

'The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,' it said.
It condemned what it called "the idolatry of the market" as well as a "neo-liberal thinking" that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems.
'In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviors like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,' it said, adding that world economics needed an 'ethic of solidarity" among rich and poor nations.[...]
"In fact, one can see an emerging requirement for a body that will carry out the functions of a kind of 'central world bank' that regulates the flow and system of monetary exchanges similar to the national central banks," it said.
The document, which was being presented at a news conference later on Monday, acknowledged that such change would take years to put into place and was bound to encounter resistance.
"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalizes world."

I don't know how influential the Vatican is. I know at one point it was an influential force in world politics. Today, they might just be a bunch of people wearing clown suits that have no power or influence in the world. But their thought is the prevailing thought among world leaders today.

While the death of Gaddafi and the pulling out of American troops from Iraq might make Obama look good and increase his chances of winning reelection, these and other developments in the Middle East does not appear to be shaping up to be good for America, Israel, the West, or freedom in general. What has been happening in the Middle East is that America has been supporting its enemies whether by fighting a war for them, giving them money, or handing a country to our enemies. So much for the flowering of "democracy" in the Middle East.

Chris Christie: So Much For The New Conservative Hero

2011-10-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like politics have ruined what was once a great governor and a possible perceived hope for turning the country around. (There really isn't that much hope when you start looking at America's situation, but figuring that out takes time/effort and might make one sad if you aren't prepared to handle it.) Christie has officially sold out. He is no longer a principled conservative and has instead decided to become part of the political establishment. He has now endorsed the liberal presidential candidate Romney and has said it is intellectually dishonest to compare Romney care to Obamacare. Looks like Chris is the one that is intellectually dishonest:

"Mitt Romney and Barack Obama never met to discuss the federal health care law, but Romney's advisers did. New records reviewed by NBC News's Michael Isikoff point out that 'White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006.' One meeting, NBC News reports, 'was in the Oval Office and presided over by Barack Obama.' Jon Gruber, one of the advisers who attended the Obama meeting, said that the White House 'really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.'"

This is just one small point to show that Christie is himself being intellectually dishonest.

What a sell out, but such is the way of American politics: Americans won't accept or elect a real principled conservative. Americans would rather be lied to and have leaders like Obama. Christie's betray is just another nail in America's coffin along with the Republican's complete and utter failure to address America's looming debt crisis during the debt ceiling deal. Watch Romney become the candidate. Obama or Romney? Looks like a false choice to me.

I am a Champion

2011-10-02T08:57:00.001-07:00

This is what a champion looks like

How Good People Get Duped Into Supporting Evil

2011-09-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is a great article from the American Thinker website about how being uniformed on history and current events and not taking the time to look a little below the surface of the prevailing narratives that are present in today's society can cause people to end up supporting evil in a similar way that the German people supported Nazism.

It's interesting how history cycles around to the same old thing, over and over. Ecclesiastes 1:9 reads: 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.' Ominous words that are sadly true -- a warning that mankind continuously fails to heed.

Historically, societies have good people and bad. The good people tend to live their lives with good intentions to stay informed, be involved in the community, heed their belief system, behave in a moral way, raise their children to be good people, and work hard. They innocently get swept up in the assumption that everyone else is also, basically good. So, they overlook the evil that encroaches upon their society in dribs and drabs. They look the other way, they make excuses for the bad behavior of others, maybe even taking blame for being the cause of the bad behavior -- all because of their internal belief that everyone wants the same things they want, and believe the same things they believe.
But eventually, and out of nowhere, evil takes command of the society. The good people finally see the evil that has been there the whole time. While evil was still powerless, the good people did not see it, or did not want to see it, so they were blind. Perhaps they could not see it because they did not know what it looked like, smelled like, or sounded like.

Evil is silent. It sneaks up in the night, gaining footholds one drib at a time; one drab at a time. While the good people sleep, it sets a trap for its prey. When morning comes and the people awaken, they find themselves impossibly ensnared by the power of the beast, as it rains terror down upon the land, with full abandon.[...]
As the historical cycle goes, the good people don't stand a chance for they don't study history with the same rigor and attention to detail. Good people learn the stories of evil historical events, such as the Holocaust, with the focus on the horrible outcome. What they learn from the personal stories, the destruction of lives, and the devastating aftermath, is what evil looks like in its death. This is important, to be sure, but much more than that is required if they are to truly learn from history in order to avoid repetition. Good people must study the events that led to the horror with greater scrutiny. They must learn what evil looks like at its birth. What gets lost in the message of history is how, nearly always, good people were duped into complicity and cooperation, with and by, evil. Only if history is analyzed in such a way to determine what the silent evil looks like, and how it draws the good people to its side, will societies avoid allowing the evil to rise, again. And it always rises again.[bold text is my doing]

Evil studies and analyzes history so adeptly that each time it resurfaces it is able to advance more quickly and more powerfully than before, simply because it has learned from history. Good people must then do the same. They must be sure their children learn history -- the causes as well as the effects. If they aren't learning it in school, then it is up to the good parents to teach them. If they don't, they may find themselves like the good people of Germany -- duped, complicit, and guilty.

The evil haunting, or specter as Marx calls it, us today is communism/collectivism that is being prepared to be thrust on the whole world by economic circumstances. Just as the gulags and concentration camps didn't just appear out of thin air but were the end result of a long line of prevailing narratives from philosophy and culture that slowly filtered into the very fabric of society, so too is this modern day evil that is in the "birth stage" about to pop its head out into the world. Some of the prevailing narratives of today consist mainly of lies: man is causing the climate to change, therefore man must reduce his standard of living to save the earth; capitalism has failed and led to the current global economic mess, therefore capitalism must be scraped and replaced by a new system; no one culture is superior to another, therefore it is good to emulate a culture that is not conducive to human prosperity; the IMF and World Bank's stated goals are good, therefore they must be good; and etc. Not taking the time to look beyond the prevailing narratives of our time and taking a look at the foundation that these narratives are built on can lead one to end up "duped, complicit, and guilty" in supporting what can ultimately be called evil, using wisdom and summing up a very complex system into a simple word. It would suck to end up like the German people did after their country had been destroyed and their women rapped.

Post Pax Americana?

2011-09-15T22:25:00.000-07:00

A cool post at Hot Air for strategy geeks, illustrating the re-emergence of regional, Nation-state strategizing because of the withdrawal of American influence and power in the world. The author touches on many places around the world where groups of countries are manuevering with and against each other in local groups, rather than the great geopolitical groups that have dominated the world since WWII:

They touch on the situation in Central/Eastern Europe and the Visegrad group, which I discussed a while ago
The games being played between Russia, Iran, and Turkey, and Turkey's apparent attempt to resurrect the prestige of the Ottoman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean
Israel's response by teaming up with Greece and Cyprus
India & Japan's attempts to contain China in the Far East
etc.

Super cool stuff. The tone of the article is a little sad that American can't dominate everywhere like we used to, but it doesn't seem as depressing to me: make these sponges deal with things themselves. It'll make them all better countries, and save us money and blood. We still need to be able to punish our enemies when we need to though and help our friends...that'll have to wait until Obama's gone of course.

Anyway, read the article; fascinating, if somewhat speculative.

OBAMACARE

2011-09-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

When discussing the recent government overhaul of America's health care system, one needs to look at it through the prism of this video where Obama states how a public insurance option will lead to a single-payer health care system-- or a government run health care system that "will control the people" in the words of another politician.

Aside from the fact that the new health care law will entice employers to drop their health care plans for their employees:

'Now, it should surprise no one that more and more companies are exploring the possibility of dropping their employee health coverage in 2014. A new study from the benefits-consulting firm Towers Watson finds that nearly 10 percent of midsized to large companies are seriously considering doing just that, and another 20 percent are thinking about it. Still others don't know. 'Many are uncertain how they will respond to the looming impact of state-based insurance exchanges in 2014,' says Towers Watson.

Obama did say that this would happen in the video above.

And there is some new information about parts of Obamacare. It appears that a part of it was know to be "fiscally unsustainable" before it was passed:

Administration officials knew before they even passed the CLASS Act that the voluntary long-term care insurance program it created would be fiscally unsustainable, a new report from select House and Senate Republicans shows.

Obamacare will be one of the most lasting legacies of Obama's presidency that will "fundamentally transform" America: it will transform the relationship between the individual and the government in a profound way and will change the character of the American people by making them look to the government to meet one of their most basic needs. It will also create another unsustainable entitlement program that will bankrupt America and help to "collapse the system". It is one more reason that Obamacare should be completely repealed.

Middle East Update: America Encouraging And Helping Its Enemies

2011-09-02T16:14:00.001-07:00

It is still looking like what the Arab Spring might not be such a good thing for Israel and the West. Remember that the Arab Spring was encouraged and cheered on by our President and media with organismic praise. Also Egypt was given money by Western nations; and in the case of Libya, the West fought a war against our enemies who were the enemies of a less dangerous enemy.

It looks like the Muslim Brotherhood is still becoming the dominant political force in Egypt and is still somewhat unfriendly to Israel:

The Muslim Brotherhood's new message is very similar: all Islamic men in Egypt, whoever they may be, should stand and be counted as members of Hamas. Whether one sees this message as analogous in the sense of ideology, however, would likely be a matter of perspective.[...]

The aim of the Muslim Brotherhood, as it is with other anti-Zionist Muslims throughout the world, is to have the followers of Islam hold dominion over the holy land that Israel now occupies, to be governed by Islamic law. To them, having the Jewish "apes" and "pigs" govern with the notion of "freedom" and allowing equal worship at holy sites in Jerusalem is a slap in the face to the prophet who has promised the right to govern that region to Muslims. Therefore, they would much rather see Islamic clerics and mullahs allowing preferential rights to be granted for Muslims, while non-Muslims are subjugated, as Allah intended (Surah 9:29).[...]

The Muslim Brotherhood has held rallies recently that have seen the incineration of Israeli flags and the exhibition of Nazi symbols, complete with taunts to Israelis suggesting that "the gas chambers are ready." It seems rather interesting for a group that has denied the Holocaust to clearly reference the means of its historical practices. Apparently, the infidels' false history is not without its charms in the Brotherhood's eyes.
But think about the implications of what we see every day, but fail to recognize. A burgeoning regime in Egypt, under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, is threatening the Israeli ambassador's life. They have openly declared themselves to be not only in league with terrorists, but among the terrorists of Hamas, and therefore they have proclaimed themselves terrorists. Mohamed ElBaradei, a possible Brotherhood candidate for Egyptian leadership, has stated that he would go to war with Israel if it attacks Gaza. This means that any of Israel's numerous and necessary retaliatory strikes upon Gaza could result in war with Egypt, their historic enemy whose strength Israel has bolstered in efforts to achieve the longstanding peace that the Brotherhood would so readily break.

Their is a direct link between the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood and Nazi Germany. And if you listen to their current spiritual leader, he praises Hitler for carrying out his punishment against the Jews. So why did America encourage the recent Egyptian revolution when it was clear at the time that the Muslim Brotherhood would become the dominant political force in Egypt? And why is America and the West sending Egypt money? What will this lead to?

And I love this article where the Libyan rebel military commander who was a member of a terrorist group that sent fighters into Iraq and Afghanistan is trying to explain how he is not going to support terrorism against the West:

TRIPOLI, Libya - The rebels' Tripoli military commander, a former leader of an Islamic militant group that sent fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan, insisted Friday that the new Libya will shun extremism and won't become a breeding ground for terrorism.

What is happening in the Middle East is that America and the West is supporting its enemies through several different channels: by sending billions of dollars a year to the Middle East for oil that in turns goes towards funding terrorist and radical Mosques that breed terrorist, giving moral and financial support to a revolution that leads to an anti-Western political regime, and actually fighting a war for our enemies. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Game Time

2011-08-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

Its that time of year again. And this season should shape up to be good one for Oregon.

Oregon comes in to the season ranked #3. Preseason rankings don't mean much but expectations are high. They return most of their high prospect players but have a depleted offensive line. We should get a real good taste of what they are made of when they play #4 LSU on saturday (5 pm PT ABC).

This Oregon vs. LSU game was going to be the biggest game of NCAA Football's season opening weekend. The hype has been depleted because LSU has lost some starters due to a bar room brawl (http://www.nationalfootballauthority.com/2011/08/lsu-tigers-suspend-three-tigers.html). I still view LSU as about 97% of what they were. Their starting QB, Jefferson, kind of sucked anyway and his replacement is a senior who has started games before. LSU's power comes from their defense and their defense is unblemished.

Considering that Oregon will be without it's best talent, CB Cliff Harris, I look at this game with just as much hype as before. The winner should still feel confident that it is the better team. I'm sure though that all of the SEC fans will claim that they weren't at full strength but I wouldn't give one Cliff Harris (definite 1st nfl pick) for ten Jordan Jeffersons.

Lets strap it on and get it on!!!!

EU Update

2011-08-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Bad news out of the EU has been driving global worries over another financial crisis and this has been a contributing factor behind the volatility in the stock market the past couple of weeks. What happens in the EU will affect the U.S. and global economy to a great extent. A note of interest is that the U.S. is already bailing out the EU. It appears as if the great EU political project is falling apart. This is not the case according to a lot of market analyst:

'The default position is more integration, which is why commentary, especially that coming out of the US, is very focused on euro break-up is biased towards thinking about the downside scenario, and is not really thinking about the upside scenario,' he told CNBC.com. 'The upside scenario I think is one that's more consistent with the history of European projects.'[...]

'When people ask us 'is Greece going to leave the euro?' our immediate pushback is that Greece doesn't have the agency. It's not really Greece's choice – it's Germany's choice and it's France's choice,' Rahman said. [...]

However, he too said that stepping forwards towards integration, not backwards, is the far more likely scenario.

'Of course, it didn't happen in an orderly way, and now possibly it's coming in a disorderly way, because now everyone's realizing that you can't have a currency and a single market and communalized trade policy without also having more political cohesion and more fiscal union,' Techau said.
'Maybe, in the end, ironically, Helmut Kohl will be vindicated because the answer to the crisis is either disruption, or another bold step towards integration,'[...]

The most noise seems to be coming from commentators who believe in disintegration, but those who really understand the inner workings of the EU say the opposite: economically it does not make sense, technically it is exceptionally difficult and politically it is nearly unthinkable.

One of the legacy of this global financial crisis will be a more economically united globe. This economic crisis is going to force some politicians and nations to do things that they otherwise would not do: like integrate further into international governing bodies.

European leaders are being pushed into closer fiscal union sooner than they had anticipated by volatile markets concerned over a dearth of ideas on how to solve the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone, analysts and investors told CNBC.[...]
'If you believe the United States of Europe is stronger than the individual nations, it's simply a step that the politicians have been working towards, but now they're being pushed into it rather than managing the process,' Neil Dwane, chief investment officer for Europe at RCM told CNBC.
Over the weekend, German chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to soften her position on the issuance of so-called euro bonds, but she stressed they were not on the table for now.
'I think [Merkel] is just realizing that politicians are pushed by markets into solutions that politicians don't feel comfortable with yet,' Frank Engels, co-head of European Economics Research and Asset Allocation Strategy at Barclays Capital explained.
His comments reflected those made by Paul Donovan, deputy head of Global Economics to CNBC last week, who warned that markets would push European leaders towards "extreme action" and he called for the appointment of a European statesman to oversee closer fiscal union within the euro zone.[...]
'There is a sense that you have to move eventually towards a common fiscal union, a very coordinated policy approach on economic and fiscal policies, but not now, not yet because you need to lay the foundations in terms of political and legal infrastructure first and then later on move, that is the message [Merkel] wants to provide to markets,' Engels said.

It appears that the EU has lost, to some extent, "its power of decision over the direction that it is going". This economic crisis is the result of a government managed economies. The main instrument that the governments use to manage the economies of the world is through central banking and international governing bodies like the IMF/World Bank (both founded by a Fabian Socialist and a communist). The IMF/World Bank is helping to keep the socialist's dream of global socialism from falling apart in the case of the EU by continuing to bailout the failed nations that should be allowed to default. (A look into the history of central banking and the IMF/World Bank is illuminating.) These government institutions are helping to create an economic crisis that will push the world into a global-socialist-communist-governance. Well that sounds stupid doesn't it? The financial analysts take on the events happening in the EU point to the fact that the EU is being pushed by economic events into a tighter political/fiscal union. What has been the overall effect of the global economic crisis, larger and more united government(s) that are/is taking over economic functions once carried out by the private sector. The direction that the the world is a more in is that of a more united globe, economy and politically. I could state it in a more intelligent manner but that would take a lot more time and room.

Signs of some cuts

2011-08-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

It looks like the postal service is finally getting reigned in. USPS has been outdated since mid 20th century. I havent heard much outcry from the public about the fact that over 100k postal service jobs might be lossed. This is a good sign. I think people are realizing that the private sector needs to do the job. Hopefully we start seeing some more cuts. The military? I would accept a pay cut. Shoot, I wouldnt be heartbroken if I was laid off from the Guard.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/17/nonprofits-oppose-measure-wiping-out-their-mail-discounts/

A New Era For Our Military and Nation.

2011-07-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

(A very appropriate picture.) The time has finally come.

The Pentagon will announce Friday that it is ready to certify the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," the controversial 1993 law that banned gays from serving openly in the military, two U.S. officials told Fox News.

This signals a great cultural shift in our society away from the cultural foundation that has made America the nation it is. I have a hunch America will be receiving a fairly significant military set back coming soon. At least America won't be discriminating against homosexuality. I like Congressman Allen West's take on DADT.

This Is Rock/Math!

2011-07-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

A short post with some videos, about 10 minutes all together, that makes/alludes to the connection between math and music. "Math has long been at the foundation of music. In fact, in ancient Greece, 'music' referred to the study of numerical ratios, and around the time of Plato, 'harmony' originally emerged as a branch of physics." (The video is under the June 30 entry.)

And check out this video starting at minute 12 Also check out this video about string theory. There is a connection between math and music. What makes a collection of sound noise or music? Is modern rock music considered noise or real music? The videos are interesting.

Don't Mess With Texas

2011-07-06T19:45:00.001-07:00

I thought this was an interesting story.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/07/06/mexican-national-inmate-on-death-row-creates-international-stir/

Basically, this guy named Humberto Leal, a mexican national, raped and murdered a sixteen year old girl in 1995. The evidence was overwhelming against him and it only took the jury 45 minutes to reach a verdict.

The UN and Obama have been trying to postpone the execution, which is scheduled for 6:00 pm thursday 7-7-11. Evidently there is a UN resolution that gives Leal the right to seek consultation from his home nation of Mexico.

My favorite part of the story:

“Texas is not bound by a foreign court’s ruling,” Katherine Cesinger, the press secretary said in a statement (foxnews).

This is just another example, among many, why Texas is awesome.

Financial Collapse 2020-2035

2011-06-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

Here is some more information to help you to better see that the "most predictable economic crisis we've had" is headed our way: it is obvious to those that care to look. Here is some more good new about our economic situation from the Congressional Budget Office, CBO. It paints a very bleak picture where America is headed towards a Greek-like crisis between 2020-2035.

As negotiators look to gimmicks and changing assumptions to reach a deal on raising the debt ceiling, a new report by congressional budgeters out Wednesday is offering a grim outlook and ugly alternatives for dealing with increasing debt. The report by the Congressional Budget Office says that the debt will eat up the government’s spending ability, and offers two scenarios -- both potential trajectories -- that they say by 2035 will push the debt either to most of the annual gross domestic product or to nearly twice the economic power of the U.S. Already, the CBO says, the debt has spiraled out of control in just three years. 'At the end of 2008, that debt equaled 40 percent of the nation's annual economic output (a little above the 40-year average of 37 percent). Since then, the figure has shot upward: By the end of this year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects, federal debt will reach roughly 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) -- the highest percentage since shortly after World War II,' reads the report.

This increase in debt is staggering and can't be maintained. The August 2 deadline to raise the nation's debt ceiling is fast approaching and it looks like some sort of a deal has been reached between republicans and democrats on raising the debt limit in exchange for spending cuts. But these are very unlikely to be real spending cuts. They will probably be like the phony cuts to this years budget that started out as 100 billion and turned into 60 billions that ended up being a couple of million dollars. If real cuts can't be made at the present, then how will it be any easier or possible to make them at a latter date when it will be a more difficult proposition?

The fact is that America has reached the point that other countries of past and present have reached in this stage of their economic collapse that results from deficit spending-- made possible by central banks-- to fund an over bloated welfare state. The leaders knew/know that they must cut spending but that this will lead to social unrest and lost of social cohesion--check out Greece-- and that such cuts are politically impossible to make-- look at recent attacks on the proposed cuts to medicare. So the leaders create more debt in the attempt to delay the day of reckoning to buy time to come up with a better solution to the economic problems. This "better solution" never materializes and economic collapse is always the end result. This time the collapse is not an individual nation or region of the world but the entire globe. When the nations of the world find themselves in this state of collapse, they will be forced to put aside political and cultural differences while they come together for a short time as the result of the interconnectedness of the economies of the world to form international alliances, agreements and governing bodies as a means to salvage the situation. Look at the relationship between Germany and Greece. Germany is bailing out Greece against the will of its people again because they failed to live up to its austerity measures. Germany is doing this because of the risk of the financial contagion--German banks are invested in Greek debt-- affecting Germany. It is only a matter of time before Greece and then the EU collapses to be followed by America around 2020-2035.

What can you do to prepare yourself for this economic crisis so that you can thrive? Live life but prepare yourself mentally for a very bad economy, know basic survival psychology, stay out of debt, get out of debt, increase your line of available credit, have a couple months of extra food, own some precious metals, invest in commodities and assets with intrinsic value, read the Bible, and know that agriculture is going to be the next big thing according to a prominent investor. Or do what the majority of people throughout history do in situations like these which is to be unawares which leads them falling on their face and being raped. sometimes literally. "In hyperinflation[ or economic collapse], a kilo of potatoes was worth, to some, more than the family silver; a side of pork more than the grand piano. A prostitute in the family was better than an infant corpse; theft was preferable to starvation; warmth was finer than honor, clothing more essential than democracy, food more need than freedom." Quoted form Adam Fergusson's book "When Money Dies". Inflation and economic depression is always the end result when central banks control a nations money supply. To see this clearly read "The Creature From Jekyll Island".

Defense Secretary Gates Consults RTP&GG, rips NATO Allies

2011-06-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Secretary of Defense Gates, who served in that position in the second half of the Bush Administration as well as the 1st half of the Obama Administration, consulted RTP&GG, and decided his farewell speech would be a good time to absolutely hammer NATO. I've got nothing to add to it. Just read the Washington Post article. A couple of killer quotes:

“The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress, and in the American body politic writ large, to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources ... to be serious and capable partners in their own defense,” he said in an address to a think tank in Brussels.

and:

In Libya, Gates said, “the mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference.”

Pathetic.

To continue to rap on my theme: international organizations don't work when the populations of some countries think those of others in the organization aren't pulling their weight or are trying to rip them off. "Coaltions of the willing" will be the wave of the future in both military and economic arenas. The international organizations themselves have zero power. Power rests in the wills of the member countries/populations.

How About AGas Tax Hike To Force People To Drive Smaller Cars? And What Can Be Done To Save America?

2011-06-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

According to GM's (I mean government motors) CEO a gas tax hike would be a good thing because it would nudge consumers into buying smaller cars like the wonderful Chevy Volt:

General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker.
'I actually think the government will be out this year — within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months,' Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week.
He is grateful for the government's rescue of GM — 'I have nothing but good things to say about them' — but Akerson said the time for that relationship to end is coming because it's wearing on GM.
'It's kind of like your in-laws: It was a nice long weekend. We didn't say a week,' Akerson said with a laugh.
And while he is eager to say goodbye to the government as a part owner of GM, Akerson would like to see it step up to the challenge of setting a higher gas tax, as part of a comprehensive energy policy.
A government-imposed tax hike, Akerson believes, will prompt more people to buy small cars and do more good for the environment than forcing automakers to comply with higher gas-mileage standards.

I for one would be willing to pay gas tax to solve a non existent crises. As you know the American government bailed out GM and fired their old CEO, I still remember the headlines that stated a President Fired a CEO of a private company that I thought I would never hear in America-- and replaced him with one more to President's Obama's liking. This might not be surprising, but the main point of the matter is that it shows how big business colludes with government to squash competition and uses the government to create regulations that benefits the business. It is similar to the financial sector that received a bailout by the government. The people in government that bailed out the banks were once CEO's of some of these very banks and are now in the position to regulate them. Is it surprising that they would use the government regulations to benefit their former business? This is the same situation that arose when the government first started regulating businesses--this started under Theodore Roosevelt-- like the railroads: those in charge of regulating the railroads once worked in the industry and when they worked for the government they used government regulations to give the big businesses an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors by creating regulations that smaller businesses could not comply with while at the same time staying in business. Today we have GE, GOOGLE, GM, and a host of other big business that collude with the government. Looking into this subject in more depth will make one look differently at big business and realize that America is not a capitalist system. A lot of the complaints against capitalism and big business by its opponents fail to see that it is this relationship between big business and government that is the real cause of the evils that they attribute to former.

Switching the subject to unfunded liabilities, Unfunded liabilities total about 107 trillion dollars according to this news article, I have heard between 60 to close to 200 trillion dollars. All the promises made by the government to take care of us can simply not be kept:

The latest Social Security Trustees Report tells us that the program will be insolvent by the year 2037. The combined unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare has reached nearly $107 trillion in today's dollars. That is about seven times the size of the U.S. economy and 10 times the size of the national debt.

The question is will Americans react like the Greeks when the government teat runs dry or will they be able to endure hardship? According to recent developments in the debate to reform medicare, the answer is no. This is not any real news, but the author does pose an interesting question about what can be done to save America:

People ask what can be done to save our nation from decline. To ask that represents a misunderstanding of history and possibly a bit of arrogance. After all, how different are Americans from the Romans, Spaniards, French and English? These were once mighty nations standing at the top of civilization. At the height of these nations' prosperity, no one would have predicted that they'd become third-rate nations, especially England. If during Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887 had a person suggested that England would become a third-rate nation and later challenged on the high seas by a sixth-rate nation (Argentina), he would have been declared insane. One chief causal factor for the decline of these former great nations is what has been described as 'bread and circuses,' where government spends money for the shallow and immediate wants of the population, and civic virtue all but disappears. For the past half-century, our nation has been doing precisely what brought down other great nations. We may have now reached the point of no return. If so, do we deserve it?

A record number of Americans are dependent on the government for food stamps or "bread" and more Americans are concerned with "American Idol" and pop culture or "Circuses" than the important issues of the day. Reading history and comparing it to current events makes it hard to be optimistic about America's future. America is at a crossroads. Americans need to wake up and a cultural revolution needs to occur in order for our Country to be saved.

The Shaping Of The American Minds

2011-06-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

It is no surprise nor is it a revelation that Hollywood and pop culture is populated with liberals, but what may be new is the fact that many T.V. shows and movies have subtle hidden messages. This message being a liberal one. Pop culture is how most people's world view is formed and shaped. Is it then no surprise that most people hold a liberal world view? Is it no surprise that America elected a President with an affinity for communism and social justice?

A communist message is present in the majority of movies and T.V. shows: from Star Trek's vision of a united-galaxy--one-world-- Utopia where there is no money (start at min one and ignore the retard guy) and no greed because people have an evolved sense of reason and where its main hero is a drunkard as is the case in the most recent film; from Star Wars promotion of a new-age religion; from movies like "The Hangover" where getting drunk to the point of unconsciousness is glorified; from Avatar's promotion of a new environmental religion; from T.V. shows where family values are ridiculed to the effect of eroding the nuclear family which is at the very foundation of a free society; from movies that hold up a charismatic leader that shows up and saves the world from disaster having the effect of preparing people to follow a similar leader; from Superman renouncing his America citizenship to become a "citizen of the world"; from Sesame Street's subtle liberal messages; from the Snookies and Britanny Spears. This list could go on and on.

Spreading ideals and shaping opinion through media is nothing new, but what is significant is the fact that it is so widespread and the fact that a liberal message is almost the only message. Is it no wonder that Americans hold and spout liberal and communist thought without them even being aware that it is such or being aware of where these ideals came from and what these ideals lead to? Our current President is the outcome of the ideals that pop culture spreads. To change the direction America is headed will require that pop culture spread the ideals of freedom and capitalism which will lead to a cultural revolution. The problem in the political arena is merely a symptom of this pop culture disease. Until our culture starts to reflect the ideas of freedom, prepare for the end of America and freedom as you know it. Or sit back and get the pop corn, and prop the legs up and watch a movie that will ease the pain of reality.

The End of NATO? Visegrad Group Forms

2011-05-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many predicted that NATO's relevence would disappear too, as the post-WWII threat to Europe's security had disappeared. NATO did react to the 9/11 attacks on a member state (USA) by assisting America in Afghanistan. NATO did not follow the US into Iraq, but it was a war of choice by the US and therefore, it could be rationalized that it was not a war requiring NATO assistance. Many NATO countries (chiefly the UK as usual) did assist us regardless.

Many Americans wonder why we have bases in Europe when there is no threat there, or when a perceived threat (such as a nuclear Iran or a resurgent-but-greatly reduced Russia) should be handled by Europeans themselves. My own opinion at this point is that we should have Air Force and Navy agreements with European countries for bases to use as trans-shipment points, and to serve as a tripwire for US involvement should a really big attack happen, but that all major Army bases and most of the AF and Navy bases should be vacated. It's time Europeans were responsible for their own defense.

Now NATO has initiated a war of choice with Libya. I support the effort, but it certainly is not a war that NATO was ever intended to fight. This is even more a war of choice than Iraq was. NATO is officially participating, but one of its main members, Germany, is not participating. The US, after bearing the brunt of the early work has backed off to a support role, and it is now mainly a British, French, and Italian effort. What exactly the point is, is not entirely clear, as has been pointed out in a previous RTP&GG post.

Clearly, the original rationale for NATO, to protect European democracies from external threat, has all but disappeared and NATO is looking for a reason for being. Even strong pro-military, pro-western democracy guys like me are wondering why it's still there.

A new development that has occurred under the media radar is showing that some NATO member nations still take NATO's original (and only) reason for being seriously, but that they don't trust NATO to serve that role. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia have formed a cooperative military group, focused on repelling a Russian invasion...the very thing NATO is intended for. I'm pretty sure all these countries are recent joiners of NATO. Doubtlessly, they read the tea leaves after Russia's bullying adventure in NATO-wannabee country, Georgia, saw NATO's ineffectual response, and are acting accordingly. These countries, long-suffering under the Soviet boot in the Cold War, now worry very much about the Russians, and don't believe they can count on NATO to do the job it was expressly created to do. As the article points out, they are worried that Germany is now focused economically on Russia and may not be greatly motivated to help out the smaller Eastern European countries,

The Germans obviously are struggling to shore up the European Union and questioning precisely how far they are prepared to go in doing so. There are strong political forces in Germany questioning the value of the EU to Germany, and with every new wave of financial crises requiring German money, that sentiment becomes stronger. In the meantime, German relations with Russia have become more important to Germany. Apart from German dependence on Russian energy, Germany has investment opportunities in Russia. The relationship with Russia is becoming more attractive to Germany at the same time that the relationship to NATO and the EU has become more problematic.

The formation of the Visegrad group is, in a way, heartening, as it shows individual countries forming alliances to meet specific threats, and not having to depend on the US to save them. For this old Cold Warrior, it's sad to see NATO coming to an end, but it's now an alliance without an enemy. Hard to justify. The US needs to approach things more like the Visegrad group, forming alliances with good friends for good reasons.

This also is one more step in the collapse of the vast transnational groups, and is heartening in that way too. The UN, long past its useful life, NATO past its useful life, the European Union in slow-motion collapse, etc. I don't know if the IMF is close to collapse or not, but the recent scandal involving its leader revealed to us that the head of the IMF was a Socialist. WTF?! I see approaching irrelevency there too.

Just Like a Big Boy!

2011-05-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry for this post so long after the fact, but I think it's still relevent:

So the jokey Trump candidacy accomplished one thing: it humiliated Obama into releasing his long form birth certificate, over two years AFTER he was sworn in to be President. The President said

"This issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now. I think it started during the campaign," Obama said. "I have watched with bemusement, I've been puzzled at the degree at which this thing just kept on going."

"We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers," the president said.

Ironic. This president calling everyone else carnival barkers. RTP&GG ourselves did an in depth analysis of the situation a while ago. I guessed that there must be something embarrassing about the birth certificate or it would have been released ages ago, long before he became president. But, if you go to the first link above you can see a clear pdf of the certificate and you will see nothing at all odd about it, outside of the somewhat odd situation he was born into, which was already well-documented public knowledge.

Obama was trying to make fun of the people that raised a stink about the birth certificate, and of course liberals all praised this bold move.

The problems still are a) Why wasn't it mandatory to produce the birth certificate to run for president? b) Why didn't he just produce it and quash all the rumors long ago?

I am going to renew my Oregon Drivers License in a few weeks and I will need to produce my birth certificate. When kids sign up for Little League in 3rd grade they have to produce birth certifcates to prove they are the right age to play for the team they signed up for. This was a simple thing that should have been mandatory.

Talk about "soft bigotry of low expectations". This is the softest and lowest I've ever seen. Are we going to next praise him for knowing his home address and phone number, just like a big boy? Barack, I'm so proud of you! You really are qualified to be president!

Does America Need Another Ronald Reagan Or Republican Leadership?

2011-05-13T12:14:00.000-07:00

America is in massive debt and entity after entity are going bankrupt: the post office lost 2.2 billion dollars in the 2nd quarter of 2011 and might need a bailout; Social Security and Medicare will be out of money by 2036 " If you're 54 or older and plan to live the average American life expectancy of 77.9 years, then you're in good shape. But if you're planning to live past the year 2036, don't count on Social Security. And if you're relying on Medicare, don't even think about the math."; "legendary investor Jim Rogers thinks U.S. bonds will be worthless,

I will be shorting US bonds, Rogers told a conference in Edinburgh. 'I would probably be doing it today if I weren't here,' he said. Bonds in the US have been in a bull market for 30 years, Rogers said. In my view that's coming to an end...the bond bull market is coming to an end. If any of you have bonds I would urge you to go home and sell them. If any of you are bond portfolio managers I would get another job,' he said. Addressing one bond portfolio manager among conference delegates, Rogers said: If I were you I would think about becoming a farmer. You buy land and learn how to farm. In my view it’s going to be a spectacular way to make money,' he said, adding: This is where the great fortunes are going to be made in the future.[...] Longer term the US dollar is going to be a total disaster, Rogers said, urging investors to think about getting out of US dollars before it’s too late.

over in the EU Portugal has requested a bailout and Greece has not been living up to the terms of its bailout that demanded that Greece make tough budget cuts; it looks like the GOP will not be making big cuts to the 2012 budget. This little bit of economic news is just the tip of the iceberg. The world is broke and bankrupt and facing an imminent economic crisis. So does America need another Ronald Regan or Republican President? According to this view of history the answer is no.

"Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction To Revisionism" is a short book from the Mises Institute. Starting on page 177 is a brief overview of Ronald Reagan. It paints a rather different picture of the standard on that portrays him as an advocate of limited government,

Like most Republican politicians since the early 1930s, Reagan always portrayed himself throughout his political career as a champion of limited government, individual rights, and free enterprise—the classical liberal values which, of course, he absurdly described as 'conservative.' But, like almost all Republican politicians since the early 1930s, he seemed to forget all about these values once he got into office and assumed the reins of power. Consider, as a case in point, Reagan’s eight years (1966-
1974) as governor of California. As Murray Rothbard noted in 1980, 'Despite his bravado about having stopped the growth of state government, the actual story is that the California budget grew by 122 percent during his eight years as governor, not much of an improvement on the growth rate of 130 percent during the preceding two terms of free-spending liberal Pat Brown. The state bureaucracy increased during Reagan’s administration from 158,000 to 192,000, a rise of nearly 22 percent—hardly squaring with Reagan’s boast of having “stopped the bureaucracy cold.'[...]According to Rothbard, Reagan 'created seventy-three new state government councils and commissions, with a total budget, in his last year alone, of $12 million. Included was the California Energy Commission, which put the state hip-deep into the energy business' and created a regulatory climate under which a three-year review process was required before any new power plant could be constructed in the state.[...] As James Ostrowski noted in 2002, 'Over the last one hundred years, of the five presidents who presided over the largest domestic spending increases, four were Republicans. Include regulations and foreign policy, as well as budgets approved by a Republican Congress, and a picture begins to emerge of the Republican Party as a reliable engine of government growth.'

The whole section is about seven pages. I know it was the democrats that was the reason for the increase in the national deficit during Reagan's Presidency, but I don't have any good arguments against the points made against Reagan by this short book. But the fact is that Republicans are just as bad when it comes to increasing the size of government and the national debt: look at Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, Bush 43. And it was Bush 41 who started talking about this new world order.

The point of the post is that the world is bankrupt and this massive global economic ponzi scheme is about to end and no Republican President or Congress is able or willing to stop the of massive tsunami of debt that is about to hit the world. Given the history of the leadership of Republican Presidents, America doesn't need one at the crucial time.

Its Prius time

2011-05-12T09:27:00.000-07:00

How is that Prius sounding now? I never calculated this rate of inflation. I think that we have definitelly seen the last of price per gal < $3.00. Maybe even $4.00. We are entering the world of Europia.

In a political attempt to appease the voters, dems summoned up all the oil execs. This is a fake facade to appear hardline against rising prices. The dems know that the tax cuts will not be voted down. Of course it will appear like they tried but the evil republicans are to blame.

"Exxon paid $11 billion in taxes last year. Adding another $1 billion to the ticket would probably mean more pain at the pump. But the plan won’t pass, especially since Democrats themselves don’t agree on it. Not only would it be bad for oil producing states, but the tax revenues would be spent, not used to reduce the deficit."-Foxnews

I'm pretty much regurgitating the article from foxnews.com (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/12/lots-hot-air-gas-end-high-prices/). Forgive me for my lack of originality. I just wanted to get the ball moving.

Picture front: Lcpl Goekler and Cpl Dean

Picture back: Cpl Hassinger and Cpl Edwards

Photographer: Lcpl Robinson

Osama Bin Laden Killed by US Forces near the capital of Pakistan

2011-05-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

Some guy we haven't talked about in ages killed by US forces outside of the capital of Pakistan.

First off: This is definitely fantastic news! The goat fucker deserved to die and that it comes at the hands of US forces, bullet to the head form, is a great thing. Kudos to President Obama for having the balls to authorize the operation, for this must have been a delicate operation, deep inside Pakistan, not a drone strike near the border.

However, as everyone notes: this won't end the war on terror. It may be a temporary body blow to the terrorists, but, that's it. It'll be interesting to hear in the next few days, to what extent bin Laden was still involved in Al Qaeda operations. I've said many times that, living or dead, he's been irrelevent to the war for many years, offering no moral support to the people that would look to him for inspiration. I don't think he ever was too involved at the tactical level. Hopefully we'll learn soon to what extent he was still involved with things.

But, there are some things that make you say "hmmm":

A covert operation deep inside Pakistan, close to the capital. This is where Osama's been hiding? How did the ISI not know about his whereabouts all this time? Is it remotely conceivable that they didn't know?
Assuming they did know where he was, did they just recently give up the whereabouts to US intelligence, or is this something US intelligence figured out themselves?
Obama authorized what, on the surface, would be a very risky mission. He just doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would do that.

Bud-D's conspiracy theory: The ISI gave him up in exchange for cancellation or a great reduction in drone strikes. Pakistan gave tacit permission for the US to go in and snatch him. Obama will use this -undeniably great event- to justify pulling out of Afghanistan this summer.

And maybe it's time? What does the RTP&GG community think?

It'll be interesting what we learn in the near future about what really went down. What if the Pakistanis didn't know anything or didn't give him up? Then I've got to say that Obama and our Special Forces really kicked ass. And what about Pakistan?

Cool, Educational Economic Rap Video

2011-04-28T18:46:00.001-07:00

I think Melkor posted the first part of this rap video. This video is about the debate between John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich A. Hayek. The world economic system is based on the Keynesian economic model. This website has a fifteen minute video on Keynes.

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Keynes

"For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals." Hayek

Happy Mother Earth Day And Happy Birthday To Lenin

2011-04-22T12:56:00.000-07:00

As you may know it is Earth Day, but this year is a very special one because "Mother Earth is finally having her rights recognized". The UN is pushing for the Earth to have the same rights as humans. A very moving message--no this did not come from the Onion as far as I know--follows from the main proponent of the fight to give Earth her rights:

'Sixty years after adopting the [Universal Declaration of Human Rights], Mother Earth is now, finally, having her rights recognized,' said President Morales, immediately following the Assembly’s unanimous adoption of a resolution designating 22 April each year as International Mother Earth Day (A/63/L.69).

Action to that end had never been more vital, as the toll of years of environmental degradation and callous exploitation of the planet’s natural resources and ecosystems could no longer be ignored, he said. The incremental yet increasingly obvious impacts of manmade climate change were putting Mother Earth at even more peril, as in his region alone the snow capped peaks of the Andean mountain range were receding every day; islands were buffeted by ever-more violent storms; and arid areas were becoming even drier.

'We are strangling the planet -– strangling ourselves,' President Morales declared, stressing that, for too many years, the world had been held captive by the seductive notion of capitalism. However, it was now clear that “we don’t own the planet, we belong to it,” he said, calling for the twenty-first century to be dedicated to protecting and supporting Mother Earth and her ecosystems.

Some 60 years after activists had fought so hard to win acknowledgement of human rights worldwide, including social, economic, political and cultural rights, Mother Earth was now having her rights recognized, he continued. Indeed, animals and plants -- all living creatures and beings -- had rights that deserved to be respected and protected. Those that had supported the text in the Assembly would be heralded for their historic action, he said, expressing the hope that, as the twentieth century had been called 'the century of human rights', this new era would be known as the “century of the rights of Mother Earth'.

Continuing, President Morales said that, by proclaiming the International Day, United Nations Member States now had the opportunity to begin laying out a Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth. Such a Charter must enshrine the right to life for all living things; right to regeneration of the planet’s biocapacity; right to a clean life -- for Mother Earth to live free of contamination and pollution; and the right to harmony and balance among and between all things.

As you celebrate Earth Day, also take time to remember Vladimir Lenin whose birthday happens to be the same day as Earth Day. Lenin is the main inspiration for those environmentalist fighting for a cleaner environment by hasting the overthrow of capitalism. I recommend hugging a tree, turning your lights off for one hour, and reading "The Communist Manifesto" in honor of this great day.

S&P Downgrades U.S. Outlook To Negative

2011-04-19T08:52:00.000-07:00

"Standard & Poor's on Monday downgraded the outlook for the United States to negative, saying it believes there's a risk U.S. policymakers may not reach agreement on how to address the country's long-term fiscal pressures. " Or you can read the statement straight from S&P. Note this downgrade happened in 1996, but now America faces a much grimmer situation. This is one more warning from a reputable source: military leaders, congressmen, hedge fund managers, the Secretary of The Treasury, the CBO, and others of where America is headed. (I would have posted some of what the statement said but the copy and paste feature is not working properly.)

One third of all U.S. wages come from the government. An unprecedented amount of American's are dependent on government money to meet their most basic needs. The majority, 40%, of American's don't pay federal income tax. Food, shelter, and other basic physiological needs, the very base of Maslow's hierachy of human needs, are more addictive than any drug out there: if you don't get these needs you die. The vast number of Americans are not going to easily give up these basic necessities. This is exactly what will be required for meaningful economic reform to take place. If this reform takes place, social cohesion will be lost. America has been headed down this path for a long time. A cultural revolution will have to occur before America can reverse course.

Read the sobering statement about the economic reality that America faces. The next couple of years is going to an important inflection point that determines whether America's and the world's economy is going to survive or crash in the coming decades. (I am already convinced of which outcome this will be. All you have to do is look at American culture.) Get educated about economics and stayed informed by keeping abreast of economic news so that you can come to your OWN conclusion--you must know what you believe. A good easy book to read is "Economics In One Lesson". Invest your money wisely, pay down your debts, brush up on survival psychology--not that things are going to get to the point where society will completely collapse-- by knowing terms like analysis paralysis, inattentional blindness, the 10-80-10 rule and other terms as your life stands to be turned upside down; get a couple month's worth of food supply; and be weary of people that promise a magic solution to your economic problems. Or the easy thing to do is to just ignore everything and continue with your life.

Budget Battle, 38 Billion In Cuts, And America's Future

2011-04-13T07:51:00.000-07:00

The Democrats and Republicans agreed to make the "largest cuts in history" to the budget. The actual cuts were around 2 billion,

Of the $38 and a half billion dollars in cuts, $12 billion in cuts from three previous stopgap continuing resolutions. In other words, old money. Twelve billion dollars of the 38 and a half came from old CRs, three stopgaps. Ten billion came from the previous continuing resolution. Now, we talked about this yesterday. It had been said that $10 billion of it was from a previous CR. We couldn't find any documentation. We did overnight. And the number of real cuts in this continuing resolution that was agreed to on Friday night was $2 billion.

Mark Levin's take: "It is an historic scam".

Inflation is actually around 10%, "Inflation, using the reporting methodologies in place before 1980, hit an annual rate of 9.6 percent in February, according to the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter." It came from CNBC.

In light of the inability to cut government spending and to get its debt under control, here is an article to give you a heads up to what is coming.

Some more news in Egypt and the rise of Islam as the dominate political force there.

Some News

2011-04-06T20:38:00.000-07:00

Some news to keep abreast of the changes occurring in the world. Portugal is seeking a bailout from the European Union after its Parliament rejected austerity measures,

Portugal's prime minister said Wednesday his country has asked for financing assistance from the European Union due to its high debts and difficulty raising money on international markets.[...]Portugal becomes the third financially troubled eurozone country after Greece and Ireland to request assistance from Europe's bailout fund and the International Monetary Fund.[...] Such an announcement had long been expected as Portugal, one of the 17-nation eurozone's smallest and weakest economies, struggled to finance its economy. Following a rejection of additional austerity measures by its parliament last month, Portugal has seen its borrowing costs rise to unsustainably high levels.

It looks like another EU country has fallen. Instead of making very painful budget cuts, Portugal has decided to receive a bailout. This will no doubt require that Portugal cede some of its sovereignty to the larger international governing body as happened in the case of Ireland and Greece. This bit of news needs to be put into the larger context of the EU debt sovereign debt crisis and Dominique Strauss-Kahn's recent speech to understand what how this piece fits into the still nebulous large puzzle that is being put together. Every time period is one of change so this transformation is nothing new.

The IMF managing director has made some comments on the direction that the global economy is headed,

In a speech entitled “Global Challenges, Global Solutions”[...] Mr. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), called for a new approach to economic policymaking in the wake of the recent global crisis. He singled out three areas for improvement: a new approach to macroeconomic and financial sector policies, a new approach to social cohesion, and a new approach to cooperation and multilateralism.[...]Middle East, noting that it is going through an 'historic transformation' as 'citizens are seeking greater freedom, and a fairer distribution of economic opportunities and resources'.[...]'In designing a new macroeconomic framework for a new world', he stated, 'the pendulum will swing—at least a little—from the market to the state, and from the relatively simple to the relatively more complex'.[...]Mr. Strauss-Kahn called for policymakers to pay more attention to inequality and social cohesion. 'The lethal cocktail of prolonged high unemployment and high inequality can strain social cohesion and political stability, which in turn affects macroeconomic stability.' He suggested that inequality, which was a factor in the Middle East, might also have been among the root causes of the global crisis, and that sustainable global growth is associated with more equal income distribution.[...]Mr. Strauss-Kahn stressed the virtues of enhanced cooperation and multilateralism in the post-crisis world, noting that 'the great challenges of today all require a collective solution'. [ All emphasis is mine.]

I disagree with some of what is stated in this speech, most notably that in the new global economic framework the state will have a larger role, but my disagreement does not negate the realities of the world that we live in nor does it mean that this should not happen. The lost of social cohesion due to high unemployment, inflation, and overall bad economy will pose a very real threat to global stability, the Middle East and Europe are a prime example. This unequal distribution of wealth, "inequality", being spoken of sounds like the main theme of "The Communist Manifesto". This problem begs the question: who or what entity will solve this inequality? Government or the private sector? Well the pendulum is swinging a new direction. The challenges that the world faces will require "collective solution". If the nations of the world, the collective, are all socialist, then what will that solution be?

Americans took a pay cut because of inflation, "You may not have noticed it when you opened up your paycheck last month, but you just took a pay cut. Wages in America are flattening as inflation surges, therefore real income growth is actually negative, according to the latest data from the Labor Department. " If I had to make a guess I would say that real inflation will peak around thirty percent.

And El Baradei of Egypt has decided to challenge Israel's right to exist and promise to declare war on them. There is nothing like a peaceful uprising of the youth in the name of democracy.

Some interesting and exciting news.

"Whats Wrong With Being Sexy?"

2011-03-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sure you have heard of the recent class action law suit against Wal Mart for, in the words of Nigel Tufnel (lead guitarist of Spinal Tap), "being sexy". Wal Mart managers, alledgedly, made some edgy comments to female employees.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/27/court-huge-sex-bias-claim-vs-wal-mart/#

I read the article and I didn't see anything that would justify a billion dollar settlement. "Dust off your make up" was a good line. I remember trying to sell chip displays in to ceratin grocery chains and the manager wouldn't buy the display unless we send in Lisa (I changed the name). But basically, the Grocery Manager wanted to see our cute blonde manager come in and sell the product or he wouldn't buy it. Situations like this hurt men's ability to sell. So telling this woman to "dust off your make up" might have been a good selling point.

Another piece to the closing of the American mind.

An Establishment Republican Explains why Boehner's Dink & Dunk Approach on the Budget is the Right One

2011-03-28T22:29:00.000-07:00

I'm unsure about the current approach of passing continuing resolutions that get the budget to match what the Republicans want rather than forcing a showdown. I also admit that the $61M the Republicans are cutting is nowhere near enough but is literally an order of magnitude larger than the ridiculous budget proposed by Obama and the Democrats. But, I think that it's possibly the best that we can expect at this time, while Republicans control only the House and not the Senate or Presidency. Regardless of what I think, here is what long-time, respected, establishment Republican Fred Barnes thinks. I'm not going to make the argument, I'll let Fred:

...The end zone is far away, however, and impatience won't get Republicans there. Impatience is not a strategy. It may lead to a government shutdown with unknown results. To enact the sweeping cuts they desire, Republicans must hold the House and capture the Senate and White House in the 2012 election. Then they'll control Washington. Now they don't.

In the meantime, the incremental strategy is working. Republicans have passed two short-term measures to keep the government in operation since early March while slashing $10 billion in spending. At this rate, they would achieve the target of GOP congressional leaders of lopping off $61 billion from President Obama's proposed budget in the final seven months of the 2011 fiscal year.

Barnes was around in 1995 when Republicans forced a government shutdown to bring Clinton around on the budget. It backfired for Republicans at the ballot box in 1996. Would it backfire for Republicans now? I think the battlefield is much different now, and it may not backfire, but it's certainly prudent to consider that possibility.

His summary:

The House speaker has been accused of playing a weak hand. "I think John Boehner has basically climbed into the Bob Dole suit," columnist Mark Steyn told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt. "Arguing over itsy-bitsy, half a billion here and half a billion there . . . is preposterous."

But it may not be if it's the most you can get under current circumstances. What's unsatisfying to many conservatives is most likely the best Republicans can achieve in 2011. "Public opinion seems to support Republican efforts to cut spending without shutting down the government," notes Keith Hennessey, former domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush, and some recent polls back him up. Mr. Hennessey supports a gradualist strategy. "Don't change tactics," he says. "Just ratchet up your demands a little."

That makes sense. What doesn't is sacrificing spending cuts you can get on the altar of those you can't.

Of course, Read the whole thing. Not sure if he's right or wrong.

The Muslim Brotherhood Is Becoming A Major Political Force In Egypt

2011-03-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

Those that stated that the uprisings in the Middle East and especially Egypt might not be a good thing were ridiculed and scoffed at, but now it seems as if the uprisings might not actually be leading to democracy and freedom. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming a major player in the new Egypt is of interest because the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization unfriendly towards the West whose members included some of the 911 hijackers and a spiritual and intellectual leader that hates Israel, a big understatement. Israel's--our traditional ally and the only free nation is that region of the world--dependence on Egypt to maintain stability is an important factor to keep in mind as it appears they might be loosing an ally, if you could characterize Egypt's and Israel's relationship as such. The uprisings in Egypt were heralded with organismic praise by the media to include our President, who encouraged it, as an uprising comprised of the young and idealist that were seeking freedom, democracy, and "change" whose outcome would lead to democracy. If what is stated in this article is true, then this is a good indication of what the uprisings in the Middle East, at least Egypt, are possibly leading to: an outcome that is not good for freedom or world stability.

It looks like the Muslim Brotherhood is becoming a major player in the new Egypt. "In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes. It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment. [...] 'There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,' said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. 'It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.'[...]'We are all worried,' said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone'

As Thomas Sowell points out what history shows being over optimist about the youth rising up in the name of revolution,

What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government.
History says otherwise. After Russia's czars were replaced by the Communists, the government executed more people in a day than the czars had executed in half a century. It was much the same story in Cuba, when the Batista regime was replaced by Castro and in Iran when the Shah was replaced by the Ayatollahs.
It is not inevitable that bad regimes are replaced by worse regimes. But it has happened too often for us to blithely assume that overthrowing a dictator means a movement toward freedom and democracy.

It also looks like Yemen is about to fall,

Of all the uprisings and protests that have swept the Middle East this year, none is more likely than Yemen to have immediate damaging effects on U.S. counterterrorism efforts. Yemen is home to al-Qaida’s most active franchise, and as President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government crumbles, so does Washington’s influence there.[...]Further complicating U.S. efforts to build a new partnership in Yemen is the fact that one of the driving forces behind the protests is the country’s fundamentalist Islamic opposition party, known as Islah. The party’s spiritual leader, Sheik Abdel-Majid al-Zindani, is on a U.S. list of terrorists and has been described as a loyalist of Osama bin Laden. Though experts caution that Islah today is held together by shared opposition to Saleh, the group’s ties to al-Zindani would make it harder for Washington to justify spending more money to arm or stabilize an Islah-led Yemen.

This is a short post that I might add to later. The point of this post is to show that the uprisings in the Middle East are looking like they will lead to an outcome that will not be good for Israel, America, the West, or the world especially considering that terrorist organizations seem to be the ones benefiting and getting a foothold in the new governments being formed as a result of the uprisings. Given the world's dependence on that region's supply of "black gold", there is a potential for some problems ahead for the world and definitely Israel. I am not going to try and predict or state what will happen as the result of recent events in the Middle East, although it is not hard to know. But I am willingly to bet the outcome will not be good. The events in the Middle East are definitely worth keeping up to date.

Obama - Bloodthirsty NeoCon Warmonger Thread

2011-03-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'll bet we're all over that map on the rightness of the attacks Obama has ordered on Libya. I think that a determined effort to support rebels to overthrow Kaddafi is a good idea. He's been a thorn in our side for decades and no matter who takes over there after he is overthrown, it can't be any worse. He should have been killed after he ordered the Pan Am Lockerbie bombing that killed I think over 200 Americans. But, even our hero, Ronald Reagan, just did a light retaliation for that horrible act. In my opinion, the most powerful nation in the world, if it wants to remain the most powerful nation in the world, smashes opponents who pick fights like that. Kaddafi has needed eliminating for quite some time. Saying "but he's one of many assholes in the world that need taking out, what has he done this time that sets him apart from the others?" I say, past behavior for which he should have paid, and also, and this is something that it seems pundits on the left and right fail to account for in trying to be righteous for their side: it would be relatively easy to overthrow him. This as opposed to say Ahmedinajad (sp?) or Communist China. Yes, this asshole can be overthrown and held up as an example (like Saddam Hussein) for a relatively small amount of effort on our side. So, I generally support the mission in Libya, so long as it includes overthrowing and killing Kaddafi. If those are not goals, and they don't appear to be the publically stated goals of the French, British, or Obama, then I'm wondering what we're doing.

Regardless of how I feel about the action, the way Obama, the Boy King, has gone about this, and how he has arrived at the point where he felt justified sending American men and material in harm's way is greatly flawed, to the point of being disgusting. And the path he has taken will greatly increase the dissention on both the right and the left for his war effort. Ace has an outstanding article discussing this, As always, a read the whole thing article, but here are a couple things: on the legitimacy of Obama charging ahead without Congressional authority (you know, the kind Bush actually got before Afghanistan and Iraq)-emphasis mine:

The Constitution does not merely enumerate the powers of office; it also enumerates the duties of office. Certainly politicians, being politicians, would occasionally enjoy ignoring their Constitutional duties. That does not give them license to do so, however.

There is and always has been argued an inherent presidential war-making power in cases where the situation is moving too quickly for formal Congressional debate, and thus, any debate would in fact resolve the issue by default -- if national interests are at risk within hours, the President (it has long been argued) can act on his own authority, temporarily, to preserve the status quo ante so that meaningful debate over options can be had (in the sense that there will still be options remaining, rather than a fait accompli), and that the president, as commander in chief, can always act in the defense of America itself.

Obviously that last part is inapplicable here; America is not directly threatened by anything that happens in Libya. American interests are indirectly threatened, depending on hypothethical future contingencies, and that means that there may be a reason to act, but this sort of indirect, hypothetical threat is not enough to give the president license to act purely on his own authority.

As to the "we must not tarry" argument -- that is disproven wholly by Obama's perfect willingness to debate this for weeks at the United Nations. He was perfectly willing to allow the rebellion to crumble to the very brink of defeat in order to secure United Nations authorization; obviously, then, this was not a "we must not tarry" situation, because the President tarried quite a bit. In fact, he tarried so much that the situation may now in fact comprise an unrecoverable loss.

What's most disgusting to me is that Obama seems to think getting permission from the UN and France is more important than getting it from Congress:

What is preposterous here, and offensive, is the apparent belief by Obama that an international Tyrant's Club created in 1945 is the true, genuine war-authority authority while the Congress specifically named in the Constitution as the war-approving authority is... what? Nothing, apparently. The international tribunal called the United Nations has, somehow, without a Constitutional amendment, displaced the Congress as the lawful tribunal for approving the injection of United States armed forces into war.

When did that happen? When, as United States citizens, did we all agree that we should no longer have the democratic power to decide when we would and would not go to war, and would instead leave the matter up to foreign powers, many (most) of whom are allied against us in one fashion or another?

Obama believes this did happen. He doesn't think we agreed on it, of course, as he knows, surely, that no such vote every took place. But he thinks that those International Representatives are much more competent to decide the fates of Americans and so, consistent with his left-liberal worldview, such responsibilities and powers are taken away from the American public and reposed instead in "better" people, either a small self-declared American elite or a foreign elite, better able to make decisions on behalf of ignorant, uneducated Americans.

Obama is following his beliefs; he is not being given sufficient credit for that: the military of the US should only be used for causes deemed important to the UN. Anything else, such as causes deemed important to the US, is evil.

Update On The Economy

2011-03-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

(Warning, this post might make you sad and this article contains what might be considered hyperbole.) QE 3 is looking more like a possibility. (Remember that QE stands for quantitative easing and is basically the creation of new money and pumping it into the economy in hopes of giving it a boost or to keep it going.)This means that the government will continue to just print, or digitize money. This will lead to further inflationary pressures down the road. As you may know food, energy, and commodity prices are up in part due to QE 2. Food and commodities are traded in U.S. dollars and when the value of the dollar is reduced because of the creation of more dollars this tends to drive up those prices. Food prices are up in part because of bad weather that has impacted crop yields and because the developing economies of the world are getting wealthier and are demanding more meat products. Energy prices are up due to the unrest in the Middle East, which was caused in part by higher food prices which was due in part because of QE 2. So you can't blame the current spike in inflation solely on the Federal Reserve actions. Back to what QE 3 will mean, the continuation of printing money by our government is starting to look similar to the path of trying to inflate its way out of debt and economic malaise that the Wiemar Republic took, but America is different and is able to avoid basic laws of economics unlike past civilizations or nations that have been unable to do so. This is not a big deal and while it might be easy to make a comparison between Wiemar and America there are differences that make a simple analogy between the two not completely accurate. The Mises Institute does an opinion piece on the possibility of QE 3:

Austrian School economists have often explained the business cycle using the metaphor of liquor or drugs. The expansion of paper money and credit gives a sense of exuberance, an economic high that leads to excessive risk taking and balloons of production. But it can't be sustained. There is a morning after.[...]
Then there is the problem of price increases more generally. The producer price index for February has generated terrifying results, though you probably haven't heard about them. Predictions were for a 0.6 percent increase but the reality was 1.6 percent, which points to double digits on an annualized basis.
And that just the beginning. Food prices rose the most since November 1974. Prices of raw materials rose by 3.4 percent in February from the previous month. Intermediate prices climbed 2.0 percent, with diesel fuel up a monthly 12.6 percent in February[...]
History is littered with monetary mangers who believed they were in total control — until the disaster hit. It is hubris of the first order to believe oneself master of the universe — but hubris is endemic in Washington.

QE3 is playing with fire. Or with a third dose of meth. Or another bottle of Jack. Choose your metaphor. It is a bad and deeply dangerous policy, all built on the insane view that if you stimulate a zombie enough with fiat money, it will start to live and breath on its own.
Reducing this even more, consider this: If you drink enough, does your body start to generate its own liquor?
The Fed and the government have hooked the American economy on a wicked drug. Our job is to drive the dealers from their seats of power.

If the Federal Reserve is not able to detect the exact moment to pull the liquidity back in, inflation and possibly hyperinflation will be the outcome. This has not been done successfully by any central bank that has embarked on the path of inflating its way out of debt, I can't back that up any fact as I just heard that from my opinionated economics teacher who said inflation is coming so this fact should be taken lightly.

Some real spending cuts are actually being enacted by Congress, about six billion. That is a lot of money that will make a big impact on the debt,

The national debt jumped by $72 billion on Tuesday even as the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for just three weeks that will cut $6 billion from government spending.
If Congress were to cut $6 billion every three weeks for the next 36 weeks, it would manage to save between now and late November as much money as the Treasury added to the nation’s net debt during just the business hours of Tuesday, March 15.
At the close of business on Monday, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt, the total national debt stood at $14.166 trillion ($14,166,030,787,779.80). At the close of business Tuesday, the debt stood at $14.237 trillion ($14,237,952,276,898.69), an increase of $71.9 billion ($71,921,489,118.89).

Since the beginning of fiscal year 2011--which began on Oct. 1, 2010--the national debt has climbed from $13.5616 trillion ($13,561,623,030,891.79) to $14.2379 trillion ($14,237,952,276,898.69) an increase of $676.3 billion ($676,329,246,006.90).

Congress would need to cut spending by $6 billion every three weeks for approximately the next six and a half years (338 weeks) just to equal the $676.3 billion the debt has increased thus far this fiscal year.

At least some progress is being made. We just have to give the Republicans more time and a chance to make some real cuts, like reforming entitlement programs, that I am positive they will make. It now looks like Obama's proposed budget will actually add 9.5 trillion to the deficit instead of 7.2 trillion, just off by two trillion. This means that real cuts need to be made and not some phony, weak six billion.

Government money or welfare make up about a third of U.S. wages,

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
'The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,' said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. 'Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.'
The economist gives the country two stark choices. In order to get welfare back to its pre-recession ratio of 26 percent of pay, 'either wages and salaries would have to increase $2.3 trillion, or 35 percent, to $8.8 trillion, or social welfare benefits would have to decline $500 billion, or 23 percent, to $1.7 trillion,' she said.

According to this guy, America's economy has reached an important milestone.

We are borrowing more than $5 billion per day. That’s $35 billion per week to run our government, totaling more than $1.5 trillion in borrowed money just to run it this year.
Harvard’s great economic historian, Niall Ferguson, noted that the decline of a country can be marked when it pays its moneylenders more than its army. His classic case comes from the French monarchy of the 1780s that failed to make interest payments on their debt, causing the financial collapse that triggered the revolution. Recently, Carmen Reinhard and Kenneth Rogoff wrote a brilliant book titled 'This Time is Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.' Their vast study revealed that most government officials always believe they are unique and different, causing them to make the same mistakes that crippled past nations and empires.

Admiral Mike Mullen did state that America's debt is the biggest threat to its national security so maybe Ferguson is on to something. I think America can pull through and overcome this financial crisis, even if it doesn't look like it at the moment. We are different from other nations of the past and have overcome similar level of debt after WW II, although under different conditions.

And a nice opinion piece that is full of emotive language and hyperbole,

A devastating debt crisis is coming; simple mathematics predict it. It is no longer a matter of if, but when. The time for hysterics, hyperbole, and finger-pointing is over. The time for political games, grand-standing, and partisan shenanigans is long past. This is no longer about Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, or progressive issues. This affects all of us. The looming danger crosses all party and ideological lines and jeopardizes all Americans, present and future generations. We're staring down a massive debt tsunami that threatens the US with a fiscal Armageddon the likes of which we've never seen.

I am sure that I am just looking at the sensational news that is hyping the economic situation up. There are several investors that have an optimistic outlook on the economy and the stock market has done very well the past two years even if it is a bubble, about to burst, that is being inflated by the actions of the Fed. I think the Rubicon is just in front of the world's economy and it is about to cross the Rubicon with a new economic system being on the other side. That sounds crazy so it must be inaccurate. Maybe the Republicans are just getting a slow start and they will make something happen in the next few years.

Shocking Scam Revealed!

2011-03-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Though it should come as no surprise to RTP&GGers, Reason.com has revealed a shocking scam to the nation!

The nation was left reeling yesterday by the revelation that the presidential election of 2008 was a hoax. The shocking announcement came when White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that Barack Obama has been working in secret with conservative provocateur James O'Keefe since 2007.

READ THE WHOLE SHOCKING ARTICLE!

One more quote:

"By combining empty, touchy-feely slogans like 'hope' and 'change' with far-left-wing policy planks and presenting them in the person of a racial minority from a major Midwest city with an Ivy League background, we thought we might be able to make a good showing in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe even capture the Democratic nomination," Carney told reporters. "But the entire country? No. We never, ever for even a second imagined the American people would elect someone who had served only half a term in the U.S. Senate to be the leader of the entire free world."

Nuclear Meltdown - Status and Facts

2011-03-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything pithy to say about the tragedy in Japan. The tragedy being the tsunami that might have killed up to tens of thousands of people and probably destroyed more property/wealth/value than any previous disaster.

I do want to present an article that explains in fairly easy terms what the status is of the damaged nuclear plants and also what could happen. As usual, the press is having a meltdown (ha ha) over the issue. Dwelling on the possible fallout (haha) of the problems with the nuclear plants rather than the real tragedy of thousands of dead. Typical of the press (and liberals in general) to make a big deal about unimportant minor or imaginary issues (global warming) rather than focus on real problems that are painful to solve and that don't further their agendas (global debt).

I shouldn't say that the problems with the reactors are unimportant. Clearly they are, but they pale compared to the real disaster that has already happened to Japan. Liberals will of course take the scare of a meltdown and radiation release as an opportunity to lock down any further nuclear development in the US. Development that, prior to the tsunami, was getting very close to finally moving ahead after being shut down for decades after the phony (media-generated) scare over the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979. Interesting fact I heard the other day (though I don't have the reference): there hasn't been one case of cancer or death proven to be associated with the Three Mile Island disaster. The cancer rates of the fallout zone show no anomolies compared to other parts of the country.

Be armed with some facts from this Wall Street Journal article. The problems with the reactors in Japan are serious, but not nearly as bad as they are being blown up (haha) to be.

Here are a couple of quotes to get you going:

The Liberal Scare:

Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), a longtime opponent of nuclear power, has warned of "another Chernobyl" and predicted "the same thing could happen here." In response, he has called for an immediate suspension of licensing procedures for the Westinghouse AP1000, a "Generation III" reactor that has been laboring through design review at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for seven years.

The rational presentation of facts:

The core of a nuclear reactor operates at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the temperature of a coal furnace and only slightly hotter than a kitchen oven. If anything unusual occurs, the control rods immediately drop, shutting off the nuclear reaction. You can't have a "runaway reactor," nor can a reactor explode like a nuclear bomb. A commercial reactor is to a bomb what Vaseline is to napalm. Although both are made from petroleum jelly, only one of them has potentially explosive material.

Read the whole thing.

Some Good News and Some Bad News

2011-03-05T10:19:00.001-08:00

A Florida Judge has ruled the recent health care reforms unconstitutional approximately two weeks ago. This means that it is now illegal to continue to implement the new health care law. So what is the White House's response to this ruling, " ‘implementation will proceed apace’ regardless of the ruling". The White House has decided to ignore the rule of law in this particular case. I do not know how many past Presidents have decided to ignore a court ruling, but I do know that President Obama wants to redistribute the wealth / spread the wealth around and this is exactly what his new health care law does--this is only one source that states this. The rule of law is always a hindrance to those that seek to redistribute the wealth. As Hayek states in his book "The Constitution Of Liberty" page 232,

This conflict between the ideal of freedom and the desire to 'correct' the distribution of incomes so as to make it more 'just' is usually not clearly recognized. But those who pursue distributive justice will in practice find themselves obstructed at every move by the rule of law. They must, from the very nature of their aim, favor discriminatory and discretionary action. But, as they are usually not aware that their aim and the rule of law are in principle incompatible, they begin by circumventing or disregarding in individual cases a principle which they often would wish to see preserved in general. But the ultimate result of their efforts will necessarily be, not a modification of the existing order, but its complete abandonment and its replacement by an altogether difference system--the command economy.

This is only one instance where President has decided to ignore the rule of law. Why should the rule of law get in his way of providing health care to the sick and poor? Hayek's book is a must read for those that want to defend the ideals freedom and to see where a country that decides to pursue socialism leads to.

What will be the end result of this Judge's ruling? Nothing. The case will go to the supreme court where its constitutionality will be upheld. The whole point of this post is to show that the President has decided to ignore the rule of law and to point out where this leads.

A Chart Showing Why America Will Face A Serious Financial Crisis

2011-03-01T23:45:00.000-08:00

I got this chart from the Business Insider website.

We'll be breaking out some key sections in the next few days. In the meantime, here's the one chart you need to see to understand why the US is screwed.

This is the 'income statement' of the United States in 2010. 'Revenue' is on the left. 'Expenses' are on the right.

Note a few things...

First, 'Revenue' is tiny relative to 'Expenses.'

Second, most of the expense is entitlement programs, not defense, education, or any of the other line items that most budget crusaders normally howl about.

Third, as horrifying as these charts are, they don't even show the trends of these two pies: The 'expense' pie is growing like gangbusters, driven by the explosive growth of the entitlement programs that no one in government even has the balls to talk about. 'Revenue' is barely growing at all.

As we'll illustrate with more of Mary's charts next week, the US cannot grow its way out of this problem. It needs to cut spending, specifically entitlement spending. We hereby announce that we'll give a special gold star to the first "leader" with the guts to say that publicly.

You can view a clearer picture of the chart on the website. The revenue for the Federal government in 2007 was 2.4 trillion dollars before the worst part of the recession, some economist believe the recession began in 2007. I read from one source that double digit growth for a decade will not solve America's budget problems which this chart also shows. Serious cuts will have to be made to entitlements as noted by the IMF and by our Treasury Secretary who noted that the political will does not exist to make these cuts. No politician is even talking about this as it is politically impossible to do. No Tea Party rally is going to solve this budget problem. Even a majority of Tea Party followers do not support cutting entitlement spending. And note by 2020 the net interest payment will be around eight hundred billion dollars as noted by a Senator when question the Treasury Secretary and agree to by our Treasury Secretary. Either way things go, there will be a serious financial situation in the near future.

Will The Middle East Uprisings Lead To Democratic Governments?

2011-03-01T11:42:00.000-08:00

According to Thomas Sowell, the answer is probably not. It does prick one's heart to see evil and tyrannical dictators being ousted by the people that they have been ruling. But as has been noted on this blog, the uprisings are not completely about a repressed people rising up demanding freedom. A major driving force behind these uprisings were "gut-level economics" and inflation that is in part the result of the recent actions know as QE 2 by the Federal Reserve. So what is likely to be the end result of these uprisings? Will it lead to free representative-democracies or the same repressive regimes? Sowell:

Those who see hope in the Middle East uprisings seem to assume that they will lead in the direction of freedom or democracy. There is already talk about the "liberation" of Egypt, even though the biggest change there has been that a one-man dictatorship has been replaced by a military dictatorship that has suspended the constitution.
Perhaps the military dictatorship will be temporary, as its leaders say, but we have heard that song before. What we have also heard, too many times before, is the assumption that getting rid of an undemocratic government means that it will be replaced by a freer and better government.
History says otherwise. After Russia's czars were replaced by the Communists, the government executed more people in a day than the czars had executed in half a century. It was much the same story in Cuba, when the Batista regime was replaced by Castro and in Iran when the Shah was replaced by the Ayatollahs.
It is not inevitable that bad regimes are replaced by worse regimes. But it has happened too often for us to blithely assume that overthrowing a dictator means a movement toward freedom and democracy.
The fact that Egyptians or others in the Middle East and elsewhere want freedom does not mean that they are ready for freedom. Everyone wants freedom for himself. Even the Nazis wanted to be free to be Nazis. They just didn't want anybody else to be free.
There is very little sign of tolerance in the Middle East, even among fellow Muslims with different political or religious views, and all too many signs of gross intolerance toward people who are not Muslims.
Freedom and democracy cannot be simply conferred on anyone. Both have preconditions, and even nations that are free and democratic today took centuries to get there. [[What are these preconditions? Basic fundamental philosophical beliefs held by the people of that nation.]]
If there was ever a time when people in Western democracies might be excused for thinking that Western institutions could simply be exported to other nations to create new free democracies, that time has long passed.
It is easy to export the outward symbols of democracy-- constitutions, elections, parliaments and the like-- but you cannot export the centuries of experience and development that made those institutions work. All too often, exported democratic institutions have meant "one man, one vote-- one time."
We should not assume that our own freedom and democratic form of government can be taken for granted. Those who created this country did not.
As the Constitution of the United States was being written, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin what he and the other writers were creating. He replied, "A republic, madam-- if you can keep it." Generations later, Abraham Lincoln also posed it as a question whether "government of the people, by the people and for the people" is one that "can long endure."
Just as there are nations who have not yet developed the preconditions for freedom and democracy, so there are some people within a nation who have not. The advance toward universal suffrage took place slowly and in stages.
Too many people, looking back today, see that as just being biased against some people.
But putting the fate of a nation in the hands of the illiterate masses of the past, many with no conception of the complexities of government, might have meant risking the same fate of "one man, one vote-- one time."
Today, we take universal literacy for granted. But literacy has not been universal, across all segments of the American population during all of the 20th century. Illiteracy was the norm in Albania as recently as the 1920s and in India in the second half of the 20th century.
Bare literacy is just one of the things needed to make democracy viable. Without a sense of responsible citizenship, voters can elect leaders who are not merely incompetent or corrupt, but even leaders with contempt for the Constitutional limitations on government power that preserve the people's freedom.
We already have such a leader in the White House-- and a succession of such leaders may demonstrate that the viability of freedom and democracy can by no means be taken for granted here.

If governments do emerge that are not friendly to America and the West, this could lead to higher oil prices and oil being used as a weapon by these new governments against their enemies. It seems that there is a lot going on under the surface and a lot of connections with other political groups here in America and around the world that are influencing these riots.

Continuing Collapse of the Music Industry

2011-02-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

Via Ace. Not quite ready for big posts yet. Here's a quick one that caught my eye regarding the continuing collapse of the music industry. This chart from Business Insider shows that the amount of money the average person spends on recorded music is less than any time since at least the early '70's (the chart doesn't go any further back).

There are lots of other good charts tracking the music industry (all bad news for people in it). People aren't buying as much music, and when they do, they aren't buying albums anymore. I can vouch for that, and I probably still buy more music than most people. Back in the '70's, I would buy an album a paycheck, and albums still cost about half what they do now, and I was making less than 1/10. I'm not necessarily saying I spent my money wisely!

Not saying whether it's good or bad, it's just the way it is.

Update On The Looming Financial Crisis.

2011-02-22T19:00:00.000-08:00

(This is a short, happy post that is not well done.) The Republicans have failed to live up to their promise of tackling our "unsustainable" budget. It is politically impossible to make meaningful cuts without promoting massive social unrest ,look at the protest in Wisconsin, and threatening the social cohesion of our nation--the words "social unrest" come from a Congressional Budget Office's report and recently alluded to by our Treasury Secretary in his statement below. This is from the HotAir blog(they both link to the real news story),

The House rejected a measure cutting an additional $22 billion from the Republican spending bill, as conservatives ran into a wall of opposition from the GOP establishment over the depth of reductions to federal funding.

The amendment backed by the conservative Republican Study Committee failed, 147-281, but not before putting the GOP spending divide under a spotlight on the House floor. Authored by RSC chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the proposal would have dramatically reshaped an appropriations bill that already slashes federal spending by $61 billion over the next seven months…

Ace has a nice post and video that goes well with the disappointment that those that put their faith in the Republican party's promises to make some serious reforms. The Republicans have failed to make even their small 100 billion cut that even if enacted would have been ineffectual in solving the nation's looming budget crises and instead cut 60 billion from projected spending increases, not actual spending cuts. They have been dishonest in selling their proposed budget cuts and could not even vote to pass them. As Ace states "The GOP is dead to me". And even these modest cuts will likely be reduce after the Senate gets through with it. The point that I am trying to make is that no political party is willingly or able to make the necessary budget cuts and reforms to entitlement programs that are necessary to avoid the looming budget crisis. The status quo of our Nation's financial situation is simply not sustainable and there is no party that is doing anything about this fact. Who said that things are unsustainable?

The Treasury Secretary recently stated before a Senate hearing that the proposed budget is unsustainable because the interest on the debt will eventually rise to 844 billion dollars. This is the reason Admiral Mike Mullen recently stated that national debt is the biggest threat to our national security, a warning repeated by Hilliary Clinton. Tim Geithner also states that the proposed budget does not make the necessary cuts because it is politically impossible.

"'Forty cents of every dollar we spend we borrow, and in 20 years from now, all the money we have in revenue is going to go to pay the debt -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Nothing left for the national defense, homeland security, etcetera,' said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who appeared with Durbin. 'We are spending money that we do not have. Even the Social Security payments, we do not have. We're borrowing that from the Treasury,' said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who was on CNN with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y."

The point of this short post is to show that there is a very real financial crisis that is knocking on the door. The sources that state this are not simply talk show host opinion, but rather this is coming from our elected officials, Treasury Secretary, the leader of our military, and the Congressional Budge Office. Seismic , titanic, and very painful cuts need to be made in entitlement programs that are simply politically impossible to make without affecting the "social cohesion" of the Nation and won't be made until the crisis is already upon us. Either way, if the necessary reforms are made or things continue as they are, a very serious financial crisis is headed our way. With this level of debt, America and the world has lost its ability to absorb shocks to the system such as natural disasters, economic shocks, wars, or a possible negative turn of events in the Middle East. With the ability to absorb the financial cost of such shocks, they will have a more pronounced effect on America and the world. Are you mentally and financially prepared for this? Or is your head still in the sand or you have your hopes misplaced with the Republicans and the Tea Party?

Protests

2011-02-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

So lets tally up all the recent protests and revolution attempts (some successful, some pending), and feel free to add more if I leave some out:

Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, China, and Libya.

I have no real clue what to make of all this. I just figured we should start some dialogue on it now.

RTP's New Sponsor

2011-02-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

It is official. College Pro has hired me as a Franchise Manager. My territory will mainly be Troutdale, Gresham, and East Portland.

I have a lot of training to do and a lot of marketing as well. I will start lining up employees fairly soon.

If there are any readers out there who need a painting job done, just give me a call. We provide a service with a smile. With the housing market the way it is, there has never been a better time to invest in your home. Next summer inflation will have hit hard and gas prices are said to hit 5 dollars in 2012! Who knows what kind of effect that will have on all markets. Why wait?

503-810-3555

I never put you on hold.

The Devolution Of America's Society.

2011-02-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

Compare the three music videos below to see the devolution of our society being manifested. It began with Elvis shaking his hips and has led to simulated sex music videos of today and rock stars jumping around on stage in disjointed and contorted manner. Our grandparents were in an uproar over Elvis and his shaking hips and said that it would lead to far worse. Notice how the music in the Spears video mimics the beat and rhythm of sexual intercourse. I like Allan Bloom's observation in his book "The Closing Of The American Mind" on music in American culture:

Picture a thirteen-year old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever know to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism[ withdrawl of the penis in sexual intercourse so that ejaculation takes place outside the vagina; coitus].or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.

Is there any connection between the deterioration of our culture and and the deterioration of our nation? I think the two are very closely connected on a very deep and fundamental level. This is why complaining about the current state of our nation and the world is pointless as it does not address the root cause: the deterioration of our culture. Unless the American culture is changed on a very deep and fundamental level the direction we are traveling won't change. (On a more serious subject of our nation's finances, "Nominal debt will peak in 2013 at 106 percent of the economy before dropping to 105.2 percent in 2015 and 2016, though only if the economy booms." The Republicans are not doing anything but talking, and being deceptive, about addressing the very serious situation our nation's economy is in.)

Where are You From?

2011-02-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

If your last name comes from Europe, North America, Argentina, China, Japan, India, or Australia, this cool website will track it down. Zeroing down on Robinson in England, shows the name is most concentrated in Northeastern England around Durham and Nottingham, and is generally fairly concentrated throughout northern England and North Ireland. Decoy's wife, Candy Cane, found her last name very concentrated on the southern tip of the main island, Honshu, in Japan.

Melkor and ToeJamm will find that they are mainly from north England.

A Good Sign

2011-02-09T10:38:00.000-08:00

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/02/09/gop-announces-first-round-proposed-spending-cuts#

This article from Fox News shows a sign that the GOP in power is doing what we wanted them to do. I'm not sure what will come from all this or if anything will even happen but it does tell me that our elected republicans are doing what they ought to do.

"Never before has Congress undertaken a task of this magnitude," said Rogers in a statement. "The cuts in this CR will represent the largest reduction in discretionary spending in the history of our nation."

QE 2, Inflation, Unrest In Egypt, And Inflation Is Under Reported In America.

2011-02-02T07:50:00.001-08:00

(I don't have time to do a well written post.) There is major unrest going on in Egypt. I don't know all of the causes and won't try to explain all of them and I won't try to predict what will come out of the unrest in that region of the world. I will focus on how gut-level economics, the recent expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve known as QE 2, and the resulting inflation are contributing to unrest in Egypt. The unrest in the Middle East in driven in part by the world-wide inflationary policies carried out the various governments of the world and shows what the end result of such policies are.

According to this article from Big Government dot com, the recent Quantitative Easing or digitizing/printing of money to help pay for the Nation's debt has contributed to unrest in Egypt.

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke launched a second round of Quantitative Easing (QE2) in October, following over a year of growth in the economy at a robust rate of over 3%. Most analysts pooh-poohed QE2 as an insufficient economic stimulus to create enough inflation to reduce unemployment. I warned that QE2 was like pouring inflationary lighter fluid on the world and then lighting a match. With food inflation now running at 15% in poor countries, the Middle East is just the first area to burn, but fire is smoldering in much of the world and other fires will break out soon.

QE2 is a program by the U.S. Federal Reserve to inject $600 billion of U.S. dollars in the financial system by repurchasing an equivalent amount of U.S. Government bonds. Once the money is paid to the former bondholder, they deposit the cash in banks. Banks take deposit dollars and leverage them by 6 to 10 times creating $3.6 to $6 trillion in credit. Given that the Gross Domestic Product of the U.S. economy is only about $14 trillion annually, it would impossible to immediately purchase 25-40% of the entire economy. Consequently, the reality of Quantitative Easing is that the money will be invested in the stock and commodity markets. The theory is that the financial assets rise on the huge inflows of QE cash, investors will feel wealthier and go to the malls and the car dealerships to 'shop till they drop'.

The problem with theory is that QE2 money quickly drove up commodity food prices around the world. This price rise is barely noticeable to Americans who only spend 10% of their personal income on food for three meals a day; but the impact of food inflation is devastating the over half the world that spends approximately 50% of personal income on food for two meals a day. The 15% QE2 induced commodity food price increase has reduced the amount of food poor people can purchase by almost 1/3.

The riots and revolutionary activity burning down Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt are about gut-level economics. Do you think Americans would riot and throwing out our government if we were forced to cut back to eating 1 1/3 meals a day? Once riots start people in cities hoard food to survive and becomes dangerous for farmers to transport food. This is exacerbates food shortages and drives prices even higher.

Unemployment was modestly declining and inflation was flat before the Fed’s August announcement of the new stimulus, as shown above. That trend remains in place as QE2 has not significantly reduced unemployment. The only success of QE2 in U.S. is a 20% in the stock market the last six months.

When the Credit Crisis hit in 2008, the Middle East country of Dubai was the first financially leveraged nation to suffer a debt crash. Since that time; Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Spain and others are also suffering a similar fate. QE2 leveraging of worldwide commodity food prices has sent the Middle East into flames. With the price of a barrel of oil hitting $100 dollars and food prices accelerating, those flames will spread.

So it appears that inflation that was exacerbated by the recent fed action are contributing to global unrest. Corn ethanol has also driven up the price of food.

Inflation here in America as measured by the government is about 1.5 % over the past 12 months, this number excludes the cost of energy and food. But according to "Dr. Doom"/Marc Faber it is actually around 5%.

'I guarantee you … the annual cost of living increases are more than 5 percent, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics is lying,' Faber told CNBC at the Russia Forum in Moscow.
'Mr Bernanke is a liar; inflation is much higher than what they publish. I would imagine for most households it’s between five and eight percent per annum in the United States and in Western European countries maybe a little bit lower but also around four and five percent per annum,' he said.
In addtion, Faber said high food prices, which have sparked political unrest in Egypt, would next cause turmoil in Pakistan.
'You may not have the problem in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates because there the governments can heavily subsidize food if they want to, but I’m particularly worried that what has happened in Egypt will happen in Pakistan,' he said.
Asked whether Pakistan would indeed see an Egypt-style uprising, he said: 'I think that will be the case.'
'I think Egypt is a reminder to people that politics and social events and geopolitics have a meaningful impact on asset markets,' Faber said, adding that what the world was currently witnessing was 'a wake up call where the US outperforms emerging markets for a while.'
'That doesn’t mean that the US goes up. It just may go down less than the others,' he said.
Turning to the global economic recovery, Faber said the West was bottoming out and recovering, which meant the global economy looked 'OK' for the next six months.
But 'we’re all doomed in the long run,' he said.
'We have to realize it’s an artificial recovery driven by ultra-expansionary, monetary policies and also ultra-expansionary fiscal policies.
In other words, the deficits of governments are huge and that will lead down the road to renewed problems,' he said.

This social unrest in Egypt is the result of a world-wide inflationary policy. The poorer nations are feeling the effects now, later it will be the wealthier nations.

Eat Healthy or Die

2011-01-31T10:40:00.000-08:00

The government is doing what we figured it would do. The new health care industry and the FDA are excersing their tyrannical abilities to regulate.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41344808

"The government is telling half of the U.S. population to drastically cut their daily salt intake."

"But it's unclear if the industry will be able to cut enough to satisfy the new guidelines. The Food and Drug Administration has said it will pressure companies to take voluntary action before it moves to regulate salt intake."

I think its funny that the FDA says that companies need to take voluntary action or it might have to regulate. Striking fear in private business is just what our government needs to do in a recession.

Another form of soft tyranny. This is the "caring for you" tyranny that C.S. Lewis talked about. This is nothing new to us RTPers.

Obama's State of the Union Address - Profile in Cowardice

2011-01-28T21:47:00.000-08:00

As most Americans know, our country is in a severe economic predicament, caused chiefly by exploding entitlement programs such as Social Security, and Medicare, but exacerbated by exploding federal budgets, begun under the Bush II administration, and hyperinflated under the Obama administration. In the State of the Union address, Obama would call this a "Sputnik Moment", which implied that this moment of economic peril was similar to the call-to-action that occurred when the Russians launched Sputnik, putting a satellite into orbit before anyone else did, and kicking off the US space program. This would be an economic Sputnik moment, spurring the US to action against this dire economic threat. But, as is demonstrated in this very well written article, Obama, as is his modus operandi, took the cowards way out. Again, a read the whole thing article, but here are some good paragraphs:

The thrust of Obama's agenda follows Lenin's. The old jobs are gone. We must prepare for the future by educating our youth. The sturm und drang of the "We Musts" quickly becomes an argument for pandering to the teacher's unions. Only by empowering the teacher's union will we be able to compete with China. But China isn't strong because of its teachers, but because it has no independent unions, no minimum wage, no pollution laws and nothing to get in the way of the terrible machine of its industry. The People's Republic of China is not beating us in science or math, but in manufacturing cheap products with an undervalued national currency.

Handing out free educations to beat China is like going to college to fight a bear. Not only will it not improve your bear fighting skills, it actually gives the bear the upper hand. American math and science degrees are used to do research whose practical applications take the form of products manufactured in China. Even if all 300 million Americans all go to work as researchers, we are not going to "out-compete" and "out-innovate" by "out-educating" Americans. Russia has the highest percentage of college degrees by population in the world. China has the lowest. These figures have little to do with their economic success.

America already has a college degree program percentage rate on par with Sweden and Finland, countries that almost wholly subsidize higher educations. Greece subsidizes 99.7 percent of higher education, and yet has a lower degree rate than America and is in a state of complete economic meltdown. America has higher rates of graduates than many of the European countries which heavily subsidize their education systems. The takeaway is that state subsidized education does not ensure more graduates. And more graduates does not mean more jobs.

Basically, the whole thrust of Obama's speech was pure bull. What he is talking about is pap, not a call to take on the real problems in this country. Again, read the whole thing, I've got to go.

Closing of The American Mind

2011-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

Jeff has quoted this book numerous times. I just started reading it and I can understand a little more of where he is coming from with a lot of his posts.

So far it is basically laying the foundation that Americans are losing what it means to be American. They enter the academic world with a "clean slate". Families "Sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life." I can reflect on this with my own family of three. Patrick is smart. He said the other day, "Rhinoceros' come from Africa." I did not teach him this. Dora did. My family is still very young though and I can influence Patrick and his value/moral system for the next fifteen years he is at my house.

I remember having a conversation with my friend Jake a couple months back. We were talking about raising kids. He asked me about my plans and methods. I told him that I want to raise him like my father raised me. I turned out pretty good so I figure this method will do fine. Jake seemed to emphasize the importance of allowing kids to find their own interests and their own beliefs. Somewhere in our conversation he warned me of manipulating Patrick's mind. Jakes beliefs are shared by most Americans. But what is dangerous about this is that we lose our traditions and values that were passed on from the great minds of the West. In a land of many immigrants a child can be raised on an imported and inferior value system. We are lucky that there is such a variety of history to lean on when making a decision in raising our kids the right way. Parents now days basically facilitate the natural growth of their child without actually educating them. The public schools and media do this for us. Whether it be laziness or indifference or both, I do not know.

I was motivated to make this simple post by the email that Melkor sent me. It is an article in the Quantico Sentry about the Marines in the Battle of Seattle.http://www.quantico.usmc.mil/Sentry/StoryView.aspx?SID=4871. Bud-D read it already. These sort of history lessons are important.

Does Emma know the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree? He was asked if he cut down the cherry tree and said, "I can't tell a lie, Pa."

A Critique Of Libertarianism/Small Government Advocates: Is Such A System Possible?

2011-01-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

"The Trouble With Liberty" is a good article that presents an opposing view on small-government libertarianism. The article has a lot of good points and questions that need to be answered by anyone who advocates less government and it also points out the impracticality of having a very limited government. In some cases the author is incorrect and in other places he correctly points out the problems that we face, but he fails to see the cause/causes of these problem and instead advocates a solution that is what caused the problem to begin with.

Do Western nations still have to fear socialism?

Ever since its publication in 1944, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been the anti-regulatory Ur-text. Hayek wrote the book in response to the spread of socialism—including National Socialism— which at the time was a genuine existential threat to Western society. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, though, socialism isn’t the menace it used to be. Hitler is long gone.

The author is wrong that socialism is dead. While what Hayek calls "Hot" socialism is dead, the more mild version of socialism that manifest itself as the welfare state is the system that we find ourselves with. Look at Obama and the people he has put around him and look at how they describe themselves and examine their political philosophy. The prevailing political philosophy that prevails among the left and to a lesser extent the right is inherently socialist in its nature. This point does not need to be expanded for this audience. Fascism/State Corporatism is becoming the dominate global system. A good book that illustrates this is "Liberal Fascism".

The author attempts to point out the impossibility of eliminating central banking.

Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I’m a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank—otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we’ll create a central bank. But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.

Money was created not though the efforts of a central entity, but instead evolved through the experiences of millions of people throughout history. A central planning entity such as a central bank does not posses enough knowledge to properly manage a nations money supply, a fact that is becoming very evident as the age of fiat money is coming to an end. But I disagree with those calling for the "end of the Fed". The Federal Reserve could only be replaced over a long period of time after a complete transformation of the global economy, changes that won't occur and are impractical given the current state of affairs.

On the issue of government charity, given the current state of the nation; I support government performing the role that the private sector used to perform in the area of charity. It is a dangerous thing for freedom for government charity to trump private charity. The main reason the author sees as the need for a government cushion or safety net, lack of jobs, is created by government action that interferes with the free market. In a free market economy there will be enough jobs for those that want to work. And another rational for the government maintaining a huge social safety net is economic downturns, caused by government intervention and central banking expanding and contracting the money supply. There is not one economic downturn that was not caused by government intervention is the free market. We don't live in a free market and the current state of the economy is leading to an economic collapse. The government has replaced private charity through its excessive expansion into the private sector and by inculcating in the people through the education system a belief that government should be the one providing for charity which has taken away the impetus for private citizens to provide for this charity. So when the economy receives a major shock, that will have been caused by excessive government intervention in the first place, it is in the government's and society's interest that there be some safety net to provide for the basic necessities of the people. This economic shock will undercut the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of human needs food, water, security of body, employments, and other basic human needs. When this happens people tend to riot in the streets and demand that these needs be meet. This usually leads to revolutions and or the election of a Hitler that promises to bring an end to all the chaos and provide these basic necessities. In the current situation, there needs to be a huge government safety net, even if huge government created the need.

The main factor driving big government are those that can't accept the fact that some people will always be poor. These people fail to see the two main causes of poverty: human nature and excessive government. And they fail to see what the solution to ending poverty leads to: poverty spread out among a greater number of people. Some people are poor because they choose to be and/or they suffer from being raised in a poor culture; and the government's attempts at eliminating poverty end up creating more poverty, look at the results from the "War On Poverty".

And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because 'states’ rights' had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

This crash was caused by the government and state-charted banks. While there was no official Central bank in 1907, state-chartered banks were allowed to print bank notes, money, in excess of their bank reserves--inflation. Without sufficient reserves of hard assets to back up these bank notes, these banks notes became inflated and could not be redeemed in the advent of a bank run. After the creation of the Federal Reserve the Country has experienced more economic downturns and and over all more turbulent economic cycle. Again government action is the cause of the problem pointed out by the author and is also the rational for a government solution.

How can we be sure that are doctors are qualified to be doctors without government licencing and certification?

There are all sorts of situations the private market isn’t good at managing, such as asymmetrical information (I know my doctor is qualified to treat me because he has a government license) and public goods (it makes sense for the government to cover vaccines, which benefit everyone, not just the consumer). There’s also a consistency problem: Why should the government be responsible for a public good like national defense but not air-quality protection?"

The private sector is more than capable of developing mechanisms to determine the quality of service a doctor provides. One modern example would be an Internet rating system like you would find on EBay. Another example would be a private rating agency whose existence depended on how accurately they rated doctors which would mean that they would have to bear the cost of their failure to properly rate doctors. A doctor will not do well in a free market if he provides a poor service as no one would do business with him. Government certification of doctors along with the Union AMA helps to limit the number of doctors and drive up health care cost. Government action has led to more expensive, less abundant, and lower quality health care; but somehow more government interference of the type that caused the problem is the solution.

Should the Big Banks have been allowed to fail or should they have been bailed out? My natural reaction would be to not support this bail out, but what would have been the ramifications of allowing them to fail?

Or, say, a stable world financial system? Most of the libertarians I spoke with said they would have let the big banks fail in 2008. “I wouldn’t have done anything,” says French. 'The key to capitalism is you have to have failure.'

The financial crisis was not an indictment of their worldview, libertarians argue, but a vindication of it. Letting the banks fail would have been painful. But the pain would have been less than it will be now that the government is propping up the housing, banking, and automobile industries. Plus, the economy would have recovered by now. 'You’ve probably never heard of the depression of 1920,' says French. 'You haven’t heard of it because it came and went in one year, because the government didn’t do anything to prop up failed businesses.' (Other economists argue that the government’s response was actually consistent with the philosophy of John Maynard Keynes.) Letting banks fail would also avoid moral hazard, say libertarians, since investors wouldn’t take such risky bets the next time around.

It’s a compelling story. But like many libertarian narratives, it’s oversimplified. If the biggest banks had failed, bankers wouldn’t have been the only ones punished. Everyone would have lost his money. Investors who had no idea how their dollars were being used—the ratings agencies gave their investments AAA grades, after all—would have gone broke. Homeowners who misunderstood their risky loans would have gone into permanent debt. Sure, the bailouts let some irresponsible people off easy. But not intervening would have unfairly punished a much greater number.

Then President Bush said that he was told by advisers he trusted that if he did not bail the banks out then we would have been looking at the second Great Depression and the collapse of our economy. So he had to "abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system". By the government intervening in the economy and bailing out these banks, the government has set up a future economic downturn that will be greater than what would have happened if he banks would have been allowed to fail and the necessary corrections in the economy to take place. When this collapse happens, many more people will be "unfairly punished" to a greater extent than if the banks would have been allowed to fail. Although, if by not bailing out the banks this would have led to a big economic downturn the people and government would not have been able to handle the shock that would have occurred and that could have possibly lead to a global economic depression that would have lead to lost of social cohesion and threatened global peace. Bailing out the banks just kicked the can down the road and delayed the day of reckoning, see what Neil Barofsky the special inspector general for the TARP stated. Again the government created a problem that required a government solution to avoid the possible disintegration of our society--a solution that will will still lead to the very situation it was designed to prevent.

Overall, libertarians just like communism or collectivism in general is a political philosophy that would only work if human nature could be changed to some extent. By human nature I mean the basically held philosophic beliefs that the vast majority of people hold. Modern Libertarianism does not admit or recognize this fact. They correctly view human nature as something that can not be changed, yet they fail to realize that this very fact makes their system impossible to be attained. John Madison, who some considered a libertarian, came close to stating this when he said "If men were angels, no government would be necessary". While no mainstream libertarian advocates no government, their view that government should be small and encompass a very limited sphere of an individual's life is incompatible with human nature and would only work "if men were angels". The fact that the average life span, about two hundred years, of a free society points to a flaw in human nature. The average person is not compatible with a free society as they are not vigilant enough to prevent their leaders from flattering them with pleasant words and promises of freedom from want nor are they vigilant enough to hold to the beliefs that are required for a free society. The early expositors of communism admits this need to change human nature when they stated the need to create the new "socialist man" and have attempted create such a man by eliminating around one hundred million people in the 20th century. What political system do we have? A middle-of-the-road system that can not permanently exist and fluctuates between the two extremes of anarchy and total government. It would be folly for any system to attempt to change human nature as the communist attempts at this have shown. A small government would require that a level of unattainable-perfection exist among the vast majority of people that could only be achieved by billions of people that refused to hold the philosophic beliefs required for a free society being eliminated( something that should not be done and has only been tried by the opposite political philosophy of libertarianism: communism). The best system that we can hope to obtain is a limited government that does not try to completely eliminate poverty or human misery and does not take on the role of God by trying to plan society; but instead creates a system that recognizes the imperfectability of human nature, protects private property, and creates a framework for the rule of law where human freedom can flourish; a system where people will accept the very unequal outcomes--a fact that is hard to accept for many people-- that results from this freedom and restrain themselves from taking on the role of God is the best we can hope for. In short there will be no perfect system of government and we must deal with the system we have which makes it impractical for small government solutions to be implemented: a system that it is leading to failure.

Typical Academia

2011-01-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

I was so excited to take my first college history class (I took History of the Gulf War but even my teacher confessed that it was more of a government class) at MHCC this term. History of Western Civilization. Upon buying my book, I rushed to the school library to browse through it. When I read the preface I was disappointed to read the main author's credentials:

"Judith G Coffin received her Ph.D. in modern French history from Yale University. She has taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Riverside, and is currently associate professor of history at the University of Texas President's Associates' Award for Teaching Excellence. Her research inerests focus on the social and cultural history of gender, mass culture, slavery, race relations, and colonialism. She is the author of The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750-1915." (Western Civilizations Vol A)

Of course I get a book with a female author who's interests are gender, slavery, race relations, and colonialism. I'm sure this will be a fun term of learning how horrible the men of the west are. In fact, the tone is set in the introduction when the author tries to belittle the old teachings of the history of the west with her new reformed PC approach:

"Historians today are keenly aware of hw much such an account leaves out. It slights the use of force and fraud in European expansion. It also ignores the sophistication, dynamism, and humanity of the many cultures it sidelines. By neglecting the crucial importance of Byzantium and Islam, it even gives a misleadingly narrow account of the development of European civilization."

It's sad that highly regarded teachers are trying to diminish Western Civilization's exceptionalism. Sigh...gonna be a tough term.

A Couple Gratuitous Obama Observation/Slams

2011-01-02T11:10:00.000-08:00

We haven't delved too much into Obama's history on this blog as I recall. We certainly can't be considered a hard core Birther site. I'll bet that every one of us believe that Barack Obama satisfies the citizenship requirement in the Constitution to be President. The problem is that one must use the word 'believe' because there has never been enough evidence presented to the public to establish beyond a doubt that he does. We know very little of the normal things that everyone wants to know about a president. The MSM has displayed its true bias by, on one hand, tearing with incredible zest into the micro-gyno-history and family of Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin (gratuitous Palin photo required), but being singularly uninterested in the many obvious questions about President Barack Obama's past. A couple of articles discuss these things: the first is a 'What If?' scenario pointing out the unapologetic Marxism of Obama by presenting us with a hypothetical alternate candidate:

So I want to present you with a hypothetical. Let's say a leader were elected who had, during his childhood, been mentored by an avowed Nazi. Let us further say that his guardians had chosen this mentor for him, indicating that they were likely sympathetic to the man's beliefs. Now, let us say that upon reaching college, this future leader gravitated toward Nazi professors. Moreover, we then find out that a man who knew the leader as an undergraduate and was, at the time, a Nazi himself, said that the leader was "in 100-percent total agreement" with his Nazi professors and was a flat-out Nazi who believed in old-style Brownshirt tactics.

Okay, we're almost done. After graduating, the leader-to-be spends twenty years sitting in a white-power church, has an alliance with a self-proclaimed Nazi and ex-terrorist, and, apparently, becomes a member of a National Socialist party for a while. And then, upon being elected, he appoints an avowed Nazi to his administration and also a woman who cites Adolf Hitler as one of her two favorite philosophers. Now here's the million-depreciated-dollar question:

What would be nuttier: to claim that this man was a Nazi or to claim that such an assertion is out-of-bounds?

This is an EXACT description of Barack Obama, except replace 'Nazi' with 'Marxist' and replace 'White Power' with 'Black Power'. Yet the MSM is not the slightest bit interested in these questions concerning The President of the United States. Read the whole thing, there are a lot more goodies.

The next article lays out the bullet-point issues the Birthers are concerned about. The author, as well as every other citizen of the USA should be interested in the answers, even if they are convinced Barack Obama is a bona-fide US citizen. Again, why are these issues scoffed at? Someone tell me exactly why resolving these issues is a ridiculous thing. As the author says, every other president in the last 100 years has been able to satisfactorily resolve these issues:

To date the following are all undisclosed:

1) 1961 long-form, original, signed birth certificate
2) Marriage license between Obama’s father (Barak Sr.) and mother (Stanley Ann Dunham) — not found, not released
3) Obama’s baptism records — sealed
4) Obama’s adoption records — sealed
5) Records of Obama’s and his mother’s repatriation as US citizens on return from Indonesia — not found, not released
6) Name change (Barry Sotero to Barack Hussein Obama) records — not found, not released
7) Noelani Elementary School (Hawaii) — not released
Punahou School financial aid or school records — not released
9) Occidental College financial aid records — not released.
10) Columbia College records — not released
11) Columbia senior thesis — not released
12) Harvard Law School records - not released
13) Obama’s law client list — sealed
14) Obama’s files from career as an Illinois State Senator — sealed
15) Obama’s record with Illinois State Bar Association — sealed
16) Obama’s medical records — not released
17) Obama’s passport records — not released

Does wanting to see the records above seem unreasonable? It seems perfectly reasonable to me. So why scoff at the Birthers? It seems to me that by far the bigger question is, why are all these perfectly normal things being hidden?

New Years Quick Hits - Renewable Power Costs

2011-01-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

This article is written from the Green point of view, so attacking what the power companies are saying, but the point is, these two power companies: PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric, two Oregon electric utilities, are blaming their requests for rate hikes on the costs of incorporating green power into their systems:

The Citizens’ Utility Board (CUB), a Portland-based watch dog organization that has saved Oregon utility customers $3.9 billion since it was founded in 1984, has responded to news of large electricity rate increases for 2011, and clarified several issues with an article in the Oregonian that put much of the blame on renewable power for the 14.5% and 4.2% increases by PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric (PGE).

Being in the industry myself, I can tell you that the rate hikes are justified, and common throughout the country. I'm not going to copy the special pleading the Greenies on the Board make to say the utilities are phonying up these costs; read the article if you are interested. I know the costs are real. If you believe Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) is destroying our planet, then maybe these costs are justified. I don't believe it, as there is absolutely no proof of it, and even if AGW were a proven thing, I'm not sure it would be a bad thing. Surely a warmer, moister planet would be better than another ice age. But, that's off the point. The point is, this backs up my claims about higher electricity costs to the customer due to adopting renewable energy policies. The customer always pays.

Listen Up Marines! R. Lee Ermey has a few things to say!

2010-12-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

Ignore the lame-o house band doing the Stones cover. R. Lee Ermey comes out, says a few nice things, then let's us know what's on his mind.

Stolen from Ace

You guys probably know this scene well, but here's R. Lee Ermey in his prime being an Old School Marine

May not be kosher in the new gay-friendly military.

Dr. No predicts "Apocalyptic Pain" is headed our way.

2010-12-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

(I intend for this post to sound a little sarcastic.) Here is some paranoia from Dr. No who is actually Senator Tom Coburn. He made this statement when referring to our Nations debt and overall economic situation.

'Apocalyptic pain' from an out-of-control debt could cause 18 percent unemployment and a massive contraction in the economy that would destroy the middle class, a leading Republican deficit hawk said in an interview that aired Sunday.
[...]
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who recently issued a report on government waste, warned that the U.S. only has about three or four years to get its fiscal house in order or it could find itself facing austerity measures seen in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and earlier in Japan.

'The history of republics is they average 200 years of life. And they all fail in the history over fiscal matters. They rot from within before they collapse or are attacked,' Coburn told 'Fox News Sunday.'

'The problem that faces our country today, the last 30 years we have lived off the future, and the bill is coming due,' he added.
[...]
'I think you'll see a 15 to 18 percent unemployment rate. I think you will see an 8 to 9 percent decline in GDP. I think you'll see the middle class just destroyed if we don't do this. And the people that it will harm the most will be the poorest of the poor, because we'll print money to try to debase our currency and get out of it and what you will see is hyperinflation,' Coburn said.

'If we didn't take some pain now, we're going to experience apocalyptic pain, and it's going to be out of our control. The idea should be that we control it,' he said.
[...]
'I don't care if you're rich or poor, liberal or conservative. If we don't fix the problems in front of us, everybody is going to pay a significant price,' he said.

If the Republicans can't get the Country's finances back in shape in the next couple of years, what has been happening in Europe could be headed our way according to Coburn. You use to only hear this type of dire prediction by talk show hosts. Now it is coming from our Senators. Senator Coburn did pledge to not run for another term, so maybe that is why he is willing to be so honest about the situation our Country faces. America is special and we don't have to worry about the fate that has befallen other nations in the past as noted above. Our government is like the con artist who gets a loan and then pays for this loan with another loan and so on. (My economic textbook said that national debt is not anything to worry about as the government can just roll over its debt and pay for its existing debts by issuing more debt in the form of treasuries. But if the markets loose faith in the governments ability to pay back that debt, they will demand higher interest rates which will make the cost of servicing this debt prohibitive. This is what happened in Greece and Ireland.) It seems as if the economic con game that is our nations economy is coming to an end of sorts. Pain is about to befall us. Stay out of debt.

Merry Christmas! Go Ducks!

2010-12-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

What a great time of year. The Ducks are going to the National Championship, the Seahawks are still in the playoff hunt (I would bet on them winning the division), my fantasy football team is in the championship ($180 to the winner), beer to be drunk, presents to open, the house is being taken over by republicans, I just found out that we will be having another glorious son, and my family is in good health. Lets not let trivial political issues affect us this Christmas and toast a drink to the good life!

PS Ducks are gonna kick some southern ass. Ducks win 38-34. You heard it here first.

Oregon - Where the Socialist Dream Lives On

2010-12-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

As the Republican wave swept over the country, liberal enclaves on the West Coast and the Northeast held onto the Obama dream, at least a little while longer. No place more so than Oregon, where the makeup of the House & Senate members remained unchanged (4 Democrats/1 Republican in the House, 2 Democrat Senators), and where an ex-two term liberal governor was elected to the post again. Oregon hasn't had a Republican governor since the '80's.

In January 2010, while the country was slipping into a deep recession and Tea Party mania was sweeping the land, Oregon stood strong and voted in favor of Measure 67, which according to Ballot Pedia:

increase(d) taxes in the state by $733 million through increasing the state’s corporate minimum tax, raising taxes on the state’s high-income individuals and raising income taxes on businesses.

I don't recall the ballot measure, but I know that in 2009, as the state unemployment rate was skyrocketing, my own Multnomah County voted on a property tax hike to make sure the teachers got their 3% pay raise, even while everyone else was headed to the unemployment lines. Such is the perspective of most Oregonians that anything and everything must be done to keep the State government unions fully funded and in power.

Oregon's success in implimenting its socialist policies is reflected in its unemployment rate, which is a full 3% higher than the already way-too-high national average.

Now the Wall Street Journal has come out with an article showing how the taxation of the rich has led to a loss of tax income for the state, a result that will surprise no RTP&GGer (the link is to the TaxProf blog as you need a subscription to see the actual WSJ article):

Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. ...

In 2009 the state legislature raised the tax rate to 10.8% on joint-filer income of between $250,000 and $500,000, and to 11% on income above $500,000. Only New York City's rate is higher. Oregon's liberal voters ratified the tax increase on individuals and another on businesses in January of this year, no doubt feeling good about their "shared sacrifice."

Congratulations. Instead of $180 million collected last year from the new tax, the state received $130 million. ...

How could this socialist policy fail? Taxing the rich is the way to prosperity for all, right? As Obama said, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody", and "I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money". Well, that kind of deep, perceptive thought, that could only come from the Ivy League-educated, results in this:

One reason revenues are so low is that about one-quarter of the rich tax filers seem to have gone missing. The state expected 38,000 Oregonians to pay the higher tax, but only 28,000 did. Funny how that always happens. These numbers are in line with a Cascade Policy Institute study, based on interstate migration patterns, predicting that the tax surcharge would lead to 80,000 fewer wealthy tax filers in Oregon over the next decade. ...

Barack and you other socialists, maybe you should make sure you imprison the wealthy so they can't pick up and leave before you rape them of their hard-earned or easily-earned dough.

The sad thing is, the majority of Oregonians embrace these kinds of policies. Heavy sigh.

The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Internet .

2010-12-21T15:07:00.001-08:00

Net "neutrality" has passed which will help to make the Internet a public utility and regulated as such. Congress voted against this and the courts ruled that this was not legal. Well that does not matter to those with "The Unconstrained Vision". The current administration will just bypass all of the traditional restraints on government power. When restraints on the government's power prevent it from doing beneficial things, then these restraints are viewed as a negative thing by those wishing to remake a better society and must by destroyed or bypassed as in this case. The Congress is becoming irrelevant just as it did during the downfall of the Roman empire. Net "Neutrality" was passed under the guise of protecting the consumer and giving them more choice. As President Obama said about the new rules, it"'will help preserve the free and open nature of the Internet while encouraging innovation, protecting consumer choice, and defending free speech.'" That is double speak straight out of the novel "1984" as these new regulations do the exact opposite. As Rush Limbaugh stated, "It is a solution in search of a problem". He did a concise over view of the topic far better than I could and I won't repeat it. These new rules basically allows the government to regulate content on the Internet. The same argument that is used for controlling the "public airwaves" for the purpose of regulating talk radio--which happens to be the governments biggest obstacle to ramming through its agenda of having more power that will enable it to do good more things for us--is being used for regulating the Internet . These new rules will led to the government controlling content on the Internet and regulate dissenting voices that might get in the way of the government doing good on our behalf. Putting Net Neutrality into the broader context, the free flow of information is always a threat to governments that need more power--to do good in the eyes of Liberals, read "A Conflict Of Visions" by Thomas Sowell--to help people out. There are those that truly want more power to do what they view as beneficial things for humanity and there are those that use this excuse to increase their power. The worst elements, such as those that seek power in and of itself, rise to the top in such a welfare system that is created with the intentions of helping people as it eventually collapses and necessitates and leads to totalitarian power to make the whole system work, see the example of health care and the government forcing us to buy insurance and telling us what to eat. In the case of controlling the Internet, it will be this totalitarian power that will be using this new control in the future.

Net "Neutrality" is about controlling voices of opposition to the government's agenda,

Now, Copps,' one of the Democrat commissioners, "said that he wanted to ensure that the Internet doesn't travel down the same road of special interest consolidation and gatekeeper control that other media and communications industries like radio, TV, film, and cable have traveled.'

They are worried to death that the Internet is gonna become the next conservative talk radio and Fox News, and that's what they're not gonna permit. That's what so-called net neutrality is all about: To make sure that the voices of minorities and the displaced and the dis-financed and the disabused and the whoevers are equally heard. 'What a historic tragedy it would be,' Copps said, 'to let the fate,' that fate, meaning what's happened to talk radio and Fox News, 'befall the dynamism of the Internet.' That's from an earlier app story. Yeah, so we would really hate to see that -- and by the way, they don't have any regulatory authority over cable TV and they haven't asserted it, and that's what galls 'em about Fox. They are trying to control Fox on the basis that Fox does news.

One thing that is worth noting is that Google supported this. Why would big business support government regulation? Would this not hurt big business? A lot of the negative attributes that people ascribe to capitalism is actually the result of the collusion of big government and big business--corporatism. This collusion started under our first modern President Teddy Roosevelt. Big businesses like government regulation because it gives them certainty and an unfair advantage against their smaller competitors because they can afford to comply with the regulations while the smaller businesses can't. Government regulation also helps to prevent competitors from popping up because of the onerous and costly effects of the regulations. Government also likes big business and wants to enact a partnership with them for the purpose of achieving their beneficial goals. Both parties benefit in this Corporatist Fascist model while the people's freedom is the loser. America is not a free enterprise system and has not been for some time now. It is a mixed economic model with free enterprise and government control. This system started out with the free enterprise being the dominate element and the government control being the subordinate element. For quit some time these roles have been in the process of being reversed so that now the government control is becoming the dominate element and to eventually the the only element.

Our health care system and one sixth of our economy has been completely overhauled into a government-controlled model, the financial and banking industry has been basically taken over along with the car industry, the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy has been repealed, the Internet has now fallen under the regulatory foot of the government, and the START treaty looks like it will be passed. President Obama and the Democratic Congress has been very successful in "Fundamentally Transforming" America. The foundation for a new system has been and is in the process of being built, to paraphrase a Congressman referring to Obamacare. This new system is vastly different in a negative sense, change in and of itself is not a negative thing, from what this Country was founded as. All that can be done to these achievements by the new Congress and the new future Republican President, this is still up in the air, is making little reforms in the newly created structure and not getting rid of this structure or replacing it with a free market one. The full effects and force of this fundamental transformation won't be felt for another couple of decades.

This is rock #10

2010-12-19T23:22:00.000-08:00

When I was first getting in to music these were the few christian bands that really rocked. I remember going to bed to the Supertones album every night for like a month.
Supertones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFQKequLo3A
DC Talks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQZVzKKfVhw
Officer Negative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A83pZxL2cvo

Federal Budget Update

2010-12-17T09:04:00.001-08:00

No time for much talking, just a quick note that fiscal conservatives won a very good (but not great) victory in the big budget battle that just was resolved. From the Washington Examiner via Hot Air

A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether — while Democrats roll on.
The watchdog groups — Taxpayers for Common Sense, WashingtonWatch.com, and Taxpayers Against Earmarks — counted total earmark requests in the 2011 budget. Those requests were made by lawmakers earlier this year, but Democratic leaders, afraid that their party’s spending priorities might cost them at the polls, decided not to pass a budget before the Nov. 2 elections. This week, they distilled those earmark requests — threw some out, combined others — into the omnibus bill that was under consideration in the Senate until Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it Thursday night. While that bill was loaded with spending, looking back at the original earmark requests tells us a lot about the spending inclinations of both parties.
In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.
Where did those GOP earmark requests come from? Just four Republican lawmakers: South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who did not run for re-election this year; Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, who lost his bid for re-election; maverick Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and spending king Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The other Republican members of the House — 174 of them — requested a total of zero earmarks.

Republican Senators didn't behave so honorably, but, still the overall result is very good. Another win for the Tea Party: though out of power in the White House and both Houses of Congress, fiscal conservatives were able to impose their will on the ultra liberals (as in liberal with taxpayer money) that currently theoretically control our government. Let's hope Republicans can step it up to the next level in the next Congress. They better, or else!

Viriginia Gov Proposes Cancelling Govt Funding of Public Broadcasting

2010-12-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Jeff started a media series. I've got a couple here in my hip pocket too, so here's the 1st one:
In Nov 2009, we saw the 1st indication that the luster was coming off the Obama halo when Virginia and New Jersey elected fiscally conservative governors. Virginia is a traditionally conservative (though not traditionally Republican) state that has been trending liberal lately. New Jersey was a Republican state when I was young, but it has been deep blue for decades now. New Jersey elected Chris Christie, who needs no introduction to RTP&GGers. Virginia elected Bob McDonnell, who I don't know that we've mentioned before. Well, he's just given us a reason to honor his election:

“Public broadcasting is a wonderful resource, providing quality programming that is cherished by many,” McDonnell said. “However, in our modern media world there are thousands upon thousands of content providers operating in the free market. They compete with each other, and viewers and listeners have their choice as to what to tune into or turn on. Simply put, it doesn’t make sense to have some stations with the competitive advantage of being funded by taxpayer dollars. The decision to eliminate state funding of public broadcasting is driven by the fundamental need to reestablish the proper role of government, and budget accordingly.”

I agree completely with him. I actually watch a lot of the Oregon Public Broadcasting TV, I love the Mystery shows, and also, at least used to listen to NPR religiously. I used to donate regularly to Oregon Public Broadcasting too. I still think they do a thorough job reporting, though you've got to take the reporting with their heavy liberal bias. NPR and Mystery should be able to market themselves in the real world, not depend on taxes, state or federal, for survival. If they can maintain their broadcasting strictly through donations, more power to them, but people who don't choose to listen to those stations shouldn't have to pay for them, particularly in the modern media world and the modern fiscal world.

If McDonnell can succeed here, this will be a tremendous example for the rest of the country!

The Government Now Has The Power To Regulate The Volume Of Audio On Commercials.

2010-12-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

I first saw this news on Fox News. I thought is was interesting as it represents the broader goal of the government to control the Internet and all other forms of media through net neutrality. I wonder what kind of precedent this new power will set and how it will be used in the future.

President Obama on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will regulate the volume of television commercials. According to the White House, the 'Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation' or 'CALM' Act 'requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prescribe a regulation limiting the volume of audio on commercials.' The regulation applies to 'television broadcast stations, cable operators, and other multichannel video programming distributors.' Under the new law, commercials can be only as loud as the decibel level of regular programming.

The "Calm" act sounds lovely and soothing. I am glad that the government is there to protect us from loud commercials. I have not read anything that stated the rational behind this new regulation. It simply appears to be a power grab by the government. Maybe a lot of people called the FCC to complain about loud commercials. This is a perfect example of the type of tyranny that America is headed for: a soft-mild-loving-caring tyranny.

Ethanol Update

2010-12-14T20:44:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure National Review editor Rich Lowry browses RTP&GG because this article he just wrote at Real Clear Politics could have been lifted right out of our article, and Jeff's comments! He adds some follow-on information if you read the whole thing, that tends to confirm Jeff's fears that Republicans aren't going to be able to rein in the goverment bloat. However, remember this is still the lame duck Democratic Congress. I am still confident this thing will be brought under control, at least to a certain extend. Anyway, some quotes from Lowry's article that may seem oddly familiar:

When Al Gore drops an environmental fad, it has truly reached its expiration date.

In his wisdom, the Goracle recently acknowledged what almost all disinterested observers concluded long ago: Ethanol is a fraud. It has no environmental benefits, and harmful side effects. The subsidies that support its use are an object lesson in the incorrigibility of Washington's gross special-interest politics. It is the monster that ate America's corn crop.
"It is not good policy to have these massive subsidies for first-generation ethanol," the former vice president and Noble Peace Prize recipient said, referring to corn-based ethanol. He called the fuel "a mistake," and confessed one reason he fell so hard for it is that he "had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa." These farmers vote in the First in the Nation caucuses and practically insist that their favored presidential candidates drink ethanol at breakfast and hail it as the nectar of the gods.

The Porkmeisters pushing hard for this now are a bipartisan group: chiefly, the two Senators from Iowa, Democrat Tom Harkin and Republican Chuck Grassley. This budget proposal with the ethanol subsidies looked like it was going to pass with Republican support as well as President Obama's. But, after the full extent of the pork has been revealed, many Republicans are backing away from this initially-bipartisan effort that at first look didn't seem unreasonable.

More:

The multiple layers of subsidization have their own perversity. Since there's already a mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline, the tax credit is giving away money for something that would happen anyway. Environmental groups say this pads the bottom line of Big Oil. Harry de Gorter of the free-market Cato Institute has a more complicated take -- the subsidy decreases the cost and therefore the price of gasoline, effectively subsidizing its consumption. Your Congress at work.

But, read the whole thing if you're interested in this and if you want to see how close we came to Lowry's article!

Eco-Tyranny #3 About to Fall?

2010-12-08T21:33:00.000-08:00

[Author's note-this post has been re-written in light of the math error made in the original article and the subsequent change in economic benefit] Another ~~scam~~ effort at Federal Government tyranny that has been creeping along and was about to be~~come~~ a ~~real pain to~~ forced on the common man may be about to subside. Not go away, but subside:

Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan – the man running against Texas Rep. Joe Barton to be Chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee in the next Congress– has reversed his position on CFL light bulbs. The move is significant not only because Upton wants to be chairman of one of the House’s most powerful committees, but also because he championed the incandescent bulb ban and switch to CFLs just three short years ago.

I guess I had sort of heard that they were going to phase out incandescent bulbs, but I didn't really think they would do it. Evidently, this liberal Republican from Michigan, has introduced a bill that was passed that would sunset incandescent bulbs. I knew that some states were doing that, but I didn't think the Feds were going to try to do that.

I detect a sleezy politician here: not 'til the nation got rocked by the Tea Party does this slimeball see the infringement on an individual's right to run his life and the obligation of the Federal government to keep their nose out of business they have no constitutional mandate to stick it in. Rack up another victory for the Tea Party, at least hopefully, soon.

~~We should have ToeJamm run another economic analysis for us~~ I am glad ToeJamm checked my math for us, plus, I have since gone to the store and gotten more facts, so am not entirely winging it with some of my figures: ~~No, I'll do it this time.~~ The cost of electricity in households across the nation varies quite a bit, but I think 10¢ a kilowatt-hour (kWh) is a fair number. Portland probably pays more, because PGE is very expensive, but other places probably pay less. 17¢ a kWh is probably on the high end. A kilowatt-hour means 1000 watts for 1 hour. That would be equivalent to letting your wife or girlfriend's hair dryer run for an hour: costs you 10¢. Electricity, even now, is quite a bargain for what you can do with it. OK, now I normally use 60W incandescent bulbs in my house. The equivalent-brightness CFL bulb is 20W. So, for me to change to an equivalent-brightness CFL would save me 40W. If I leave my CFL lightbulb on for an hour I've saved myself 40 watt-hours of electricity. Note, not 40 kilowatt-hours, but 40 watt-hours. So, if my electricity costs 10¢/kWh and I've saved 40 Wh of electricity, how much money have I saved? By my calculation, I save 0.04¢ an hour by using a CFL bulb, but that calculation is wrong, per ToeJamm, it is 0.4¢ an hour saved. But still, that's a savings, right? Well, what about the costs? A pack of four incandescent bulbs costs about $2, so 50¢ each. ~~One CFL bulb costs from $6-$8.~~ I bought a pack of four today for $14.00, so $3.50 per bulb How long does the CFL bulb have to run before you make your money back from your big investment? Let's choose $6 $3.50 for the CFL bulb, even though they're often more expensive. $6 3.50- $0.50 = ~~$5.50~~ $3.00 for the difference between the two. So, $~~5.50~~ $3= ($0.0044/hr) x X hrs. Solving for X gives ~~13,750~~ 750 hours ~~or 573 days of continuous use to break even~~. My 60W bulb says it will last for 1500 hours. I did a test once between a 60W incandescent and a 20W CFL on the same light switch, the CFL lasted about twice as long as the incandescent however, the CFL bulbs I bought today say they will last 8000 hours. I don't believe that for a typical application, as I have tested it out repeatedly in my house and they don't significantly outlast incandescent bulbs. ~~so that modifies the equation a tiny bit, but, in a nutshell, you will never come close to making your money back.~~ Now, who's the ~~sucker~~ I mean responsible environmentalist? Well, I own some CFLs, so count me as one of those ~~suckers~~ people who know the value of a dollar. But, it was my choice to ~~be a sucker~~ make the purchase. That's fair. But, these statist, mother-knows-best, nannies want to force us all to involuntarily ~~lower our standard of living~~ have the government make our shopping choices for us for a very small comparative benefit. They WILL be defeated.

It's a trend, Jeff!

PS: And that doesn't even take into account the question I raised when we discussed Prius'. Why is the CFL bulb so expensive? Again, cost is relative to the energy required to construct, in a nutshell. My guess is you need to subtract quite a bit from your electricity savings in the whole-earth calculation of your power consumption because so much energy was used to build the CFL bulb as opposed to the incandescent in the first place, but I don't feel like expending the energy to prove that.

PPS: Besides being able to sound our arguments off each other to see where we have significant flaws, we get to learn things through the time we put investigating and discussing our article. I am very happy to learn that it does make economic sense to buy CFL bulbs!

It Was 30 Years Ago, Today...

2010-12-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

He was living in New York at the time, and was very happy there. He said that he wished he had spent his whole life there. But, then paid the price.

I was not impressed with John's post-Beatle production, (The Beatles had been broken up for ten years when he was shot) not just because the music wasn't that great, but because he seemed so bitter. He wrote some bitter songs in The Beatles too, and that helped add an edge to them, but, it's my old bugaboo, when the bitterness gets one-dimensional, it wears thin. However, the assasination guaranteed there would be no Beatle reunions. That added a great deal of downerness to the whole situation, because a whole generation had continued to hope that someday, The Beatles would get back together.

There was a huge vigil in Central Park to honor him,. I think Papa said that he saw it.

The World's Energy Juggernaut?

2010-12-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

The Canadian newspaper The Globe & Mail has put out an article titled "North America: The New Energy Kingdom, that should raise eyebrows of those not deeply knowledgeable of the situation of fossil fuel capacities in the world. It turns out that the US and Canada actually dominate many areas of fossil-fuel energy production, even now, and they are increasing their share in many areas. A read-the-whole-thing article if you're interested in this kind of thing, but they're not the kind of facts you'll see in the MSM. A few choice cuts that may rock your world:

The American Petroleum Institute reports that the United States produced more crude oil in October than it has ever produced in a single month, “peak oil” or not.

But, I thought all our wells were going to play out in the '90's!

The New York Times observed: “Just as it seemed that the world was running on fumes, giant oil fields were discovered off the coasts of Brazil and Africa, and Canadian oil sands projects expanded so fast, they now provide North America with more oil than Saudi Arabia. In addition, the United States has increased domestic oil production for the first time in a generation.” Further still: “Another wave of natural gas drilling has taken off in shale rock fields across the United States, and more shale gas drilling is just beginning in Europe and Asia.”

and

With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s natural gas production – up from 2 per cent in 1990.

The natural gas one really was a surprise to me; I thought we got most of ours from Canada.

They sum up with

Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world’s biggest supplier – and exporter – of reasonably cheap energy.

But read it all and get some learnin'.

PS: However, we'll probably also be the world's biggest supplier of stupidly expensive energy too with all our windmills and solar panels, so we probably won't see a benefit in our checkbooks.

Another Eco-Scam Being Thrown Under the Bus?

2010-12-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

You might not have noticed, but the successor of the Copenhagen Global Warming conference is happening right now in Cancun, Mexico. Smart of the organizers to hold it in Cancun, to avoid the sudden appearance of blizzards during their meeting, though, if Al Gore makes an appearance, anything can happen. Why no coverage? Why no triumphal attendance by our Glorious President who said,"this is the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal"?

The Copenhagen summit, well covered by RTP&GG in this and other posts, was supposed to be the Global Warmingists' moist, hot, wet dream, where the wealth re-distributions craved by 1st World Socialists and 3rd World Dictators would be finally set in motion, to supposedly finance everyone's reduction of fossil fuel use, and would be signed by the planet's new savior, ~~Jesus~~ I mean, Barack Obama and implemented by the leaders of the world. It ended in a shambles for reasons covered elsewhere on RTP&GG, and was the 2nd big failure by our One True Messiah after he was elected, and is certainly one of his biggest humiliations (an enterprising RTP&GGer could make a good article titled "The Humiliations of our Dear Leader"). What was supposed to be eco-socialists' crowning achievement actually was the point where the Global Warming movement nosedived into general discredit. Now, no one is paying any attention to what those scammers are saying or doing in Cancun. The MSM is avoiding it because it will remind everyone of one of Obama's first big failures, and the humiliation of one of their sacred shibboleths.

But, I'm not here to talk about Cancun. I'm here to talk about how a tightening budget environment, and the new vigilance being shown on the Federal budget (by Tea Partiers, forced on politicians) is about to kick another huge eco-scam into the dustbin of history. Ethanol (aka grain alcohol or everclear) now makes up 15% of the gas we put in our cars, by Federal decree, not by any economic value obtained. It has been a major boon to corn farmers in the Midwest and around the world, who saw the price they got for corn skyrocket once ethanol was made mandatory. Ethanol was supposed to be a boon to the planet, as it was a 'renewable resource' because of course, we can keep growing corn (the question of how much petroleum product is now used in fertilizer by agribusiness will not be pursued here). And of course it was pitched that highly processing corn and burning alcohol was somehow being green. As usual with eco-scams, the technology can't stand on its own feet on the economic merits: according to the Congressional Budget Office, taxpayers pay $1.78 for every gallon of ethanol.

A report in mid-July by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the subsidy is something of a boondoggle in part because a gallon of ethanol delivers two-thirds the energy content of a gallon of gas.

"Because 1.48 gallons of ethanol are required to provide as much energy as a gallon of gasoline, the 45 cent credit for each gallon of ethanol is equivalent to paying blenders 67 cents for each gallon of gasoline that ethanol displaces," it said.

In all, taxpayers pay $1.78 for every gallon when fuel is made from corn, CBO said.

These taxes are paid both in the direct purchase and in Federal taxes. That's a lot of money being paid to make you feel warm and fuzzy about doing good things for the environment. But how green is it? Even its green attractiveness is finally being called into question, says a professor involved in a study by Stanford University:

Prof. JACOBSON: Ozone that's formed is formed from the emissions of either ethanol vehicles or gasoline vehicles. And there - or have been technologies that have been introduced that have reduced the amount of ozone significantly. For example, the catalytic converter reduced the ozone. And there are other technologies that potentially could be used to reduce ozone further.

In fact, in this study we assumed there are going to be technological improvements. Just to put in perspective, gasoline vehicles in the United States kill about 10,000 people prematurely each year. Now, if we convert to ethanol, what I found was that this might increase slightly by about 200 deaths per year.

So it's not a large increase over gasoline. But the key is it's not an improvement over gasoline as has been suggested. The key is whether we can do a lot better than gasoline. And there are technologies out there that could eliminate all these deaths, particularly, battery electric vehicles where the electricity is provided by renewable energy such as wind and solar power. And also hydrogen fuel cell vehicles where the hydrogen is produced by wind and solar power and also hydroelectric geothermal power.

That study is not totally convincing to me I suppose. His conclusions, that electrical powered cars are cleaner where the electricity is provided by renewable wind and solar power is utter bullshit, as there is no place in the United States where the majority or even a significant minority of power is provided by wind or solar power. This casts doubt onto the believe-ability of the rest of the study, regardless of what prestigious academic institution produced it. But, assuming he knows what he's talking about, your $1.78/gal in taxes for ethanol is going towards the great green good of killing 200 more people per year than regular gasoline. I hope you feel good about that. I wonder if the professor is including the starvation deaths from the increased food prices the ethanol project has produced. Odd that he didn't mention a true green power: hydroelectric dams. What's up with these agendas dudes?

Well, I'm wandering...Let's get back on track:

The Goreacle Himself, the snakeoil saleman to the world, has now made a shocking, if not surprising admission:

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president" in 2000.

Imagine, pushing a major change in our gasoline industry primarily to win votes through pork. Tell me it ain't so, Al! Next thing you say, is the whole global warming movement is a scam too! Shocking, but not surprising. Notice he said "made that mistake". The mistake was pushing ethanol. When Al Gore admits it's a mistake, you know the end is near. [a small aside: credit Tennesseans for knowing a scam when the hear one: if Al Gore had been able to win in his home state in 2000, he would have been president.] This particular pork project shoved pork to farmers, so probably a mostly Republican group of recipients. So, of course the bottom will fall out of support for this as the Coastal libs will have no real (ie voter) reason to support it (from Hot Air):

Has the federal government’s appetite for ethanol ended? A bipartisan group of Senators signed a letter today calling for an end to subsidies and tariffs designed to protect and enhance domestic production of ethanol, which has been until recently the darling of the alternative-energy movement. In a sign of how far ethanol subsidies have fallen from favor, the letter addressed to both Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell has the signatures of such liberal luminaries as Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and the newly-elected Chris Coons

When you've lost Barbara Boxer, you've lost the liberal base. Farmers cry, "goodbye sweet pork-laden scam, goodbye."

Herr Stadler is not afraid to call a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist

2010-12-02T22:57:00.000-08:00

If you need to bitch someone out, I think the German language is best for doing it. Here, a member of the Austrian parliament delivers a severe tongue lashing to the Turkish Ambassador. If more governmental leaders would act like this, we would solve the problem of Islamic terror in the West.

How do we stop the crazed Odinist fundamentalists?!

2010-12-02T22:25:00.000-08:00

It's so obvious who the real terrorists are: blonde, blue-eyed young men who worship Odin and have names like Ingmar Johanssen. So, why in the heck are we groping old women with names like Maria Gutierrez?

This humorous article makes its points (that I of course agree with) in a fun way.

Pictured are Odin and his Raven guides Huginn and Muninn (spirit and mind) along with, curiously for a supposed religion of peace, a seaxe. So an example of Scando-Anglo-Saxon terror.

EU's Sovereign Debt Crisis And The Centralization Of Power Within The EU.

2010-11-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

Ireland has recently accepted/forced to accept a 85 billion euro bailout and Portugal, Spain, Italy are falling like dominoes. The debt contagion is spreading throughout the peripheral nations and will eventually make its way to the core. This is a very good video titled "Von Rompuy:Pin-up boy for Eurosceptics " showing a member of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage's message to the EU president and those that still wish to keep the European Union dream alive: "The dream is up". Farage's rant against the EU points out that current events in the EU could be leading to the end of the EU and if it doesn't then it will lead to people rallying around nationalism and violence because "when you rob people of their democracy and their identity. Then they are left with nationalism and violence".
(Picture) European Union: European Day poster, 2000. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Web. 30 Nov. 2010

(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/196399/93978/Europe-Day-poster-2000).

And continuing on the ideal that the current events in the EU are leading to the fragmentation of the EU here is a good article from CNBC,

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the possibility of a political breakup of the European Union. Just before Thanksgiving, I wrote— not ironically — about whether a crypto-breakup of Europe might already be underway in the sovereign debt markets.
Today, a new idea that is at least as unsettling: Fragmentation in Europe, not just along national lines, but along class and economic lines as well.
Michael Pettis, a Professor of Finance at Peking University and a frequent writer on international economics wrote in a recent blog post, in reference to Europe's most economically troubled nations:
'Political radicalism in these countries will rise inexorably as a consequence of rising class conflict. As Keynes pointed out as far back as 1922, the process of adjusting the currency and debt will primarily be one of assigning the costs to different economic groups, and this is never an easy or conflict-free exercise.'
This is indeed a frightening scenario. If, as Milton Friedman suggested in 1965 'We are all Keynesians now,' perhaps it is time to think through some of the darker ramifications for Europe.[...] In the United States, we tend to underestimate the significant ideological grip socialism held in Europe for much of the 20th century.[...] While those examples might indeed be outliers, the policies of many European Union nations are influenced by the fundamental structure of their governments: parliamentary democracies.[...] The upside of the parliamentary system is the promise of an intellectual openness to a broader spectrum of political opinion. The downside is the possibility that small parties—and with them fringe movements—can accumulate a share of power disproportionate to their representation in the general population. (In an example from the opposite side of the political spectrum, the broad Swedish left is apoplectic over the rise of a political party alleged to have racist roots.)
In short, due to cultural, historical, and structural factors at play in Europe, it seems impossible to rule out the possibility of social fragmentation along class and economic lines. In certain European intellectual circles, that oft-quoted line from The Communist Manifesto[sic] —that 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles'—is more than just a ancient relic. It's a political truism.

As Farage notes in his speech, hopefully the Euro project will be destroyed by the markets before this happens. Looking at the fact that these PIIGS nations are receiving bailouts, it doesn't seem that the EU leaders are unwilling to let the free market work. There is too much political capital invested in the concept of the EU.
(Picture) European Union. Flag. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Web. 30 Nov. 2010
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/196399/92316/Flag-of-the-European-Union).

A good article from the Ludgwig Von Mises institute states that these debt crises is leading to a centralization of power in the EU,

Finally, the bailout leads to a centralization of power in the European Union. European politicians already indirectly determine the Irish budget. For instance, they tell the Irish government to increase taxes, such as the sales tax. They also put tremendous pressure on the Irish government to abandon its policy of a low corporate-tax rate, a policy that many European politicians regard as 'fiscal dumping."' Here, at last, the Irish government resisted.

In the short run, one may find some positive aspects of the determination of fiscal policies by Brussels or indirectly by Germany. When Germany or Brussels tells Spain, Greece, or Ireland to reduce their deficits, the result for people living in these countries may be a reduced size of the government in the short run. But such centralization of power in the EU will likely prove to be disastrous for liberty in the long run. The European interventionists now claim that because there is one central bank we need one economic policy.

One factor that frequently hampers governments' attempts to increase their power via increases in taxation or regulation is the competition of other governments. If taxes get too high in a country, economic agents will flee to countries with lower tax rates (such as Ireland, with its low corporate tax rate). If economic policy is centralized in the European Union, this limitation on government power is eliminated. European politicians already aim at a harmonization of fiscal policies and talk about benchmarks for tax rates. Once fiscal policies are harmonized, there will be a tendency toward an increase of power in Brussels and then toward an increase of tax rates throughout the eurozone.

The euro might be saved, but at the cost of building a strong, central European state, as national policymaking is transferred to Brussels in exchange for bailouts. The turmoil produced by the euro will then have served as an instrument for the development of a centralized state in Europe.

This article also describes the problem with the concept of the EU project: it created the incentives for small EU nations to run up massive deficits.

This article notes the Ireland bailout is not about Ireland but it is about the European project,

What you need to know about Ireland's economic crisis is that it's not about Ireland: a small country of slightly more than 4 million people and an economy of roughly $200 billion. It's about Europe. For decades, Europe has pursued two great political projects. One is the democratic welfare state, designed to improve economic justice through various social safety nets. The other is European unity, symbolized by the creation in 1999 of a single currency -- the euro -- now used by 16 countries. The fact that both contributed to Ireland's troubles suggests that Europe could be on the brink of a broader crisis.
Ireland's problems are not isolated, and if they portend a wider meltdown, this would mark a dangerous new phase in the global economic turmoil that began in 2007. Europe represents about one-fifth of the world economy, comparable to the U.S. share. If the continent relapsed into recession, worldwide economic nationalism would intensify, as the already-weak global recovery faltered and countries competed for scarce sales. For example: Europe buys about 25 percent of America's exports, which would suffer. Protectionism and predatory behavior would increase.

Europe's problems can easily spread to the rest of the world. America could possibly have a very similar situation to the EU with its individual states. The concept of the Euro is being put before the economic well being of the individual EU nations and the whole European economy.

The events in the EU illustrates how that the concept of socialism is an economic failure and how that it leads to centralization of power among various governmental entities. In the case of the EU, it is the result of the attempts by them to prevent the economic collapse that is the inevitable result of socialism. If the concept of the EU does not end but continues to be pursued, it will lead to a more centralized European governing body that is built on very shaky economic ground that will possibly collapse into a very different system of government. Friedrich Hayek warned that socialist planning leads to situation where "totalitarian powers will get the upper hand",

I have never accused the old socialist parties of deliberately aiming at a totalitarian regime, but' What I have argued in this book[The Road To Serfdom], and what the British experience convinces me even more to be true, is that the unforeseen but inevitable consequences of socialist planning create a state of affairs in which, if the policy is to be pursued, totalitarian forces will get the upper hand. I explicitly stress that 'socialism can be put into practice only by methods of which most socialist disapprove' and even add that in this 'old socialist parties were inhibited by their democratic ideals' and that 'they did not posses the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task'.

As Farage notes in his address to the EU president, democratic principles are being put aside for the purpose of maintaining the EU. From what I gleam from the various commentary that I have heard on business shows like CNBC's "Squawk box", the situation in Europe is leading to an inevitable collapse of the EU system. What system of government will emerge out of the possible future economic collapse of the European socialist model?