Trust Your Federal Government? A Trip down Memory Lane

Ron Brown and Plane Crash in Croatia

The American Thinker blog has an article taking us down memory lane, in light of the multiple disgusting Obama administration scandals currently dominating the headlines, about the events and coverup of the death of Clinton Administration Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.   It's a multi-part article detailing the electoral politics around a series of events beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and a still-unidentified "foreign-looking man" in 1995 and including the crash of the Air Force transport plane carrying Secretary Brown in Croatia in 1996.  Though I was familiar with these events at the time, I had forgotten the controversies.  Very interesting reading, both for review and if these events of the mid-90's are new to you.

What these articles show is the extent that our government leaders will go to cover their own ass and do what is right for them politically, rather than what is right for the nation.  All these scandals show what a hypocritically disgusting thing our completely amoral president said at Ohio St University on May 5th

"Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems," Obama told graduates. "Some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works. They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices."

The American Thinker article is a good primer on what was going on back in the mid 90's.  Interesting that it was also a Democratic administration, but I'm not trying to make the point that Democrats can't be trusted (though that is certainly true).  My point is that doubting our elected leaders is a very proper, right, healthy thing to do.  And doing things like, oh, Obamacare, that gives the Federal government even more control in our lives, even in the alternate universe where it would be economical, is the wrong thing to do.  Not news to RTP&GGers of course.

Voters need to make sure that the right thing for politicians is the right thing for America.  That is what the ballot box is for.  Unfortunately, I don't know that the majority of Americans care what is right for America anymore.

Print Your Own Gun

In the not-too-distant future this will be possible. The world's first 3-D printed gun,,, called the Liberator, has been successfully fired by Defense Distributed. This is in addition to an AR-15 and AK-47 magazines and an AR-15 lower receiver that has been successfully made and used with this new technology.

On May 1st, Wilson assembled the 3D-printed pieces of his Liberator for the first time, and agreed to let a Forbes photographer take pictures of the unproven device. A day later, that gun was tested on a remote private shooting range an hour’s drive from Austin, Texas, whose exact location Wilson asked me not to reveal.

The verdict: it worked. The Liberator fired a standard .380 handgun round without visible damage, though it also misfired on another occasion when the firing pin failed to hit the primer cap in the loaded cartridge due a misalignment in the hammer body, resulting in an anti-climactic thunk.[...] 

The group’s initial success in testing the Liberator may now silence some of its technical naysayers, too. Many skeptics (include commenters on this blog) have claimed that no plastic gun could ever handle the pressure and heat of detonating an ammunition cartridge without deforming or exploding. But Defense Distributed’s design has done just that.

The gun is composed of 16 parts. Only the firing pin was not made with the 3-D printer, a nail was used. The gun was made using a 9000 dollar 3-D printer. Defense Distributed is currently working to improve the gun so that it can be made with a less expensive 3-D printer. The current design is still fairly crude. The accuracy, reliability, and safety of the gun is questionable but this will be improved upon in time.

Almost immediately after the successful firing of the world's first 3-D gun the government is already working to regulate the technology. The gun's creator has faced many challenges and roadblocks along the way, and there is no doubt that this technology has many more to come. This technology in its early development, but it will continue to be improved upon. Eventually this technology has the ability to prevent the government from being able to completely ban guns. This is a "game changer".

Who Are You Going To Listen Too?

I think these videos are very instructive. Who are you going to listen to when it comes to figuring out what the economic environment is going to be like and planning for your future? The experts and the mainstream opinion or people with a proven track record of accurately forecasting economic events? The economic crisis in 2008 was completely predictable; but the mainstream analysts and experts did not see 2008 coming. Instead the experts laughed at the people that were telling them what was coming. Why does this matter to you? Today most of the experts are still telling us that the worst of the economic crisis is over and still deriding those that are "too negative" and are "doom and gloomers" who are forecasting that a much bigger global economic crisis is headed our way. What happened to those that were telling the truth?

Here is Peter Schiff getting laughed at while telling everybody that there was a big economic recession coming around 2008.

 Here is the current chairman of the Federal Reserve stating during 2005-2007 that the economy was doing well and that there was no recession headed our way. A prominent central banker fessed up when caught in an open lie by reporters said this: “When it becomes serious, you have to lie".

Here is Peter Schiff talking a much bigger economic crisis coming.

 Who are you going to listen to?

Happy Earth Day!

This was so good I had to steal it: The 13 Worst Predictions made on the 1st Earth Day, April 22, 1970:

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald


"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

"In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." — Paul Ehrlich

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

"[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt

Hmmm, anybody notice how wildly off these predictions were?  It seems that even learned Ivy League 'scientists' can't deal with anything more complicated than a straight line as far as trends are concerned.  Temperatures are getting colder, therefore temperatures will continue to get colder unless we do something drastic.  Temperatures are getting warmer, therefore temperatures will continue to get warmer...yadayada, populations are increasing, therefore...

In fairness, pollution levels have fallen greatly since I was a kid both in the air and in the water.  I remember flying around the Puget Sound in the '70's with my dad and always seeing a yellow fog over Seattle.  Going to LA and getting a headache from air pollution.  Catching deformed and diseased flounder in the Puget Sound.  I do think that government regulation is primarily responsible for solving these things. 

But, still notice that many of the same people are still making predictions that have no more foundation in facts than those were back in 1970, when eco-consciousness was first really forced on America.

A Federal Europe By The Back Door

Here is clip in honor of the late Margaret Thatcher who warned against the Euro.

And here is a clip of Nigel Farage speaking the truth about the European Union and discussing the recent wealth confiscation of the people of Cyprus. (This is a portent of what will happen in the next economic crisis here and around the world.)

The current economic crisis in the EU was predicted by some of the finance ministers of the various European nations that signed up for the Euro. They had wanted to create a political and economic union that would have created a united states of Europe. They couldn't get the political union by consent of the European people, so they settled for an unsustainable economic union that would force the political union on the people of Europe through an economic crisis:

  "On 1 January 1999, with the introduction of the an important part of national sovereignty, to wit monetary sovereignty, was passed over to a European institution...The introduction of a common currency is not primarily an economic, but rather a sovereign and thus eminently political act...political union must be our lodestar from now on: it is the logical follow-on from Economic and Monetary Union,” then German foreign minister Joschka Fischer told European Union lawmakers just days after the introduction of the euro in 1999.
Fischer was not alone, with many of the founding members of the euro zone making it clear that the single currency was significant as a stepping stone to political union.

"The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community...it is a decision of an essentially political nature. We need this United Europe...we must never forget that the euro is an instrument for this project” said Felipe Gonzalez, then Spanish prime minister. Even those who opposed the idea and refused to join agreed that the euro had little to do with economics.

"A single currency is about the politics of Europe. It is about a Federal Europe by the back door,” John Major, the former U.K. prime minister, said two years before the euro was born and six months before being routed at the polls by Tony Blair.

Historian Niall Ferguson wrote in this weekend’s Sunday Times that the euro’s founding fathers were well aware that the introduction of the euro would lead us to a crisis very like this one. [Emphasis is mine.]

Vladimir Bukovsky states that the European union is the new Soviet Union:

The European Union is template for the coming world government that will be forced upon the people of the world in the coming economic crisis.

Sacrifice

Every facet of our government needs to sacrifice if we are going to survive the debt crisis. This does not mean that our government has to be less effective. It just means they need to start operating like a normal business. I like what our new  Secretary of Defense had to say about defense cuts:

The greatest fiscal threat to the military is not declining budgets, Hagel warned, but rather “the growing imbalance in where that money is being spent internally.” In other words, money dedicated to health care or benefits is money that’s not spent on preparing troops for battle or pilots for missions. (militarytimes.com)

It is good to see that a person at such a high level is finally saying the things that need to be said.  Legacy costs are killing our budgets. If a respected and honorable community, like veterans, can take a hit on benefits, then there should be no argument for any entitlement to be spared. Certainly veterans deserve these things more than most others.

The Science is Settled!

Even the super hyper Climate Warming partisans at The Economist finally note what people with brains have noticed for many years now: Climate is not warming.  In fact, every single climate model that has been used to prove Global Warming, and justify massive governmental intrusion and taxation in our lives (mostly through the Green Power initiatives) has been proven grossly wrong.  And, as you may expect with people putting an agenda before the science - they all err in exactly the same way - overestimating climate warming.  Looking at the graph, and understanding a limited amount of statistics, you can see how horribly bad the predictions are.  Even though we have continued to fill our atmosphere with more and more killer Carbon Dioxide, the temperatures refuse to budge.  The studies were mostly made in the late 90's and the data, when not skewed by the scamsters, refuses to track the predictions.

The point isn't that global climate doesn't change.  Of course it does and always has.  The point is that the big hype of pushing man's increasing production of carbon dioxide as the true environmental killer has been shown to be completely without foundation in fact.  Which means all our money-wasting initiatives to create less carbon dioxide have been done without an ounce of real-world justification:  all the shutting down of coal plants, development of expensive 'renewable' electrical generation plants, hybrid and electric cars, and every other effort to reduce our material wealth via the global warming boogeyman is money and life-alteration is just money sucked out of our pockets and into the pockets of scamsters

It's very ironic that in the late '90's, when all the studies were published showing global temperatures going through the roof, Gaia decided to play a joke on the scammers and flatline the temperatures. 

I'm sure another scam will come along soon to replace Global Warming.  Global Climate Change!  It will be too easy to mock them if they turn back to the Global Cooling of the '70's.   Too many of us remember when they tried that the first time.

But just remember, our God-King Obama, Al Gore, and all our betters, who of course have degrees from Ivy League schools, know better than we do.  So, be sure to listen to them when they try this again.  And of course this current scam is still -practically speaking- going full-speed ahead, as carbon caps are still in effect for the power industry, and you still are paying higher and higher power bills etc, etc.