The RogueNation

The RogueNation Cover of the Week

2009-03-08T00:47:00.000-08:00

Joss Stone (Hawwwt) singing Son of a Preacher Man:

Yoga with Tara Stiles

2009-01-28T23:12:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite yoga chicks is doing headstands:

The RogueNation: Holiday Edition

2008-12-23T17:15:00.000-08:00

It's been nearly 7 months since I last posted an entry here at The Roguenation. In that time, the economic depression I've been harping about for the past 3 years has made its way to Main Street. People are feeling the effects of an economic correction that was long overdue. The bad news? I don't think we've hit rock bottom yet. It took Japan the whole decade of the 90's and zero percent interest rates to recover from the malinvestment and bubble creation that they went through in the 80's (does anyone remember growing up to stories about how the Japanese were going to buy all of Hawaii from us and what we didn't lose in WWII we were going to lose in the 80's? I think that was a Magnum PI episode).

Well, at least the central planners in Washington DC know that the worst possible thing we can do is start bailing out companies, whether it's banks, or the "Big 3", or any other private enterprise. Because if we do that, it will only prolong the pain and dig us a deeper hole for us to get out of. Oh wait.... aww crap.

More things I need to get off of my chest (Larry King style):

Given the past 8 years, can't we say that "GOP" and "Democrat" mean the same thing? That is, big government statism with central planning douchebaggery from the bureacratic parasites in DC? I mean really, anyone who thinks W is a conservative (in the mold of say Reagan, Goldwater, or Taft) probably still thinks that the Village People, like Tom Cruise's character in "Top Gun" aren't gay. At least the Dems are out of the closet, so to speak, on their grand politburo designs...

Speaking of gay (not that there is anything wrong that), I switched over from a PC laptop to one of the new aluminum macbooks from Apple. Three words: FAB U LOUS. I've used Windows XP for years, (on both my desktop and laptops) and knowing what I know now, I probably should have switched years ago...it's easy to use, intuitive, plus I can run XP on the macbook (though I haven't had to yet)...oh yeah, I got an iphone for my personal cel and it runs circles around the blackberries that we got for company use...

Here's a link to a SFW gallery of one of my favorite supermodels: Allesandra Ambrosio

I like to think of it as a palate cleanser after that previous paragraph...
Oh yeah, I'm in the market for a gas guzzling full size SUV, I was leaning toward the Chevy Tahoe (for business purposes). I can't carry all of the guns I'm going to start collecting in my Volvo (Nevada has a really healthy respect for the 2nd Amendment, a big plus in my book.)

The good thing about the depression we are in: TAX REVOLTS! We are going to see more and more people say "screw you, I need to feed my family" to government. This is a great thing, stop feeding the monster that is government and it will be forced to shrink (it's our fault for letting it get this big anyway). I think not paying taxes someone isn't liable for is one of the most american and patriotic DUTIES that we have as citizens of this country. Our country was founded on a tax revolt. THAT tradition will make a comeback in '09...

Merry Christmas to all! I wish everyone out there peace, happiness, and hope.

The Weekly Buchanan: Is Bush becoming Irrelevant

2008-05-30T06:41:00.000-07:00

Pat writes:

Looking back on the years since 9-11, it is hard to give the Bush foreign policy passing grades. We pushed NATO eastward and alienated Russia. We have 140,000 Army and Marine Corps troops tied down in Iraq in a war now in its sixth year, from which our NATO allies have all extricated themselves. We have another war going in Afghanistan, where the situation is as grave as it has been since we went in.

The Bush democracy crusade was put on the shelf after producing election triumphs for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, after Iraq, appears to be headed there, as well.

Are we safer now than we were 8 years ago pre-9/11? If we are, has the cost in terms of American lives, money, and the constantly expanding nanny state been worth it?

In the final analysis, I don't think one can come to any other conclusion than it has not. One thing that Pat doesn't mention about our foreign policy is the risk that our trillion dollar a year liability puts us economically. Which, in my mind is the greater threat to us (and always has been).

It's so wrong, but I laughed out loud

2008-05-30T06:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.sarahjessicaparkerlookslikeahorse.com/

Movie Weekend

2008-05-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

Indiana Jones came out this weekend and I have my review of the flick at the end of this post. But first, I've a couple of things (movie related, of course):

First, MovieCrunch has a list of the 20 Worst Chick Flicks of All Time. Needless to say, my favorite movie of all time, "Species" (how can a movie with Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forrest Whitaker and a constantly naked Natasha Henstridge at the peak of her powers NOT be our "Citizen Kane"?), is nowhere to be found. Which makes the only redeeming quality about this list is the drinking game that was tacked on at the end. Conveniently, I've cut and pasted that here:

1) Take a drink when someone dies of a lengthy illness.
2) Take a drink whenever someone has cancer
3) Take a drink the first time Matthew McConaughey, Richard Gere, or Tom Hanks appears.
4) Take a drink whenever you see a woman over the age of 40 (be careful with this one, you could easily die of alcohol poisoning).
5) Take a drink for every single mother that appears.
6) Take a drink whenever someone cries onscreen.
7) Take a drink whenever someone mentions men disparagingly.

Also, Cracked has a list of the 8 Least Intimidating Gangs in Movie History. I don't know anything about the writer of this particular piece, but how can any list like this be complete without mentioning Breakin II: Electric Boogaloo?

Finally, my review of "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull": Aside from me taking a snooze about midway through. I can't think of anything memorable about the movie. Except for thinking about 5 minutes after waking up during the film, what a waste of $7.50.

1984

2008-05-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

So what good are all those surveillance cameras provided by the nanny state if they don't make anyone safer, deter crime, or sometimes go unmonitored? From Reason Mag's Hit and Run blog:

The Get Out Clause, an unsigned Manchester band who could not afford a camera crew for their video, 'performed' in front of a load of CCTV cameras, requested the footage from the camera operators under the Data Protection Act and then stitched the results together for their music video.

Tax dollars at work!

Good Bye

2008-05-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

Ed Morrissey over at Hotair writes about Ron Paul:

For some reason, normally sensible people like John Derbyshire continue to put their hope for electoral victory into a candidate who consorted with and exploited racists and anti-Semites for years in order to bolster his political standing.

Ohhhh, did you see that? Ron Paul "consorted with and exploited racists and anti-Semites". Normally, Captain Ed is a fairly reasonable guy. Compared to the morons over at Ace's blog, or a lot of the 2nd tier bloggers that make up the Pajamas Media Right, he looks like Voltaire. But he and the rest of the PJM sound like Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton playing the "racist" card when they can't win on issues like, say, CUTTING THE SIZE OF THE FRIGGIN GOVERNMENT AND GETTING THEM THE FUCK OUT OF OUR LIVES. That's one thing the neoconservatives will never be accused of trying to do. You know the things that conservatives once stood for.

I entertained thoughts about coming back to the GOP, but naww, I can't do it in good conscience. They are as corrupt as the Dems. It'll be a cold day in hell before McCain gets my vote, my support or my dollars. Same with the GOP.

Good riddance.

Sin City

2008-05-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

I'm coming up on two weeks in my new hometown and here are a couple of things that I've noticed about Las Vegas:

It really is a 24 hour city, there is always something to do, places to eat, things to see, and not just on the Strip. In fact, I've spent a total of maybe 4 hours on the strip in the time that I've been here.

So far, my favorite casinos: Southpoint (just because I like the blackjack game they have there) and Red Rock Casino (because it's about 5 minutes away, has lots of eyecandy, and has a cool, trendy vibe) but their blackjack game is ok.

CVS, Walmart, Target, and Home Depot seem to be the only stores that are allowed on the major intersections in Las Vegas. Seems like they are everywhere.

90 degrees isn't that bad when you have air conditioning. I don't know what I'm gonna do when summer rolls around and it's 120.

How come nobody told me that there are strippers and prostitutes in Las Vegas? I couldn't believe it, next thing you know, I'm gonna find out there are gay people in the arts.

Louisiana Gov. Jindal

2008-05-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

David Weigel over at Reason writes about something that's music to my ears:

Jindal headhunted a Fortune 500 executive to run his state department of Labor and commanded him to prune it down. In response, the secretary came up with a plan for abolishing the department. This is what you fantasize about Republicans doing before they go and do things like hire Tom Ridge to lobby for the duct tape industry.

THIS is the GOP that wins elections not the "compassionate conservative" garbage that Kristol, W, and the rest of the neocons have shoved down our throats for the past 8 years. Now if the Republicans could start abolishing departments at the federal level, I might come back to the fold.

Vegas Baby! Vegas!

2008-05-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

The RogueNation has moved it's HQ from San Diego to temporary diggs in Las Vegas after 18 years. My only vices are all-you-can eat buffets, gambling, and strippers, does anyone know how this story ends? lol

More to come on my new hometown very soon. In the meantime, the talk radio out here plays commercials for these guys all the time:

http://www.24-7privatevaults.com/index.htm

I know where I'm putting my collection of unopened SPAWN action figures!

Lew Rockwell Linkorama

2008-05-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

Lew Rockwell has a few posts that I'm linking below. He's an old school conservative (like Taki or Ron Paul) and since one of my favorite things to read about that I never get from the Pajamas Media Right is stuff about the evil of big government. LR's site has been one of my everyday stops on my web travels.

Trevor Bothwell has a piece over there entitled "The Sordid, Wretched, Self-Serving State"

Also, is there such a thing as a "prison industrial complex"? Don Bacon makes the argument that there is one in California:

The California Prison system is the third largest penal system in the country, costing $5.7 billion dollars a year and housing over 170,000 inmates. Since 1980 the number of California prisons has tripled and the number of inmates has jumped significantly. In the past few years controversies involving prison expansion, sky-rocketing costs, and claims of mismanagement and inmate abuse have put the California prison system under heightened public scrutiny.

What caused prisons to be a growth industry in California? Did Californians suddenly become lawless? We need look no further than the CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. "The Power this prison guards’ union wields inside our prisons, legislative chambers and governor's office disturbs me. It should disturb every citizen." ~ Judith Tannenbaum, formerly an English teacher at San Quentin State Prison

Read the whole thing here

Lastly, the thing about Cali is that trends that first appear there have a habit of spreading across the country here's one I'm sure everyone will be happy about. There is a special license plate issued by the state that basically gives immunity from all traffic laws to anyone privileged to work for the government. Since there are nearly a million of those plates out there, the math works out to about 1 out of every 9 cars in California having these plates.

Read about the rest of this outrage here.

Earmarks, Robert Byrd, and Taxes

2008-04-30T05:46:00.000-07:00

I've never read a Dave Barry column before, but people say he's really famous and funny. Well, he is funny, here he is talking about earmarks and Robert Byrd from a column that came out around tax time:

The entire state of West Virginia is covered with a dense layer of federally funded buildings named after Sen. Robert Byrd, who will still be in office centuries after his death, which for all we know has already occurred. There is no end to the list of projects that congresspersons would like you to finance so that they can take the credit.

Further down, he talks about taxes and makes a very salient point:

My point is that, as you do your taxes, you should remember where your tax dollars are going, and recognize that you, as a citizen, have a moral obligation to prepare your tax return with the same degree of conscientiousness that Congress exhibits in spending your money.

Read the whole thing here.

Judge Napolitano should be nominated to the Supreme Court

2008-04-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

He was on Bloomberg a month ago and did a great interview:

Here's part 1

Part 2 and Part 3

Most Over and Under-rated Presidents in History

2008-04-30T01:09:00.000-07:00

David Wiegel over at Reason piles on with the Lincoln bashing (can't say I disagree with him either)

1. Abraham Lincoln. I'm sorry. By any definition of "over-rating," you have to go there. He has become our secular saint, with a multi-million dollar industry built around his veneration. That just makes it all the easier when some John Yoo or another seizes on Lincoln's abuses of power—suspending habeas corpus, directing funds without the approval of a rump Congress, the "rich man's" draft—to argue that the president has the right to split babies and shoot laser beams from his eyes.

See the rest here.

The Great Emancipator?

2008-04-29T04:03:00.001-07:00

Economics Professor Thomas DiLorenzo on the Lincoln cult:

Lincoln was a masterful politician who could use tongue-twisting rhetoric to deceive the public better than any American politician in history. In this regard he was Bill Clinton times ten thousand. For example, referring to the part of Declaration of Independence that mentions equality (while ignoring the fact that the entire document was a declaration of the right of secession), he said: "The African upon his own soil has all the natural rights that instrument vouchsafes to all mankind" (emphasis added). The italicized words are the key to understanding Lincoln on this point. He considered black people to be some kind of alien beings, which is why he called them "the Africans." More importantly, he believed that they could never be equal here in America, but only "upon their own soil" or "in their native clime," i.e., Africa, Haiti, Central America, etc., as he often stated. Moreover, he also clearly believed that it was undesirable to attempt to enforce racial equality in the U.S., as he stated in the above quotation from the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Harry Jaffa has spent his entire career spreading the Big Lie of Lincoln as a champion of "equality" in order to justify the Republican Party’s foreign policy agenda of military aggression and imperialism in the name of spreading equality around the globe. (Spreading "equality" around the globe at gunpoint sounds a lot like the professed goals of 20^th-century communism, doesn’t it?).

Read the whole thing over at Lew Rockwell

Until maybe the last 4-5 years, I never really understood the fascination that people had with the Civil War. Of course, my public school education limited the reasons that we had a civil war to only one, to free the slaves. The idea of secession was never mentioned, or states rights, or the economic reasons behind the war.

But I still don't get the whole idea of recreating famous Civil War battles, someone needs to explain that to me, because that just seems stupid.

At What Price?

2008-04-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan writes about the classic deal we have made with the devil (our government):

The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril.

Read the rest here.

Justice Scalia on 60 Minutes

2008-04-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

While not my favorite Supreme Court Justice (that would be Justice Clarence Thomas) I thought Justice Scalia's interview on 60 minutes was very enlightening:

See the rest here

The Revolution Lives

2008-04-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

In Nevada:

Pilfered from Laura over at Red State Eclectic

TechnoViking

2008-04-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

This video has 2+ million views on youtube and I saw it for the first time today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nzEFMjkI4

Of course, there HAD to be a remix (which I like a little better) with Michael Jackson:

"The Revolution: A Manifesto"

2008-04-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Welcome Mises.org readers!

It's Friday night and I just finished Ron Paul's book "The Revolution: A Manifesto". It's so brilliant that I wept upon turning the last page, like seeing your first born for the very first time...

No, not really, but Dr. Paul's short (less than 200 pages) prescription for returning these United States to her rightful place in the world as the beacon of hope, peace, freedom, and prosperity comes at the proper moment in time. This country is at a crossroads economically and politically. We have a dollar that is in collapse (it has lost 35% of its purchasing power since 2001), and entitlement spending that is ballooning in the near future that requires at least double digit economic growth to barely keep up (hint, we don't have double digit growth and haven't for decades). Our civil liberties are being rapidly eroded (of course, dipping crucifixes in urine and calling it art is still OK) with our government conveniently ignoring or evading nine of the first ten amendments consistently. Don't worry, the 2nd Amendment could be on its last legs as well depending on how and what the Supreme Court decides on the Heller case.

What Dr. Paul has done is put out into the arena ideas that we used to talk about, that this country was built upon. He asks questions that you won't find in the MSM, National Review, or the Pajamas Media Right. It is those questions that have made him a pariah in his own party and exposes what constitutes "mainstream conservatism" as the morally and intellectually bankrupt school of big government statism that we used to easily label as "progressive" or "liberal".

One example is in foreign policy. The conservatism of Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, David Frum, or yes, George W Bush has given us nothing but a foreign policy that is incomprehensible to anyone unless you grew up watching "Cruel Intentions", "Wild Things" or are a fan of Woodrow Wilson. Like the prom queen that maybe was a little too privileged, and a little too good looking during high school that got what she wanted whenever she wanted yet never learned that the real world doesn't work the way it did in high school (especially if it's twenty years later and you are divorced with kids, put on 50 pounds and are still a bitch). Our country doesn't have to play games and meddle, back stab, or undermine other countries in order to have peaceful relationships with them.

Dr. Paul distills what our trillion dollar foreign policy currently amounts to. We treat countries either one of two ways: we either give our money and arms to them (see Saddam Hussein) or we go to war with them (see Saddam Hussein) all in the name of some Wilsonian vision that we can impose our will with our money or at the point of a gun (but don't try and guess which side you are on). Never does anyone, aside from Ron Paul, suggest that we take our founding fathers advice and do neither.

I could go on, because "The Revolution" addresses economics, civil liberties, and states rights. But the bottom line is that what Dr. Paul has written is a call to return to the foundations of our country. To understand and take seriously the words of our Founding Fathers and not doze through them like it's a Sunday morning sermon on the one day of the year that we bother to show up at church and only because we are there with our parents.

Anyway, buy it, read it, let me know your thoughts on it.

Why Socialism Will Fail

2008-04-20T08:08:00.000-07:00

I'm in Las Vegas for the next few days so posting will be about what it has been this past week. After all, there is gambling to be done and the fortune I've made from the blog ads here isn't going to spend itself.

In the meantime:

Of all places, you will find an important point in economics at the Huffington Post (it shows you how far the right has fallen when you won't find any mention of this at the Pajamas Media Right):

The Federal Reserve insists that "inter-connections" require rescuing large institutions that might knock down other entangled financial dominoes. However, these would not have been so cocky or so inter-connected in their web-spinning if the Fed had not allowed so much greed and gamesmanship for so long. Ex-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is often singled out as a culprit, but most of what he did was what most of the financial sector wanted. They, too, loved making 4th of July speeches about the glories of free enterprise and free -- market profits while counting on the government to collectivize the perils of risk. Big, fat and dumb financial institutions could count on being big, fat and bailed-out.
There was a time in the annals of American finance when this kind of practice would have been unacceptable -- indeed, serious economists like Joseph Schumpeter recognized that "creative destruction" was part of a vital capitalism. Painful as the depression of the early 1930s was, its creative destruction so revitalized U.S. finance and enterprise that by 1950, the U.S. economy was the kingpin of the post-World War Two world, vital and vibrant.

Wow, how come you never see any of this talk on on the economy on the Pajamas Media Right?

Because, as Justin Raimondo points out, the big government socialists ARE the Pajamas Media Right.

Pilfered from Lew Rockwell

Eclectic Linkorama

2008-04-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy this past week that I've neglected to link posts that have caught my eye. So here are a bunch of them:

You know those dumbed down history text books that are politically correct and pretty worthless that they use in public school? I don't think this guy read any of them. From Reason

William Grigg has a couple of posts up about the what the raid on the FLDS Church by the Texas Rangers really means. This one makes a comparison between the Church and State as far as which is more evil and the resulting analysis may surprise you. This post shows that the pretext under which the raid was made may have been false. Could 400 children being taken away from their mothers be based on a lie?

Dr. Ron Paul's speech about capitalism is a must read. Read or listen to "Has Capitalism Failed?" here

"Necessity is the mother of invention" as the saying goes and Conservative Belle has a post up about illegals circumventing the border fencing that we have up.

Here's Ron Paul interviewed by Cavuto on Fox on Tax Day. Brilliant as always:

Finally, here's Vin Suprinowcz on the REAL reason for the 2nd Amendment. As a side note, I had commented over at Ron Simpson's blog that politicians (particularly Democrats) look really retarded when they talk about "guns for hunting" nowadays. Especially since it seems like 2-3 times a year there's a story of someone shooting up a mall, or campus, or other "gun free" zone.

The Federal Reserve

2008-04-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

Why do you need to go all the way to the financial press in Sri Lanka to find stories by the one politician that question the very foundations of our money system?:

"Few Americans give much thought to the Federal Reserve System or monetary policy in general," Ron Paul wrote in his column this week.
"But even as they strive to earn a living, and hopefully save or invest for the future, Congress and the Federal Reserve Bank are working insidiously against them. Day by day, every dollar you have is being devalued.
"The greatest threat facing America today is not terrorism, or foreign economic competition, or illegal immigration.
"The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation."

Read the rest here.

Pilfered from Lew Rockwell

First Among Equals: Thomas Jefferson

2008-04-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Thomas Jefferson's Birthday. Read this:

He penned numerous documents extolling the revolutionary ideas of his time, including the stirring words on the parchment that is the soul of America, "The Declaration of Independence." Yet how many of our current citizens – and elected officials – truly understand its meaning?

The Declaration launched the first country in history based on the principle that every individual possesses certain "unalienable" rights. According to Jefferson's writings, "free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate." No tyrant can violate the rights of man, nor can any majority vote in Congress. "[T]he majority, oppressing an individual," says Jefferson, "is guilty of a crime ... and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Our rights belong to us as individuals, with each of us possessing the same rights. There are no "rights" of groups to any special favors or privileges. It is inappropriate, for example, for pizza eaters to lobby Congress for a "right" to a free pizza every Thursday. If Congress grants their wish, out of concern for their nourishment or their votes, it acts outside of its proper function. According to Jefferson, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated [in the Constitution]."

Our rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are rights to take action; they are not entitlements to the goods and services of others. Jefferson defined liberty as "unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." This means we may act in our own behalf, for example, to earn money and buy a house, but we may not expect the government to tax others to provide us with a house for free.

Read the rest here.

Flags for the Nanny State

2008-04-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Over at Fark.com you can see what other people have put up. I like the idea but I can't say that any of the entries over there really jump out at me. I sorta like this one:

You think he'll call her?

2008-04-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

A hot blonde gets rid of a one night stand:

http://view.break.com/484483 - Watch more free videos

Pilfered from Gorillamask.net

The Federal Reserve

2008-04-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

Eric Parks over at Red State Eclectic writes about the Federal Reserve:

In the fifth plank of the communist Manifesto, Karl“I-can’t-prove-my-own-labor-theory-of-value” Marx calls for the monetary means of causing the ruination of a capitalist society in order to bring about a Communist utopia. The Manifesto calls for “Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Other planks call for institutions that, on the face, seem normal to us today: Graduated income tax, inheritance tax, government schools, etc. They are all communist in origin.

Read the rest here

Best. Column. on. Illegal. Immigration. Evah.

2008-04-08T22:40:00.000-07:00

According to Fred Reed, our immigration policy can be described thusly:

To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers.

Further down:

We have immigration because we want immigration. Liberals favor immigration because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and international and all, and from a genuine streak of decency. Conservative Republican businessman favor immigration, frequently sotto voce, because they want cheap labor that actually shows up and works.

Read it here

The Tyranny of the State

2008-04-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

William Anderson writes about Judge Andrew Napolitano and his book "A Nation of Sheep":

After his introduction, in which Napolitano clearly lays out his thesis, he then explains the natural rights origin of freedom, and how many of the founders of the United States held to a natural rights position. Law, in their view, existed to protect individual liberties from those who would deny them. Today, the deniers of liberty are those legally entrusted to protect it.

Napolitano quotes Benjamin Franklin, who certainly knew something about a natural rights origin of law: "Those who give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." The judge explains that people who are willing to give up liberty are giving power to a government that will take away the rest of their liberties, and make the people even more unsafe, as a predatory government never brings safety.

In his first chapter, Napolitano takes issue with legal positivists, who seem to dot the political landscape these days. I remember speaking to a True Believing socialist who held a high place in President Jimmy Carter’s government, as he told me, "The Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is."

Certainly, it seems that legal positivism holds sway. From the writings of Judge Richard Posner to the Federalist Society to the New York Times to the leaders of both major political parties (or the "Republicrats or Democans"), the idea of natural rights and natural liberty seem not only passé, but also downright subversive to Good Government. Even though politicians will make passing remarks about individual rights and Constitutional government, nonetheless they govern as legal positivists who do what they want whenever they have enough weapons to back up their positions.

Read the rest of it here.

I like being Captain Obvious

2008-04-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

Allahpundit dismisses the story that ABC News is running about the troops voting Democrat in November:

Doubtless there’s been some erosion of Republican support as the war’s dragged on, even within a profession that’s always skewed a bit right, but to the extent suggested here? With Republicans generally overwhelmingly predisposed to staying in Iraq? Even the left acknowledges that most troops are gung ho to win the war, and that was before 10 months of security gains. Maverick’s surely doing better than this.

Here's a thought, maybe the troops are "gung-ho" to win the war because that's the only way that they can come back home you ignorant fuck.

Why is being a JBS'er a perjorative?

2008-04-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

Justin Raimondo writes about the John Birch Society:

...the Birch Society has been the unfair target of a smear campaign for many years—and yet, without it, arguably, Barry Goldwater would not have secured the Republican nomination in 1964, and the Reagan Revolution would never have happened.

Read the rest here.

Here's your ransom

2008-04-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

I can't believe this movie came out 12 years ago. I still throw out the "Give me back my son!" line every once in awhile. Like this morning when I was standing in the checkout line buying the newspaper, I said it to the checkout girl...well, I never said I knew when it was appropriate to throw that line out there. Anyway, here's one of my favorite movie scenes:

Reigning in the Executive Branch

2008-04-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

Slate comes up with a few things that the next President can do to negate the damage that W has done to the office. This is something you'll only hear on the far-right:

Withdraw all U.S. troops from foreign countries. The Declaration of Independence explains that the purpose of government is to secure unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States was not created to build an empire, to aggrandize government, or to purge the planet of nondemocratic regimes. Accordingly, the next president should announce that we are withdrawing all U.S. troops from foreign countries and that, hereinafter, all the nation's military resources will be devoted to building missile, electronic, and other defenses against potential foreign attacks. The United States lacks the wisdom necessary to spin modern democratic gold from centuries of despotic flax by military force or otherwise. Iraq and Afghanistan are clear proof. Further, the United States has no moral responsibility for the destiny of persons outside its jurisdiction who pay no taxes to support the government and pledge no allegiance to the republic.

Read the rest here.

Pilfered from LewRockwell.com

Lessons in Free Market Economics

2008-04-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

Professor Sowell gets back to writing about the economy:

There was a real irony in the recent intervention by the Federal Reserve System to provide the money that enabled the firm of JPMorgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns before it went bankrupt. The point was to try to prevent a domino effect of panic in the financial markets that could lead to a downturn in the economy.

The irony is that it was almost exactly a hundred years ago -- 1907, to be exact -- that the original J.P. Morgan arranged a bailout of a troubled financial institution for the same purpose of preventing a panic that could end up with the whole economy declining.

Read the whole thing here.

The column is interesting because he ends his column with these words:

There is no question that the people who run the Federal Reserve System today are a lot more knowledgeable about economics than those who ran it back in the days of the Great Depression. Indeed, the average student who has passed Economics 1 today is probably more knowledgeable than those who ran the Federal Reserve System back during the Great Depression.

Being a disinterested government official does not mean that you know what you are doing. That fact gets left out of the equation in a lot of proposals for new government programs.

What Professor Sowell doesn't say is that even if we know more now than we did during the Great Depression, that still isn't enough knowledge for one person, the Fed Chairman, to make decisions that he is expected to make.

Speaking of free market economists, Vox Day has an interview up with Dr. Frank Shostak. Have you ever wondered what the difference is between Friedman's Chicago School and Mises' Austrian School of economic thought? What is the Austrian theory of the business cycle? Why is having a central bank a waste of time? Listen to the podcast here and find out.

Ron Paul Abuses Ben Bernanke, Again Part 3

2008-04-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

Pilfered from Liberty Maven:

In case you are wondering what that school of political thought is that Dr. Paul is referencing, i'll give you a hint: the first letter is "f" and it rhymes with mascism

The path our country is moving down is more along the lines of the Jonah Goldberg historical definition of fascism than the pejorative that the left usually hurls at people who they disagree with.

Glenn Beck and Ron Paul

2008-04-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey at Hotair plays cheerleader for the economy because today the stock market ended up 400 points. What he neglects to mention is that it is the *volatility* of the market that is indicative of the mess we are in. A movement in the stock market of 1 percent used to be considered normal, but these swings of 3-4 percent are symptoms of deeper problems. So don't be surprised to see more massive swings, both up and down in the coming days, weeks and months.

The other thing that Ed fails to mention is the inflation or loss of purchasing power of the dollar that Greenspan, Bernanke and our government has engineered. Sure, inflation is only 3 percent if you take the "core" inflation number that the government is running up the flagpole. So if you don't drive your car, don't use electricity and don't eat food, then yes, prices will go up more slowly for you. However, if you use gasoline, lights, or have meals, then you are looking at inflation as high as 13-14 percent.

Ron Paul was on Glenn Beck tonight talking about the Federal Reserve and in light of the proposals to increase the power of the Central Bank it's good to see that at least some media outlets are questioning the wisdom of that idea. Lord knows you won't see this from the Pajamas Media Right.

Click here to see the whole thing and below starts where Beck talks about the Federal Reserve:

Pilfered, as pretty much most of my Ron Paul interviews are pilfered from, the Liberty Maven

The Kids are Alright

2008-04-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

From Reason:

Dustin Zebro insists he didn't throw a root beer keg party to embarrass the police. His school, yes, but not the police.
It struck him as unfair that D.C. Everest Senior High suspended students from a dance team awhile back because they were pictured on Facebook drinking out of red plastic cups that tend to signal a beer bash.

So Zebro, an 18-year-old senior, devised a plan to show that things are not always as they appear. He bought a quarter-barrel - of root beer - and a tall stack of red cups, and he spread the word that the party was at his house in Kronenwetter, a village just outside Wausau, on a Saturday night this month.

"There were keg stands and root beer pong and all that, so it looked like a real party," he said. The idea was to post photos on the Internet and fool the school, he said.

Police showed up because of a complaint about cars blocking the road, and an officer administered breath tests to 89 teens.
Every kid blew 0.0.

Read the rest here

Here's the video

Montana Wyoming is awesome

2008-04-01T16:11:00.000-07:00

Montana is still awesome for their stand on Real ID and their threat to secede because of the Heller case, but since I'm on a states rights posting binge this is what you get:

Sheriff Mattis said, "I am reacting in response to the actions of federal employees who have attempted to deprive citizens of my county of their privacy, their liberty, and their property without regard to constitutional safeguards. I hope that more sheriffs all across America will join us in protecting their citizens from the illegal activities of the IRS, EPA, BATF, FBI, or any other federal agency that is operating outside the confines of constitutional law. Employees of the IRS and the EPA are no longer welcome in Bighorn County unless they intend to operate in conformance to constitutional law."

How can the Sheriff say that the alphabet soup agencies of the federal government are persona non grata in his county? Well it's not the Sheriff that says that, but the US District Court:

Bighorn County Sheriff Dave Mattis spoke at a press conference following a recent U.S. District Court decision (Case No. 2:96-cv-099-J (2006)) and announced that all federal officials are forbidden to enter his county without his prior approval ......

"If a sheriff doesn’t want the Feds in his county he has the constitutional right and power to keep them out, or ask them to leave, or retain them in custody."

The court decision was the result of a suit against both the BATF and the IRS by Mattis and other members of the Wyoming Sheriff’s Association. The suit in the Wyoming federal court district sought restoration of the protections enshrined in the United States Constitution and the Wyoming Constitution.

Guess what? The District Court ruled in favor of the sheriffs. In fact, they stated, Wyoming is a sovereign state and the duly elected sheriff of a county is the highest law enforcement official within a county and has law enforcement powers exceeding that of any other state or federal official."

The 10th Amendment and states rights lives!

Pilfered from Eric over at Red State Eclectic

First Among Equals

2008-04-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

In my worldview, there is no such thing as democrat or republican, liberal or conservative, there are only douchebags who inhabit Washington DC and they are all equally worthless. The only difference between any of them really comes down to what special interest gets rewarded and whose ox gets gored.

Here is head douchebag Senator Harry Reid in an interview being asked about taxes. Pilfered from the Free Liberal Blog, click on the pic to watch:

How is his answer to the question even considered coherent? Oh that's right, it's not.

We really should have more contempt, skepticism and yes, outrage with our government. We pay, depending on who you ask, between 40 and 50 percent of our earnings to the government in the form of taxes. Slaves in this country before the Civil War at most, would pay 10 percent of their earnings towards their slave masters. But slaves could actually save their money and buy their freedom. Oh yeah, and the purchasing power of those dollars wasn't being devalued at the rate of 10% per year by inflation either.

I pilfered this link from Hotair.com

Dane Cook and Atheists

2008-03-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

Vox Day asks atheists a question:

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you, the atheist, are completely correct and there is no God. Let us postulate that religion is merely an evolutionary spandrel and religious faith is merely a crutch for the intellectually weak, crippled, and cowardly.

Now, what is the normal human being's opinion of the sort of individual who would purposefully kick out the crutch from a cripple who is leaning upon it? Indeed, what is your opinion of such an individual?

Here's Dane Cook (I know, but I actually chuckled) talking about his encounter with an atheist. Also pilfered from Vox Day:

Taki's Top Drawer

2008-03-31T00:59:00.000-07:00

Taki Theodoracopolus has revamped his website Taki's Top Drawer check it out and you will find some of the best conservative writing around. Never heard of Taki Theodoracopolus before?:

Taki writes a column, the “High Life,” which has appeared in London’s The Spectator for the past twenty-five years. He writes also for National Review, the Sunday Times (London), Esquire, Vanity Fair, and Quest, among others. In 2002, Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell.

Here is a piece about McCain, the GOP, and Abortion from Dan McCartney:

The GOP has had opportunities to overturn Roe before—at any point when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and White House, Congress could have restricted the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over abortion using the powers invested in the legislative branch by Article III of the Constitution, overturning Roe at a stroke. Perhaps they were right not to do so: the powers of Article III, Section 2 have rarely been used in such a manner, and the precedent could easily have boomeranged against conservatives once the Democrats took Congress. Nevertheless, if the GOP were as adamantly pro-life as pro-lifers are encouraged to believe it is, the Republican Congress could have voided Roe any time between 2003 and 2007.

Read the rest here and browse around, you will see a conservatism that is almost unrecognizable for what passes for "mainstream" these days.

The Bills Keep Piling Up

2008-03-30T15:12:00.000-07:00

Unnoticed in the media last week among the all important stories like what Barack Obama's preacher said on the pulpit (why are people still talking about that?), John McCain's teeth, and nipple rings, the Social Security Board of Trustees released its 2008 annual report on the finances of the Social Security Trust Fund.

It's not pretty and hasn't been for years:

The Report released Tuesday pointed out that when benefits payouts exceed revenue, Social Security will have to dig into its assets the fund has accumulated over the years to fund the over-extended benefits. The Report also noted that once Social Security goes upside down, it can only continue to fund the benefits until 2041. ... if the Government does not somehow begin to pay back the money it owes to the Social Security Funds, then current benefits will HAVE to be reduced by 2017 because there will be no assets for them to fall back on. With nearly 80 million baby boomers planning to begin drawing benefits in the coming years, there is no way possible to reduce benefit spending.

All candidates agree that a massive Social Security Reform is inevitable. The major difference is, the Democrats think the Government can fix it, while the Republicans feel it is better off partly privatized and less reliant on the Government. Where all the front-running candidates falter is the fact that they have all been in Senate for at least the last 2 years, with McCain and Hillary being in the Senate for a minimum of 6 years, and neither of them have yet to do anything about the Social Security problem.

Read the rest at Political Lore

Crossing the Rubicon

2008-03-29T15:10:00.000-07:00

I'm truly speechless:

In the past two weeks, the Federal Reserve, long the guardian of the nation's banks, has redefined its role to also become protector and overseer of Wall Street.
With its March 14 decision to make a special loan to Bear Stearns and a decision two days later to become an emergency lender to all of the major investment firms, the central bank abandoned 75 years of precedent under which it offered direct backing only to traditional banks.
Inside the Fed and out, there is a realization that those moves amounted to crossing the Rubicon, setting the stage for deeper involvement in the little-regulated markets for capital that have come to dominate the financial world.
Leaders of the central bank had no master plan when they took those actions, no long-term strategy for taking on a more assertive role regulating Wall Street. They were focused on the immediate crisis in world financial markets. But they now recognize that a broader role may be the result of the unprecedented intervention and are being forced to consider whether it makes sense to expand the scope of their formal powers over the investment industry.
"This will redefine the Fed's role," said Charles Geisst, a Manhattan College finance professor who wrote a history of Wall Street. "We have to realize that central banking now takes into its orbit everything in the financial system in one way or another. Whether we like it or not, they've recreated the financial universe."
The Fed has made a special lending facility -- essentially a bottomless pit of cash -- available to large investment banks for at least the next six months. Even if that program is allowed to expire this fall, the Fed's actions will have lasting impact, economists and Wall Street veterans said.

The story is more floating of an idea than anything else. But the mere fact that our leaders are considering expanding the role of the Fed should raise alarms and red flags to everyone. The response from everyone to this idea SHOULD be a resounding Ari Gold "Fuck You!" along with calls for Bernanke resign and the Fed to be abolished. That is, unless everyone likes inflation at 20 percent, and government intruding into every aspect of your life, and us living in a banana republic like Zimbabwe.

Looking at the situation, I'm reminded of this quote by one of our founding fathers:

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

Thomas Jefferson

Anyone wonder where we are at?

The Dead Letter Office

2008-03-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

There is actually an internet version:

When businesses want to communicate with their customers via e-mail, many send messages with a bogus return address, e.g. "somethinghere@donotreply.com." The practice is meant to communicate to recipients that any replies will go unread.
But when those messages are sent to an inactive e-mail address or the recipient ignores the instruction and replies anyway, the missives don't just disappear into the digital ether.

Instead, they land in Chet Faliszek's e-mail box.

As owner of www.donotreply.com, the Seattle-based programmer receives millions of wayward e-mails each week, including a great many missives destined for executives at Fortune 500 companies or bank customers, even sensitive messages sent by government personnel and contractors.

Read the rest here.

Pilfered from Consumerist

Come on

2008-03-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

The Swindle has the story of the Patriot Act being used in a drug case:

The lawyer for a man accused of being a major cocaine supplier for the Wichita Crips gang contends that a secret search of the man's house under the Patriot Act was illegal.

In a recent motion to suppress any evidence from the search, defense lawyer Charles O'Hara argued that the Patriot Act was meant for "serious matters involving national security," not drug cases like the one involving his client, Tyrone Andrews.

"I thought that this Patriot Act was something passed to protect us all from these terrorist acts, and it would be used very judiciously," O'Hara said Monday. "This doesn't seem to be one where these secret searches would be used."

Should we really be surprised by this? I'm mean it's not like the pros and cons of the Patriot Act weren't debated thoroughly and every aspect of it was vetted for its constitutionality in the 30 minutes that Congress had to read its 300 plus pages before having to vote on it. I think I spent more time deciding which pair of flip flops I was going to put on this morning than Congress spent scrutinizing the Patriot Act (I went with the brown ones). But, once again, we shouldn't be surprised by the overreach of law enforcement. They are using the tools given to them.

I'm at the point where I think that the only legislation we should be seeing from Congress should just be acts that start repealing everything that the feds have done for the past 100 years. They can start with abolishing the Federal Reserve, eliminating the income tax, stopping the drug war, pulling the troops from Europe, Japan, Korea, and yes Iraq, repealing the Patriot Act and a bunch of other stuff. I have pretty much nothing but contempt for the parade of government bailouts, government entitlements, and undermining of the Constitution. It's a horrible feeling knowing that the GOP has presided over 8 years of it and the party that once preached civil liberties, fiscal restraint and limited government now must be put down like Old Yeller. (metaphorically of course! Sorry DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA, TSA, DEA, BATF, IRS, OSHA, FEMA)

The Spitzer Scandal by a 3 year old

2008-03-27T22:52:00.001-07:00

Pilfered from Gorillamask

The Revolution Lives! Part 2

2008-03-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Liberty Maven gives the rundown on the 40+ candidates who are running for Federal office on the Ron Paul platform.

One guy who I'm endorsing is Murray Sabrin, he's a professor at Ramapo College and is running for the Senate seat in New Jersey. Click here for his site.

Here is Dr. Sabrin getting the Ron Paul endorsement:

Katrina Revisited: Walmart Wins! Part 2

2008-03-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

Lew Rockwell and Walter Block on Hurricane Katrina, it's aftermath, and getting people to realize that central planning (whether it's for the economy or for disaster relief) sucks balls:

Watching the Capitol Hill hearings on what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina provided a glimpse of what it must have been like in the Politburo in the 1950s. The Soviet bureaucrats would gather with the party officials and factory and farm managers to figure out why grain production was down or why shop shelves were empty or why the bread lines were ever longer and the quality ever worse.

They gathered under the conviction that they had a workable system that was being rendered unworkable because of the incompetence, shirking, or wrecking of certain key players in the chain of command. No one was permitted to say that the command system itself was the problem. Instead, they had to place blame on someone, as if all problems could be reduced to issues of obedience. It was always a scramble. Whoever was finally said to be at fault faced certain ruin.

Let's be clear, we are much closer to a socialist society than we are to a free state. Every aspect of our lives can be monitored, scrutinized, criminalized, or taxed by our government. But when the opportunity came for our government to make good on the marshmellowy promise of safety and protection during the hurricane, let's face it, the government swung and missed.

I don't fault Bush for the governments weak, inefficient, and incompetent response because Katrina could have happened on Clinton's watch and I'm pretty confident we would have gotten the same bureaucratic abortion that W presided over.

What we should be questioning is the fundamental assumption that our strong central government should be handling disaster relief (among many other things) at all. That's one question that no one in the MSM is asking.

I like the way Rockwell and Block end their paper:

It took decades for the rot to give way underneath the Soviet apparatus of central planning. But eventually the implausibility of the entire project was no longer possible to deny. It gave way under an intellectual reaction against the whole of socialism. We are seeing something like that take place today, as government fails in Iraq and New Orleans, and in every place around the country and the world where it causes problems and creates no solutions. The age of confident central planning is behind us. Right now, the state is just trying to keep its head above water. If freedom is to have a future, the time will come when it will sink to an ignoble end, and we will wonder how we ever believed in this myth called government crisis management.

Read the whole position paper here.

Too little too late

2008-03-26T16:46:00.001-07:00

A surprisingly positive article on Ron Paul from Fox News:

Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.

The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.

The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.

Read the rest here.

I think I'm in love

2008-03-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

The only type of car I've ever owned has been 2 door coupes. From the Chevy I had in high school, to the bulletproof Toyota I kept for 10 years, to the Volvo coupe I have now, I've never had anything with more than 2 doors.

Now, the Aston Martin DBS is way out of my price range, and will be for all time (unless I win the lottery) but the new Audi A5 is not. It's brand new, and is more Grand Tourer than race car but I look at pics of it and can't wait to see what one looks like in real life:

DC vs Heller Pundit Roundup

2008-03-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Update:

I dare you to watch this video of this woman testifying before Congress and not get a lump in your throat, she speaks the truth. Thanks to Eric at Red State Eclectic:

I meant to put this up last week:

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard a case dealing with the 2nd Amendment. It could prove to be a landmark decision that SCOTUS hands down and may finally put to rest whether owning a firearm is an "individual" or "collective" right. As such, there are plenty of opinions going around before the ACTUAL opinion from the Supreme Court gets handed down. Here's a smattering of them:

Reason Mag- Jonathan Raech - Gun rights protect civil rights even if you are gay.

ABC News - Jan Greenberg - Justice Kennedy may be the "swing" vote in this case, and based on his questioning, it sounds like he's in the "individual" rights camp.

But Dakota Ranger brings up a good point in his post about the Heller case:

We don't licence our other rights, nor do we do background checks for the privilege of driving. When there are politicians that want to give drivers licences to illegal aliens it is disgusting to us law abiding gun owners that we have to go through a background check at every purchase.

The whole idea of having the 2nd Amendment was so that the people would be able to protect themselves from criminals and others who wish to do them harm. But what if the trespasser is the government itself? What if government was so tyrannical, so oppressive that IT was what people were protecting themselves from?

My point is that the idea of having a license program for guns seems antithetical to what the 2nd Amendment is about. Because if the government was the enemy of the people, then a firearm registration program is nothing more than a roadmap to tell the government exactly where the guns are.

Katrina Revisited: Walmart wins!

2008-03-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

As if we don't already know that private enterprise almost always does things better than the government, it turns out that even in disaster FEMA (whose sole reason for existence is handling disasters) sucks balls and should be eliminated. From Federal Times:

Private organizations such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other so-called “big box” stores provided more supplies and relief than the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina, George Mason University’s Mercatus Center said in a report released March 20. Local store managers took advantage of their autonomy and moved quickly to reopen after the storm and distribute supplies — sometimes for free, and often without the permission of superiors. One Wal-Mart employee in Kenner, La., broke through a warehouse door with a forklift to get water for a nearby retirement home, the report said.

But at the bureaucratically stymied FEMA, supply purchases and shipments were tied up in red tape, and offers of help from other parties were turned down for fear of liability issues.

The main difference, said report author Steven Horwitz, is that private companies have to make sure there are still people in the community to shop at their stores after a disaster and who think well enough of stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to give them their business. That prompts companies to act quickly and keeps them from gouging prices, which, they believe, hurt them in the long run.

Wow, look people are able to make decisions for themselves without taking orders from central planning! Who woulda thunk it?

Hmmm, Intriguing.

2008-03-24T21:53:00.000-07:00

There's talk that former Congressman Bob Barr could run for President as the Libertarian Party nominee. From the Washington Times:

"There is great deal [of] dissatisfaction with the candidates for the two major parties, particularly among conservatives, but also a great deal of Internet and other support for a candidate like Ron Paul who advocates libertarian and true conservative principles," said Mr. Barr, who is now a Libertarian.

If he were to get the nomination, his presence could really hurt John McCain. McCain already has enough problems with the hard core base as it is. The presence of Bob Barr (whose conservative cred is well documented) would only highlight McCain's weakness with that base. I think I'd vote for him instead of McCain.

Deja vu, All Over Again

2008-03-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

William Anderson gives an overview of what we can expect over the next decade in our economy by comparing it to what happened in the 70's. Read the whole thing here.

Nice Job! Part 2

2008-03-23T13:14:00.000-07:00

Big government incompetence fever!:

"During his nearly four years as a translator for U.S. forces in Iraq, Saman Kareem Ahmad was known for his bravery and hard work. "Sam put his life on the line with, and for, Coalition Forces on a daily basis," wrote Marine Capt. Trent A. Gibson.
Gibson's letter was part of a thick file of support -- including commendations from the secretary of the Navy and from then-Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus -- that helped Ahmad migrate to the United States in 2006, among an initial group of 50 Iraqi and Afghan translators admitted under a special visa program.

Last month, however, the U.S. government turned down Ahmad's application for permanent residence, known as a green card. His offense: Ahmad had once been part of the Kurdish Democratic Party, which U.S. immigration officials deemed an "undesignated terrorist organization" for having sought to overthrow former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Ahmad, a Kurd, once served in the KDP's military force, which is part of the new Iraqi army. A U.S. ally, the KDP is now part of the elected government of the Kurdish region and holds seats in the Iraqi parliament. After consulting public Web sites, however, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services determined that KDP forces "conducted full-scale armed attacks and helped incite rebellions against Hussein's regime, most notably during the Iran-Iraq war, Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Ahmad's association with a group that had attempted to overthrow a government -- even as an ally in U.S.-led wars against Hussein -- rendered him "inadmissible," the agency concluded in a three-page letter dated Feb. 26."

With friends like that...

Pilfered from Obsidian Wings

Nice Job!

2008-03-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

Conservative Belle has news about progress being made on the border fence. In fact, the Army Corp of Engineers have been dispatched to the border to facilitate the building. Unfortunately, the engineers and the $23 million that goes with them is being sent to the border in Egypt.

Click here to see the details.

Big government incompetence fever, catch it!

Chertoff on Real ID: We're not Kidding

2008-03-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Of course DHS isn't kidding about the Real ID. Because you can't kid when the jokes on you.

Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff has come out today saying that all states must comply with the mandate from the Feds, otherwise travelers won't be able to board planes at airports. Reaction from states like South Carolina, Maine, and Montana? I would describe it as making a loose fist, putting it in the general vicinity of ones nether regions, and shaking vigorously. Oh, and don't forget to throw in a rolling of the eyes.

Montana's Governor REALLY doesn't like the REAL ID, listen to an interview he gave recently to NPR here. I've never heard of a governor actually saying "blah blah blah" on the radio in an official interview. It's friggin hilarious. Here's what DHS's reaction to Montana:

On Friday, the federal agency granted Montana an extension, even though state officials didn't ask for one and insist they will not adhere to the Real ID law.

Go Montana.

Ron Paul Schools Some Douchebag about the Gold Standard

2008-03-21T17:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the guy who they brought on to counter Doctor Paul was talking out of his ass especially when he started talking about the Great Depression. But don't take my word for it. This is what Milton Friedman had to say about what caused it. From a recent article in Worldnetdaily:

Friedman: Well, we have to distinguish between the recession of 1929, the early stages, and the conversion of that recession into a major catastrophe.

The recession was an ordinary business cycle. We had repeated recessions over hundreds of years, but what converted [this one] into a major depression was bad monetary policy.

The Federal Reserve System had been established to prevent what actually happened. It was set up to avoid a situation in which you would have to close down banks, in which you would have a banking crisis. And yet, under the Federal Reserve System, you had the worst banking crisis in the history of the United States. There's no other example I can think of, of a government measure which produced so clearly the opposite of the results that were intended.

And what happened is that [the Federal Reserve] followed policies which led to a decline in the quantity of money by a third. For every $100 in paper money, in deposits, in cash, in currency, in existence in 1929, by the time you got to 1933 there was only about $65, $66 left. And that extraordinary collapse in the banking system, with about a third of the banks failing from beginning to end, with millions of people having their savings essentially washed out, that decline was utterly unnecessary.

At all times, the Federal Reserve had the power and the knowledge to have stopped that. And there were people at the time who were all the time urging them to do that. So it was, in my opinion, clearly a mistake of policy that led to the Great Depression.

Click here to see what current Fed Chair Ben Bernanke has to say about Friedman's assessment. I'm sure you'll find it enlightening.

The Revolution Lives

2008-03-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

In Missouri from St.Louis Post Dispatch:

The first hints were the phone calls.

Never before had St. Charles County Republican Party Chairman Jon Bennett received so many queries about where this year's party caucus was to be held. And Bennett didn't recognize most of the callers.

On Saturday, Bennett learned why. Dozens of avid supporters of Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who is running a renegade quest for the presidential nomination, staged a political guerrilla attack. At that caucus at St. Peters City Hall — as well as others across the state — party regulars like Bennett were overwhelmed.

Party crashers! How rude.

The LA Times has additional coverage of what happened in Missouri:

Usually attended only by party apparatchiks, the caucuses help set the official party platform and deal with internal rules issues. The kind of stuff most folks ignore. Not the Paulistas, who swarmed meetings in St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and some rural counties and, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch put it, "snagged roughly a third of the 2,137 state Republican delegates."

This reminds me of that scene in Old School where the character played by Jeremy Piven finds out that Luke Wilson and crew were able to get their fraternity set up. "They're really good at paperwork!"

Of course, this really didn't go over too well with some of the Republican blogosphere. Take for example Dee over at Chatterbox Chronicles.

Now, I've always maintained that the way that most of the Pajamas Media Right react to Ron Paul is not really any different than what you would find with the Daily Kos crowd about George W. Bush. Mostly rantings and name calling, but never really anything that challenges the basic questions that he asks and that makes them squirm.

Anyway, one question that will be asked is now that the GOP is the party of big government and we are now paying for the sins of our largesse, why should anyone vote for the party hack McCain if it's just more of the same thing we've had for 8 years? Look at where all this spending has gotten us. Up until yesterday, the silence from the PJM right on the collapse of the dollar and government bailouts for financial institutions had been deafening. My opinion is because this disaster can be laid squarely at the feet of GWB and 6 years of GOP rule and to all the neocon enablers who cheered every step of the way. Well, people are waking up, and all of the "Old Right" are pissed. Because you ruined it all for me, my kids, and my grandkids.

God Bless Ron Paul for standing up there and speaking the truth.

Another Casualty in the War

2008-03-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

The War on Drugs that is:

Imagine you're home alone.

It's 8 p.m. You work an early shift and need to be out the door before sunrise, so you're already in bed. Your nerves are a bit frazzled, because earlier in the week someone broke into your home. Oddly, they didn't take anything; they just rifled through your belongings.

But the violation weighs on your mind. At about the time you drift off, you're awakened by fierce barking from your two large dogs. You hear someone crashing into your front door, as if he's trying to separate it from its hinges. You grab the gun you keep for home defense and leave your room to investigate.

This past January that scenario played out at the Chesapeake, Virginia, home of 28-year-old Ryan Frederick, a slight man of little more than 100 pounds. According to interviews since the incident, Frederick says when he looked toward his front door, he saw an intruder trying to enter through one of the lower door panels. So Frederick fired his gun.

The story isn't over yet. It turns out that the intruders were the Cheseapeake Police Department. They were serving Ryan Frederick a drug warrant using a tactic called a "" .

Fredericks fired his weapon and ended up hitting Detective Jarod Shivers, who died of his wounds. Now, Ryan Frederick is on trial for murder.

Read the rest over at Reason.

This Guy Knows Something that Bernanke Does Not

2008-03-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

How come Jim Rogers and Peter Schiff are the only ones on TV who know what they are talking about when it comes to the Fed and our economy:

The unprecedented actions of Bernanke and company this week ALWAYS comes at the price of the taxpayer. Bailouts, inflationary rate cuts: it's not necessary for a central planner like Bernanke, or Greenspan, to have a job dictating what our dollar should be doing. Get rid of the Federal Reserve.

People should be angry that their wealth is being stolen from them. I know I am.

Did Maria Bartiromo get collagen injections in her lips?

That's Just Wrong

2008-03-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

Consumerist has this entry:

A woman has filed a $200,000 lawsuit against American Airlines alleging the flight crew failed to protect her from a passenger who moved into the seat next to hers while she was sleeping, then "masturbated to her" and—well, you've seen "There's Something About Mary"? Yeah, that.

Come on, do they let just anybody on airplanes these days? Yeah, that's pretty foul and to her, it's probably more "Silence of the Lambs" creepy then "Something About Mary" gross out. I hope she gets the $200k

But I am curious, I wonder how hot she is?

Here's the link

Call of Duty 4: The Musical

2008-03-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

This is a video for a song made entirely from the different gun shots in Call of Duty 4. It's pretty awesome:

Song Made From Call Of Duty 4 Gun Shots - Watch more free videos

Pilfered from Gorillamask

Someone owes Someone a Penny

2008-03-16T17:37:00.001-07:00

This is a clip from CNBC two years ago between Art Laffer and Peter Schiff. Prescient.

Pilfered from Lew Rockwell.

Pajamas Media Blogosphere Reaction to Falling Dollar and Government Bailouts: Outrage and Silence But Mostly Silence

2008-03-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

I took a brief survey of the Pajamas Media Blogosphere that I visit on my web travels looking for the reactions to the dollar crisis that has been brewing for awhile and is finally coming to a head. Let's see:

Hotair: There's a nice video of Dana Perino's appearance on the Daily Show, but no mention of the Bear Stearns bailout by the government, or the continued free fall of the dollar. Come on, I would have thought Ed Morrissey would have had something to say about it.

LGF: There's a couple of entries about Obama and his religion, Elliot Spitzer gets goofed on a bit as well. But nothing about the economy or the dollar there either.

Malkin: ~~Michelle~~ See-dubya has a story about Obama, Michelle writes about Dickie Scruggs as well as an entry about the super-secret session in Congress that didn't accomplish anything. Anything about the financial health of the country? Not today, maybe something on Monday.

Ace: We have a winner! An entry on the bailout for Bear Stearns. It's a brief mention because entries about Obama and Spitzer dominate.

One entry out of all of the PJM blogs I visited mentioned the big financial news today. What's wrong with them? They are supposed to be "conservative" but nothing about the bailout? Malkin, to her credit, has talked about the sub prime mortgage crisis that has been developing into a story over the past year, and her take on that has been correct. Suck it up, no bailouts for the people who took crappy loans. Does that apply to the banks and other financial institutions? I don't recall seeing any mention from her about the dollar tanking in the past few months either. Why is that?

What the Price of Gold is Telling Us

2008-03-14T22:30:00.000-07:00

You know who deserves a second look as President? The guy who wrote this a few years ago:

Though everyone decries inflation, trade imbalances, economic downturns, and federal deficits, few attempt a closer study of our monetary system and how these events are interrelated. Even if it were recognized that a gold standard without monetary inflation would be advantageous, few in Washington would accept the political disadvantages of living with the discipline of gold – since it serves as a check on government size and power. This is a sad commentary on the politics of today. The best analogy to our affinity for government spending, borrowing, and inflating is that of a drug addict who knows if he doesn’t quit he’ll die; yet he can’t quit because of the heavy price required to overcome the dependency. The right choice is very difficult, but remaining addicted to drugs guarantees the death of the patient, while our addiction to deficit spending, debt, and inflation guarantees the collapse of our economy.

Special interest groups, who vigorously compete for federal dollars, want to perpetuate the system rather than admit to a dangerous addiction. Those who champion welfare for the poor, entitlements for the middle class, or war contracts for the military industrial corporations, all agree on the so-called benefits bestowed by the Fed’s power to counterfeit fiat money. Bankers, who benefit from our fractional reserve system, likewise never criticize the Fed, especially since it’s the lender of last resort that bails out financial institutions when crises arise. And it’s true, special interests and bankers do benefit from the Fed, and may well get bailed out – just as we saw with the Long-Term Capital Management fund crisis a few years ago. In the past, companies like Lockheed and Chrysler benefited as well. But what the Fed cannot do is guarantee the market will maintain trust in the worthiness of the dollar. Current policy guarantees that the integrity of the dollar will be undermined. Exactly when this will occur, and the extent of the resulting damage to the financial system, cannot be known for sure – but it is coming. There are plenty of indications already on the horizon.

The whole article is here. And if you've ever wondered or been confused about *why* a monetary system will survive over the long term only if it's asset backed, click on the link, you will find the answer there.

Rep. Jeff Flake on Cuba

2008-03-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: I forgot to add the link to Reason where I pilfered this video from. Click there and you can watch Congressman Flake go into more depth on his visit to Cuba (about 15 mins of video, very fascinating) Click here.

I hope his district keeps sending him back to Congress. He's a rising star in the GOP.

Ron Paul Supporter Spotlight

2008-03-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

This is a fully animated 3D Ron Paul commercial. It's pretty impressive:

An HQ version is available at the website www.hightidepromo.com

Pilfered from Liberty Maven

Federal Reserve: We should put it on the Green Mile

2008-03-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

The reports of the weakening dollar keep coming in:

Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India's Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don't want U.S. dollars.

The reason people don't want dollars is simple, people don't want what the dollar is offering. The dollar, at one time, used to represent stability, value, and security. Now, based on the unprecedented liquidity injections, interest rate decreases and other market manipulations by Bernanke and company, one can conclude that a full fledged panic is just around the corner because that stability, value, and security is being shredded.

What offends me the most is that peoples life savings are being stolen from them by inflation. The buying power that someone on a fixed income (like the elderly) has is being taken from them through no fault of their own. It was bad enough when 3 percent inflation was deemed "acceptable" (sorry Milton Friedman, you were wrong on this) but now that the inflation rate is pointing towards double digits. Where is the outcry?

Shouldn't I see headlines like: "US Economy Killed by Terrorists and Excessive Government Spending and Inflation, but mostly by Excessive Government Spending and Inflation" over at Ace?

or even a "Dude" by Allahpundit over at Hotair?

What does the White House have to say about the weakening dollar? Oh yeah:

We should be at LEAST as offended about the Federal Reserve as we are about illegals coming into this country.

Good Riddance Elliot Spitzer

2008-03-13T01:19:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite columnists William Anderson gives his take:

...for all of the "cleaning up Wall Street" rhetoric that came from Spitzer and his main supporter, the New York Times, his actions were more about shaking down firms and forcing them to pay for legal protection than "saving capitalism from itself." For example, he fingered PayPal while the fledgling company was maneuvering to have an initial public offering (IPO) several years ago.
PayPal was permitting its payment mechanism to be used to pay for online gambling, which then was legal. However, Spitzer told the principals of the company that he would block their IPO and give them trouble unless they paid his office $150,000. Now, had he come in with a fedora and Sicilian accent, people might have understood he was running a protection racket. But, instead, the New York Times insisted he was "protecting the public integrity."

It's amazing to me that he was elected into office with 70 percent of the vote. Buh-bye.

Read the rest of Professor Andersons column here and check out his archives here. I originally started reading his stuff from the Duke Lacrosse Case but his columns on the abuses and often criminal (as well as nonsensical) activities of the feds in the name of "justice" are what made me a fan. This is a good one about Martha Stewart and here is a different perspective on fighting terrorism.

The Fed Makes it Rain

2008-03-13T00:56:00.000-07:00

The more I listen to the chorus of this vid by Fat Joe and Lil Wayne the more I think of what Bernanke and the Fed are doing with our dollar.

Gary North has an analysis of the recent action by the Fed and the other Central Banks:

Here is the FED's official description. The first two paragraphs are clear. They are a warning call.
Since the coordinated actions taken in December 2007, the G-10 central banks have continued to work together closely and to consult regularly on liquidity pressures in funding markets. Pressures in some of these markets have recently increased again. We all continue to work together and will take appropriate steps to address those liquidity pressures.
To that end, today the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, and the Swiss National Bank are announcing specific measures.
This is an international credit crisis. Make no mistake about this. No single central bank can deal with it successfully.

Read the rest here, and remember, if we even introduced legalized competition of gold and silver as legal tender, those who aren't rich and ridiculously handsome like me will have a better shot at preserving their wealth instead of having it eaten away by inflation. F#$@ the Federal Reserve.

Daily Show: Marines in Berkeley

2008-03-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

Pretty funny:

Pilfered from Hotair

The Dollar and Oil

2008-03-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

From Reason Mag:

Let's start with geopolitical uncertainties. Last year, oil consumers watched warily as unrest in Nigeria's oil fields, the possibility of war between the U.S. and Iran, and the antics of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez threatened to disrupt oil supplies. That analysis may have once made sense, but most of those tensions have abated in recent months. Nevertheless, it remains true that most of the world's oil is produced in volatile regions and by erratic governments, so the price of crude must still include some kind of political risk premium.
What effect does the falling dollar have on the price of crude? Most oil price contracts are denominated in dollars. The dollar has fallen in value by more than 30 percent against a Federal Reserve index of major currencies since 2002. This means that the price of imports, including oil, have gone up. To some extent, the chief of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Chakib Khelil was correct when he said earlier this week, "What's happening in the oil market is due to the mismanagement of the U.S. economy." Continuing U.S. trade and fiscal deficits along with lower interest rates are stoking inflationary fears.

So one of the reasons that oil prices are so high is that the dollar just doesn't buy what it used to. So what does the White House, purveyors of economic stimulus packages and unprecedented government spending have to say about that:

I will say that Dana Perino is smokin'.

Pilfered from Crooks and Liars

Does Admiral Fallon Stepping Down Open the Door for War with Iran?

2008-03-12T02:08:00.000-07:00

Justin Raimondo thinks so:

One can hardly imagine a clearer indication that the White House has made the decision to go to war with Iran . It's just a matter of when and how the administration can provoke an incident.
That's why U.S. warships are patrolling the Lebanese coast; and why our warships are playing hide-and-go-seek with Iranian gunboats in the Gulf. It's the reason the Israel lobby has been beating the tom-toms for war, and the reason the anti-Fallon, Petraeus, has been so vocal about the Iranian roots of our Iraqi problem. With Fallon out of the way, the road to war – a regional conflagration that will make the invasion of Iraq seem like a holiday picnic – is cleared. Get ready for World War III.

Read the whole thing here.

An Eclectic Linkorama

2008-03-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

Reason Mag has a couple of entries in their Hit and Run blog that caught my eye:

Democrats Pick Pork over Police Accountability - You know how everyone knows that the "War on Drugs" is a waste of money? You don't? Then click here.

Show us Your Money - From 2003 - The Patriot Act lets the government spy on your finances, but does it catch terrorists? It looks like it helps catch governors spending money on hookers.

From Lew Rockwell -

Cop Ratings Website Infuriates Police - Think of it as customer feedback

Fed Nationalizes Some Banks - Fascism isn't always jackboots and "Sieg Hiel!" to the Fuhrer.

La Shawn Barber - It's been awhile since I've visited her site but it looks like she has changed her focus away from politics. Amy Winehouse makes an appearance on her blog. Take a minute to listen to her cover of "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"

From The Crossed Pond - Will the Fed Be Left Holding the Kitchen Sink? Of course not, the taxpayers will.

Also from TCP - Regarding Adm Fallon (current and soon to be former Centcom Commander), Adam asks:

At times like this, the poor choice of McCain’s “Bomb Iran” joke is highlighted. Also, does Bush just plan to keep appointing senior military commanders until one agrees with him?

In case you were wondering

2008-03-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

Here's what $5k per hour would have gotten you from the call girl outfit that Elliot Spitzer was busted on.

Jury Nullification

2008-03-10T16:01:00.000-07:00

Radley Balko over at Reason mag posted a blurb about jury nullification based on the statements of Ed Burns and Company (creators of the show "The Wire") from Time Magazine:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.

This set off a 300 comment discussion over at Patterico's Pontifications. It's a good back and forth that I would recommend reading. Patterico is a prosecutor in LA county, so take his perspective with a grain of salt.

I'm of the opinion that a jury has a duty to judge the law as well as the facts precisely for the reasons that the creators of "The Wire" give. Lawmakers create stupid laws all the time and one of the reasons that we have 1 in 100 Americans in jail now is because we have a criminal justice system that has moved away from letting juries decide the merits of the law and only judge the facts presented in a case.

Montana is Awesome Part II

2008-03-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

Throw this brief interview of Democratic governor Brian Schweitzer on the Real ID along with Montana's stance on the 2nd Amendment on that growing pile of evidence that Montana is the awesomest state in the Union. The "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire has nothing on Montana.

Not really having to do with Montana but with the liabilities of the Real ID, Kerry Howley at Reason mag says one group of citizens who is extra vulnerable:

Organizations such as the National Network to End Domestic Violence contend that stores of half-guarded data would empower stalkers, violent exes, and obsessive abusers hunting for information. Abuse survivors are living repudiations of the assumption that only criminals need seek the comforts of anonymity.

Read the whole thing here

Secession Fever: Catch It! (Follow Up)

2008-03-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to my post on the Lakotah Indians withdrawing from its treaties with the United States (which you can see here) I emailed the tribe with some follow up questions and received a response from Phyllis Young (aka Mni yuha Najin Win) one of four signatories on their "Declaration of Independence" which you can see here.

The following is part of Young's response to me on how they got to the point of withdrawing:

Lakotah chiefs and treaty councils made the Declaration of Continuing Independence in l974. This was a conference of over 5,000 people and 98 tribal nations held in Lakotah country. There were two objectives: one, to seek recognition and support from the United Nations. The International Indian Treaty Council was recognized as an NGO(non-governmental organization) in l977. At that time, the first International Conference on Indian Peoples and their Lands was held at the UN in Geneva, Switzerland. After thirty three years, the United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with l43 countries supporting it and four opposing, including the United States. The US does not recognize collective rights, which is, of course, Indian tribes.

With the culmination of this Declaration at the United Nations, Lakotah set out to fulfill the second mandate of l974: to address the United States Department of State on the Treaty Relationship and the negotiation of the treaties. The United States unilaterally abolished treaty making in l87l on an Appropriations Rider because they did not want to continue payments to Lakotah. But the provisions of the treaties are continuing rights.

My own opinion is that, based on Article l3 of the l868 Treaty, our us citizenship has been nullified due to the taking of our land. This provision provided each family with a tract of land and with that land came the citizenship of the United States. Our own Lakotah citizenship was retained as well and so we have dual citizenship. When that land was forcefully taken from us, the citizenship went with it.

Of course, the big question that hasn't yet been answered, and which a quick google search failed to yield any results for, is how exactly are the Feds going to react to all of this.

There are a number of factors that come into play here. I had mentioned in one of my previous posts that a number of Montana public officials have gone on record saying that secession from the United States would be on the table if the Supreme Court decided that the 2nd Amendment referred to "collective" rights and not individual rights. If Montana were to secede, would the United States recognize Montana as a sovereign country? If so, how can the Lakotah NOT be recognized as sovereign as well? If anything, their argument is at least as compelling as the one Montana has.

That's a lot of if's and in my opinion, the bridges to be crossed seem a long way off. But, it's a fascinating story to me and I'll be watching closely for a couple of reasons. First, the self determination angle (how can we preach democracy and self-determination abroad when we can't even practice it here). Second, one of the questions that I asked in my email was this: Do you (the Republic of Lakotah) plan on establishing a currency? And do you plan on having it asset backed (say with gold)? Phyllis Young wrote back two short answers: "Yes" and "yes". Given my long term financial prognosis of the United States, trying to find a currency that doesn't lose its value at 10 percent per year is something that makes me sit up and take notice.

Here is the official site for the new Republic of Lakotah

Megan Fox is Hot

2008-03-05T23:54:00.000-08:00

You know what takes my mind off of war, the falling dollar, our impending economic collapse, and our loss of civil liberties? Megan Fox in a bikini. Thank you Megan Fox.

More pics (rated PG13) of Megan over at Gorillamask

Cracked: 7 Insane Conspiracies That Actually Happened

2008-03-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here's #7:

In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we're 6talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one.

Read the rest of this conspiracy and the other 6 plots here.

Major General Smedley Butler is an interesting character. This is what wikipedia has about him:

During his 34 years of Marine Corps service, Butler was awarded numerous medals for heroism including the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (the highest Marine medal at its time for officers), and subsequently the Medal of Honor twice. Notably, he is one of only 19 people to be twice awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only three to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor, and the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two different actions.

Major General Butler also has the distinction of being one of the first to recognize our military industrial complex. His short book "War is a Racket" lays it all out there (using examples primarily from WWI) and is still relevant today.

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.

Read the whole thing here.

Incumbent defeats challenger 70%-30%

2008-03-05T12:08:00.000-08:00

No big deal, the challenger in an election always has a disadvantage. But based on the coverage of certain conservative news outlets, one would have thought that once the votes were counted the race for Ron Paul's congressional seat would have been much closer than the final tally. How could the Pajamas Media Right be so wrong? Remember this:

While pursuing his thus far quixotic quest for the presidency, Congressman Paul has fallen behind by over ten points in the polls (43-32) in the fight for the Republican nomination in the Texas 14th to challenger Chris Peden, according to internal polls from both campaigns, which Pajamas Media was told were quite similar.

Reason magazine offers this:

The part about Peden's poll was true—sort of. According to Peden's political director Onzelo Markum, the campaign ran one automated poll in the district. It was not a blind test. People who picked up their phones were told that incumbent Ron Paul didn't support the war on terror, while councilman Chris Peden did. Only when given that informed choice did voters claim to support Peden.

Click here for the rest of the story.

The problem that the GOP faces now is that Dr. Paul has promised to continue his presidential campaign as long as the money and support keeps coming in. While it's easy to dismiss a candidate who hasn't broken single digits in any of the primaries so far, time and money are on his side. His position on the economy and limited government and most everything else are winners across the board for most GOP voters. He's also on the right side as far as Iraq is concerned with the general population.

John McCain still has issues with the hardcore conservatives (like me) and his FEC issues, while being dismissed by his campaign, are not going to go away in a general election. In fact, the Dems have (and should) position themselves to keep campaign finance on the front burner "Look, McCain can't even follow McCain-Feingold!". Of course, irony of ironies would be if Hillary is the nominee.

Antitrust: The Case for Repeal

2008-03-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Professor Dominic Armentano makes the case that all antitrust laws are BS (from the introduction):

Since antitrust regulation (at least the Sherman Act) was allegedly designed to prohibit business activity harmfulto consumers’ interests, much of antitrust policy as practiced, appears terribly misguided and might be termed a“paradox.”

The alleged paradox can be explained in several ways. One approach is to challenge the “public interest” origins of antitrust policy. If the laws were originally meant to protect less efficient business organizations from competition rather than to promote the interests of consumers, then there is no paradox. From that perspective, antitrust regulation is just another historical example of protectionist rent-seeking legislation, the overall effect of which is to lessen economic efficiency.

The subject of monopolies and antitrust legislation interests me because what we've been taught in government schools has really been one side of the argument. The simplified version of which is companies are bad, government is good. What Professor Armentano basically argues is that government can and often does more harm than good.

You can read his book for free in PDF form here

For a video discussion on this topic with Dr. Armentano and newly re-elected Congressman Dr. Ron Paul click here

The Onion Movie

2008-03-04T18:20:00.000-08:00

Apparently this is going straight to DVD, but Mountain Dew spokesman Steven Seagal makes an appearance. Mark my words, someday he's going to make it to the big screen!:

Pilfered from Film Drunk

Secession Fever! Catch it!

2008-03-03T15:37:00.000-08:00

Montana is making noise about it because of their stance on the 2nd Amendment. Vermont has always had a secession streak as well. But the Lakotah Indians went ahead and announced their withdrawal from all treaties with the United States back in December. Now I don't know if it's technically secession, but what they are doing is declaring their independence. So go with it.

The big question, of course, is how is Washington DC going to react? We haven't had to deal with a secession question since the Civil War, and we all know how that turned out. But how can our country support the independence of say, Kosovo, and not support the withdrawal and independence of the Indians here?

My imagination does go wild with the possibilities of the restoration of a country in the middle of the United States that doesn't have to deal with the bureaucracy and burden of dealing with a heavy-handed federal government (they've already said there wouldn't be an income tax). What if they create and develop a sound, asset-backed currency that wasn't controlled by a central bank? Investment by companies and individuals would pour into their country. If they developed strict secrecy and privacy laws for their banks, they could be like Liechtenstein but here in North America. That in itself would bring untold prosperity to the indians. Just by banks respecting privacy rights for its customers (which is something we don't have here).

Anyway, here's Russell Means talking about it:

National Security and the Falling Dollar

2008-03-03T00:18:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Dr. Ron Paul responds to the WSJ:

"I was delighted to read in Judy Shelton's op-ed, "Security and the Falling Dollar" (Feb. 15), that at long last the security implications of the dollar's collapse have made their way into the mainstream media. The dollar's strength (or lack thereof) has been of paramount concern to me, and the subject of many of my statements over the past several years. Decades of manipulation by the Federal Reserve have benefited the government and certain politically-connected firms, while gradually destroying the purchasing power of middle-class Americans. Despite numerous warnings in the past, it is only now at a point of acute crisis that Washington insiders are beginning to awaken to the reality of the end of dollar hegemony.

"While I desire reform of our current monetary system, my own proposals have not been as all-encompassing as Ms. Shelton's suggestion to return to a Bretton Woods-style system. Her recommendation, though, that gold backing should make up a component of a future monetary system, is one that we would all do well to heed. My own legislative proposals focus around eliminating the taxes and laws that dissuade individuals and institutions from using gold as currency or as a backing for currency. By allowing market processes to determine the issuance of currency, we can allow individuals to decide for themselves what currency they wish to use. This would lead to a gradual reintroduction of sound money and avoid the market shocks that occur when monetary decisions are mandated by government fiat."

Since today ended up with the DOW down 300, the price of gold reaching another record high, and other indicators pointing to an economy sputtering into a recession (at one time we used to call it a depression) it's good to see that the MSM is finally catching on to the threat that a falling dollar represents to our national security.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Quote:

Every year, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is briefed by the chief of U.S. intelligence on potential threats to the nation. The list is sobering, but usually predictable and typically includes global terrorism, nuclear proliferation and regional conflicts.

But this year, there was a surprising potential foe: the falling dollar. In his report to Congress last week, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell went beyond the conventional world of spycraft. Mr. McConnell specifically acknowledged "concerns about the financial capabilities of Russia, China, and OPEC countries and the potential use of their market access to exert financial leverage to achieve political ends." He noted, in particular, the impact a weak dollar can have on national security: "As the dollar has weakened this year, some oil producers -- such as Syria, Iran, and Libya -- have asked to be paid in currencies other than the dollar while others -- such as Kuwait -- are delinking their currency pegs to the dollar."

This is something that the douchebags in DC haven't been talking about even though the subprime mortgage crisis has been one of the biggest red flags for the past 9 months on the economic and financial health of our country.

Also, don't people see the link that our trillion dollar foreign policy and the 65 trillion dollar future liabilities in Medicare and social security has to our economic and fiscal problems? Our "War on Terror" and our empire around the world has bankrupted us in the short term, and the enormity of our welfare state ensures that the pain is going to last in the long term as well.

The funny thing is that the only options that McCain, Clinton, and Obama offer is more of the same. Obama, to his credit, at least says he wants to get out of Iraq sooner rather than later, but we should also be out of Korea and Europe and Japan as well. But Obama, like the other two, are big government guys.

I have the answer to what ails us: Secession! Who's with me?

Numbers in Asia

2008-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

Asian Markets 3-4 percent down in early trading and gold and silver hitting record highs as well.

I'm going to repeat: Get rid of the FED, allow gold and silver to be used as currency and get rid of the income tax. No matter what happens over the next few years (and I'm thinking there is going to be a LOT of pain), this can all be laid at the hands of Washington DC and the Federal Reserve. Too much spending, and too much regulation and too much of a war.

This thing is going to end very badly, but recovery can be had relatively quickly if we get back to an asset based currency, if we got rid of the income tax, and if we start severely shrinking the government (the easiest thing to do is start coming home).

Michael Scheuer interviewed by Tavis Smiley

2008-03-02T19:44:00.000-08:00

A very insightful interview by Tavis Smiley with Micheal Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit:

Pilfered from Liberty Maven

It's all about marketing!

2008-03-02T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big fan of amnesty for the telecoms and based on this, it looks like it's going to happen (Where are you Chris Dodd?) But you know what makes it OK? Good marketing:

The Billboard Liberation Front has taken upon itself the task of getting this new message out there about what a burden it is keeping secrets from the government. From their press release:

AT&T initially downplayed its heroic efforts in the War on Terror, preferring to serve in silence behind the scenes. “But then we realized we had a PR win on our hands,” noted AT&T V.P. of Homeland Security James Croppy. “Not only were we helping NSA cut through the cumbersome red tape of the FISA system, we were also helping our customers by handing over their e-mails and phone records to the government. Modern life is so hectic – who has time to cc the feds on every message? It’s a great example of how we anticipate our customers’ needs and act on them. And, it should be pointed out, we offered this service free of charge.”

But what was really telling was the NSA's comment:

Commenting on the action, and responding to questions about pending privacy litigation and the stalled Congressional effort to shield the telecoms from these lawsuits, NSA spokesperson [REDACTED] remarked: “[REDACTED] we [REDACTED] condone [REDACTED] warrantless [REDACTED], [REDACTED] SIGINT intercepts, [REDACTED] torture [REDACTED] information retrieval by [REDACTED] means necessary.”

And that's all there needs to be said about that.

Pilfered from The Crossed Pond

Yoga with Tara Stiles, Ford Model

2008-03-01T00:46:00.000-08:00

This week: Yoga for tension in your neck

Pro Libertate: Restoring the Right to Resist (UPDATED)

2008-02-29T02:01:00.000-08:00

William Grigg on reintroducing Americans to a long forgotten right (here's why):

We’ve reached a point at which police can often kill innocent citizens with impunity – yet the slightest physical contact from a citizen can be prosecuted as “battery on an officer,” and a citizen wielding a flyswatter – yes, a flyswatter -- during a police raid can be accused of planning a “felonious assault” on a policeman.

That’s not to say, of course, that such outrages were rare ten, or even twenty, years
ago. But now they are more plentiful – and, thanks in no small part to the growing influence of cyber-samizdat, such as YouTube, much more visible. Acts of corrupt police abuse that once could be dismissed as figments of a troubled imagination, or the invention of vindictive criminals, are now routinely exposed to worldwide public scrutiny, and the fuel of growing public outrage.

The police have a hard job, no doubt. But putting cops in the position of having to enforce BS laws (like arresting unlicensed manicurists or fighting the drug war or whatever else the nanny state can come up with) and the movement of law enforcement towards paramilitary tactics can only lead to more absurd situations like sending a SWAT team to punch a hole into the door of a house and enter it with guns drawn because a parent decided his child didn't need to go to the hospital after an accidental fall.

The solution from Mr. Griggs:

I have a suggestion: We should work to re-instate statutory protection of the right to resist unlawful arrest in the 38 states that presently do not recognize that ancient and indispensable Common Law right.

Unless a police officer is dutifully enforcing a legitimate warrant, or has unassailable probable cause to believe that an individual has committed a felony, he has no business attempting to arrest anybody. That was the understanding that prevailed in the Anglo-Saxon world, in one form or another, from 1215 until the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, at least here in the United States.

Read the rest here.

Ron Paul Abuses Ben Bernanke, Again

2008-02-27T13:47:00.000-08:00

Update: Cavuto follows up with Dr. Paul and his hearing with Bernanke on Fox Business. Pilfered from Liberty Maven:

Dr. Paul is one of the only politicians out there who really understands the way the economy works. Can't say that about any of the other douchebags running for President.

The Nanny State: Example 23423

2008-02-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

Sent to jail for giving a manicure without a license! Un. Friggin. Believable.

Pilfered from Lew Rockwell

Trainwreck Alert

2008-02-26T17:57:00.000-08:00

This game show "Moment of Truth" lives up to its billing:

I've seen the promos for this show but never the show itself. The woman pretty much destroyed any trust that her husband had with her in the course of answering questions like "Were you in love with someone else on your wedding day?" or "Have you had sexual relations with anyone other than your husband since you've been married?" but the twist at the end is great.

Pilfered from Gorillamask.net

Ron Paul Gets It

2008-02-26T17:39:00.002-08:00

Dr. Paul really is the only candidate who gets it:

Pilfered from RedStateEclectic

Hellooooo

2008-02-26T16:48:00.000-08:00

In case you haven't been paying attention for the last 9 months, the economy is in a shambles. The dollar continues its decline. The "core inflation" rate (a figure of dubious value since it's calculated by EXCLUDING non-essential items like say food and energy) is even showing an uptick of .4 percent. Which is actually a rather large number for that particular measurement since it's the largest increase in 11 months AND double what analysts were expecting.

Now we are starting to see the consequences of the "guns and butter" policy. We are in the midst of an economic meltdown that could take a decade to recover from unless we start cutting government spending and interference in peoples lives.

I'm going to keep hammering this until I'm blue in the face. IT'S ALL THE FAULT OF GOVERNMENT. IF YOU WANT TO END THIS BOOM/BUST CYCLE GET RID OF THE FED. BY DOING THAT A SIDE BENEFIT WILL BE SMALLER, CONSTITUTIONALLY SIZED GOVERNMENT.

Finders Keepers

2008-02-26T01:39:00.001-08:00

A fascinating, unintended consequence of our "War on Drugs":

At first glance, Bluefields in Nicaragua looks like any other rum-soaked, Rastafarian-packed, hammock-infested Caribbean paradise. But Bluefields has a secret.

People here don't have to work. Every week, sometimes every day, 35kg sacks of cocaine drift in from the sea. The economy of this entire town of 50,000 tranquil souls is addicted to cocaine.

Bluefields is a creation of the gods of geography. Located halfway between the cocaine labs of Colombia and the 300 million noses of the United States, Bluefields is ground zero for cocaine transportation. Nicaraguan waters are near Colombian territorial limits, making the area extremely popular with cocaine smugglers using very small, very fast fishing boats.

When our Navy or Coast Guard starts tracking these small boats, the cocaine smugglers end up dumping their loads overboard. Where do those wash up? On the beaches at Bluefields.

There is no oversight from the central government and the local population governs themselves. But this is the best part:

With literally tonnes of cocaine buried in the hills, stashed in yards and piled up around town, why doesn't the Colombian mafia storm into these remote communities and repossess their coke bales by coercion or brute force?

"Hell no," says Peter, a local businessman. "The Miskito [local Indians] are guerrillas. They have been through war. They have AK-47s and up."

This is an unintended consequence of the drug war because our strategy in fighting it artificially inflates the price of cocaine. If all drugs were decriminalized, there wouldn't be any incentive for the cartels to exist at all. But then this anarchist paradise wouldn't exist at all either.

Pilfered from Lew Rockwell

First Montana, Now Liechtenstein?

2008-02-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

Awesome:

The government of Liechtenstein on Wednesday detailed plans to strengthen privacy guarantees for the investment vehicles at the center of a tax evasion scandal in Germany, a move that might prevent this tiny Alpine country from exiting a short black-list of international tax havens.

But wait, it gets awesomer:

Liechtenstein maintains that whether Germans or other foreigners with Liechtenstein-based bank accounts or foundations pay their taxes is none of its business. Klaus Tschütscher, the Liechtenstein justice minister, said foundations should not be tarred with a bad reputation just because some Germans might have set them up in order to avoid taxes, saying that was a separate matter.

"The Germans say, "Take this product off the market because some Germans may be using it wrongly," Tschütscher said at a news conference in Vaduz, the capital. "If someone puts their money in a mattress to avoid paying taxes, I can't say, 'You have to stop making mattresses.' "

It's the equivalent of the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument. Good for them, at least some common sense is prevailing in Europe. Now if we can bring some of that back to this country we'll be all right. (Thanks to Montana for keeping hope alive here.)

Go Montana

2008-02-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

They take the 2nd Amendment seriously out in Montana, unlike out here in LaLa land:

Montana officials are warning that if the Supreme Court rules in the D.C. gun ban case that the right to keep and bear arms protects only state-run militias like the National Guard, then the federal government will have breached Montana's statehood contract.

Can you imagine if the SCOTUS decided (though I can't see how) that the right to keep and bear arms was decided as a collective instead of an individual right? Would Montana secede? Would the feds let them go that easily?

Where is it? Oh yeah here:

...That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness...

I would love someone to ask John McCain his opinion on this.

"Senator McCain, what would be your response if Montana decided that their interests weren't being served by the federal government because the Supreme Court decided that the 2nd Amendment is a collective right? They also agreed to join the Union contingent upon the understanding that it is an individual right, your response?"

I don't know when the decision is going to be handed down, but oral arguments for the case DC vs. Heller are scheduled for next month.