Fighting in the Shade™

The Evolution of Our Prison Nation

2012-01-26T13:52:00.003-05:00

One of the most coveted items of contraband in the various facilities of incarceration across the fruited plain is the cell phone; and for valid reasons. The ability to engage in and coordinate criminal activity is one of the very legitimate reasons for categorizing these communication/recording devices as prohibited items in detention facilities such as jails, prisons, government schools and in at least one recent incident a TSA cubicle at the Nashville, TN airport. At 1:30 into the video you will learn how cell phone use is viewed by the TSA.

We Americans are becoming inured to being monitored, video recorded and photographed by our rulers in virtually any public and many private venues. Such routine practices should not however, lead ordinary citizens to conclude that they have license to engage in such surveillance of leviathan's agents while they are engaged in "keeping us safe". One such event resulted in the suspension of a middle school 9th grade student in Tulsa, OK. It seems the cell phone photo of a substitute teacher asleep in class was discovered posted on the web. A ~~youth indoctrination facility~~ school official stated the "...student was suspended because they’re not allowed to use cell phones on campus". There is no word as yet explaining how the cell phone slipped by the alert ~~guard~~ school employee monitoring the metal detector at the entrance to the facility. It becomes increasingly clear that the real reason for the government schools has become not to educate but to condition the population to servile reactions to tyrannical government acts.

Outside these "facilities" and even though the courts have upheld a mundane's right to do so, you will likely be charged with either "disorderly conduct" or "interfering with a police officer" for undertaking to record in public these minions of the state as they go about "making ~~the state~~ us safe".

Smackdown!!

2012-01-21T22:29:00.000-05:00

Whether or not one is a fan of Newt, this exchange probably won him the South Carolina Republican primary.

This Will NOT End Well

2012-01-17T12:57:00.000-05:00

The European financial system explained in less than 3 minutes

Is "Electable" The Stupid Party's Nominating Criteria?

2012-01-17T08:01:00.000-05:00

By Mark Crivelli and stolen with permission from Here

Republicans sure have short memories. It was just four years ago that they went to the polls in the primaries and elected the most "moderate" and "electable" candidate they could find in the hope that they had a man who was palatable to the general population. Their reward for their unprincipled pragmatism was an ass-kicking in the general election that few Americans will ever forget. John McCain and Sarah Palin certainly won’t forget it.
Four years later, having learned absolutely nothing from the election of 2008, Republican voters are once again lining up behind the most moderate and supposedly "electable" candidate that they can find in the pragmatic hope that they can beat Obama in the general election. They have become so unprincipled and pragmatic, in fact, that they are lining up behind the very man who brought European-style socialized medicine to our fair shores, simply because they have been told that he is more "electable" than anyone else in the field. How they can expect an outcome that’s better than four years ago is difficult to fathom, unless they think that their new moderate’s plastic hair can compensate for his obvious blandness.
In one respect, moreover, the selection of this particular "moderate" is even more ridiculous than the selection of the kooky moderate four years ago. This guy came in second place in the primaries to the "moderate" who got his ass handed to him in the general election. Think about that for a minute. This guy was moderate enough to come in second in the primaries two years ago, when the Republicans first decided to eschew principle and select a moderate, and yet he was deemed less "electable" than the guy who lost so badly.
In other words, if the more "electable" moderate got his ass kicked four years ago, how badly is the second-place moderate going to do this time around?
Here’s a novel idea for Republicans: Vote based upon principle, not based upon whatever the bobble-headed morons in the media establishment say is strategically expedient. Your strategic pragmatism got you nowhere four years ago. Young people and independents in this country are not any more impressed with bland flip-floppers from Massachusetts than they are impressed with nut-job moderates from Arizona. These guys don’t even impress Republicans themselves. If they want a "moderate" who stands for war and socialized medicine, they might as well stick with the moderate, warmongering socialist they already have.
How about nominating someone who has a record of standing up for individual liberty for once? How about nominating someone who believes in the Constitution for once? How about nominating someone who opposes liberal nation-building and warmongering for once? How about voting for a real capitalist for once?
In other words, how about voting based upon your own damn principles for once, instead of voting like pragmatic Trotskyites taking strategic orders from the political-media establishment? Forget this ridiculous, immoral and futile idea of "electability" and vote for Ron Paul and the principles of your own party.

A Clever Analogy

2012-01-08T09:22:00.002-05:00

Our national debt, the legal limit on which was raised with much feigned gnashing of teeth a mere 6 months ago now exceeds the GDP and will reach the "current" limit later this year. Of course, the collectivist economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes which has driven the nation's fiscal and monetary policies for the last 75+ years avers that the economic laws which govern individuals, families and corporations do not apply to the federal leviathan. This attitude doubtless drives the actions in which the government engages and for which it would incarcerate or murder ordinary citizens i.e. printing money out of thin air and expecting no negative consequences.

This Keynsian hypothesis is of course based on a similar concept to the warmista religion and the collectivists including most of the current crop of aspirants to the presidency subscribe. Great is the legislative power of governments but the repeal of natural law is not within their purview. Attempts to engage in such fatuous projects inevitably result in human suffering.

A "Senior" Moment

2012-01-07T08:48:00.003-05:00

There are good reasons that the late Samuel Francis designated the Republican Party as "The Stupid Party" and one of them is due to their proclivity toward nominating presidential candidates based on seniority within or favor with the party leadership. The video below is evidence that the suicidal policy continues.

This raises the question: would the nation be better or worse off had this old fool been elected in 2008? A tossup? Yeah!

The "Racist" Dr Paul

2011-12-30T20:45:00.002-05:00

In case you, dear reader, haven't noticed, the long knives are out for Ron Paul. Among the mud and feces being thrown at this humble and honorable man by the political elite of both of the major parties is the charge of "racism". The ruling class is becoming afraid, very afraid.

h/t Claire Wolf

Whoda Thunk This?

2011-12-29T08:36:00.004-05:00

When we first learned of the tragic Christmas day shooting in a Fort Worth, Texas suburb, mental alarm bells went off. Few details of the incident were released and we expected a press release from the Brady bunch demanding stricter gun control. Sound of crickets chirping.

We now know the probable reason for the organized gun grabbers silence. The names and identities of the victims and the shooter were withheld until the 26th. As details of the shooting are becoming available we learn the shooter and his dead family members were of the Islamic persuasion and the shooter's 19 year old niece who was among the dead was dating a non muslim.

Political correctness is a wondrous tool of the left and involves a hierarchy: in the interest of "diversity" concealing societal issues involving cultural incompatibility trumps the exploitation of the citizen disarmament agenda.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Down and Dirty

2011-12-28T17:43:00.001-05:00

More and more of what this writer observes of the current and apparently permanent presidential campaign convinces him that there is little of substance to differentiate the two major political parties here in the US. The now four decade long descent into a collectivist/fascist dictatorship has been presided over by all three branches of our government and under the aegis of both Republicans and Democrats. Should you, dear reader doubt it, I would hasten to call your attention to this evidence. It is a rather long read containing researched data and devastating in its logic.

The evolution of our republic into an empire of global dimensions has resulted in the emergence of an executive who not only wages war without the niceties required by our constitution but now claims the power to detain and/or execute citizens by merely declaring them to be terrorists or "enemy combatants" in a never ending "war on terror" waged at his discretion.

The complicity of both of our major political parties which are in reality only one party obsessed with exercising power is evidenced by the fact that one candidate (Mr Gingrich) has implied he would seriously consider support for the candidate of the supposed opposing party should his own party nominate Dr Ron Paul.

Do you, dear reader need further evidence of the validity of George Wallace's remark that "There's not a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and most Republicans"?

Please excuse this old Greek while he retires to the Imperial vomitorium.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

We Are Totally Screwed

2011-12-15T11:00:00.002-05:00

Like most of you I have had difficulty wrapping my mind around the numbers casually displayed and quoted in the media recently. This video may be able to help you all get a handle on the deep doo doo we are in.

An Outlaw Government

2011-12-14T21:25:00.000-05:00

For the better part of 2011 the mainstream media (which was by the way only dragged kicking and screaming into reporting on it) the scandal designated "Fast and Furious" by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (BATF) has been reported as a "botched sting" operation. No such characterization of the operation could be further from the truth. A "sting" operation in law enforcement parlance involving known contraband must of necessity in its planning and execution include a system of observation either electronic or visual of the contraband in order to maintain an unbroken chain of control ultimately linking it to a suspect. There is no evidence such a method of observation was a part of the F&F operation. Indeed, when ATF field agents attempted to initiate such a chain they were ordered to refrain from doing so by supervisory personnel. Understand, dear reader, that the "contraband" in F&F consisted of items capable of causing death and mayhem when wielded by dangerous criminals i.e. Mexican drug cartels.

Fast and Furious involved the willful and knowing transportation of firearms across an international border a violation of Title 23 Section 150 of the US Code. It is impossible such an operation could be carried out without the authorization of the highest level of ATF's parent cabinet level department, the Justice Department yet the Attorney General Eric Holder would have us believe he was unaware of it and testified to that effect before Congress.

The following is an open letter to Mr. Holder from a US government agent operating in Mexico. The letter was posted at the whistleblower site CleanUpATF on 9 December 2011:

Posted 09 December 2011 - 11:47 AM
An Open Letter to Attorney General Holder

Dear AG Holder:

From deep inside Mexico, thanks to streaming video, I was able to watch and listen to the entire House Judiciary Committee hearing. I'm a registered
Independent - not Republican and not Democrat, so this is a non-partisan commentary. As I write this, my life, and the lives of my family members are more
at risk because of the reckless actions of you and your ATF buddies allowing, facilitating and even paying for firearms to be smuggled into Mexico for
criminals.

Wow! You really made points with us when you refused to acknowledge you were under oath.

How many times did you answer "I don't know"? You must be the most "know nothing" Attorney General in history.
Funny, you had the answers for all the other issues brought up during the hearing.....

You said those who created "Fast & Furious" will be held accountable, but you still don't know who did it and no one will be fired? You have to consider
their overall service to the department???? Do you consider their overall service for any other crime?

It's been nearly a year since you assigned the investigation of Fast & Furious to the DOJ IG, although not in writing. Interesting. So, the DOJ is
investigating itself? How long does it take for the IG to investigate? Is this the same IG that cooked up the false $16 muffin story? Is this the same IG
that took (as gospel) ATF's word that 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico and traced came from the U.S. - statistics later discredited - by ATF themselves?

We watched and listened as you and your Democrat sycophants on the Committee parroted the same tired scripted mantra praising you for advancing gun control
and begging for more gun regulations and more ATF funding. The same old figures were quoted about how many guns were traced from Mexico. Did your figures
include all the duplicate traces from Mexico? All the.22 rabbit rifles and farmer's shotguns that Mexico traced? Did they include 100 year old guns used by Pancho Villa? Did you explain that the average age of those guns traced from Mexico is over 14 years? ATF calls that "time to crime", but may have nothing to do with a crime.

Did you explain that as far back as 1992, and as recently as 2009, the Congressional Research Service warned against the use of statistics from ATF's
tracing system? Did you also not read their warning, "The ATF tracing system is an operational system designed to help law enforcement agencies identify the
ownership path of individual firearms. It was not designed to collect statistics."? Or did you simply ignore it?

Did you explain that the new multiple rifle regulation which you are so strongly supporting would not have stopped a single Fast & Furious gun from being
smuggled to Mexico? And won't stop any future smuggling? And the multiple rifle purchase report requirement is so overly-broad that it includes 50 to 100 year
old rifles of interest only to collectors - which will now be reported as 'crime guns'? What's with that? Oh, yeah..... Those sales are now permanently 'registered'
in ATF registration databases. Was this supposed to be "under the radar", too?

Did you explain why your buddies at ATF are reporting personal information (name, address, height, weight, date of birth, drivers license number, etc.) of
totally innocent American gun owners to corrupt Mexican cops - through eTrace? Enough information for ID theft? These gun owners may have disposed of the guns
many years ago - but ATF still reports the original owner as a 'suspect' to Mexican cops. Thanks a lot. That makes me feel really good while I'm here in Mexico.....
Have you forgotten that in Mexico, you're guilty until proven innocent?

So this is the "Most Transparent Administration" in history? Well, on that issue, that's right. With your performance in front of the Committee, and your
obstruction of justice and obfuscation of the issues, you were completely transparent. Everyone could see right through you. And you're refusing to release
any more documents? What could be more transparent than that? Wow!

Watching you in front of the Committee, for the first time in my life, you make me ashamed to be an American. Hell, Watergate was easier to understand....., and people didn't die. How many people are going to be killed as a consequence of Fast & Furious?

How do I explain to my Mexican friends and associates why ATF has illegally armed Mexican criminal gangs? And no one has gone to jail, or been fired, or
suspended, or even identified.....? Isn't that great for international relations.....

Mr. Attorney General, you will be held accountable - by the American People.

Sincerely,
(Name Withheld - still in Mexico)

Incredibly, Democratic members of Congress and their mainstream media cheer leaders insist on the need to enact more stringent gun laws affecting private law abiding US citizens as a result of the criminal actions of a government bureaucracy. Only in the fevered minds of gun grabbing hoplophobes and leftist politicians; but I repeat myself.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Seasonal Observations

2011-12-13T21:43:00.002-05:00

Readers of this observer's postings are doubtless aware of his libertarian proclivities. Like most of you gentle readers I have continued the search for a politician or opinion leader whose positions are congruent completely with my own views. Not surprisingly, the quest has been thus far in vain. Pursuant of that end I have regularly frequented one of the most visible libertarian sites on the web, Lew Rockwell.com. Please feel free, gentle readers to suggest any additional fertile areas of research.

Yesterday, on the above linked site the following blog posting appeared without comment by Mr. Rockwell and was entitled: No War Toys for Christmas

Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy suggests that if your parish collects toys for Christmas gifts, you might ask your pastor to note that war toys are not wanted. "It could be explained in the bulletin why toys that fill children with the spirits of homicide and enmity and self righteousness do not fit into the meaning and purpose of Christmas."

Is it truly toys and not moral teachings that influence our young? I have no knowledge of the identity of Father McCarthy nor of the sect or diocese he represents, but responded to the posting as follows:

Re: No war toys for Christmas

What is a "war toy"? I would submit that such items are merely non functioning children's versions of tools that are used for military purposes. McCarthy's implication is that all military purposes are evil and must be discouraged. This is the logic of those who would disarm law abiding citizens thus preventing them from engaging in self defense.

Would Father McCarthy decline toy guns used by defenders of the constitution or toy cannon such as used in our revolutionary war?

Objecting to and imputing morality to mere tools borders on idiocy. Are toy guillotines also to be banned? Ultimately it is human intent which should be the subject of moral condemnation. Was it Jesus in Luke 22:36 who stated: "Let him without a sword sell his cloak to buy one"?

As of the time of this posting, Mr Rockwell has neither responded to nor posted my comment on the blog. Having said that and in the spirit of a lively libertarian discussion I am pleased to report that one of the contributers to Mr. Rockwell's site with which this writer almost totally agrees is Dr. Walter Block; closely followed by Drs. Thomas DiLorenzo and Thomas Woods.

Tangentially apropos the subject, one of the practices disturbing to this writer is the recent characterization by the mass media of all military personnel especially those wounded or killed in the current conflicts as "heroes". Having served previously in the military wherein extraordinary heroic actions were a requisite for that designation, it seems to me a disservice to genuine heroes to assign the title to those who's only misfortune though tragic, is to have suffered the consequences of warfare.

In any event, to quote an ancient philosopher: "Only the dead have seen the end of war". For now I, for one would council keeping one's powder dry and compiling a list of candidates for the future decoration of lamp posts á-la signore Mussolini.

Merry Christmas

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A Deliverance?

2011-11-20T20:28:00.002-05:00

As this posting is being composed an unconstitutional "super committee" of Congress is wrestling over the issue of "solving" the crisis of debt which threatens the very survival of our nation. This writer posits that the premise upon which this so called committee was instituted is false. The current US national debt now exceeds $15 trillion with the annual budgetary deficit projected for the coming decade to be $1.3 trillion. The committee is charged with reducing the annual deficit by a total of $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years. That supposed "reduction" amounting to $130 billion per annum accepts an actual expenditure increase by the federal government of $1.170 trillion per year. Only in the fevered minds of Washington political operatives' "baseline budgetary" calculations can such a figure be characterized as a budgetary "cut".

Underlying the sturm und drang of this issue are the philosophical assumptions of the two major antagonists in our society: the collectivists and the individualists, and the divide has seldom been more pronounced and divisive.

The collectivist position is currently represented by the extreme left wing of the Democratic party as espoused by the current occupant of the presidency who considers himself an heir to the New Deal legacy of Franklin Roosevelt. In Roosevelt's State of the Union Address of 11 January 1944 he proposed the following "Economic Bill of Rights":

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.

Each and every one of the above "rights" envisions the seizure of private property in the form of labor, capital or property from individual citizens of our nation in violation of the black letter of the founding documents dully ratified by the people of the United States.
Opposing the collectivists in this epic struggle are the so called individualists who advocate:

A free market economy – an economy unhampered by political regulations, rigid controls, bureaucratic guidelines, high taxes, mandatory racial quotas, compulsory minimum wage rates, redistribution programs, and other coercive distortions – presupposes the principles of self-ownership and private property rights in peaceful adult citizens. The Left attacks freedom and civilization at this crucial foundation level by denouncing and undermining private property rights at every opportunity, from the income tax and antitrust laws to the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision..
And since the related principles of Self-Ownership and Private Property are the bedrock core of the political perspective known as libertarianism, the Left’s ultimate target is individual liberty and it assiduously fights any significant movement in the direction toward true libertarianism. Libertarianism is the ultimate ideological opposite to Leftism and the Left’s anti-property, anti-individualist Orwellian agenda.
The Left often postures as being in favor of "tolerance" – but only in such superficial matters as skin color, not in the realm of ideas. The Left’s long-time and continuing ideological monopoly in America’s universities seethes with anti-conservative and anti-libertarian bigotry and intolerance much uglier and much more unrelenting than the personal prejudice of any stereotyped Southern racist.
Leftists also claim they are for freedom – but it is not the freedom from coercive interference with peaceful adults for which libertarians stand. No. The leftists clamor for freedom from want, freedom from deprivation, freedom from poverty, freedom from being disadvantaged, freedom from discrimination, freedom from having one’s feelings hurt, freedom from the real world, and other such bogus "freedoms" which, if they can be achieved at all, come only at the forced expense of productive peaceful adult citizens. They think people have a "right" to "free" medical care, food, schooling, retirement funding, disability assistance, housing subsidies, etc. – all to be paid for by the forced expropriation of other people. In other words, they believe that some people have a "right" to violate the rights of others.

In view of the fundamental divergencies in the stated philosophies of the two groups on the "super committee" this writer feels safe in predicting that a further attempt will be made at "kicking the can further down the road" which will be the case even should the minimum requirements of the committee be realized.

Save Us Obi Ron! You're our Only Hope

2011-11-17T08:40:00.001-05:00

Your humble blogster found this video on LewRockwell.com who credits Paul Craig Roberts. Please steal it and make sure it goes viral.

Especially note the prolog and the credits.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Worth a Thousand Words

2011-10-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

...and an orange jumpsuit for Eric Holder?

Time is Running Out

2011-09-30T09:26:00.000-04:00

The recent interview of Mr. Alessio Rastani on BBC and embedded below is jaw-dropping on many levels. Non Keynesian economists have been warning of the approaching storm for years and for their troubles have been soundly ridiculed. Here for the first time to my knowledge in the main stream media is spoken the unvarnished truth. The wonder is: how many will take him seriously?

"In wartime [and the run-up to revolution] truth is so precious that she should be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill

No End in Sight?

2011-09-17T18:32:00.002-04:00

It will soon be a decade since the United States military first engaged in the Afghan operation. We have been assured that Osama bin Laden now sleeps with the fishes in the Indian Ocean. In spite of having achieved the stated objective of this undeclared "war" the killing and dying continue. May one be excused for asking: "to what further purpose"?

How long will our leaders insist on the continuation of this expenditure of blood and treasure?
This humble writer posits that the insanity will continue until it can no longer be economically sustained or alternatively, that our political leadership is replaced by sane adults.
President Obama has recently signed on to regulations requiring us mere mortals to conserve fuel while The Afghan "war" consumes 22 gallons of fuel per diem for every one of our personnel in that theatre. The fuel costs $400.00 per gallon to be delivered.

Collectivists Progressives and the Bloody 20th Century

2011-09-16T13:42:00.001-04:00

by William L. Anderson

As one who has written on the Progressive movement that began in the late 1800s and still continues today, I am struck by the way that people have institutionalized the "reforms" and creations of Progressives to the point where they become something even beyond articles of faith. There can be no discussion on anything Progressive governments enacted, not matter how much damage these "reforms" have caused, and even to suggest that these "reforms" are not essential to our very existence is [to] want to repeal life itself.

The latest hysterical "They Want to Repeal the 20th Century" screed comes from Steven Pearlstein, an economics columnist for the Washington Post, who lays out an interesting line of thought and in the end seems to claim that the mass of government programs and agencies created during the last century carries the same aura of truth as does the Law of Gravity. He writes:

These folks are actually talking about repealing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970s.
They’re talking about abolishing Medicare and Medicaid, which passed in the 1960s, and Social Security, created in the 1930s.
They reject as thoroughly discredited all of Keynesian economics, including the efficacy of fiscal stimulus, preferring the budget-balancing economic policies that turned the 1929 stock market crash into the Great Depression.
They also reject the efficacy of monetary stimulus to fight recession, and give the strong impression they wouldn’t mind abolishing the Federal Reserve and putting the country back on the gold standard.
They refuse to embrace Darwin’s theory of evolution, which has been widely accepted since the Scopes Trial of the 1920s.
One of them is even talking about repealing the 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax and the direct election of senators – landmarks of the Progressive Era.
What’s next – repeal of quantum physics? (Emphasis mine)

As I read through this litany, I realize that his line of argument is terribly fallacious, but to Progressives, all their talk of science and logic does not apply to their own methods of reasoning. Pearlstein is claiming that the very creation and continued existence of agencies like the EPA and the provisions of the Clean Air Acts and Clean Water Acts, along with the Income Tax and direct election of U.S. Senators, Medicare and Social Security are proof of their truth.

Furthermore, he equates these legislative acts, along with the Keynesian theories and accompanying policies as having the same legitimacy as laws of quantum physics. Just as one cannot debate the existence of gravity, so one cannot even debate anything that fits within the Progressive agenda.

As I read through the article, I come to the conclusion that Progressivism at its heart is a religion, one in which the State is God and Abraham Lincoln, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson are its Holy Prophets. John Maynard Keynes is the savior. To question anything that they said or did is to require banishment not only from polite society, but from the very universe altogether.

If there is a Golden Era of Progressivism, it is the 20th Century, and while many decent people are repulsed at the government-initiated slaughter of innocent people that characterized those 100 years, Progressives see, well, progress. Where some see the butchering of 10 million men in the execrable trenches of World War I and ask who could have ordered this needless destruction of lives, Progressives see "progress" in the destruction of the European monarchies and the establishment of the U.S.S.R. (Yes, the U.S.S.R. during the 1920s and 1930s was a darling of U.S. Progressives, and their effusive praise of the regime, and especially of Josef Stalin, is well documented in Paul Hollander’s Political Pilgrims.)

Furthermore, World War I in the USA led to military conscription, high income tax rates, destruction of the classical gold standard (and replacement with fiat paper money), Prohibition, and government takeover of the railroads and government control of business, all of which were highly-sought by Progressives for years before World War I brought their goals to fruition, which was aptly noted by Murray N. Rothbard in his classic essay, "World War I as Fulfillment." Thus, to Progressives, the bloody human sacrifice that characterized that conflict was "worth it" because the postwar world was much more to their liking.

It is hard to understand why anyone would prefer the bloodshed and social turmoil that was World War I and its aftermath to the relatively peaceful western world that existed before Europe stumbled into massive warfare in August 1914, yet Progressives believed (and still believe) that the destruction of ancient institutions and replacing them with edicts from the state was a good thing. And when people pointed out that the Russian Revolution was bringing death and destruction, the typical Progressive response was, "If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs."

The Great Depression was the next event that solidified the Progressive hold on U.S. policies, and like World War I, it provided Progressives the opportunity to make permanent changes in the nation’s political economy, or at least bring permanent changes to the legal institutions that set the boundaries for private enterprise. Furthermore, in the name of "bold action," the government engaged in activities from cartelizing U.S. industries (the idea that reducing output would reduce layoffs, which would reduce unemployment) to hiring vast number of people to do chores from writing propaganda for the Roosevelt administration to digging drainage ditches in U.S. cities.

That the nation’s unemployment rate still was in double digits in 1940 did not discourage Progressives from pursuing their various agendas, as they claimed that unemployment would have been greater had the government done "nothing." Meanwhile, the Great Depression spread from the United States to the rest of the world and led to political and social upheaval that ultimately exploded into World War II.

Because Progressive policies (laid out in detail in Murray Rothbard’s classic America’s Great Depression) created the economic calamity that created the rest of the turmoil, one can say that World War II also was a Progressive’s war. Not surprisingly, Progressives jumped at all of the "opportunities" that war brought, including military conscription, government control of the economy, further destruction of sound money, price controls, forced unionization of firms that did business with the government, military destruction of cities in Japan and Europe, and the creation of an international monetary system that would collapse in less than three decades and lead to the ultimate Progressive goal: worldwide fiat money.

World War II ended in 1945, but not before more than 50 million lives had been snuffed out, and the reach of Stalin’s Soviet Union extended, along with the establishment of what would be the Cold War. Unfortunately, the end of World War II was not the end of the mass murder of which either Progressives would directly influence or, at least approve. Wars in Southeast Asia killed millions of people, and the killing escalated after U.S. Progressives in Congress and the White House committed millions of conscripted troops to the region to prop up existing non-communist governments.

It is hard to know how many innocents died in these Progressive conflicts, but it is clear that the so-called vision that these We-Want-To-Remake-the-World that Progressives demanded resulted in slaughter and calamity that is hard even to describe, and when one thinks of the vast human displacement, the use of concentration camps, and the state-sponsored violence that was endemic, the only things that remotely resemble what happened were the Thirty Years War and the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of the ancient world. Yet, when one speaks to Progressives about World War I and World War II, we are told that the first "made the world safe for democracy" and the second was "the good war."

Now, some Progressives might agree that these wars were bad – although they will claim that the Progressive Agendas had nothing to do with them – but then they will point to the "accomplishments" of the 20th Century, specifically the establishment of the Welfare State and the expansion of government agencies and programs that ostensibly were created to save humanity from the alleged horrors of capitalism. Pearlstein’s screed, for example, lists a number of Progressive "reforms" and creations, from the EPA to Social Security and the Income Tax.

The idea is that their very creation proves their necessity, and that our society would collapse and fall into chaos and death without them. Not only is the State central to our existence, in the Progressives’ viewpoint, but now that the state is all-pervasive, we cannot survive unless the state is nurtured and expanded, for "reforms" always involve the expansion of government, and anything less is to do away with civilization altogether.

Such thinking hardly is new. Frederic Bastiat more than 150 years ago anticipated Pearlstein when he wrote:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain

Substitute "Progressive" for "socialist," and you can see that nothing has changed. (While it is true that many Progressives do not claim to be socialists, both believe that all improvements in the human condition come about as the result of the expansion of the State. There really are no exceptions.)
In the end, we are supposed to ignore the slaughter and destruction of the world wars, the exponential growth of the surveillance (read that, domestic spying) state, the choking taxation, and all of the wars fought since in the name of "liberation" and "progress." Furthermore, if any of us would like to repeal all of that, or if we wish it had not happened, something is wrong with us.

Progressives, as stated earlier, love to use the "break eggs to make an omelet" analogy to justify the destruction that has accompanied their Great Visions. To be honest, I’d rather not eat what they are trying to force down my throat.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Obama's STIMULUS IV "Jobs Bill"

2011-09-12T14:04:00.000-04:00

stolen from: Grouchy Old Cripple

More Smackdown

2011-09-09T21:34:00.000-04:00

The following is one of the finest smackdowns of a mind-numbed bureaucrat by a libertarian infiltrator of the US political system to date. Attention my anonymous reader in Culver City, Kalifornia. You too can escape the Peoples Republic.

All the best.

Gotcha "Journalisn" Backfires

2011-09-08T22:14:00.000-04:00

This humble blogster heartily enjoys a good smackdown. The brief clip below is one such example. Full disclosure: ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ is NOT a fan of Fox News' chief bloviator.

My; How Times Have Changed

2011-08-29T13:53:00.000-04:00

Caption this.

An Interesting Experiment

2011-08-20T20:50:00.002-04:00

Above is pictured a quarter dollar minted in 1950. It consisted of 90% silver and 10% copper. If you carried a paper dollar (silver certificate) to any US bank in that year you could exchange it for four of these quarters. Also in 1950 this writer with one dollar purchased 4.9 gallons of gasoline i.e. just under 20 cents per gallon for his first automobile, a 1936 Ford 5 window coupe.

Beginning in 1965 the US mint discontinued issuing quarters containing silver and substituted other base metals. Coincidentally, paper dollars although closely resembling the earlier silver certificates, miraculously morphed into what all US paper currency is today: “Federal Reserve Notes” i.e. 1 a : a written promise to pay a debt;

On Friday last, 19 August 2011 that 1950 quarter was nominally worth $7.76. What seems to be transpiring here can only be categorized as theft and deception. Our coinage has been debased by the government mint to the status of trolly tokens and our fiat paper currency is produced by printing presses and computer keystrokes backed by nothing but promises by a “private” central bank called the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile legal tender laws enacted by avaricious politicians force us to accept these bits of junk and wood pulp under penalty of imprisonment.

Meanwhile, the media is wall to wall “election” coverage of an event 15 months in the future. Dr Ron Paul who is virtually ignored is the only presidential candidate mentioning this problem and when even discussed is dismissed as a “crackpot”.

Sign at Ashland, Oregon Gas station May 2011

We are in deep trouble.

Murphy's Law: What to expect from a government bureaucracy

2011-08-16T11:13:00.001-04:00

The saga continues.

Last week we completed Mrs. Leonidas' application for renewal of her expired "permanent" resident card. The forms were meticulously completed with every electronic field filled in and the fee electronically submitted.

Yesterday we received email confirmation that the application had been received by the appropriate bureaucracy with a PDF document completed by the concerned bureaucrat to be proofread. Sure enough, in the field labeled "middle name" where we had carefully inserted NONE due to Mrs Leonidas having none, the bureaucrat had entered the initial "N".

These documents need to be letter perfect in order to avoid rejection or even prosecution for violating an obscure and arcane regulation. We followed the directions for correcting the document; which is telephoning the number of a government office and finally, after 12 minutes on hold and listening to instructions in Spanish after pressing 1 for English a sentient semiliterate humanoid answered the phone.

The ensuing conversation was quite bizarre due to the bureaucrat having only a rudimentary command of the English language. Many common words had to be spelled out phonetically for him. God willing the process will proceed.

The Moral Blame Game of WW II

2011-08-15T22:30:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, 14 August was the 66th anniversary of official notification to US citizenry that the Imperial Japanese government had agreed to a nearly unconditional surrender. This action ended WW II hostilities which had really commenced in 1931 with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

Much ink and many electronic bytes have been spilt supporting this or that motivation for the Japanese decision to capitulate. Most of what this writer has read, especially by leftist and libertarian "pundits" hastens to assign moral culpability to US political leadership for the employment of weapons of "mass destruction" against "innocent civilians". Those who subscribe to that position offer compelling and cogent arguments against the impersonal raining down from high altitude horrific and indiscriminate death on young and old members of a belligerent nation's population.

By accident of birth this writer not only has living memory but reached the so called age of reason during the most destructive war of written history. He therefore can recall having participated in not only such activities as air raid alerts and buying war bonds and stamps but collecting scrap material for the "war effort". It did not evolve in the US that the cottage, backyard industry of machining and assembling military weaponry occurred as was common throughout Japanese society in 1944 45. Had such been the situation, can any of the morally righteous essayists of recent history on that basis be excused from condemning a Japanese policy of not only launching jet-stream driven incendiary balloons on the US Northwest but the shelling from submarines of the US coastal areas of California?

Overwhelming evidence supports the position that the antagonists in the Pacific theater of operations during the war of 1941 45 represented vastly different cultural philosophies. The actions and policies of Japan's military during its conquests and occupation of parts of China 1937 1945 as well as Southeast Asia and the Philippines are compelling evidence of a society whose civilian culture spawned an absence of regard for humanitarian values. During the period December 1937 and February 1938 hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered and 20,000–80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army. "The stark differences in reported death rates for U.S. soldiers and civilians in German vs. Japanese camps dramatize the nature of the experience of Japan's camps for POWs and internees. Dr. Stenger's figures list 93,941 U.S. military personnel captured and interned by Germany, of whom 1,121 died (a little over a 1% death rate), and 27,465 U.S. military personnel captured and interned by Japan, of whom 11,107 died (more than a 40% death rate)"

In view of these facts, can any scholar logically assert that were the fortunes of WW II reversed, the imperial Japanese war machine would have hesitated to visit a nuclear holocaust on San Francisco or Seattle? I would therefore advise those who have hastily assigned moral culpability for the unfortunate Japanese casualties of late 1945 to president Truman to rethink their condemnation.

We can all agree that war in all of its manifestations is man's most horrendous evil. However, as Plato observed concerning human nature: "Only the dead have seen the end of war".

Heads We Win; Tails Y'all Lose

2011-08-13T21:16:00.001-04:00

As we witness the ongoing economic and financial collapse of our formerly cozy and apparently secure existence there is occasionally here and there an example of ironic levity usually generated by our ruling elite. As one example, we learn that during the recent London "riots" as British subjects have been effectively disarmed by Her Majesty's constabulary, shopkeepers and local residents have had occasion to resort to the employment of sporting equipment in an effort to defend their lives and property. As a result, a brisk (6000% increase on Amazon UK) trade in baseball bats has emerged with the aluminum variety selling for USD $28.00.

The Turkish shopkeepers observed by the police wielding these implements have been advised that it is allowable to utilize them inside their shops defensively but are subject to arrest if caught threatening a "youth" outside preparing to launch a brick or molotov cocktail. You can't make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond our very own Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) which falls under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security, on its web site and in various pamphlets advises us to be prepared for all variety of emergent situations by assembling "kits" containing useful items such as: food, water, waterproof matches, flashlights with spare batteries etc. As ATMs and cash registers are likely to be inoperative due to the crashing of the power grid, cash and coins should be available for emergency purchases. Additionally Ms Napolitano's Department alleges that "...lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States." Ignore those jihadists enrolling in flight training classes skipping the instructions on landing and takeoff.

On the other hand, the FBI's Bureau of Justice [sic] Assistance has recently disseminated a briefing for the proprietors of military surplus businesses and gun stores to be on the lookout for persons making bulk purchases of among other items: weatherproofed ammo cans, match containers meals ready to eat, night vision devices, night flashlights etc. The surplus store operators are urged to: "require valid ID from all new customers, keep records of purchases and make note of suspicious statements, people and vehicles." Particularly suspicious are customers insisting using cash for their purchases.

It seems that if one follows the advice of one department of our rulers' bureaucracy he runs the risk of being scrutinized by another as a possible "terrorist".

As our descent into the abyss continues, we would be well advised to maintain a sense of humor.

Travelogue: Stranger in a Strange Land

2011-08-10T22:29:00.001-04:00

This humble blogster has recently received emails from concerned readers querying as to the cause of the recent dearth of postings. The reason often assumed for such nonfeasance during the dog days of Summer is "vacationing" and in a strict sense that may be the case.

Recently Leonidas was virtually dragged "kicking and screaming" through the gauntlet which commercial air travel has become on a visit to Mrs. Leonidas' family and friends in Sweden. Understand, dear reader, that Leonidas has command of two languages and neither one of them is Swedish. Fortunately, many (but not all) swedish people are reasonably conversant in English. For that reason and the good offices of Mrs. Leonidas, the sojourn escaped being categorized as "the trip to hell".

The situation however rapidly deteriorated at the Stockholm airport upon preparing to return home. Unfortunately, Mrs. Leonidas' ten year "permanent resident" card had expired during the trip and she was denied boarding for the flight home. Until recently, such an unhappy event would not have resulted in a denial of entry but under new unpublished "Homeland Security" (yes those are sneer quotes) regulations she needed to obtain a "Letter of Transport" from the US embassy in Stockholm. Such a document requires: 1) completing a 5 page I-90 form, 2) submitting 3 passport photos, 3) Being interviewed (by appointment only) by a US Consular officer.

I would advise anyone against attempting to reach a US government office either here or especially overseas by telephone. The likelihood of communicating with a live and sentient human being has about the same probability as completing the beautification process of the Roman Catholic Church. In the event, the appropriate consular officer conducts such "business" between the hours of 1:30 PM and 3:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays ONLY and the federal government exacts a fee of US $165.00 for the service.

Having gone unnoticed due to Mrs. Leonidas state drivers license being renewed at the same time as your hapless correspondent's for five years in 2009, hers was issued to expire on the same date as her "permanent" resident permit. Voilá, no longer any valid identification papers for Mrs Leonidas except a Swedish passport. To quote the gestapo agent addressing the unfortunate Norwegian civilian in 1944 Oslo: "Your papers are NOT in order!"

Upon returning home two weeks later, the Customs and Immigration agent at the Chicago airport advises Mrs Leonidas to submit a completed I-90 form (accompanied by a $450.00 fee) to the immigration office in Atlanta to apply for a ten year renewal for her expired "permanent" resident card.

Upon traveling the 90 mile round trip to the Atlanta immigration office we are advised that "paperwork is NOT accepted here". According to recently implemented "regulations" it is required to submit all forms electronically with applicable fees and await an interview and biometric sample appointment which will take "up to 3 months". If approved after that process, Mrs Leonidas will be mailed about 3 months later a renewed 10 year "permanent" residence card.

With all these requirements having being met and awaiting probably for the next six months of federal bureaucratic actions, we proceed to the local (32 miles distant) DMV office to renew the expired drivers license. After standing in line for 2 hours and filling out the multi page renewal form and passing the required exam Mrs Leonidas is advised her license CANNOT be renewed until she receives her "permanent" residence card containing an EXPIRATION date!

To quote the Curmudgeon Emeritus in a recent post: "Social harmony must rest on two supports: individual inhibition against lawbreaking, and an overwhelming preponderance of force on the side of social order...."

This aging blogster who has living memory of a much freer and harmonious society prior to the publication of a billion or so pages of the Federal Register hastens to raise the following rhetorical question: where do I sign up for the revolution?

A Curious, if Rare Example of Justice

2011-06-06T11:54:00.000-04:00

Occasionally one of the "good guys" prevails in this Byzantine "justice system" we suffer under. Behold!

H/T: Market Ticker

The Smell Test: FAIL!

2011-06-01T21:39:00.008-04:00

In a previous life this humble blogster had occasion to participate in a "covert" law enforcement operation involving two agencies; one federal and one of Los Angeles county. He therefore managed to acquire a somewhat rudimentary insight into the workings of "sting" operations as popularized in the 1973 film staring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Probably the most annoying and frustrating feature of such projects is the tendency of higher supervisorial and administrative ~~bureaucrats~~ personnel to micromanage how these scenarios play themselves out. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most, if not all, such capers are closely monitored by command and control functionaries for the simple reason that the political and career-destroying fallout can prove to be: shall we say "unpleasant".

In 1974 a president of the United States was forced to resign over the coverup of a third rate burglary operation aimed at garnering political dirt on an opponent who arguably had the chances of a snowball in hell of gaining the presidency. That burglary resulted in prison terms for several of the personages involved in the incident as well as the disgrace/conviction of the serving Attorney General.

The Watergate scandal did not involve the death or injury of a single human being. Such is not the case regarding the unfolding scandal involving the alleged "sanctioned" transfer of at least 1800 firearms to drug cartels in Mexico by the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Not only are there two federal agents murdered by the "walked" firearms, but an as yet unknown number of Mexican and US citizens whose bodies have been discovered in mass graves in Mexico.

When questioned regarding operation "Gun Runner" involving the ATF approving of the sale of firearms to "straw" buyers for illegal trans shipment to drug cartels in Mexico, the White House and the Attorney General denied approval for or much less knowledge of such an operation. In light of documents provided by ATF agents who have come forward protesting "Gun Runner" and this writers prior experience, the denials fail the smell test big time.

One may be excused for inquiring qui bono (who benefits) from what amounts to such a human tragedy. The answer is very likely contained in a revealing article here and hopefully you, dear reader will read the entire text. If whistleblower ATF agent John Dodson had not revealed that the walking of guns to Mexican drug cartels had been engineered by his bosses the allegations regarding ATF being used as a tool to advance the citizen disarmament political agenda of the Obama Administration would lack traction.

The AK-47 used to gun down fellow federal agent Brian Terry, once recovered, would no doubt have been identified by ATF as a weapon recently purchased from a US gun dealer on the southwest border (ATF would have had, after all, the serial numbers and other identifying documentation).
There would have been no need to mention the existence of any ATF ‘secret sting,’Operation Fast and Furious, or any links between these ATF endeavors and the movement of the weapon used to murder Terry across the US border and into the hands of his Mexican assailants.
Instead, the discovery and identification of the AK-47 used to gun down a US agent as one sold by a US gun dealer and then trafficked ‘illegally’ over the border into Mexico and into the possession of the cartels might have created a ‘perfect PR storm,’ neatly reinforcing the arguments put forth, first, by Mexico’s government, which contends there would be no gang violence in that country if the US didn’t supply gangs with guns; second, by higher-ups in the US government who favor tougher gun-control laws and non-intervention in Mexico (DOJ and the Obama Administration); and, third, by the public anti-gun lobby in America.
Indeed, here’s how that story would have read: Mexico’s claim re the US fueling cartel violence is right, and worse yet, weapons trafficked from the US [gun dealers and gun shows] are no longer being used just to murder Mexicans, but to kill Americans as well.

The silence concerning this unfolding scandal on the part of most of the "mainstream media" is deafening. Instead, the population is treated to a feeding frenzy concerning "Weinergate" (pun intended). We, as imperial subjects of the former Republic known as the United States are truly, not only bankrupt but thoroughly screwed.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

h/t: Mike Vanderboegh

An Open Letter to My Fellow Lovers of Liberty

2011-06-01T13:47:00.001-04:00

Yesterday concluded the trial in the Netherlands of Geert Wilders. Mr Wilders was prosecuted for speaking his opinions. He did not interfere in the internal affairs of any Muslim nation nor did he incite anyone to violence unless those who would kill him for expressing his opinions are considered "incited".

I have seen nothing in the so called "libertarian" media expressing any outrage at this so called trial in a "Western" nation. I have however, read reams condemning Israel for defending its existence against those who are routinely incited to commit a second holocaust.
The following is a translated transcript of Geert Wilders' closing argument at his trial:

Mister President, members of the Court,
I am here because of what I have said. I am here for having spoken. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak. Many have kept silent, but not Pim Fortuyn, not Theo Van Gogh, and not I.
I am obliged to speak. For the Netherlands is under threat of Islam. As I have argued many times, Islam is chiefly an ideology. An ideology of hatred, of destruction, of conquest. It is my strong conviction that Islam is a threat to Western values, to freedom of speech, to the equality of men and women, of heterosexuals and homosexuals, of believers and unbelievers.
All over the world we can see how freedom is fleeing from Islam. Day by day we see our freedoms dwindle.
Islam is opposed to freedom. Renowned scholars of Islam from all parts of the world agree on this. My witness experts subscribe to my view. There are more Islam scholars whom the court did not allow me to call upon to testify. All agree with my statements, they show that I speak the truth. That truth is on trial today.
We must live in the truth, said the dissidents under Communist rule, because the truth will set us free. Truth and freedom are inextricably connected. We must speak the truth because otherwise we shall lose our freedom.
That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.
The statements for which I am being tried are statements which I made in my function as a politician participating in the public debate in our society. My statements were not aimed at individuals, but at Islam and the process of islamization. That is why the Public Prosecutor has concluded that I should be acquitted.
Mister President, members of the Court,
I am acting within a long tradition which I wish to honour. I am risking my life in defence of freedom in the Netherlands. Of all our achievements freedom is the most precious and the most vulnerable. Many have given their lives for freedom. We have been reminded of that in the commemorations of the month of May. But the struggle for freedom is much older.
Every day the armoured cars drive me past the statue of Johan de Witt at the Hofvijver in The Hague. De Witt wrote the "Manifesto of True Freedom" and he paid for freedom with his life. Every day I go to my office through the Binnenhof where Johan van Oldenbarneveldt was beheaded after a political trial. Leaning on his stick the elderly Oldenbarneveldt addressed his last words to his people. He said: "I have acted honourably and piously as a good patriot." Those words are also mine.
I do not wish to betray the trust of the 1.5 million voters of my party. I do not wish to betray my country. Inspired by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt and Johan de Witt I wish to be a politician who serves the truth end hence defends the freedom of the Dutch provinces and of the Dutch people. I wish to be honest, I wish to act with honesty and that is why I wish to protect my native land against Islam. Silence is treason.
That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.
Freedom and truth. I pay the price every day. Day and night I have to be protected against people who want to kill me. I am not complaining about it; it has been my own decision to speak. However, those who threaten me and other critics of Islam are not being tried here today. I am being tried. And about that I do complain.
I consider this trial to be a political trial. The values of D66 [a Dutch leftist liberal party] and NRC Handelsblad [a Dutch leftist liberal party] will never be brought before a judge in this country. One of the complainants clearly indicated that his intentions are political. Even questions I have asked in parliament and cooperation with the SGP are being brought as allegations against me by Mr Rabbae of GroenLinks [the leftist Dutch Green Party]. Those on the Left like to tamper with the separation of powers. When they cannot win politically because the Dutch people have discerned their sinister agenda, they try to win through the courts.
Whatever your verdict may be, that is the bitter conclusion of this trial.
This trial is also surrealistic. I am being compared with the Hutu murderers in Rwanda and with Mladic. Only a few minutes ago some here have doubted my mental health. I have been called a new Hitler. I wonder whether those who call me such names will also be sued, and if not, whether the Court will also order prosecution. Probably not. And that is just as well. Because freedom of speech applies also to my opponents.
My right to a fair trial has been violated. The order of the Amsterdam Court to prosecute me was not just a decision but a condemning verdict by judges who condemned me even before the actual trial had begun.
Mister President, members of the Court, you must now decide whether freedom still has a home in the Netherlands
Franz Kafka said: "one sees the sun slowly set, yet one is surprised when it suddenly becomes dark."
Mister President, members of the Court, do not let the lights go out in the Netherlands. Acquit me: Put an end to this Kafkaesque situation.
Acquit me. Political freedom requires that citizens and their elected representatives are allowed to voice opinions that are held in society.
Acquit me, for if I am convicted, you convict the freedom of opinion and expression of millions of Dutchmen.
Acquit me. I do not incite to hatred. I do not incite to discrimination. But I defend the character, the identity, the culture and the freedom of the Netherlands. That is the truth. That is why I am here. That is why I speak. That is why, like Luther before the Imperial Diet at Worms, I say: "Here I stand, I can do no other."
That is why I have spoken, why I speak and why I shall continue to speak.
Mister President, members of the Court, though I stand here alone, my voice is the voice of many. This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of expression is the life source of our Western civilisation.
Do not let that source go dry just to cosy up to a totalitarian regime. "Freedom," said the American President Dwight Eisenhower, "has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die."
Mister President, members of the Court, you have a great responsibility. Do not cut freedom in the Netherlands from its roots, our freedom of expression. Acquit me. Choose freedom.
I have spoken, I speak, and it is my duty - I cannot do otherwise - to continue to speak.
Thank you.

The verdict in Mr Wilders' trial is expected to be handed down on 23 June.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

A May Day "Surprise"?

2011-05-03T17:29:00.001-04:00

The "wetwork" executed this past weekend by Dick Cheney's "hit squad" had this writer scratching his head, especially in view of the fact that we now know that Sheik Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad had been under surveillance by US intelligence assets since 2007.

Our current administration is known for NEVER undertaking any potentially major project without considering the probable impact on its political objectives i.e. getting the leftist collectivists re elected in 2012. For that reason; why not wait until October of next year to take out the most wanted fugitive on the planet? That would be a major "October Surprise".

A report by Neil Sears in the UK Daily Mail states:

For although the CIA has thought since September that he [bin Laden] was in hiding in Abbottabad, special forces stormed his fortress only days after the website [Wikileaks] published new secret documents.
These made reference to named ‘couriers’ carrying Bin Laden’s message to his followers, and also to Abbottabad as a possible Al Qaeda bolthole.
America has already revealed that it was led to Bin Laden by tracking a man identified as his key courier.

We may have differing viewpoints as to the degree we support or condemn Mr. Assange's publication of documents embarrassing to our rulers, but the possibility his actions may have been instrumental in forcing the US government's hand at this early date prior to the 2012 elections could be seen as a "goodness thing", at least by conservatives.

I should remind readers that with the passage of a similar period of time between George H.W. Bush leading the "liberation" of Kuwait (March 1991 94% approval rating) and his defeat at the polls in 1992, the parallel to 2012 cannot be lost on Democrat operatives. This is especially true when the Repubs will likely be taking a page from Mr. Carvill's playbook: "It's the economy, stupid!"

h/t Thomas Lifson

Déjà Vu with a Variation

2011-04-24T14:23:00.002-04:00

Easter Greetings to all you impatient readers. Your humble blogster has finally (with the assistance of some truly outstanding 21 year old Panamanian rum) toasted the Rising of the Christian Savior and partially overcome his depression induced by observing the recent unfolding events on the planet's social, cultural and economic stage.

In many respects recent events as viewed by us superanuated citizens exhibit copious doses of déjà vu. For example, the recent spike in the price of motor fuel is considered sufficiently threatening to our political rulers that we are being assured that the "authorities" will leave "no stone unturned" in unmasking the "possibly" illegal actions of "those in the oil and gas industry" responsible for this outrage. What a relief.

Such announcements by politicians seem to be routine when the media begin reporting public outrage, and to that extent there is little surprise. What is a new twist to the currently unfolding price increases is the willingness by the mainstream media to insulate the political establishment from any culpability. We are not now treated to the shrill condemnations of "gouging and profiteering by Bush/Cheney oil industry cronies". Instead, reporters of MSNBC and the New York Times hasten to assure us that Mr Obama is blameless. Wait a minute!

1) Domestic exploration and drilling for new sources and often in producing/existing crude oil fields has been effectively banned by Mr Obama's bureaucratic goons throughout this administration; thus withholding billions of barrels from the global market thereby reducing supply of the product.

2) No permits for the construction of new petroleum refining facilities have been issued for over 3 decades in spite of exponentially increasing demand.

3) The Federal Reserve has been operating its printing presses at warp speed in excess of 2.5 years to pay for out-of-control federal expenditures resulting in the devaluation of the US dollars which are used to purchase crude oil on the international markets.

To illustrate this condition, simply examine the chart below recently posted by Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker®.

Click the graph to enlarge

The red and green line is the price of crude oil per barrel and the white line is the value of the US dollar.

In modern times politicians have been extremely sensitive to the consumer price of motor fuel. In some nations the low price of gasoline is subsidized by the government. In Venezuela when ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ was cruising aboard his auxiliary sloop LEONIDAS, the mid 1980s' price of diesel fuel for foreign flagged vessels at the fuel docks amounted to US $1.55/gallon. The price to all domestic Venezuelan consumers was US $.06/gallon. The price for Venezuelan consumers of gasoline was equivalent to US $.12/gallon. These are the same prices that continue today. Indeed we witnessed subsidized Venezuelan fuel for sale in the harbors of Grenada and Bequia by enterprising smugglers.

The last time a Venezuelan leader successfully raised gas prices was in 1998, when then-President Rafael Caldera also ended Petróleos de Venezuela's monopoly on domestic gasoline sales. Foreign companies, which were promised that the country would eventually end fixed gasoline prices, rushed in, hoping to capitalize on growing demand. But when Chávez took office in 1999, those promises were forgotten. Many of the companies that invested in stations, including Shell and ExxonMobil (XOM), subsequently wrote off their investments and left.
In the years since, prices of most other goods have risen dramatically—consumer prices in general are up fivefold since 1998—and the Venezuelan minimum wage has kept pace. The widening gap with gas prices has forced many gas station operators to shut down.

The US government has long been loath to admit the true extent of monetary and thus price inflation as reported by the Consumer Price Index which conveniently omits the costs of energy and food. The index does however factor in shelter i.e. home prices which have declined sharply since 2008.

An excellent example of what our rulers have done in order to finance the welfare/warfare state is observed in the decline in the value of the US dollar since the establishment of the Federal Reserve bank in 1913: The price of a high quality Men's suit in 1910 was $20.00 i.e. one ounce of gold. In 2011 an equivalent man's suit is priced at about $1450.00 i.e. just under the present price of 1 oz of gold. The slight decline in the cost of today's men's suits is the productivity increase due to recent advances in technology. Other such comparisons abound.

"Freedom" Packages

2011-03-23T10:08:00.000-04:00

Your humble host is not a big fan of John Stewart but occasionally one of his skits is hilarious. This is one such example.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Project "Gunwalker" Updated

2011-03-08T18:44:00.003-05:00

Since 14 December of last year when two semiautomatic AK 47 "assault" rifles were recovered at the scene of a "shootout" between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and Mexican criminals in southwest Arizona leaving Agent Brian Terry dead, the "mainstream" media has finally been dragged kicking and screaming into reporting the story. Also, US government agencies such as ICE and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have been less than forthcoming on the circumstances and background surrounding the incident.

What is gradually emerging from this tragic event is the liklihood that federal agencies are being used as tools in the pursuit of a political agenda undermining rights guaranteed by the second Amendment.

For many months it has been alleged by spokespersons at the highest levels of the Administration that the violence of the drug cartels in Mexico has been fueled by weaponry supplied by private legal sources in the US; thus justifying additional regulations on gun transactions by heretofore legally licensed firearms dealers.

The ATF keeps statistics on the origin of "cherry-picked" weaponry seized at crime scenes in Mexico and has been massaging them to make it appear their major sources were gun shops and gun shows in the US. This practice proving insufficient in generating public support for additional gun control regulations has apparently resulted in the policy of sanctioning the transfer of larger masses of weapons into Mexico (project gunrunner). This project would serve two bureaucratic purposes: 1) a justification for additional funds and personnel for ATF and 2) mobilizing political support for more stringent gun control legislation.

Apparently our bureaucratic and political "servants" failed to realize that the historic ability to control cultural memes via the MSM no longer obtains in the era of "alternative" media. Two dedicated and unpaid members of that alternative media, Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea have, virtually unaided, engaged in the investigative digging, reporting and prodding which has resulted in the exposure of this scandal which in the opinion of this observer far exceeds the importance of the Watergate affair in that the resulting deaths in both the US and Mexico are yet to be enumerated. A daily perusal of both of the above web sites is highly encouraged in order to obtain an understanding of the scope of our rulers efforts to eliminate our liberties.

The most outrageous facet of this scandal is the spin produced by not only the federal agencies complicit in the coverup but the traditional media outlets who serve as government apologists and spin doctors.
By far the best illustration of the of the mentality of these government employed creeps is recorded in an exchange between Mike Vanderboegh and an un-named veteran of government operations which is here reproduced with permission of the author:

Let me tell you what this was, and where it came from, based on a conversation I had with a long-time, well-informed veteran of American government intelligence operations the other day.

"Do you think," he asked me, "that this happened accidentally in a vacuum?" Meaning that one day "Gunwalker Bill" Newell, Phoenix SAC, just got a wild hair and decided to invent his own foreign policy. "Things like this happen because of meetings. People sit in meetings and they decide what they want to happen. And then they take decisions, make policy and implement that policy to achieve those ends." He added, "That's why State is so nervous. They signed off on this. In a meeting."

Gunrunner, I pointed out to him, predated the Obama administration. "Yes, but 'walking guns' didn't." I told him it seemed to me that given the dates on the documents that the meetings crafting this policy must have taken place sometime in mid-2009. "And who took power in January, 2009?" he replied.

He continued, summing up this way. The gun issue was known to be radioactive. Every time the Democrats embraced it they got killed at the polls the next election cycle. What was needed, in Rahm Emanuel's parlance, was a good crisis to exploit, something to change the paradigm. The gun confiscationists had always danced in the blood (my term, not his) of every mass shooting and gotten nowhere, to their chagrin and frustration. What was needed was a game changer. Something that fit the meme of "we've got to tighten up on American gunowners, gun stores and gun shows because they are feeding the slaughter." Mexico was perfect. The ATF controlled the reporting of the statistics, the headlines were lurid and if the rest of us gunnies knew that you don't get automatic weapons, hand grenades and RPGs from gun shows and gun stores, most of the American people were too ignorant of the issue to care about the distinction. But the fact was, as the IG report and other sources concluded, the amount of weapons from those legitimate American sources did not meet the allegation. More importantly the statistics didn't meet the policy need. So, how to "fix" that? Project Gunwalker. If there weren't enough semi-auto "assault rifles" in Mexico, the ATF could fix that. And the murders would follow, justifying the policy change of cracking down on "assault rifles," gun shows and the like.

"So," I said, "you're saying that this was a deliberate attempt by policymakers at the highest levels of the Obama administration to subvert the Second Amendment and further diminish the free exercise of firearm rights of honest citizens?"

"You got it. Sucks, huh?" He laughed bitterly.

I thought of Zed in "Men in Black."

He added, "Of course the meeting transcripts won't reflect the truth so plainly, but then neither did the Wannsee Conference. These bastards always talk in riddles about what they're really after. Watch what they do, not what they say."

Sucks, huh?

Interestingly enough, this humble blogster has in a previous life attended and participated in similar "meetings".

Updated 9 March 2011 @ 17:10 EST

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

A "Brave New World"

2011-03-06T09:49:00.001-05:00

Mostly absent from the recent reporting of widespread unrest in the Mideast is a curiosity concerning the underlying cause of such a seemingly tectonic shift in the political fortunes of so many "tyrannical" governments. The casual references to a sudden awakening of interest in "democratic" governance begs the question as to why after the better part of a century following the departure of the European colonial powers such events would emerge within the span of less than 100 days.

The common denominator throughout the region encompassing the upheaval is the relative poverty of the masses of the population even in regions blessed with substantial natural resources such as petroleum. Those populations are forced to expend larger percentages of their incomes on necessities especially food which has undergone exponential price increases over recent months. This brings to mind the aphorism: "a hungry man is an angry man".

Those of us in "western" society appear to have difficulty grasping such a concept but the likelihood of our experiencing such a reality increases inexorably day by day. The main reason? Enter stage left Mr. Benjamin S. Bernanke and his fellow banksters:

Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke
Before the National Economists Club, Washington, D.C.
November 21, 2002:
".... Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation."

Until August of 1971, international financial accounts were settled with gold. Subsequently, the means for settlement has been (printable) US dollars i.e. the world's "reserve currency". When US dollars are printed or created by electronic fiat irresponsibly the result as we know is inflation and it is exported globally to foreign central banks who are also engaged in currency inflation.

Gold closed last Friday above $1432.00 per troy ounce.

Welcome to the brave new world of inflation.

For the Children!!!

2011-02-26T16:31:00.002-05:00

An Obvious Solution...

2011-02-20T17:15:00.003-05:00

...To the crime problem.

h/t Mike Vanderboegh

"Who You Gonna Believe, The Government or Your Lying Eyes? UPDATED

2011-02-13T21:51:00.009-05:00

It has been many years since this writer first observed the aphorism: "Don't steal; the government hates competition". At the time, the admonition fit nicely onto a bumper sticker and elicited a smile and a chuckle. Likewise, almost everyone is familiar with the proverb regarding 'the only sure things in life are death and taxes". To those two categories could doubtless be added a corollary: the ruling government elite lies systematically in the furtherance of its various agenda items. The case for this assertion is presented convincingly by Judge Andrew Napolitano in his recent publication Lies the Government Told You.

The government consistently promotes its agenda of disarming the U.S. population and relies heavily on the "mainstream" media outlets by touting the meme that the narco terrorists in Mexico are obtaining their arms and weaponry from the same suppliers who sell guns legally to law abiding US citizens e.g. mom and pop gun stores and gun show venders in the southern tier of states.

Since early last year, the [ATF]’s press releases have constantly made mention of the so-called Iron River. Call it branding, sloganeering, or the Big Lie. Say something often enough and people believe it. If the federal agency charged with policing American gun sales keeps talking about an Iron River of illegal gun sales, if the media repeats the menacing meme like a well-meaning mantra, an iron river there must be.
Not a trickle. A river. A steady flow of weapons, moving from Bob’s Gun Stores (or similar) to Los Zetas drug cartel (or similar). A river that must be dammed! Because we’re damned if we don’t. Damned by a personage no less prominent than Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico. Damned, chided and publicly humiliated for our inability to staunch the flow.

Such assertions are eagerly spread from government agency press releases by graduates of leftist journalism schools who are both lazy and anxious to further the government's citizen disarmament agenda.

I recently posted on the likelihood that the ATF was attempting to "pad" the statistics on private US sources for weapons recovered from Mexican drug gangs in order to justify its budget requests. Consider that as it seamlessly dovetails with Parkinson's Law to what has been learned of "Project Gunwalker" especially as evidence surfaces via WikiLeaks that our lying government has known from the get-go that the real main source of the weaponry in the hands of the Mexican cartels is in fact the Pentagon. (scroll up as the link is to the bottom of the posting)

Ask yourself, dear reader how many of the types of weapons displayed in the above graphic are sold at your local gun shop or gun show. If the truth of the matter is ever revealed, the minute trickle of gun shop arms making their way south into Mexico will turn out to be ordinary Mexican citizens attempting to defend themselves from the Zetas and the Sinaloa drug cartel.

UPDATE: TUESDAY 15 FEB 2011 10:05 HRS

[T]he 90 percent number [touted by the agenda driven ATF] was derived from a June 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress on U.S. efforts to combat arms trafficking to Mexico.

According to the GAO report, some 30,000 firearms were seized from criminals by Mexican authorities in 2008. Of these 30,000 firearms, information pertaining to 7,200 of them (24 percent) was submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) for tracing. Of these 7,200 guns, only about 4,000 could be traced by the ATF, and of these 4,000, some 3,480 (87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States.
his means that the 87 percent figure relates to the number of weapons submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF that could be successfully traced and not from the total number of weapons seized by Mexican authorities or even from the total number of weapons submitted to the ATF for tracing. In fact, the 3,480 guns positively traced to the United States equals less than 12 percent of the total arms seized in Mexico in 2008 and less than 48 percent of all those submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing. This means that almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.

The remaining 22,800 firearms seized by Mexican authorities in 2008 were not traced for a variety of reasons. In addition to factors such as bureaucratic barriers and negligence, many of the weapons seized by Mexican authorities either do not bear serial numbers or have had their serial numbers altered or obliterated. It is also important to understand that the Mexican authorities simply don’t bother to submit some classes of weapons to the ATF for tracing. Such weapons include firearms they identify as coming from their own military or police forces, or guns that they can trace back themselves as being sold through the Mexican Defense Department’s Arms and Ammunition Marketing Division (UCAM). Likewise, they do not ask ATF to trace military ordnance from third countries like the South Korean fragmentation grenades commonly used in cartel attacks.

Of course, some or even many of the 22,800 firearms the Mexicans did not submit to ATF for tracing may have originated in the United States. But according to the figures presented by the GAO, there is no evidence to support the assertion that 90 percent of the guns used by the Mexican cartels come from the United States — especially when not even 50 percent of those that were submitted for tracing were ultimately found to be of U.S. origin.

Latin America is awash in weapons that were shipped there over the past several decades to supply the various insurgencies and counterinsurgencies in the region. When these military-grade weapons are combined with the rampant corruption in the region, they quickly find their way into the black arms market. The Mexican cartels have supply-chain contacts that help move narcotics to Mexico from South America, and they are able to use this same network to obtain guns from the black market in South and Central America and then smuggle them into Mexico. While there are many weapons in this category that were manufactured in the United States, the overwhelming majority of the U.S.-manufactured weapons of this third type encountered in Mexico — like LAW rockets and M60 machine guns — come into Mexico from third countries and not directly from the United States.

Mexico's Gun Supply and the 90 Percent Myth is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

A Short-Notice Invitation

2011-02-07T09:32:00.000-05:00

For those readers within ~~puking~~ reasonable traveling distance of the District of ~~Criminals~~ Columbia, you are invited to:

The historic first hearing of Chairman Ron Paul's monetary policy [sub]committee, to expose the Fed as the prime creator of unemployment and so much human suffering, will take place at: 10:00AM on Wednesday, February 9, 2011, in Room 2128 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the main hearing room of the Financial Services Committee. The witnesses include the eloquent Austro-free-market stars Thomas DiLorenzo of Loyola College and Richard Vedder of Ohio University.

Source

Glimmerings of a Eureka Moment

2011-02-04T13:44:00.001-05:00

More evidence emerges daily supporting the assertion engendered in my previous post as evidenced by the below embedded video produced by the main stream financial media. Heretofore the fiat currency dots were connected only by such "fringe" voices as Peter Shiff, the followers of Ludwig VonMises and the Austrian school of economics.

The so called "main stream" economic scholars are beginning to understand that the recent and ongoing unpleasantness in the middle east is driven by the planet's largest central banks causing inflation in the commodity (food) markets by running the printing presses in overdrive. As the talking head in the video points out, the poor in the Arab world must spend 80% of their income on food and food prices continue to rise exponentially. The populations of those countries are lashing out at their only available targets, the oppressive regimes tormenting them which in most instances are propped up by the American Empire.

Until recently the US through military and economic aid to tyrants in the region has been able to precariously maintain the political status quo. Those days are swiftly coming to an end as the US treasury is effectively bankrupt. We are very likely beginning to reap what our corrupt rulers have sown.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

cross posted at: Eternity Road

The End Game Begins

2011-01-28T17:11:00.004-05:00

Recent postings and comments here as well as on other sites appear to be assuming a somber note. Can it be that the citizenry is at last awakening to the precarious nature of Western culture in general and the American empire specifically? We are now beginning to hear even the "One" speak of the "unsustainability" of our present economic and financial direction. However, can he be taken seriously when in the next breath he proposes we "invest" additional (borrowed) treasure in a rail scheme which has already been proven bankrupt?

If one does not have his head buried in either the sand or his rectal cavity he should be beginning to consider individual options for dealing with the deteriorating situation. What continues to amaze this observer is the debate on how the now ongoing collapse can be reversed by "cutting expenditures" on this or that government "program" by some miniscule sum. By miniscule, we continue to insist on defining such "cuts" as mere billions of dollars (Federal Reserve banknotes) of increases in future growth.

The time is now past when such a discussion is relevant to the real world. The Empire has begun collapsing around us and academic debate over which interest group's sacred cow is to be slaughtered and whose is to be spared serves little objective purpose. We have been overtaken by events. An example would be the back and forth over reductions in the "defense" budget. It may or may not be advisable to maintain hundreds of thousands of military personnel and hardware thousands of miles from our shores. More importantly, how can such policies be pursued when the means for supporting them is borrowed from our likely competitors? As in the later part of the fourth century Roman empire, the legions will be retreating from the periphery whether or not it pleases the emperor.

If you look at what they pay, you will think them abundant in riches, but if you look at what they actually possess, you will find them poverty stricken. Who can judge an affair of this wretchedness? They bear the payment of the rich and endure the poverty of beggars...

It now behooves individual families to consider which tools will be useful in addressing the cascading of events. The only sure wager is that the world of 5-10(?) years hence will be substantially changed from what obtains today. For example, will that hoard of gold bullion coins and bags of junk silver serve to ameliorate the dearth of what are now considered necessities? Will we be able to defend from predators consisting of starving mobs of our fellow citizens or a desperate and dying government the meager means of continuing a brutish existence? Only those of the remnant either blessed or cursed by experiencing these most dangerous of times will be equipped to record the events for the enlightenment of future generations. Make no mistake, just as a wounded beast is the most dangerous of creatures, a dying empire is a most murderous enemy of the lives, liberty and property of its subjects.

If there is a God may he have mercy on us all. Meanwhile, keep the powder dry and sell your liberty as dearly as possible.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Historic Parallels

2011-01-25T14:23:00.003-05:00

Tonight we will be treated or subjected (depending on your viewpoint) to the Kabuki theater performance known as the "State of the Union" address by the President of the United States. Rumor has it that POTUS will be pushing for increased "investment" in national infrastructure and "research" in order to "restore" competitiveness. It is further rumored that POTUS will acknowledge the negative impact of excessive regulation on the nation's economy and in addressing the situation will impose additional regulations. In other words: "the beatings will continue until morale improves".

The President will doubtless urge the Congress to increase the national debt ceiling by at least another trillion dollars in order to "buy time" to implement "deficit reduction". Have we heard this before? Since Congress first enacted a debt ceiling has it EVER failed to raise that ceiling in order to accommodate the increased ~~spending~~ investment? I thought not. Why not simply repeal the so called debt ceiling and continue borrowing until our creditors finally wise up and refuse to finance the spending addiction? It is only a matter of time until the inevitable day of reckoning arrives. The question answers itself. The current political class assumes the collapse can be postponed until they are safely retired.

Additionally, there is always the Federal Reserve which will; and is arguably now acting as the lender of last resort by buying government bonds with freshly created banknotes and electronic digits. This practice is already resulting in the inflation that government hastens daily to deny, understanding that the booboisie will eventually realize that the 2% Fed inflation target (soon to be spiraling upward) is in fact a tax. The government profits from inflation when it prints additional banknotes by being the first to spend them before their inflationary impact works its evil on the rest of the serfs. This is an ancient practice dating from at least the later Roman Empire where taxes were required to be paid in unclipped gold coins but imperial expenditures were paid in clipped or debased coins at face value.

The government schools of recent decades when deigning to teach history at all, which is increasingly rare, offer up a sanitized version of past "civilizations". These versions generally designate the fall of the western Roman empire in Europe as A.D. 476 when a descent into the "dark ages" occurred. This factual distortion conveniently obscures the economic/cultural situation which obtained in fourth and fifth century Europe.

One of the great weaknesses of standard accounts of the Middle Ages is that they compare the poverty of the provinces with the wealth of the city of Rome in the early Empire. This is completely misleading. The comparison should be between the provinces in the first century with the provinces five centuries or more later. Here, the typical serf was better off under the manorial system of the so-called "dark ages" than the slave had been in Augustus' day. Farming was more efficient, due to crop rotation. Metallurgy was more advanced. Road building was not, but the roads had been more for military control than trade.

Economic historian Robert Latouche as far back as 1956 argued that, in comparison to the heartland of Western Europe in the early Roman Empire, economic conditions were better during the dark ages. Another economic historian, Rondo Cameron, two decades ago wrote that "medieval Europe experienced a flowering of technological creativity and economic dynamism that contrasts strongly with the routine of the ancient Mediterranean world.

During the rule of the later Roman emperors citizens were legally bound to their taxing districts and sons were forced to enter the trades and occupations of their fathers. We see the beginnings of such a system today in the US where income earned outside of the country by expatriate citizens is taxed as if it were earned within the US.

Another measure of what our government has wrought is comparing the value of our (infinite) currency today to the purchasing power of a finite commodity such as gold. During the reign of Augustus Caesar in the first century an ounce of gold bought a quality robe/toga or a suit of armor. The services of a Roman scribe-messenger could be obtained for the better part of a month for an ounce of gold. In 1910 an ounce of gold equalled US $20.00 which was the price of a quality man's suit. In 2011 an equivalent man's suit is priced at $1,300.00 about equal to an ounce of gold or the wages of an urban messenger for the better part of a month.

This is the work of the Federal Reserve Bank whose enabling act of 1913 stated its purpose as "stabilizing" the value of our currency. How's that working out?

cross posted at: Eternity Road

End of a "National" Monopoly?

2011-01-18T19:23:00.000-05:00

I hope it would not be overly presumptuous of this humble blogster to assume that you, dear readers (all three of you) are aware that there are several states in this once perfect union who are in dire financial straits due to having overspent their budgets by substantial sums. California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey come immediately to mind with the attendant handwringing on the part of their spendthrift politicians.

That sigh of relief by residents of more parsimonious states who have assured themselves that the inevitable economic pain will be confined to the populations of the bankrupt states are in for a rude awakening.

The actions of the central bank, The Federal Reserve, are not controlled by a Congress who, due to the political climate revealed by last November's mid term elections may decline to bail out the spendthrift states. If Mr Bernanke elects to purchase the soon to default state and municipal bonds of these entities (naturally at face value) those bonds will soon join the worthless "assets" lounging on this or that taxpayer guaranteed "balance sheet".

As disastrous as the above described nightmare scenario is, imagine the following: California resorts to printing "legal tender" dollars at its printing presses in Sacramento. Preposterous you say? Compare such a national disintegrating event with what we just learn is happening in the European Union:

In news reports that have thus far not attracted much attention, the Irish Central Bank has been printing euros out of thin air to prop up its ailing banks. The whole of Europe will pay for this action, as the result will be increased euro-zone price inflation. We can only imagine the reactions of Germans if this continues – though apparently the Irish action is legal from the EU's standpoint so long as the ECB is "informed" in advance and approves. As is often the case, we doubted our reaction to the news, so we went trolling the ‘Net to see if anyone shared our instinctive reaction that this was overwhelmingly bad news for the euro. Here's one comment we found:
"Wait... have I just slipped into a parallel universe? Is this some sort of early April's fools joke? Doesn't this defeat the entire point of a single currency and the ECB? Were the rules changed on the quiet without anyone noticing?"

The nations (states) who responsibly "lived within their means" will be handed the bill for profligate states' irrational policies. This is the stuff of which revolutions are made. We are indeed living in "interesting" times.

Got food and ammo?

cross posted at: Eternity Road

US Government Bureaucracy Smuggling Guns to Mexican Drug Cartels?

2011-01-06T21:47:00.000-05:00

A thread running through much of the reporting of violence along and mostly south of the Mexican-US border is that most of the weaponry used by the Mexican drug cartels is supplied by private sources in the US and smuggled south.

"Federal authorities say more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years, helping fuel the violence that has contributed to 30,000 deaths. Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to Washington in May and urged Congress and President Obama to stop the flow of guns south."

The Washington Post article quoted above refers as you can see to, "Federal authorities" who are charged with gathering and collating statistics relating to firearms. Enter BATFE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. After examining the statistics published by the "authorities" several US gun rights groups whom the Post refers to as "the gun lobby" found several problems and inconsistencies. Firstly, only an unknown portion of the weapons seized in Mexican crimes were sent to the US for identification and the "authorities" claimed that "80-90% of them could be traced to private sources in the US e.g. licensed gun dealers. When these statistics were challenged and it was pointed out that the cartel members, especially those involved in the Acapulco Police Massacre and similar crimes prefer fully automatic weapons such as AR 16s and AK 47s which are not available from non governmental US sources, the ATF simply discontinued publishing the statistics.

Recently and since the death of a US Border Patrol agent in a shootout in Arizona, allegations have surfaced that the source of the weapon used in the agent's death was possibly the ATF field office in Phoenix and it's attempt to "pad statistics" by transferring weaponry into Mexico without consulting the Mexican government:

    •    ATF’s Phoenix office allowed the guns to go across the border.
    •    The ATF office in Mexico was denied permission to share this information with their Mexican counterparts. Believing this was wrong, they went over the heads of the Phoenix office and requested permission directly from headquarters in DC.
    •    The higher-ups sided with the Phoenix decision to withhold the information from Mexican authorities.

If this is true, there are some federal bureaucrats that are in need of serious jail time.

It is common knowledge that the Mexican drug cartels pay their "employees" substantially more than the Mexican military and law enforcement. Thus the desertion rate of Mexican police and military trained personnel is extremely high and these deserters take with them the issued automatic weaponry which was originally supplied by US military and law enforcement agencies.

The efforts by lapdog mainstream media and federal bureaucracies to paint gun dealers in the US as complicit in the ongoing bloodbath in Mexico is one of a piece with the gun control lobby's effort to disarm law abiding US citizens. The apparent attempt by ATF bureaucrats to pad gun trafficking statistics in order to defend their fiefdom and pursue a citizen disarmament agenda needs to be investigated by an independent agency. It is also time to end the failed "drug war" which like most prohibitionist projects only serves to increase the price of the prohibited product thus generating lucre for criminals.

Déjà vu all Over Again

2011-01-04T17:25:00.002-05:00

One of the first orders of business for the 112th Congress which will convene this week will be a debate on increasing the national debt limit. As of today the national debt surpasses $14 trillion. The statutorily imposed limit of $14.294 trillion was signed into law on 1 June 2010 a mere 7 months ago by President Obama. The president appears anxious to sign a new and increased debt limit as soon as it is passed by Congress in order to avoid what one of his advisors characterizes as a catastrophe involving a government default on its obligations and an inability to borrow more money.

The debate is likely to become contentious as "Some Republicans in the new Congress have said they'll seek to block an increase in the Debt Ceiling unless a plan is in place to significantly reduce federal spending and unfunded government liabilities on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare." Your humble blogster's bluff detector has just gone off. Regardless of the sturm und drang, the political game of chicken will end with a hefty increase in the debt ceiling and the can will continue to be kicked down the road to the point of collapse wherein there will be no fools left other than the printers at Mr.Bernanke's Fed willing to bid on U.S. Treasury bonds.

Nevertheless, plan on hearing political speeches such as the following in the halls of the Capitol:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

The above are the words of Senator Barak Hussein Obama on 20 March 2006. Boys and girls; we are in DEEP doo doo.

Swedish Man Loses His (other) Head

2010-12-30T21:14:00.000-05:00

In the ~~socialized medicine~~ health care reform debate the president has taken a bit of flack from ~~socialists~~ progressives for not expending more political capital in order to achieve "single payer" health care here in the US. In point of fact, "single payer" as it refers to the progressives' concept of health care is a gross misstatement. A true single payer system would consist of the health care consumer paying for it out of pocket whereas the progressives would have the taxpayers (that's multiple payers) pick up the tab. The following is an interesting but not surprising outcome of socialized single payer ~~lack of~~ health care.

A Swedish man was forced to have his penis amputated after waiting more than a year to learn he had cancer.
The man, who is in his sixties, first visited a local clinic in Blekinge in southern Sweden in September 2009 for treatment of a urinary tract infection, the local Blekinge Läns Tidning (BLT) reported.

When he returned in March 2010 complaining of foreskin irritation, the doctor on duty at the time diagnosed the problem as a simple case of inflammation.

After three weeks passed without the prescribed treatment alleviating the man’s condition, he was instructed to seek further treatment at Blekinge Hospital.

But it took five months before he was able to schedule an appointment at the hospital.

When he finally met with doctors at the hospital, the man was informed he had cancer and his penis would have to be removed.

It remains unclear if the man would have been able to keep his penis had the cancer been detected sooner.

"If it's any consolation, he's probably better off without it. Given what we've learned about Swedish law from the Julian Assange case, those things just get you into trouble over there."

h/t: James Taranto

Government Agencies at Work

2010-12-30T09:38:00.004-05:00

Warning: R rated narration!

H/T William L. Anderson

Something to Ponder on Boxing Day

2010-12-26T14:40:00.000-05:00

Even an intensive study of history can result in no more than an absorption of limited data. The known "facts" available to us do not constitute even a miniscule quantity of the fund of human history. We are therefore forced to develop a philosophy of history as even the data which have survived the ravages of time were recorded by fallible human beings who viewed events through the prism of their own prejudices and cultural biases. This has been the case in the view of this writer for even such meticulous historians as Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus, Plutarch, Tacitus and Sozomen to name but a few of the more scrupulous historians of the ancient Mediterranean world.

Enough of the works of the above scholars as well as others have however survived to supply us with at least an imperfect view of the great historical powers including their ascendancy and decline. Perhaps one of the most important literary works on the subject is Edward Gibbon's classic "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", the first Volume of which was published beginning in 1776, eerily concomitant with the US Declaration of Independence. The following is an excerpt from Vol. I chapter 3:

The [western] Roman government [seated in Ravenna after 402 AD] appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects. The severe inquisition, which confiscated their goods and tortured their persons, compelled the subjects of Valentinian [III] (425-455 AD) to prefer the simple tyranny of the barbarians, to fly to the woods or the mountains, or to embrace the vile and abject condition of mercenary servants. They abjured and abhorred the name of Roman citizens, which had formerly excited the ambition of all mankind. If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour. [Gibbon uses the term "severe inquisition" in referring to the Roman equivalent to our Internal Revenue Service.]

Do you, gentle reader note any similarities to the conditions now obtaining here in "the freest nation on earth"; a nation that requires a submission to illegal searches as a precondition for air travel, criminal penalties for ingesting or even possession of proscribed substances which cause no injury to third parties? The US and its provincial "states" today exhibit many of the characteristics which evinced the decline of the Roman Empire. These conditions to mention but few, include the debasement of the currency by the creation and exponential augmentation of fiat, unbacked paper/electronic money in the US as compared to the coin-clipping and precious metal debasement by Roman emperors as well as the proliferation of obscure and arcane laws. As in the declining era of the Roman Empire, our citizens are precluded from engaging in any enterprise except by the leave of the federal and/or local government and the payment of a myriad of arbitrary fees as well as submission to countless stifling regulations put in place at the behest of the new priesthood of environmentalists by our nanny state rulers. Real property is for all practical purposes owned by the state and deeded (leased) out to private entities in exchange for payment of unilaterally determined rents (taxes). The lower orders of the populace are purchased and kept quiescent by the means of seizing wealth from the industrious and transferring it to the indolent or failing that, borrowing the largess from foreign potential foes. Infiltration of the borders by foreigners who decline to assimilate into the host culture is also a condition existing in both the later Roman Empire and the United States of recent decades. Continuing proposals here such as the (for now) defeated "DREAM" act mirror the gradual displacement of Roman citizens in its legions by foreign tribesmen.

Fitzroy McLean sums up succinctly in this quote what he observes as the collapse of western civilization as we now know it:

In the very near future the only truly admirable and moral profession will be a smuggler. There will be genuine heroes that ply that trade moving goods and people in service of humanity, although it will be illegal. This goes to the death rattle of the nation state, which will almost certainly be violent and oppressive. The US and Europe will have an underground railway and covert information highway.

The insidious metamorphosis of our nation into a collectivist state seems to go unnoticed and unremarked by the bulk of our younger population which appears to have been indoctrinated into its acceptance of and by a government "education" system controlled by a ruling elite primarily concerned with enjoying the perquisites of power.

The question arises: can the inexorably approaching collapse be averted? It is the view of this writer that the tipping point has already been passed and is apparent in the disregard by both ourselves and our rulers of the restraints placed upon government by the founders of the Republic. The interregnum following the collapse is likely to be bloody and tumultuous with a restoration of the status quo ante as regards liberty, unlikely. Western culture previously endured nearly a millennium before an awakening and given the most optimistic outcome, those living today are unlikely to experience the next one. These are the views held by one who approaches threescore and fifteen years of observing the descent and he would be overjoyed to be proven overly pessimistic.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-26T13:02:00.008-05:00

This is the original 1943 (WW II) version of the song written for the musical Meet Me in St Louis and it brought tears to the eyes of grown men who were often far from home and dying for their country.

STEAL THIS POSTING!!!

2010-12-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

It has been some time since Leonidas was a grunt (formerly dogface) in the Army of the United States (hint: the term refers to the conscripted Army). It appears however, that some things haven't changed substantially. The following essay describes the practice of "over classification" of documents. It has been going on for at least decades but has taken an ugly turn since the emergence of highly politicized and undeclared wars:

American Soldiers Should Be First in Line To Defend Bradley Manning

by Andrew Mason and Mark R. Crovelli

One of the most curious facets of the ongoing Wikileaks saga is the conspicuous silence of the American military about the Bradley Manning case. The military’s silence is absolutely deafening, for example, on the pages of Stars and Stripes, where only two articles in the turbulent month of December have even deigned to mention Mr. Manning. One would expect that, in a case involving the largest leak of classified documents in the history of the world, the armed forces would be staking out a concrete position on this case for the entire world, and especially the armed forces, to see. After all, it was one of the armed forces’ own who allegedly released the documents to Wikileaks, and other active-duty servicemen with access to classified documents may be considering doing the very same thing as Manning.
This silence emanating from the armed forces regarding Manning raises a fascinating and important question: What position should the armed forces take with regard to the Manning case? We all know what stance the Pentagon is likely to take, given that many of the embarrassing documents actually refer to people in the Pentagon, but the question that truly needs to be answered concerns the position the armed forces should take – especially the position that average soldiers should take on Bradley Manning.
The answer, it turns out, cannot be discovered by facilely pointing out that it is illegal under military law for soldiers to release classified information to the public. This is true, because the document classification system has been manipulated by political and military elites in a way that is extremely prejudicial to average soldiers. Ironically, this fact has itself been revealed by the Wikileaks releases, because it is clear that political and military elites are over-classifying documents in order to protect their own asses. They have been classifying documents "secret" even when they involve nothing more than gossip about foreign diplomats and royalty, for example. Peruse the Wikileaks files for two minutes and you will get a good sense of just how absurd the document classification system in the United States has become.
Insofar as the document classification system in the U.S. has been absurdly extended and abused, this has created a serious moral problem for conscientious soldiers in the armed forces. For, by over-classifying documents, political and military elites are able to hamstring their subordinates and make the exposure of what they are doing virtually impossible, unless it is leaked. Any unsavory, illegal, untruthful or even just plain embarrassing information can be hidden from public view simply by stamping the offensive document "secret." It is also a way for political and military elites to avoid prosecution for crimes in the United States by claiming that their defense involves "sensitive" or "secret" documents that cannot be revealed in open court. This strategy is so common in our corrupted day and age that it even has a name: "greymail."
In essence, then, the document classification system in the United States has warped into an instrument of intimidation against average, conscientious soldiers who might be appalled by their superiors’ words or deeds. Superior officers and civilian bureaucrats can preempt dissent by simply stamping incriminating documents "secret," and use that tiny word as a threat against conscientious soldiers that they had better keep their mouths shut – or else. This threat is all the more unconscionable while two wars are going on that are killing average American soldiers, not political and military elites, in droves. When lies are used to get American soldiers killed, and soldiers are intimidated to preempt the exposure of those lies, you have a recipe for tragedy on a massive scale.
It is important to bear in mind, moreover, that we are not talking about documents upon which the safety of the United States rests. No high-ranking officers would be stupid or reckless enough to share such sensitive documents with low-level officers and enlistees. If they were that mind bogglingly idiotic, then the entire Pentagon and officer corps ought to be forced to resign for incompetence immediately. In addition, the fact that people in Washington routinely leak documents to the press that are far more sensitive to national security than those Manning released, like the National Intelligence Estimate, testifies to the existence of a revolting double standard being applied to political and military elites as compared to the standard being applied to average soldiers like Mr. Manning.
Bearing these observations in mind, it ought to be obvious that average soldiers should celebrate Bradley Manning as a hero who stood up to this unconscionable intimidation from above. He didn’t just reveal to the world that the upper echelons of the political and military establishment are engaged in outright crimes and deception; he revealed and took a stand against conscientious soldiers being silenced by asinine document over-classification. He is, in other words, a defender of the honor and integrity of the average soldier and the Army’s own core values, which stands in stark contrast to the depravity of the political and military elites that we meet in the Wikileaks documents, and who are now trampling on the constitution even in their detention of Mr. Manning.
Thus, average soldiers ought to be the first in line to defend Bradley Manning. They ought to insist that he only be punished if it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the documents he released were indeed of vital importance to the security of the United States. If this cannot be proven, then Mr. Manning ought to be immediately and unconditionally released. (Proving this in Mr. Manning’s case will be extremely difficult, however, given that Defense Secretary Gates has already asserted that the documents have harmed no one, and the fact that the Pentagon didn’t even think it necessary to redact names from the documents). The assumption going forward, now that we know for a fact that documents are being over-classified in abundance by political and military elites, is that any released document is not vital to national security until conclusively proven otherwise. If average soldiers were to operate under this assumption, moreover, political and military elites would be forced to take the time to actually hide any truly sensitive documents from the view of hundreds of thousands of people, as they should have been doing from day one.
It was long overdue for someone to stand up against the practice of over-classifying documents in order to intimidate average soldiers. Bradley Manning has courageously done so, and all members of the armed forces should rejoice for it.

December 22, 2010

Andrew Mason is a former corporal in the U.S.M.C. Mark R. Crovelli [send him mail] writes from Denver, Colorado.

Adiós Madams Liberty and Justice

2010-12-19T15:58:00.003-05:00

As is the case these days with most of us connected to the internet, this blogster receives a fair number of forwarded emails in addition to the usual spam. This morning's harvest of such missives included a message forwarded by the widow of one of Leonidas' army buddies with whom casual contact has spanned many years. The following is excerpted from that forwarded message:

11. It's the Veteran, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press.
It's the Veteran, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech.
It's the Veteran, not the community organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate.
It's the Military who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.

It is reasonable and appropriate to harbor feelings of gratitude toward those who participate in the defense of our nation and communities, but I am driven to disagree with the assertion that persons who have participated in defending the national interests have "given" us such liberties that the government deigns to refrain from denying us. Indeed, the liberties that we yet retain are inexorably diminishing as I type this essay and one need only consider the many thousands of pages in the Federal Register to understand the magnitude of the loss.

Military conscription in the US ended most recently in 1973 and for that reason one must more or less volunteer (hopefully based on informed choice) to subject ones self to the body of laws consisting of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governing members of the military. These laws, in the interest of discipline, differ in some procedural respects from civilian legal usages.

Having noted the distinctions between the two justice systems, one is forced to be curious as to precisely what rights are forfeited by members of the military. Let us consider the provision in the VI th Amendment to the Constitution requiring a "speedy...trial": An army private first class, one Bradley Manning "was arrested on July 29 ... for allegedly downloading... classified material while serving on an Army base outside Baghdad." It is duly noted that UCMJ does not provide for bail pending court martial proceedings, however the conditions under which Manning has been detained would seem to argue against a prolonged delay based on humanitarian considerations.

"At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards...PFC Manning is held in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day...The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes [day and night] by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay...He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow...He is not allowed to have any personal items in his cell...He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop...He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk. PFC Manning normally just walks figure eights in the room for the entire hour. If he indicates that he no long[er] feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell...When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts and surrender his clothing to the guards. His clothing is returned to him the next morning."

According to a computer researcher who has bi monthly contact with Manning:..."he is starting to deteriorate. Over the last few weeks I have noticed a steady decline in his mental and physical wellbeing," he said. His prolonged confinement in a solitary holding cell is unquestionably taking its toll on his intellect; his inability to exercise due to [prison] regulations has affected his physical appearance in a manner that suggests physical weakness."

May I remind you dear reader that this individual, a citizen of these United States has not been convicted as yet of any crime. The reasons offered by our government for confining PFC Manning under these conditions are due to his being held on "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch". Is it any coincidence that we learn: " Justice Department officials are said to be looking for evidence of collusion between him and Assange to build a case against the 39-year-old WikiLeaks founder...and that the U.S. had offered Manning a plea bargain in exchange for his naming Assange as his co-conspirator"? But then we all know that our "federal rulers" would never suborn perjury; especially in order to obtain a conviction against one who has seriously embarrassed them (wink wink nudge nudge).

cross posted at: Eternity Road

The Lynch Mob Gathers

2010-12-10T13:35:00.005-05:00

Greetings gentle readers. For some time there has, in the opinion of this humble blogster, been a pernicious myth permeating our society. The myth involves the idea that our nation is the beacon of "freedom" on the global stage. Indeed, when compared to many nation states as well as super-national conglomerations such as the European Union and the Russian Federation the US citizen enjoys a measure of (but vanishing quantity of) liberty.

Prior to the days of "diversity", the national security state, zero tolerance, progressivism and environmentalism our society was a much freer one. Indeed, in order to institute national alcohol prohibition in 1920 our rulers, finding no such authorization in the constitution, proposed and the several states ratified the XVIIIth amendment. How times have changed! It is not fantasy to conceive that recent Congresses (Congri?) would legislate such a prohibition without recourse to the amendment process and when questioned would reply: "Are you serious"?

Until the advent of the United Nations in 1945 it was inconceivable that our nation would engage in warfare lacking legitimately declared hostilities under Article I sec 8 of the Constitution. The last time the US legally declared a state of war was 5 June 1942. In June of 1950 our military forces were committed to hostilities on the Korean peninsula under the auspices of a United Nations "police action" resolution. Since that time all armed conflicts involving the US military have proceeded sans the legal niceties described in our constitution but with the occasional sanction of a congressional resolution or a perfunctory genuflection toward the "War Powers Act".

This is all understandable as historically the public has countenanced violations of constitutionally "protected" liberties during declared hostilities e.g. the Palmer raids subsequent to WW I enforcing the Espionage Act of 1917 and the ordered internment of US citizens of Japanese ancestry in 1942. We have now ~~descended~~ progressed to a public outcry amounting to blood lust demanding the trial/execution/assassination of a foreign national for "treason".

Strangely enough, the previous outcry against the WikiLeaks dump last summer involving the Iraq and Afghan files failed to generate the level of outrage accompanying the recently published State department unredacted cables. Can it be that the previous releases were less embarrassing to the ruling class but now their subterfuge, arrogance and incompetence are revealed for all to view? Just askin'.

In any event is it not ironic that Mr Assange was finally taken down for sex "crimes" committed in the Feminazi Republic of Sweden and we now await Eric Holder's efforts to discover an appropriate crime to utilize for the show trial? Perhaps Mr Assange can plead honorary membership in the New Black Panthers in order to quash the investigation. It is all reminiscent of Leventry Beria's statement to Stalin: "Show me the man and I will find the crime".

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Enemy of the State Updated

2010-12-03T00:43:00.004-05:00

If any of you gentle readers were entertained and or amused by the cinematic 1998 production "Enemy of the State" starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman this humble blogster would hasten to call your attention to the present and ongoing saga of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen and founder of the notorious web site Wikileaks. Last year Wikileaks released many thousands of electronic documents dealing with the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents had been "classified" by agencies of the US government and were at variance with many official information releases. It was asserted that the publication of these sensitive documents could/would result in retributive actions on "innocent" assets of intelligence agencies of the US and its allies.

When recently questioned, Admiral Mike Mullen chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff was unable to cite one instance of an intelligence asset being harmed as a result of wikileaks' document dumps. Conversely:

"The major government players such as the CIA and the Pentagon do not stop at just Julian but also target many WikiLeaks volunteers or associates. Two volunteers and an American WikiLeaks spokesperson have been detained and questioned in the United States along with other individuals alleged to be participant to his publishing activities ... The result is a constant need for legal and political support and managing this from afar and throughout many continents is no small task. Furthermore Julian Assange does not take these matters lightly having been privy to bad experiences in the past - while working on the extra judicial assassinations taking place in Kenya, two WikiLeaks' affiliates [were] assassinated."

The most recent instance of political harassment of Mr Assange is the issuance of an interpol warrant for his arrest, by the government of Sweden; not for espionage or theft of documents but for "Sex by Surprise"(???) which involves a fine equivalent to US $715.00. The warrant arises from incidents occurring in August 2010 involving:

"The strange tale of Assange's brief flings with two Swedish women during a three-day period...and decisions by three different prosecutors to first dismiss rape allegations made by the women and then re-open the case...

[O]ne of Assange's accusers sounds tailor-made for those who think Assange is being set up in Sweden by dark CIA-backed operatives who want him smeared or silenced for his document dumping. She's a 31-year-old blond academic and member of the Social Democratic Party who's known for her radical feminist views, once wrote a treatise on how to take revenge against men and was once thrown out of Cuba for subversive activities." Assange arrived in Sweden on Aug. 11 to speak at a weekend seminar sponsored by the Social Democratic Party and arranged to stay at a Stockholm apartment belonging to the event organizer, a member of the branch of the party who would become one of Assange's two accusers.

According to a police report obtained by the Daily Mail in August, she and Assange had sex, and at some point the condom broke. While she was apparently not happy about the condom breaking, the two were seen the next day at the seminar, and nothing appeared amiss.

Another woman at the seminar, a 27-year-old art photographer, said in her police statement that she'd come to hear Assange's lecture because of her fascination with him and his work. She can be seen in video footage on the Internet sitting in the front row during Assange's lecture, wearing a pink sweater and snapping pictures of him.

According to the police report, the woman managed to get an invitation to go out for lunch with Assange and his entourage after the seminar. They spent time together before he went back to stay at the event organizer's apartment.

Two days later, on Aug. 16, they reconnected by phone and the woman invited him to her apartment, more than 40 miles outside Stockholm. She paid for the ticket since Assange apparently had no cash and doesn't like to use credit cards because they could be traced.

She complained in her police statement that during the train ride to her hometown, "he paid more attention to his computer rather than me." She also said that by the time they arrived at her apartment, "the passion and excitement seemed to have disappeared."

You can't make this stuff up.

It should be pointed out that none of the released wikileak documents have been challenged as unauthentic but are extremely embarrassing to many high powered players on the global political scene including US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

For this writer, the most disturbing issue of this entire sordid situation is the blood lust by many supposed conservative defenders of the rule of law. There have been calls for Assange and his associates to be declared "terrorists" and enemy combatants indicating they should be dealt with outside the law. Jonah Goldberg, a conservative syndicated columnist asked "why wasn't Julian Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"

Enemy of the State indeed. It would appear that sunshine and truth are serious crimes in our Brave New World.

UPDATE 4 Dec 2010 12:13 hrs EST

As an update for anyone interested in evidence that the Swedish charges are a frameup please visit here and here. The "authorities" wish to have Assange returned to Sweden and enact Ex Post Facto legislation in order to criminalize acts which were at the time not illegal. Sweden has no constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder or ex post facto laws.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Evil But Not Stupid

2010-11-25T09:30:00.003-05:00

Faced with the likelihood of massive resistance to the outrageous and demeaning process of obtaining government permission to board a commercial airline flight, what is a tyrannical bureaucracy to do? Answer: simply remove (temporarily) the triggering source(s) of the resistance i.e. the porno scanners and sexual groping. Voila! It worked, and nary a single aircraft was brought down or hijacked by a terrorist.

On one of the busiest traveling days of the year there were no reports of disruptions at any of the airports caused by travelers "opting out" of being irradiated and thus "requiring" to be groped and fondled by the TSA gestapo perverts.

Gee. Do any of you gentle readers now understand that the major reasons for implementing the recent procedures were not really to improve "security" but only to create the illusion of increased safety while enriching special interests and encouraging us to surrender more of our liberties to the all powerful government?

As for this aging Spartan, he will resume domestic commercial flights when he is not denied his right of self defense against criminals and terrorists while hurtling through the troposphere in an aluminum tube.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

From Pete Blome on the TSA

2010-11-23T22:48:00.001-05:00

As this is not cited as an official Libertarian Party of Florida communication, I will take this as a personal transmission, albeit with a request for wide distribution.
Consider it distributed.
All 22 quotes are attributed.
Are we going to sit for this? If we are, then we're no longer citizens. We're cattle, and the stun gun is right around the corner. Mark my words.

(ed: In response to the question in the subject line below, our President has never seen a piece of the Constitution he's not willing to wipe his ass with... oh, and speaking of which, you will be happy to know that he's "making a list" of all who "resist" this new Neo-Nazi crap. Assuming that report is accurate (and I have no reason to believe it is not) I stand proudly on it along with Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz and millions of other red-blooded Americans who believe in the Constitution, The Rule of Law and our unalienable rights - rights given by our Creator. Government may not grant that which it never possessed; rights and privileges are often confused as I noted yesterday on Blogtalk. I, for one, will not go willingly into the gas-filled showers of the American version of Auschwitz.)

Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 16:48

Subject: Violations of the 4th Amendment

Or doesn't that matter anymore?

The following are 22 quotes about enhanced pat downs and TSA groping. They are presented without commentary because they speak for themselves. Please share these quotes as widely as possible. If Americans do not wake up now, when will they ever wake up?….
#1 Blogger Erin Chase:
I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.
#2 ABC News producer Carolyn Durand:
“The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around.”
#3 Wendy James Gigliotti:
“She said ’spread your legs.’ And then she took her full palms and started at my neck and ran all the way down my body, full palms, constant contact. And when she got down to my feet, she was in constant contact from my ankles all the way up to my groin, across my groin, and down the other leg. And she did that twice.”
#4 Female air traveler Ella Swift:
“The female officer ran her hand up the inside of my leg to my groin and she did it so hard and so rough she lifted me off my heels.”
#5 Flight attendant Cathy Bossi:
“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’. And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”
#6 Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano:
“I think we all understand the concerns Americans have. It’s something new. Most Americans are not used to a real law enforcement pat-down like that.”
#7 A 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor:
“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”
#8 An anonymous TSA worker:
“Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me. …These comments are painful and demoralizing.”
#9 Robert Colella:
If some total stranger walked up to you in the street and said “I am either going to see you naked or touch your genitals”, What would be the likelihood of that person walking away from that encounter?
#10 CNN employee Rosemary Fitzpatrick:
“As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!”
#11 Meagan Quinn:
I will not board an airplane in America until the TSA body scanners are gone. No one is seeing my naked body unless I let them. I will also not settle for being GROPED in public as an alternative.
#12 A lawsuit filed on behalf of a female college student from Amarillo Texas:
“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area.”
#13 Bruce Sargent:
The sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib is not so very different then the sexual humiliation being heaped on American air travelers at airports. Why is TSA torturing us to protect us?
#14 A 37-year-old Texas woman who had her nipple ring removed with a pair of pliers before she was allowed to pass through security:
“My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”
#15 A soldier returning from Afghanistan:
“So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.”
#16 A flight attendant named Megan:
The agent went up my right leg first and then met my vagina with full force….the same on the other leg with the same result. She then used both of her hands to feel my breasts and squeezing them. At this point I was in shock.
#17 Jay Glover:
I spend on average $30K per year on business travel. The airlines get the bulk of this but hotels, car rentals, meals and miscellaneous expenses add up as well. Where I can cut travel, I will. When those associated with airport travel feel the financial pinch just watch how fast this all will change.
#18 Paul Craig Roberts:
It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowded subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion.
#19 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when asked if she would like to go through the new pat-downs:
“Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”
#20 TSA Administrator John Pistole during a Congressional hearing:
“If you are asking me, am I going to change my policies? No.”
#21 U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller to TSA chief John Pistole:
“I Think You’re Doing A Terrific Job.”
#22 Congressman Ron Paul:
I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

Via Karl Denninger

They Still Do not Get It

2010-11-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

All members of Congress and Administration officials with a security detail are EXEMPT from the jail booking procedures forced on ordinary law abiding citizens who must fly commercial air lines.

In other words: the crooks are exempt from scrutiny while the rest of us must prove our innocence. Such irony!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Boycott Commercial Air Travel!

2010-11-16T10:14:00.001-05:00

It has been nearly a decade since Leonidas has refused to travel by commercial air. It happened one day in 2000 when an airline declined to allow him to board a flight from Eureka, California to Los Angeles while in possession of his legally permitted Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.

He relented one time in 2007 at the entreaty of Mrs. Leonidas for a flight to Antigua in the Caribbean and was only prevented from decking a surly and arrogant ~~Walmart reject~~ TSA "officer" in San Juan, Puerto Rico by his better judgement.

Since that time "alternate" modes of travel have been chosen and it now appears the idea is gaining traction.

THIS IS A NATIONAL BOYCOTT CALL.

Specifically:

We will not consent to be sexually assaulted as a condition of getting on an airplane. A virtual strip-search is no different than a physical strip-search, and a "grope" is a sexual assault. Period. Such a "Custody Search" is only permissible under US law when one has been arrested with probable cause to believe one has committed a crime and is being taken into custody. We refuse to accept being treated as literal Federal Prisoners as a condition of boarding an aircraft.
We assert that virtual strip-search machines do not in fact, and cannot in fact, detect things such as an explosive device inserted into the anus, which has already been done by a terrorist in an attempt to kill a Saudi Prince. The so-called "purpose" claimed for such searches is thus in fact a lie.
We understand that flying carries risk - including the risk of a terrorist attack. But a terrorist can do just as much damage exploding a device in the security screening line, which of course, a scanner and intrusive grope will not prevent as they haven't been encountered yet. Again, the claimed purpose of said procedures is a lie as any terrorist intending such an action can simply explode himself while standing in line.
You are more than 100 times as likely to die in a car crash then from a terrorist attack on US soil. About 42,000 people die annually in a car crash. 3,000 people died on 9/11, and a few in other terrorist attacks since (e.g. Ft. Hood.) The odds are clear - under 4,000 people have been killed in terrorism attacks on US soil since 2000, while over 400,000 people have died in car accidents. While terrorism is horrifying it does not rise to a risk that justifies abrogation of our Constitutional rights - especially when the proffered claims of "safety" against said attacks made by the government are in fact intentionally false and misleading.
We assert that metal detectors are sufficient to detect weapons such as guns and knives. Armed pilots, marshals and even armed citizens with concealed weapons permits would and will stop armed assaults. In point of fact, United Flight 93 was stopped on 9/11 without any weapons at all by the passengers once they determined the terrorists intended to use it as a bomb. In short, other than by means of explosive, arming pilots, marshals and/or citizens is more than sufficient to prevent terrorism on board. Further, claims that gunfire on board would cause "explosive decompression" are intentional lies - the average aircraft intentionally bleeds off massive amounts of air from the cabin to balance cabin air inducted from the turbine bleed as a routine part of pressurization for high-altitude flight.
We further assert in defense of our position that no prohibited item was brought through security on 9/11. In point of fact boxcutters were permitted items on board aircraft at that point. There was no breach of airport security on that day. No guns, no bombs, nothing but permitted items and determined individuals who were willing to both kill and die. The reason 9/11 succeeded was not due to "lax security" by the airlines but rather because the government refused to act on reports of suspicious activities at flight schools in Florida and also refused to run down and remove persons in this country on expired Visas! That is, 9/11 happened due to government incompetence, not due to airline security breaches - and that's a fact.
We do not, and will not, consent to being under effective arrest just for setting foot inside an airport. The position that the TSA takes that one cannot refuse screening and decide not to board - that is, you cannot determine what you are to be subjected to in advance and elect to give or not to give consent. That is, once apprised of the nature of the screen to be performed you cannot then refuse and not fly. This is an arrest when one has committed no crime. It is our position that this procedure constitutes unlawful detainment and felony kidnapping.
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Welcome to Zimbabwe

2010-11-07T16:59:00.002-05:00

Hold the Champagne!

2010-11-03T22:53:00.000-04:00

Well sports fans, on successive days just past both shoes have fallen: Yesterday the election of the 112th Congress and today the Federal Reserve meeting to "officially" announce the fresh creation from thin air, of at least $600 billion in brand new banknotes.

Make no mistake, the $600 billion is merely the down payment on what the cultural Marxists characterize as "quantitative easing 2". Since the federal leviathan and its agents produce no product and few services that we serfs are willing to purchase, the injection into the economy of these crisp new banknotes only serves to diminish the value of the so called cash we may already have or expect to accrue to our possession.

The official word on inflation as announced by the government published Consumer Price Index is touted as <1% and anyone foolish enough to accept this garbage as fact is cordially invited to invest in a bridge over the Hudson river which Leonidas is willing to sell at a bargain price. "Since last July, margarine prices have risen 6 percent. Women's dresses are up 6 percent. Beer is up 6 percent. Milk prices have risen 6.5 percent. Candy is 13 percent more expensive. Butter is up 19 percent. Shoes are up a whopping 45 percent. All in just over four months!" For those of you with the time to spare (74min) Leonidas would invite you to view the video here for a somewhat depressing exposition of the present situation obtaining in these formerly "free" United States. Hat tip to my colleague Ol' Remus.

While the government (and most privately administered retirement plans) use the CPI to determine cost of living adjustments to geezers living on defined benefit pension plans, it must be noted that the items EXCLUDED from consideration are food and energy costs. These are precisely the items constituting the bulk of the geezers living expenses. For this reason, and for those willing to connect the dots leading to the Great Government Default, the second consecutive year that SSI recipients will receive no COLA adjustment can come as no surprise. The politicians and bureaucrats in charge realize that the otherwise criminal ponzi scheme is a major contributor to the current financial/economic death spiral. In other words, the dollar train wreck is already baked into the cake. No 65 seat turnover in the House of Representatives can apply the brakes sufficiently without committing political suicide.

In the words of Pat Buchanan the US is looking more and more like the Fourth Republic of France where each election cycle produced radical 180 degree shifts in policy. This situation does however have a few interesting bright spots: What is to become of Speaker Pelosi? Will she retain her current perks including the military commuter jet to shuttle her entourage between her California wine country estate and Sodom on the Potomac or will she "take her marbles and go home"? On the other hand, there are many of us who would assert that her marbles were lost some time ago.

More Anecdotal Evidence!

2010-10-22T22:49:00.001-04:00

This humble blogster and his wife, accompanied by the family canine (a Belgian Malinois named Osita) recently returned from a near transcontinental road trip. I use the term "near transcontinental" due to not having included the People's Republics of Kalifornia, Oregon or Washington in the itinerary. Over the years we have taken to avoiding the interstate highways and their tedium, opting instead to utilize the surface roadways when practicable.

The downside of selecting this option is the necessity of adhering to the lower speed limits assigned at the caprice and avarice of local politicians and suffering the tortoise like traffic flow in the myriad of smallish jurisdictions.

On the next to last day of our most recent trek we had occasion to be following an overly mature female motorist proceeding east bound on a rural two lane highway in eastern Arkansas at a speed of 42 miles per hour in a zone marked with an eye toward revenue enhancement by a 55 mph limit. After some interval we arrived at a zone with a broken yellow center line admitting of legal overtaking and passing. Observing the nearest oncoming vehicle to be at a distance of 1.25 miles your brave blogster accelerated to a speed of 66 mph and passed the geriatric motorist and observed the oncoming vehicle to be none other than a white sedan sporting a red and blue light bar and the markings of the friendly revenuers of the Arkansas State "Police". I noted the troopers car to execute a "U" turn as I passed and we resumed a safe speed of 63 mph after overtaking the little old lady. Suffice it to say that the trooper was very soon on our rear bumper an lit up with "cherries and blueberries" not to mention alternately flashing high beam headlights.

We executed a safe stop at the nearest shaded right shoulder and awaited the approach of the minion of Arkansas' finest. The trooper appeared extremely agitated and proceeded to describe my 8 mph "speed" violation of the 55 mph posted limit as the "crime of the century" after which he demanded my drivers license and insurance card. I produced the necessary documents along with my Los Angeles County retired Sheriff's ID card in order to preclude any subsequent difficulty caused by the Glock .40 cal auto pistol which is always present in the drivers door pocket when traveling. He handed back the ID card with the terse exclamation: "all this tells me is that you should know better" and returned to his patrol unit to fill out the paper work. At this time Mrs. Leonidas remarked: "you're going to get it THIS time".

Five minutes later the trooper returned and ordered me to sign the document which I did, noting that it was an Arkansas State Police "Courtesy Warning Notice" of a "speed violation".

It was a relief to learn that the supposed "crime of the century" was really only a minor revenue issue which the trooper was willing to "overlook" when perpetrated by a retired so called "brother LEO". I am gradually becoming ashamed of how my former career has evolved into a revenue generation scheme for politicians and bureaucrats.

The Time Has Come (The Walrus Said)...

2010-10-21T08:53:00.000-04:00

I’ve been thinking about the horrid situation at airports for weeks, and before that for even more months.

Flyers now have the option enforced against them of either being scanned or groped. What a choice!
I haven’t flown in an airplane for years now. [...} I have been lucky. I didn’t need to fly or want to fly, but I still may feel I have to, and I am still deeply troubled by the scanning and groping. Both are despicable.

What I wish is that all flyers would organize and boycott all flying, or organize sit-down strikes at all the airports on a given day and hour, or organize some sort of widespread protest action or actions at specific times so as to make known their true inner feelings.

This hope banks on the notion that people now put up with the scanning and groping because they feel they have no alternative as individuals. I may be wrong. They may support it or feel it’s in their safety interest. I don’t know, but I can only express my own personal distaste for what air travel has come to and hope that someone better equipped to organize protests than I will do so. Such protests should be accompanied by publicized demands to end this travesty.

Stop it! Stop it now! Stop searching every traveler! Stop searching innocent people.

Stop searches that have no reasonable basis. Stop searches that are based only on one criterion: that the person is a traveler. What kind of reasonable basis for a search is that? None whatsoever! It is totally unreasonable to suspect everyone! It is totally unreasonable to suspect everyone who is a traveler. It’s unreasonable for the obvious reason that we all know that not one person in sixty million is a terrorist, and not one in six hundred million is at the point of trying to board a plane with an explosive device hidden on his person.

Groping and scanning are both searches. Both are equally vile. Both are unreasonable searches. Both need to be rejected.

Why should I submit to a search? What have I done to merit that? What criminal record have I accumulated in my 70 years? When have I uttered a threat against an airline? When have I encouraged anyone to blow up an airplane?
Where’s the probable cause? Where’s the reasonable basis to grope me, frisk me, x-ray me, or otherwise invade my person or property? There is none.

Where’s the warrant obtained from a judge? There is none.

It’s totally ridiculous to be searching me. I won’t stand for it. I am being assumed to be a criminal suspect for no good reason whatsoever. The people engaging in the criminal behavior are the searchers in this case, not the searchees.
I speak personally, but of course the same is true of millions upon millions of other people. What have they done to merit a search? Absolutely nothing. Nada.

There is such a thing as a U.S. Constitution, although adherence to it is zilch. It once meant something, and the government still claims it means something. What a bunch of liars and hypocrites they are. They deserve no respect. They deserve nothing but scorn. How can they conduct such searches of millions of innocent people in the face of the constitutional language?

The Fourth Amendment reads:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

There is no ambiguity here. The right to be secure in my person shall not be violated. Period. It doesn’t say that airports are an exception. Or that public roads are an exception. Or that public spaces are an exception. There are no exceptions listed.

If exceptions are allowed, such as supposedly to create safe air travel, then similar exceptions can be allowed for rail, bus, auto, and pedestrian traffic anywhere, anytime, and at virtually any place. Police state, folks. That’s what we’re talking about. Police state. We’ve got it. Now. Here and now. Don’t look now, it’s here already.

Am I an expert on the case law of searches? Have I read all the pertinent Supreme Court cases that develop exceptions and procedures and interpret the Constitution? No. I won’t waste any more time on such a fruitless endeavor. I did that for the case of America’s money. I did that in excruciating detail over the course of two solid months. I found, as have others before me, that the Supreme Court is perfectly capable of making things up as they go along. They have twisted the clear constitutional language to suit themselves and their own ideas. We cannot quietly submit to what the Supreme Court says. We must protest when conscience and reason tell us that the Court is in the wrong.

I demand the termination of these unreasonable searches and I urge you to demand the same. Boycott air travel, or else dream up some better manner of protest than I can think of. But don’t sit still for this. It’s not right, and you know it’s not right. It’s not lawful, and you know it’s not lawful. It’s mass insanity, and you know it’s mass insanity.

Michael S. Rozeff

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. reprinted by permission

A Descent?

2010-10-03T23:27:00.001-04:00

In the Fall of 1936 the influential weekly magazine Literary Digest conducted a straw poll of the presidential election for that year. The results published in that periodical prognosticated that the Republican candidate Alf Landon would handily defeat Franklin Roosevelt. It must have been a telephone poll as those who could still have afforded telephone service may well have intended to vote for Mr. Landon while those citizens who could no longer pay for the luxury (such as my own family) had seen their service disconnected. Suffice it to say that the error of such a prediction (Landon carried 2 states while the remaining 46 voted overwhelmingly for FDR) resulted in the demise of the Literary Digest.

Today, most polling suggests that the current minority Republicans are expected to post moderate gains which will "probably" enable them wield a majority in the lower house of Congress. We shall see.

Since 1980 this humble blogster has made at least two dozen transcontinental road trips across these United States between his native California and the East coast aboard motorcycles, automobiles, small trucks as well as "hippie" (VW) vans. Other than the societal decay experienced in the "progressively" ruled Mexifornia beginning in the early 1980's the remainder of the nation commonly known as "flyover country" by the ruling elite had remained relatively unaffected until late 2008.

Your correspondent has just completed the second day of his most recent road trip and the noticeable though admittedly anecdotal national deterioration occurring since just last Spring is truly astonishing.

Our first days journey found us seeking lodging at an inn we had previously patronized. The establishment had begun to evidence a degree of seediness and a homeless male adult was observed seated near the rear of the facility on an abandoned car seat when the wife walked our dog at 8:00PM. Morning revealed him still seated in the same location shivering in the chill of pre sunrise. Mrs Leonidas retrieved two "complementary" breakfast rolls provided by the inn and presented them to the appreciative "derelict" causing this humble writer to be reminded of what had originally attracted him to this marvelous woman many years ago.

Since the onset of today's ongoing financial/economic crisis there has been a substantial deterioration in the observable lifestyle circumstances of ordinary Americans. In point of fact, many of the small communities along the back roads of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico resemble the scenes in Mad Max. Not only are there noticeable changes in the nations infrastructure, but the anger expressed in overheard conversations in pubs, cafes and other public places far surpasses what has been witnessed by this writer during his threescore and 14 years.

In sum, I would have to conclude that the anger and frustration of ordinary citizens across this formerly great, free and prosperous nation is palpable beyond the comprehension of the "mainstream" elite and ruling class. It is I believe possible that events of the upcoming November plebiscite will surpass the worst nightmares of Mssrs Obama and Reid as well as Ms Pelosi. The saddest part however will be played out when the new crop of rulers fails to produce the desired results. The ensuing events will be decidedly unpretty.

More anon.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

King Canute, Call Your Treasurer!

2010-09-25T20:46:00.001-04:00

Recently, a bill introduced in the lower chamber of the US Congress died a quiet death in the House Committee on Financial Services. The Bill (HR 1207) boasted 315 co-sponsors and would have ordered an audit of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. Had the bill become law, the heretofore secret operations of the central bank would stand revealed as the most colossal financial/economic scam in recorded history. The "rationale" offered up as a justification for scotching the audit proposed by HR 1207 was: "the need to isolate political considerations from the determination of monetary policy." I will pause here to allow the laughter of my esteemed readers to subside.

Since implementation of the Federal Reserve Act in December of 1913 the United States dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power. In other words, items (utilizing adjusted/comparable costs of production) selling today for $1.00 were regularly traded at 3 cents in 1913. Considered from another perspective, a good quality man's suit could be purchased in 1913 for one troy ounce of gold valued at $20.00. A comparable quality suit would sell today for approximately $1,297.00 which just happens to be the value of 1 troy ounce of the yellow metal.

The preamble to the Federal Reserve Act reads as follows:

"An Act To provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes."

The author of HR 1207, Dr. Ron Paul (R Texas 14) intends to introduce legislation in the 112th Congress during 2011 requiring an audit of the gold allegedly owned by the US government and secured in depositories at Ft. Knox, Kentucky and the New York Federal Reserve vault at 33 Liberty street New York, NY. It is anticipated that the opposition to such legislation will consist of the self same opponents as those who killed HR 1207. An important argument of our rulers will however be undercut, and that is the separation of politics and monetary policy to wit: the gold is either in the depositories and owned by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve or it is not.

Such an audit will in the opinion of this writer reveal that either a) the gold seized/stolen from the American people in 1933 is still secured where the government assures us that it is, or b) it has been sold, leased or transferred to the London gold depository.

The desperation of our elite rulers to control the monetary policies engendered by their insistence on the acceptance of fiat paper currency whose printing presses they control is beginning to be revealed to the nation's booboisie. When such knowledge becomes widespread the game will be up and the result will not be pleasant to behold.

There are valid reasons why precious metals have evolved as media of exchange lo these many millennia. The chief reason being the inability of political elites to "print gold" not withstanding the "clipping" of coins by Roman emperors and the issuance of "Federal Reserve Notes" by our current elite.

The tide of history is rising and cannot be stemmed by the current elite in Washington and New York.

An Open Letter!

2010-09-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

In keeping with the theme generated by the esteemed Curmudgeon Emeritus here, this humble blogster will add his own contribution to the refrain entitled "why didn't I write that?".

The following is an open letter to general David Petraeus published by Chuck Prime here. To one and all: Please steal this and repost it!

OPEN LETTER TO GEN. PETRAEUS (Please re-post to anti-jihad sites)

“Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult.”
– Gen. David Petraeus
General, I ask you this: what in hell is your “mission” if We The People jeopardize it by exercising our First Amendment rights in our own homeland? Is your “mission” to defend our rights against foreign enemies, or to defend foreign enemies against our rights?
You made your choice, and you justified by claiming that you and those under your command have been taken hostage by our 7th Century terrorist enemy, and that the ransom demand you deliver to us is that we submit to your captor’s restrictions on our natural and constitutional rights – or they’ll kill you.
I remind you and your captors that we do not negotiate with terrorists.
And I remind you that you are the most revered general in the present day, commanding in the most powerful military in all of history, during the most justifiable war in the last seventy years. So please either remember your priorities and slaughter your captors, or resign in disgrace so that we may replace you with a warrior. And if you resign, you should do so right along with President Obama, Gen. Caldwell, Pentagon Spokesman Lapan, Sec. of State Clinton, Atty. Gen. Holder, NATO Sec. Rasmussen and all others in all branches of government and in all alliances who echoed your request, whether they did so mindlessly or with surrender aforethought.
To have our own military leaders beg us to refrain from exercising our Constitutional rights on our own soil is completely un-American. And to have you make that request of us in the name of cowardice is a shocking and unthinkable perversion I still don’t have the words for.
But I do have the plan for it. We The People will force the issue right here and now. We don’t want harm to come to our military, but if peacefully exercising our rightful freedom on our own property here in our own homeland endangers you, then we will endanger you!
We will burn the Koran for freedom and post the videos for all the world to see. We can be overt or covert, named or anonymous, sparse or numerous – but ultimately we will be unstoppable, and eventually we will be effective.
We will do this because you have no fucking right to sell our freedom down the river for the sake of our enemy’s sensitivity. We will do it because you more than have the power to defend yourselves against that enemy if only you would use it. We will do it because facing danger to defend our rightful freedom is why we pay you, train you, equip you, promote you, appoint you, deploy you, and – formerly! – revere you.
You work for us, General, not for our enemy. Therefore we will regain control over you and over this war from the command center of our own backyards. We will force you to end any of your appeasement and nation-building which would restrict our Constitutional rights. We will force you to defend yourselves and us, and to do the job you were appointed to do: destroy the enemy in defense of our freedom.
Our military has the power. We hired you to use it. Now we’ll make sure you do.
When Americans can burn our own copies of the Koran on our own soil without credible threats from jihadists or appeasement of those threats from our President and our Generals, then we will gladly stop burning them.
We are a free people, and although we clearly live in occupied territory psychologically, we do not yet live in occupied territory legally or physically. We will do as we please, and we will continue to expect all branches of our government to secure our right to do it.
I remind you that securing our rights is the only legitimate reason that governments are instituted among men in the first place, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
And not everybody among the governed consents to surrendering our rights to terrorists.
Freedom for all,

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Beyond the Sidewalks

2010-08-15T11:32:00.005-04:00

Considering the plethora of recent literature on the subject of "prepping" for survival as the socioeconomic meltdown inexorably approaches, it may be beneficial to hear the experiences of one who has "been there, done that".

We lived with various "sustainable" combinations of wind, hydro, solar and diesel generated power for 20 years both aboard our sail boat and our off-grid ranch. With both wind and hydro there are substantial costs (in addition to the initial capital investment) associated with bearing, brush/slipring and armature replacement not to mention impeller deterioriation. In considering all of these various forms of alternative energy the cost per kilowatt hour needs to be factored in.

We found that the average cost of grid supplied energy ranged between 12 and 15 cents per kilowatt hour as opposed to an estimated 40 cents plus per kilowatt hour for solar and hydro power when equipment replacement costs are factored in. The special ambient conditions necessary for availing one's self of hydro and wind energy do not obtain for the vast majority of shore side locations.

So called fossil fueled sources of energy generation obviously make economic and logistic sense only for limited and emergent situations due to their need to be fed.

True stand alone applications where no grid source of power is available will require a means for the storage/regulation of the energy for utilization during windless and sunless periods. For heating purposes a mass consisting of water or other heat storage material such as metal or stone can suffice. For electrical energy storage, current technology forces us into the utilization of batteries and they are not cheap. This old sailor-cum-homesteader found the use of deep cycle lead acid 6 volt "golf cart" batteries to make economic sense. True, recent advances in battery technology have improved their efficiency to a limited extent but the initial capital investment remains high. Additionally, lead acid batteries do not thrive on neglect such as repeated extreme deep discharging or electrolyte starvation.

An example of this problem reared its head with one of our native American neighbors living on Yurok tribal land in Humboldt county, California. The tribe received a federal "grant" of substantial funds to erect stand alone photovoltaic power systems at individual single family Indian residences in the Klamath river valley. The equipment, consisting of a 2 kilowatt solar array on fixed mounts, an appropriate charge controller, 1200 amp hour sealed gel battery bank and a 4500 watt 24 volt to 120 volt inverter with necessary wiring harnesses and separate housing shed were erected near his mobil home in an area SHADED during part of the day. The equipment alone cost in excess of $27,000.00. It was installed by "progressive" student "volunteers" from Humboldt State University who upon completion of the project advised our neighbor (whose only source of power previously had consisted of a succession of 600 watt gasoline generators obtained at Costco) that he could begin using his home "just as if he lived in town on the grid".

Needless to relate, our neighbor and his family proceeded to purchase appliances such as irons, toasters, heaters and television sets. Within a week he was knocking on our door requesting help with his non working electrical system. The ~~hippies~~ volunteers were unavailable to assist him. So much for the "turnkey" ~~taxpayer~~ government supplied "sustainable" systems provided to "disadvantaged" minorities.

A major consideration in view of the approaching societal disintegration as regards emergency or backup energy systems is security. "Law" (yes, those are scorn quotation marks) enforcement, should it continue to function, will inevitably have its hands full maintaining "order" in a population reduced to desperation and energy systems are especially vulnerable to theft and vandalism not to mention a confiscatory government itself. I have written elsewhere of our own experiences but will leave it to you dear reader to acquaint yourselves with various post apocalyptic scenarios ranging from Mad Max to mere Hobbesian squalor.

A New Litigiuous Industry?

2010-08-09T14:17:00.001-04:00

I don't know how many of you dear readers are aware of the tempest that has recently exploded concerning the issue of "intellectual property" as it applies to the internet and specifically the "blogosphere". In any event, thus far over 91 lawsuits have been filed in the federal district court of Nevada. These suits generally claim "theft" of copyrighted material by mostly small mom and pop web sites and blogs. The suits have been filed by a firm called RightHaven and the defendants for the most part have not received prior to the filings any cease and desist orders or demands to remove the objectionable material.

Thus far the bulk of the allegedly stolen material has been copied, excerpted from or linked to publications in the daily Las Vegas (Nevada) Review Journal whose publisher is Mr. Sherman Frederick. His decision to assign copy rights to his newspaper's material to RightHaven in order that they, rather than his newspaper, pursue litigation is explained in a column/blog posting dated 28 May 2010. I will neither quote nor paraphrase Mr. Frederick here and indeed link to his screed with considerable trepidation. If you, dear reader choose to follow the link I would advise you to read it carefully and pay special attention to the comments before drawing your own conclusions. There are even those who connect (tenuously) the RightHaven staff to White House officials. You decide.

Mr. Frederick, in his analogy to an auto displayed and "stolen" from his front yard seems to engage in what could be termed in the opinion of this humble blogster "tortured" logic. He also links to a National Public Radio interview on the prior "scooping" of the McChrystal piece in Rolling Stone magazine but does not allude to any instance in which his publication suffered any such outrage.

It would appear that the Review-Journal is a business enterprise. That is, they display paid advertising which is incidentally viewed by web surfers following links to their site. If bloggers and other web sites fail to attribute material lifted from the R-J they should by all means be placed on notice to cease and desist and sued if they fail to do so. However, it seems counter productive to prosecute in the federal courts those who avail themselves in good faith of the doctrine of "fair use" with attribution and links. Unless of course such a strategy is your business model.

A Quick Fix

2010-07-16T10:25:00.001-04:00

According to our imperial federal ruling masters and their dog washers in the media the recent financial/economic "crisis" has ended and the "economy is in recovery". The government bureaucrats even trot out supporting data and statistics expecting boobus Americanus to buy into the fiction. The most recent example is the official bureau of labor statistics citing a reduction in the "unemployment" rate from 9.7% to 9.5% while the economy underwent a net job loss of 20,000+. This simply does not pass the smell test. Another fiction is the "growth" measured by gross domestic product (GDP) which is simply a measure of the total cost of all goods and services produced by the nation. This would and DOES include the salaries earned by recently hired government regulatory aparatchiks who contribute nothing of value to the economy and are paid with funds extorted at gunpoint from taxpayers.

This humble blogster has a suggestion for boosting the statistics and jolting the economy into massive recovery. (Irony Alert): Assign every resident in the US to take in the laundry of their next door neighbor for the minimum wage of $7.75 per hour. Not only would this proposal eliminate the unemployment problem, but consider the enormous uptick in the GDP statistics (Irony Alert Off).

How did we get Here?

2010-07-15T09:39:00.002-04:00

Below is a guest posting by Scott Lazarowitz that appeared originally at ReasonAndJest.com. A few additional concepts should be born in mind while reading and digesting the essay.

"It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment."..."Where all children go to school, and all schools are controlled by the government, the authorities can close the minds of the young to everything contrary to official orthodoxy.” Bertrand Russell "Impact of Science on Society" 1952

Obama the Socialist Fascist Communist, by Scott Lazarowitz
July 15, 2010
Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Link to this article at LewRockwell.com

A recent poll showed that 55% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a “socialist,” and many Americans believe that the nation is on the “road to socialism.”
The road to socialism? Where have these people been for the last 75 years? America has been a socialist – as well as fascist – nation for many decades, especially since FDR’s New Deal. Socialism primarily is public ownership of wealth, property and the means of production. So, of course Obama is a socialist. He has expressed that.
For some reason, many people mistakenly believe that Social Security, an important outcome of the New Deal, is a program in which some of Americans’ earnings are taken and put into some kind of “savings account,” to be available to them when they retire. In actuality, Social Security is a real-time redistribution of wealth scheme administered by the State, in which income is taken from producers and redistributed to non-producers, mainly retired persons and the elderly. LBJ’s Medicare program is an extension of this.
Further examples to show that Obama is a socialist include his vote as a U.S. Senator in favor of the Wall Street Bailout, often mistakenly seen as an example of “capitalism,” but which was actually an example of socialism: redistribution of wealth from the middle-class workers and producers to the already rich Wall Street bankers and financial executives.
Obama also clearly supports the ongoing military socialism through the wars he has been continuing and strengthening abroad: redistribution of wealth from American workers and producers to defense contractors, consultants and lobbyists, oil executives and Wall Street bankers, which really has been a main objective for American wars throughout the last century. As the late USMC Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler would say, “War is a Racket.”
And as the late economist Murray Rothbard put it, regarding World War I:

Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the war may have been the single most fateful action of the 20th century, causing untold and unending misery and destruction. But Morgan profits were expanded and assured.

Things have not changed in 100 years.
Obama’s stated intention has been for redistribution of wealth as a means to help the poor, the underprivileged and so on. But his unstated intention is the same as all politicians of his ilk: to reach into as much private wealth as possible as a means towards expanding State power and control.
Many people also mistakenly believe that Obama’s medical takeover is “socialized medicine,” but we already have socialized medicine in Medicare as mentioned, and other similar programs. ObamaCare is actually a fascist program.
Fascism is another major aspect of FDR’s New Deal, which gave us an untold number of regulations, mandates and enmeshments between business and government. Fascism primarily is State control over privately owned property, wealth and industry. All government mandates and regulation of private economies are examples of fascism. ObamaCare consists of one mandate and regulation after another of private doctor-patient relationships, patient/doctor-insurance company relationships, and a laundry list of medical related industries.
In addition to ObamaCare fascism and Obama’s strengthening of his own executive dictatorial powers as president, some other examples of Obama’s fascism include his new financial regulations, and the environmental regulations that he used as a means of interfering with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s duty to protect the people of Louisiana from the oil spill that threatens their livelihoods.
While allowing doctors’ practices, HMOs, and insurance companies to continue to be privately owned, the federal government will nevertheless dictate to them how their contracts and associations will be run. However, given a variety of factors, this dictatorial control over the medical industry will most likely lead these still privately owned interests into bankruptcy, much like what the federal government has done to the financial and mortgage lending industries, and the federal government will most probably take upon ownership, as well as control, of much of these industries.
That is where Obama’s communism comes in. The “road to socialism”? No, already there. Fascism? Already there. But are we on the road to communism? You betchya!
Communism is, by and large, complete State ownership and control of all industry, wealth and property, and the means of production. So far, we have seen this from Obama in his leading the charge of confiscation of much of the automobile industry, as well as the federal government’s ownership of much of the mortgage and finance industries. And eventually, most likely, the entire medical industry.
Whether Obama is intentionally implementing a communist America by way of long-planned “stealth,” as some people have suggested he is doing, or whether he has a communist agenda by way of his long-time partnership with admitted terrorist bomber and “small-c communist” Bill Ayers, or whether Obama follows the teachings of “radical community organizer” (or “communizer”) Saul Alinsky, is actually not as important as Obama’s actual actions as president.
So far, we have noted that Barack Obama is:

A Socialist. He supports public ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth from some segments of society to others.
A Fascist. He supports State control over private industries and the means of production, and just about every aspect of citizens’ daily lives.
A Communist. He supports State ownership as well as control of industry and the means of production.

But what isn’t Obama?

A Capitalist.

Barack Obama is not a capitalist because he opposes voluntary exchange, private property rights, voluntary contracts, associations and markets free of State intrusions, and under the Rule of Law. The true capitalist, voluntary exchange-private property system that coexists with individual liberty is exactly what the American Founders believed in, for which they fought a Revolution to have and preserve for their posterity. This capitalist system is the only system that exists under the Rule of Law that protects all individuals in such a society from the theft and trespass of others including agents of the State.
In contrast, socialism, fascism and communism all institutionalize the violation of the Rule of Law as they institutionalize the violation of all individuals’ inherent rights to life, liberty and justly acquired property.
In those totalitarian systems, the individual is a sacrificial animal for the collective, and a serf for the State.
Alas, America has not actually experienced true capitalism, at least not since the U.S. Constitution was written and ratified, and especially not since the presidency of hardcore banking and monetary fascist and warmonger-business protectionist Abraham Lincoln.
The choice for America is whether to continue on the road to communism, or to turn back, dismantle all of it, and restore our freedom and prosperity.

Relieved of the Pressure

2010-07-09T14:36:00.002-04:00

As both of you have duly noted, postings on this blog recently have been "sparse" to say the least. Surprisingly enough there is a reason, and it goes something like this: I have been trying in my own retarded way to compose my thoughts on the descent of my native land into the abysmal conditions which now obtain here in the former "land of the free".

Last Tuesday we were visited by an agent of the imperial federal government identifying herself as a "census" ~~inquisitor~~ worker. Having previously received the "census" document, filling in the constitutionally required data and returning it, I was not, however completely surprised by the visit. You see, Article I, section 2 mandates an "enumeration" for purposes of apportioning legislators and collection of direct taxes. Those data are all that were answered. I advised the "census worker" that the census form had been marked and returned late in March 2010. Her (lying) response: "we did not receive it." She asked how many lived at the address as of 1 April 2010 to which I replied "2". Her next question was: did I "wish to state my name" to which I replied: "no". Her next question was regarding the race of the residents, to which I replied: "human being". At this time she stated "I'm wasting my time." whereupon she turned and departed without asking any further questions. Somehow I suspect that we have not heard the last on this subject from the ruling clique. Stay tuned.

Returning to the subject of the first paragraph of this posting I will reproduce in full the entry today by my esteemed co-conspirator Fran Porretto at Eternity Road who says it ALL. Get thee hence and read the comments:

Making Amends: A Mini-Manifesto
By Francis W. Porretto

Fran here. This will be in first-person, as I have some hard things to say. Forgive me, Gentle Reader, but I don't think you'll like them much.
One caveat: When I use the pronoun we in what follows, I don't necessarily mean all of us alive today. I'm using we in its political application: to the polity we call today the United States, to the polity and society it has been in the century past, and to whatever emerges from the chaos I foresee.
Please read carefully, and with attention.

***
"When a man dies, he does not just die of the disease that he has; he dies of his whole life." -- Peguy
We stand, God willing, at the end of the Progressive Era in American politics and political thought. One way or another, the edifice will shortly come crashing down. The only questions that remain are whether a recognizable United States of America will rise from the rubble.
Many Americans, however, will not. That's guaranteed.
Our current political order does not resemble our Constitutional basis in any way. Every stricture of the Constitution has been abrogated. Most states treat their own constitutions as palimpsests, from which any clause may be deleted and to which any permission might be added, entirely at the will of the rulers. As for county and municipal charters...do I really need to go on?
The prevailing order compounds Corporatism^[1] with Social-Welfare Fascism.^[2] Under such a scheme, persons will flow steadily away from the "economic means"^[3] and toward the "political means,"^[4] in obedience to the established incentives. As the current state of affairs has obtained for nearly a century, a terrifying number of Americans and pseudo-Americans have made themselves utterly dependent on the State for their sustenance. They own no means of support -- no skills by which they could create value for others.
The key phrase in the paragraph above is "made themselves." Reflect on it.
When -- not "if" -- the Corporate Social-Fascist State exhales its bloody final breath, the economy that results will not have provisions for those dependents' support. As they will be unable to support themselves, their continued existence will depend wholly upon the kindness of others. But, given the immense damage that's been done to our economic foundations by Progressive policies, the crash is overwhelmingly likely to be massive. Many of us who can support ourselves on our own abilities will be hard pressed. Many others will disdain to succor of persons they deem complicit in their own fates.
There will be suffering. It will be massive. Some will die.
Yet the reckoning is at hand. It cannot be delayed much longer: even if the rising some foresee should fail to materialize, our current profligacy and laissez les bon temps roulez insouciance cannot last more than a year or so from here. No matter how well politically connected you are, you cannot consume what no one has produced.
Americans' charitable impulses and capacities, even if nominally quantitatively adequate to the demands that will be placed upon them, will fail to reach some persons in time. That, too, is guaranteed.
As one who holds notions of collective responsibility in low esteem, I dislike to proceed from here, but intellectual honesty requires it:
We brought this on ourselves.

***
America is a rich society because its people are nearly all nearly always honorable. -- Me
Honor is a necessity to a polity quite as much as to an individual. The honorable nation must stand its ground, abide by its given word, pay its debts, and answer for its responsibilities, just as must the honorable man. At this point in America's history, our nation fails the test on all four counts.
We have incurred a burden of atonement. We will face a harsh schedule of penance. If we wish to resume an estate of freedom, prosperity, and justice under objective laws, we will be required to pay.
No, we won't have to face a tribunal of some sort. What nation or nations, even in our current deteriorated state, possesses the power to enforce its will upon us? The laws of this Universe are self-enforcing, most particularly those that pertain to the ways of men:
For having shown weakness to aggressors, we will be required to defend ourselves, against both invasion from without and predation from within.
For having reneged on our promises, we will lose the credibility upon which we've become accustomed to rely.
For having incurred the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, we will forfeit all credit, and will henceforward be unable to borrow.
For having scamped our duties to those we promised protection, we will be denied the comfort of alliances and the protection of our extraterritorial assets.
And it will be just and proper that it be so.
Mind you, these things will come upon us whether or not we overthrow the Corporate Social-Fascist State. They cannot be averted. They can only be delayed a little longer -- and it's questionable whether it would be wiser to hold them off as long as possible, or to face the music as soon as we can.

***
Freedom is not free, free men are not equal, and equal men are not free! -- Richard Cotten
We are responsible for putting things right. The current situation is the fruit of our wishful thinking:
We recoiled from the hard jobs of justice.
We demurred from the maintenance of our borders and our defenses.
We ate our seed corn, and staked our futures on a credit-based economy.
Rather than whip aggressors back into their kennels, we paid them Dane-geld.
We assumed that our freedom and prosperity had become a permanent state of grace. In other words, we believed in "something for nothing."
But our recent prosperity is the consequence of our prior freedom. Our freedom is the consequence of our forebears' willingness to fight for it. We cannot have either without the willingness to fight as fiercely as they did, whether on a battlefield, on a factory assembly line, or in an air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit office.
Economically, we overlooked the First Law of Wealth:

Men must be free because nothing else can be.Politically, we overlooked the Conservation Law of Freedom and Power:

Freedom and power can neither be created nor destroyed, but only exchanged for one another.
Therefore, every grant of power to the State reduces the freedom of individuals.These laws are not repealable nor modifiable by Congress. We cannot attach riders to them, to grant exemptions to favored persons or groups.
We will be required to make good on our debts and defaults, for it is certain that no other nation will step forward to pay them for us.

***
Mei Ling translated. Eddie Lee smiled again, one eye squinting as the smoke from his cigarette drifted past.
"You think be hard to kill you?"
"Yeah," I said. "Be hard." [Robert B. Parker, Walking Shadow]
"Once you know a man deserves to die, you have to kill him. If you don't, you're committing a crime against everyone who doesn't deserve to die. If you get him down but can't bring yourself to do it, and he gets up off the mat and kills you instead, you're only getting what you deserve yourself." -- On Broken Wings
Should we succeed in throwing off the yoke of the Corporate Social-Fascist State, part of our atonement, perhaps the most unpleasant part, will be this: we will be required to be hard.
We will never, ever, put an end to the dreams and machinations of the power-seekers unless we punish those among us with proper severity. Among our current officials are several overt traitors: men who took oaths to defend the Constitution, and have done the exact opposite. Of these, I count one president, four Supreme Court Justices, and hundreds of federal legislators. Unless these are dragged from their hidey-holes as was Saddam Hussein, and executed or incarcerated for life, there will be no respite from the pressure of closet totalitarians and social engineers against our polity. Men to whom power over others is the ultimate satisfaction will seek it relentlessly, until the price for doing so becomes both ultimate and inevitable.
That's merely what will be demanded of us to cleanse the federal government. Further severity will be required of us:
Toward nations and "non-state actors" that seek to bend us to their wills;
Toward religious and quasi-religious, racial, and ethnic groups that agitate for special treatment and exemptions from the laws;
Toward special interests that seek subsidies, subventions, or to impose their views upon us through the political process;
Toward individual predators who have, in the main, eluded the proper penalties for their deeds.
The underlying message is, of course, We mean it. But it can only be expressed in deeds. Our words have become untrustworthy. We will not regain our credibility until we've demonstrated that we deserve it.
That will be the hardest price of our restoration. It will be unpleasant at best, dreadful and massively bloody at worst.
We will be spared none of it.

***
"From those to whom much is given, much is expected." -- Richard Kinane
Don't think it pleases me to write this. It doesn't. I'm an old man whose fondest wish is to finish my life in peace. But I have a responsibility.
My responsibility flows from four things: my percipience, my knowledge of history, my intellect, and my conscience. If I were to withhold what I've set down here in service to my personal tranquility, I would be derelict in the duties that arise from those things.
You may elect to disregard the warning. That's at your discretion. But the words have been spoken. If history is to gainsay them, no one will be gladder than I.
I await the fusillades, both from the Left that's the principal source of our ills and from the comfortable defenders of the status quo, to whom "freedom and justice are all very well in theory, but..."
Where do you stand?
"Brace for impact." -- Captain Chesley L. Sullenberger
NOTES:
1. Corporatism is a scheme of political organization in which certain companies and institutions receive favorable treatment from the State, up to and including the making of public policy.
2. Social-Welfare Fascism is an approach to politics that emphasizes good intentions and the succoring of the worse off as the rationale for total government control over a nation's economy.
3. Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 1905.
4. Ibid.

Revenge

2010-07-01T16:43:00.002-04:00

This is how one tormented pooch reacts to the African torture invention.

EMBED-Dog Vs Vuvuzuela - Watch more free videos

Reason versus the Hysteria of Big Government Sycophants

2010-06-27T13:09:00.002-04:00

Recently I read a list of things that leftists whisper among themselves when no one else is within earshot. One of them was: "How did we manage to get Shepard Smith hired as a prime time anchor on the Fox News Channel"?

Unlikely Allies? Not so Fast

2010-06-22T16:43:00.009-04:00

As a former resident of Humboldt County in Northern California the video (@ 3' 45") below caught the eye of this blogger who has a propensity toward the laconic e.g. "one reason video avoids several thousand spartan keystrokes".

ht: the OTHER Allen

Giveaway!

2010-06-22T08:27:00.000-04:00

M.D. Creekmore at The Survivalist Blog – a survival blog dedicated to helping others prepare for and survive disaster – with articles on bug out bag contents, survival knife choices and a wealth of other survival information is giving away a 1,000 round case of 9mm – 124 Grain FMJ (a $200 value – donated by LuckyGunner)! To enter, you just have to post about it on your blog. This is my entry. Visit The Survivalist Blog for the details.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!

Public Enemies?

2010-06-19T11:19:00.001-04:00

The truth of a quotation attributed to Harry Truman: "If you want a friend in Washington DC, get a dog." can seldom be more clearly illustrated than the recent and ongoing demonization of British Petroleum (BP) by the political leeches in Congress and the Obamunist Administration. Until recently, the company logo, intended to evoke visions of an enviro friendly corporation along with the slogan "beyond petroleum" were presented ad nauseam in video advertising. This public relations campaign was also accompanied by an aggressive rent seeking effort:

[T]he Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring “reform” opponents as the stooges of big business.

Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.

Of course, in the current political climate few will note the parallels with the rent seeking relationships of I.G. Farben and Friedrich Krupp AG with the German National Socialist government 1933 1945. Nevertheless, rent seekers are leading candidates for scapegoats by collectivist politicians as Mr. Hayworth has discovered to his dismay.

I would submit to you, dear reader, that the real public enemies in this tragic train of events are the environazis and the politicians at whose behest BP is forced into drilling in 5000' of ocean depth while petroleum reserves on dry land and shallow water are placed off limits.

The Blame Game

2010-06-11T22:38:00.001-04:00

Gentle readers,

I don't know about yourselves (both of you know who you are) but I, for one, am about up to my eyeballs with the round-the-clock "news" coverage (including the finger pointing) of the crude oil being deposited into the Gulf of Mexico. Is there nothing else of note occurring in the world?

It's as if a committee of political hacks meeting under Roberts Rules of Order could end the 53 day long crisis by issuing press releases blaming all the hapless producers of a product that fuels our global society instead of the actual authors of the tragedy.

Full disclosure time: This humble scribbler is the spawn of a family who earned its bread in what is known as the "oil patch". Indeed he entered employment in the "patch" at age 14 until being driven out by government regulations 20 years later. That first career included two major oil companies, (Texaco and Conoco) as well as drilling and oil well service companies in southern California both off shore and land side. During that interesting experience he witnessed two "blowouts" which are uncontrolled escapes of pressurized natural gas and crude oil as well as sand and other objectionable material. Make no mistake gentle reader, this event in the Gulf of Mexico is NOT a "spill". A spill is the escape of a previously contained material from a storage or transportation facility such as a pipe line or tank.

Interestingly enough, blowouts are usually controlled in a matter of hours or at most days, often by the application of heavy mud and/or cement deployed by the equipment of that EEEvil corporation, Halliburton.

As any sentient voter with two or more functioning brain cells is aware, the federal government as well as various state governments have placed off limits virtually all of the not inconsiderable proven petroleum reserves on government land as well as decreeing oppressive regulations discouraging production from private leases. These restrictions are the result of a decades long vilification program by well funded "environmentalist" groups such as the Tides Foundation, the Sierra Club and others.

Consequently, the enormous demand for sources of petroleum has driven the industry further and further off shore. We now have oil companies forced to drill in 5000+ feet of water. Although the technology for such drilling exists, no one has been able to figure out how to economically deliver a functioning Halliburton cement wagon to the ocean floor at those depths.

As this disaster unfolds, few if any in the media are pointing a finger at the two chief culprits: the government and the environazis. On the up side, the bumbling incompetence of the huge bureaucracies of the government and the grandstanding politicians are being revealed for what they are: a black hole sucking away our wealth and liberties.

Update: 6/12/10 2147 EDT

Another Country Heard from

2010-06-09T21:25:00.001-04:00

A recent post by the Curmudgeon Emeritus on the subject of Israel's ongoing struggle for its very survival speaks truths that sadly most of humanity is unaware of. The enemies of western culture have, by their seizure of the media and academia succeeded beyond even their own wildest expectations. As evidence of this postulate I herewith present the translation of a comment published on a popular (rated in the top 10) Swedish blog .
The commenter addresses his comment to "Zionistlover" an apparent reference to the blog poster. In this instance Mrs. ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ.

Zionistlover ...

Helen Thomas, the journalist, is correct in saying:
"Jews out of Palestine".
It was a BIG mistake to create the Zionist state, this killer band that is thought to be above the law.

The increasing Islamisation of Europe is a problem, yes, but that is partly a consequence of the world's having given the Zionists too much leeway.
I am sorry to say, they do not play by the rules, for example, disclosing their nuclear weapons, and because of that there is unfortunately only one solution. Just as in Iraq, Israel should be invaded and Netanyahu as well as other Zionists brought to justice, destroying all Israeli weapons of mass destruction, appropriating their money and paying it back to the people in Gaza, Jordan and Syria as their homes were expropierade without any compensation.
An international force should be organized in the same way as in Yugoslavia to keep the parties separated, with the right to shoot Zionists and others who do not respect the new division.

Port workers in Sweden are quite right, just as against apartheid in South Africa in it's time, a boycott is a possibility. Therefore, we must hope the rest of the world will follow and ban zionist products and demand special Zionist visa, it may well be a yellow star, on the document.

Proud anti-Semite, Peder Jensen.
PS. No Jews should not be eradicated, they only have to behave properly, it means they are not above any law.

Gentle reader, Peder Jensen expresses the views of a not inconsiderable segment of the European electorate. He appears to have little to no concept of the Anglo Saxon common law philosophy or for that matter natural law. Tragically, his position is what is increasingly recognized as politically correct in today's academia.

The Considerable "Cheek" of Felipe Calderón

2010-05-22T14:09:00.002-04:00

Just when one believes he has seen and heard it "all", along comes the reality of post modern political hackery to resurrect with all seriousness the ancient practice of betraying the gates of the city to the besieging enemy for the fleeting advantage of political gain.

On 20 May just passed, the president of Mexico addressed the US Congress. The purpose of his speech appears to have been that of creating momentum for passage of "comprehensive" reform of US immigration law. Not content with the non enforcement of existing law, the operatives of the "lying" party are complicit in the recruitment of lying heads of foreign states to assist them in augmenting the ranks of collectivist voters.

In his speech, Sr. Calderón refers to Mexico's "loss" due to the emigration from his country of the "brightest and hardest working" members of Mexican society. Apropos the subject, your humble corespondent has just returned from his most recent transcontinental road trip. During that trip he was regaled with considerable anecdotal evidence to the contrary. One member of Leonidas' extended family has been employed for several years as an on call emergency room nurse at a Phoenix area hospital. During those years her income has approached $250,000.00 per year as she is a highly trained and experienced professional called upon to work many hours per week. Since enactment and actual enforcement of the Arizona law which incidentally mirrors the wording of long existing federal legislation, she is only occasionally called to assist in the treatment of true traumas as opposed to the formerly routine incidents of sniffles, sore throats and bruises attributed to the minor domestic squabbles of the "bandilito" (wetback) population in the Phoenix area. Word has apparently spread through the bandilito community that after their "free" treatment at the local trauma center a bus ride to the Nogales port of entry awaits them.

Sr. Calderón's assertion that his government is seeking ways to retain the "brightest and best" members of his society is risible to anyone such as this blogster who has resided in Mexico and experienced the pervasive corruption at all levels of government. On one occasion, Leonidas was required to not only perform the detective work for the local police in Acapulco to recover his property stolen by a local shopkeeper, but to supply cash to "purchase fuel" for the police vehicle that was used in the investigation. This is reported with all due respect to Fred Reed who happens to be a LEGAL gringo resident of Mexico.

Interestingly enough, Leonidas' recent road trip included a fuel stop in Hollister, California. The entire visible population of that city appeared to consist of bandilitos. The only non bandilitos in evidence were SOME of the motorists entering and exiting the city. The clerk at the fuel stop spoke no understandable English and was so flustered by an obvious gringo addressing him in proper Spanish that he was rendered virtually speechless. This incident only lends credence to the aphorism that most of the bandilito population are "illiterate in two languages".

A Border Solution?

2010-04-30T14:33:00.001-04:00

Where to begin?

The recent brouhaha over Arizona's enactment of legislation attempting to address the serious negative impacts of the porous border with Mexico continue, in the opinion of this humble writer to overlook some important factors.

The caterwauling raised by those feigning concern over the civil rights of the "bandalitos" (illegal aliens) is especially amusing and arises from either ignorance or cynical political motives. If any of those activists/politicians, from the obamunists to Marco Rubio, who states that: "I think aspects of the law, especially that dealing with ‘reasonable suspicion,’ are going to put our law enforcement officers in an incredibly difficult position." can cite a single police power conferred by the Arizona statutes that exceeds those assigned to federal officers, I for one am prepared to eat a crow sandwich.

Probably the most effective way to address the immigration portion of the border problem would include rigidly enforcing the following:
    1) All undocumented foreigners within the borders to be declared felons
    2) Foreign residents must prove they are not a burden on society
    3) Immigration authorities must have a record of each foreign visitor
    4) Visitors must not violate their visa status
    5) A ban on interfering with internal politics i.e. public protests and marches
    6) Imprisonment or deportation of those entering under false pretenses
    7) Those aiding illegal immigration shall be imprisoned
    8) Public transport companies that import undocumented foreigners will be fined
    9) Marrying a foreigner for the sole purpose of legalizing residence is prohibited

Such "draconian" measures would doubtless elicit a cacophony of protestations from not only apparatchiks of the Democratic party but "civil rights" activists and the ACLU, not to mention president Calderón of México.

Oh, by the way; did I neglect to mention that the above 9 items and others were extracted and translated from México's Ley General de Población? These sections are strictly enforced. Simply ask those citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador and NIcaragua who have run afoul of México's immigration law.

Additionally, a reconsideration of the US "War" on drugs would also go a long way in ameliorating the border difficulties.

Test

2010-04-27T22:12:00.002-04:00

Another "Undeclared" War

2010-04-27T17:51:00.000-04:00

The following is an email that originated in southern Arizona. I have been unable to determine its veracity via either Snopes or TruthOrFiction.com. It does however, have the ring of legitimacy from my own perspective in law enforcement as well as the current practice of the main stream media suppressing stories embarrassing to our current political regime.

Date: Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 6:28 PM
Subject: FW: Mexican Assassins - Life on the border

-----Forwarded Message-----

Forwarded to me by a friend who recently retired from border patrol.........

As you know, one of the local ranchers was murdered in Douglas two weeks ago. His funeral is tomorrow. I received three messages similar to the one below from different officers within the Rangers and law enforcement.

Yesterday afternoon I talked to another rancher near us who is a friend of ours and whose great grandfather started their ranch here in 1880. These are good people. He told me what really happened out at the Krentz ranch and what you won’t read in the papers. The Border Patrol is afraid of starting a small war between civilians here and the drug cartels in Mexico.

Bob Krentz was checking his water like he does every evening and came upon an illegal who was lying on the ground telling him he was sick. Bob called the Border Patrol and asked for a medical helicopter evac. As he turned to go back to his ATV he was shot in the side. The round came from down and angled up so they know the shooter was on the ground. Bob’s firearm was in the ATV so he had no chance. Wounded he called the Cochise County Sherriff and asked for help. Bleeding in the lungs he called his brother but the line was bad so he called his wife but again the line was bad.

Several ranchers heard the radio call and drove to his location. Bob was dead by this time. The ranchers tracked the shooter 8 miles back towards Mexico and cornered him in a brushy draw. This was all at night. The Sherriff and Border Patrol arrived and told them not to go down and engage the murderer. They went around to the back side and if you can believe it the assassin managed to get by a BP helicopter and a Sherriff’s posse and back to Mexico . So much for professional help when you need it.

One week before the murder Bob and his brother Phil (who I shoot with) hauled a huge quantity of drugs off the ranch that they found in trucks. One week before that a rancher near Naco did the same thing. Two nights later gangs broke into his ranch house and beat him and his wife and told them that if they touched any drugs they found they would come back and kill them. The ranchers here deal with cut fences and haul drug deliveries off their ranches all the time. What ranchers think is that the drug cartels beat the one rancher and shot Bob because they wanted to send a message. Bob always gave food and water to illegals and so they think they sent the assassin to pose as an illegal who was hungry and thirsty knowing it would catch Bob off guard.

What is going on down here is NOT being reported. You need to tell people how bad it is along the border. Texas is worse. Near El Paso it’s in a state of war. 5000 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez last year and it’s over 2000 so far this year. Gun sales down here are through the roof and I get emails from people wanting firearms training.

Something has to be done but I don’t hold out much hope. These gangs have groups in almost every city in the US . Please read below. This is serious business. The Barrio Azteca and their sub gangs are like Mexican Corporations and organized extremely well. If this doesn’t get dealt with down here you guys will deal with it on your streets.

It really is getting worse and worse down there Folks....."starting a small war between civilians here and the drug cartels in Mexico."

HT: Wollf

A Commemoration

2010-04-22T09:29:00.001-04:00

Your humble blogster has recently learned that the organization dedicated to the preservation of vintage military aircraft formerly known as the Confederate Air Force has, in the name of political correctness i.e. cultural Marxism been renamed the Commemorative Air Force. We wonder how long the search for a suitable substitute for the word "Confederate" required in order to retain the acronym CAF.

In any event, apropos the subject of "commemorate" we note that today is "Earth Day" and therefore wish to call your attention to a presentation by the late George Carlin on the subject of "saving the planet".

Warning: those concerned with the PG 13 rating of this blog may wish to forgo viewing the video. For the rest of you (both of you know who you are) enjoy.

Worth 1000 Words

2010-03-31T22:20:00.000-04:00

A TSA worker pats down a traveler at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Sept. 22, the day the government introduced stricter security measures.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

We now live in a society where the arrest of 9 "christian militia" nutcases who are most likely the hapless victims of a government agent provocateur garners above the fold front page media coverage while suicide bombers in Moscow who murder scores are relegated to a page 4 report that fails to even hint at their religious affiliation.

Outrage anyone?

I thought not.

Census Protest

2010-03-17T09:38:00.003-04:00

The following is a blog posting by Dr. Walter Block lifted from here. Obviously this message needs maximum exposure:

I pass this along [sic] letter on the census for your information, only. I do not counsel anyone to break the law. Of course, I’m not real sure of what the law is. A direct and literal reading of the U.S. Constitution it seems to me, a non lawyer, is clear as to what the law is: people are legally obligated, only, to cooperate in a head count for political representation purposes. But, my fear, my expectation, even, is that present courts will not interpret the law in that way, and may instead punish census rebels who refuse to furnish additional required (requested?) information. In any case, the following will undoubtedly be of interest to all people concerned with liberty; I offer it exactly as it was sent to me:

From: ronpaul-200@meetup.com on behalf of DarkLaw
Sent: Tue 3/9/2010 9:02 PM
To: ronpaul-200@meetup.com
Subject: Re: [ronpaul-200] Ron Paul CNN on Cafferty Files 2/27/10

My response to the Census

I compiled this letter and inserted it into the Census envelope, along with my 2010 census form.
I marked off that ‘02′ people reside at this address….and, well… read the rest!

Use this as a template! This is just another small step in which we can show the Feds we won’t take this nonsense lying down!
______________________

To Whom it May Concern,

Pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, the only information you are empowered to request is the total number of occupants at this address. My “name, sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, telephone number, relationship and housing tenure” have absolutely nothing to do with apportioning direct taxes or determining the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Therefore, neither Congress nor the Census Bureau have the constitutional authority to make that information request a component of the enumeration outlined in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. In addition, I cannot be subject to a fine for basing my conduct on the Constitution because that document trumps laws passed by Congress.

Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447, 479 (May 26, 1894)

“Neither branch of the legislative department [House of Representatives or Senate], still less any merely administrative body [such as the Census Bureau], established by congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen. Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 190. We said in Boyd v. U.S., 116 U. S. 616, 630, 6 Sup. Ct. 524,―and it cannot be too often repeated,―that the principles that embody the essence of constitutional liberty and security forbid all invasions on the part of government and it’s employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of his life. As said by Mr. Justice Field in Re Pacific Ry. Commission, 32 Fed. 241, 250, ‘of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves, not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.’”

Note: This United States Supreme Court case has never been overturned.

Respectfully,

A Citizen of the United States of America

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Judicial Outrage

2010-03-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

Shamelessly stolen from Col B Bunny

A Turnaround?

2010-03-15T10:42:00.002-04:00

Duh!

Your humble and semi fearless blogster just yesterday broke one of his most important and long standing self imposed rules. While surfing between the local news broadcast and the weather channel he paused on one of the Sunday "talk shows" and within one minute needed to hastily retreat to the closest water closet and be relieved of his breakfast. The author of the need to visit the vomitorium was a talking head that assured one and all that the latest "polling data" reveals that the American boobioiese is now welcoming the arrival of Obamacare as blessed relief from "skyrocketing" health insurance premiums.

Oh goody! The Fed has inflated the "money" supply by over 100% in the last 18 months and "costs" for goods and services including insurance premiums are beginning to rise. Who knew? According to the cretin spouting this "logic", the miraculous turnaround in the acceptance of socialized medical delivery is due to a clamoring for price controls and rationing. Who knew? Welcome to the Zimbabwe/Cuba system of "social progressivism".

Life Imitates Hollywood

2010-03-10T21:05:00.004-05:00

Many of you may remember the 2002 Stephen Spielberg scifi production of Minority Report, portraying a future society in which the government assured its citizens that certain individuals were "about to commit" crimes and therefore justified "preventive" arrests and prosecutions.

Those of us who viewed the film experienced relief that "our" form of government would never engage in such outrageous practices. Think again gentle reader.

In the southern Oregon community of Medford, a furloughed Oregon Dept. of Transportation employee has been taken into "protective custody" for legally purchasing 3 firearms over a period of two days:

In two days, the man bought a Heckler & Koch .45-caliber universal self-loading handgun, a Walther .380-caliber handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle, Medford police Lt. Bob Hansen said. All of those firearms were purchased legally, with required record checks by the Oregon State Police.

Please note that the state mouthpiece media is dully identifying all of these semiautomatic firearms by their politically correct Pelosi/Feinstein nomenclature.

The identity of the person detained in this swat team operation has not been released. He is being held for a 72 hr. "psychiatric evaluation". At the end of the 72 hrs. a psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker may have him detained for an additional 90 days. The record of this detention will preclude him from "owning any firearm for the remainder of his life". So much for the protections of the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.

If any of you yet entertain the fiction that we live under a government who respects the liberties earned during the unpleasantness of 1775-1783, I suggest you reconsider subscribing to such nonsense and proceed accordingly.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

cross posted at: Eternity Road

A Bit of Government "Comedy/Irony?"

2010-02-26T19:10:00.001-05:00

Your semi fearless blogster had an amusing encounter this morning on the way to the gym and reasons for levity of late being sparse he has decided to share it with both of his faithful followers.

Only last week the "first lady" Mrs. Michelle Obama/Soetoro appeared on one or more of the insipid morning boob tube venues to decry childhood "obesity". It is as yet unclear which of the 22 members of her White House staff broached the idea of such a crusade (perhaps in view of recent trends the term should be jihad). This concept of nanny statism follows closely on the heels of trial balloons being floated over government controls of junk and fast food.

Where was I? Oh, yes; the narrow road near our residence necessitated us coming to a stop in front of a neighbor's residence in order to allow the boarding of a school bus by a rather portly pupil who attends the public elementary level indoctrination center located approximately 900 feet away. As the school bus paused with appropriate flashing red lights and obligatorily deployed octagonal stop sign as well as bumper barrier, the pupil of some 10 years of age huffed and puffed up the slightly inclined driveway and lumbered aboard the bus. Two more stops were required of the bus on its 900 foot journey in order to board pupils who live directly across the street from the school.

It appears that the school district prohibits pupils from arriving and departing its facilities by any means other than motor vehicles even though each and every roadway adjacent to any of the institutions displays flashing yellow lights indicating reduced speed limits often monitored by ~~revenuers~~ minions of the law replete with electronic detection devices even on "snow days" when the schools are vacant.

Goodness, how times have changed since the old days when we young'uns were forced to trek "2 miles up hill (both ways) in blizzard conditions" to the little red school house. It must be the price we pay for our rulers keeping us safe, healthy and protecting the environment.

"Right" vs "Privilege"

2010-02-13T22:40:00.005-05:00

In less than three weeks the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of McDonald v City of Chicago. The court will decide if the Second Amendment which states: "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." applies to the various states and local governments. In 2008 the court held that the plain language of the Second Amendment applies to the District of Columbia which like Chicago had ordinances effectively prohibiting the possession of firearms in its jurisdiction. The odds are that the Chicago law will be struck down as unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

The decision will doubtless impact many restrictive gun laws in multiple states. A case in point is the (idiotic?) law in California (section 12031 (a) (1) of the penal code) which prohibits the carrying without a concealed carry permit of a loaded firearm in any incorporated city or designated area in the unincorporated area of any county. The law as interpreted by California courts allows the carrying of a concealable firearm in those prohibited areas if it is "unloaded". Of course All schools and public buildings are "gun free" zones.

One can imagine the confusing situation faced by a non permitted citizen who wishes to exercise his second Amendment "right" under these Byzantine laws, especially when sheriffs and police chiefs routinely refuse the issuance of concealed carry permits to all but a favored class of applicants.

Recently a group of California residents protesting this situation has begun to openly carry their hand guns in various venues such as Starbucks coffee shops in the Bay area. The response of some police personnel to these protests is about what one could expect of members of a class whose monopoly of certain "rights" is threatened as is illustrated by the following exchange discussing a legal instance of open carry on the face book threads of one officer Tauson:

"Haha, we had one guy last week try to do it!"...""He got proned out and reminded where he was at and that turds will jack him for his gun in a heartbeat!..."Sounds like you had someone practicing their 2nd amendment rights last night!" Tuason wrote. "Should've pulled the AR out and prone them all out! And if one of them makes a furtive movement ... 2 weeks off!!!"

The two weeks off (with pay of course) refers to the internal shooting investigation period.

I have a question for those who allege that law abiding citizens have certain "rights" guaranteed by the Constitution: does one need a permit to exercise a right? If you, dear reader, believe that a permit is only required for a privilege you would be in error.

The Supreme Court will hand down its ruling before the June adjournment. We are breathlessly awaiting the determination of at least 5 of our black robed demigods. Any bets on the voting alignment?

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Bang for the Buck

2010-02-12T16:15:00.004-05:00

click to enlarge images

How to avoid looking like a referee at a tennis match while giving a speech.

ht: Theo Spark

Transportation (Non) Security

2010-02-02T11:49:00.002-05:00

In one of his previous lives (the law enforcement one) your humble blogster participated in several "covert" operations. That is the main reason that he finds the saga of the underwear bomber of Christmas day especially intriguing.

As "luck" would have it and much to the chagrin of our political masters, a material witness to the events concerning flight 253 happened to be an individual trained in both logic and evidence evaluation. Unless this witness can be either discredited or intimidated into silence, the entire bureaucratic farce designated "transportation security" and erected by the government will stand revealed for the sham that in fact it is.

The witness, an attorney by the name of Kurt Haskell who was a passenger aboard flight 253 avails himself of his legal training in opening his "case" by posing seven questions :

1. Who is the Man in Orange?

2. Did Mutallab know the Sharp Dressed Man?

3. Was it intended that the bomb explode?

4. Did the U.S. Government know that Mutallab had a bomb when it allowed him to board Flight 253?

5. Why is the U.S. Government seeking a plea deal for Mutallab?

6. Why did a fellow passenger call me to discuss changing my story?

7. Why are the important questions being ignored by the mainstream media?

I hope that you, dear reader, will follow Mr. Haskell's discussion of these seven questions at the link provided above and supply your reactions in the comments at the end of this post.

Public perception of the workings of covert government operations have been severely distorted by the entertainment media. In other words: what one views on the entertaining episodes of "24" is so far from reality as to enter the realm of the absurd. In the real world and almost universally, those charged with supervising these operations have little to no hands on experience working "under cover". The skills required of successful operatives are not necessarily congruent with supervisory abilities. The "bosses" have been promoted/appointed/elected into their supervisory positions on the basis of a variation of the Peter Principal which rewards those skilled in sycophancy and bureaucratic political maneuvering. The "supervisors" almost invariably experience difficulty in managing the often complicated operations. These difficulties arise chiefly from an inability to resist tendencies toward micro management. Political corruption is also an occasional factor. First hand examples of this theory will doubtless supply subject matter for future posts.

In classic Platonic fashion, Mr. Haskell discusses the implications of the possible answers to his seven questions and invites us to; (using an overworked cliche) "connect the dots". Suddenly, Ms Napolitano's apparently nonsensical statement that "the system worked" acquires the ring of perverse if partial truth.

In any event, the concept that ultimate transportation security can be achieved if only we surrender more liberty is revealed for the nonsensical fairy tale it has always been.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Oliver Stone and Danny Glover, Call Your Offices

2010-01-29T19:04:00.001-05:00

Try wrapping your mind around these concepts:

1. According to the Castro regime in Cuba, the United States government, using recently developed technology caused the recent disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the southwest corner of the island of Hispaniola. Several days prior to that event a test of the technology was conducted 10 miles offshore of the extreme northern California town of Ferndale near Eureka. The latter temblor registered a 6.5 on the Richter scale. The Cubans warn that the new weapon is next to be used against the Islamic Republic of Iran.

2. Venezuela's "elected" caudillo, señor Chávez explains (with a straight face) that the US military has invaded Haiti:

"I read that 3,000 soldiers are arriving, Marines armed as if they were going to war. There is not a shortage of guns there, my God. Doctors, medicine, fuel, field hospitals, that's what the United States should send," Chavez said on his weekly television show. "They are occupying Haiti undercover."

He would doubtless prefer that volunteers attempting to deliver humanitarian aid should deal with events such as this and this and be unencumbered by adequate means to accomplish their objective or even to defend themselves.

Meanwhile, the rolling blackouts in Venezuela (except in certain districts of the capital) are blamed on the el niño induced drought rather than the socialist power suppliers' neglected maintenance of the hydroelectric infrastructure as seen in this slide show. Strangely enough, the "drought" has not effected the power generation in neighboring Colombia. This odd situation is doubtless also to be the fault of the "imperialist yanquis" who have developed a "drought machine" to augment the new "earthquake machine".

It appears that the teleprompter jesus will be required to make a new and improved apology tour of our southern neighbors as soon as all the newly imported Democratic voters from Haiti are added to the rolls here in the US.

Hello UN!

2010-01-21T14:05:00.000-05:00

Who 'da thunk it?

2010-01-17T19:24:00.001-05:00

Why, you may ask would this happen?
Answer: Power over YOUR life.

Your (Tire Inflation) Papers Please

2010-01-16T11:17:00.001-05:00

The enactment in 2006 of AB-32 (The Global Warming Solutions Act ) in California and establishing the California Air Resources Board to enforce it will soon begin to bearing bitter fruit for residents as well as motor vehicle operators in that hapless state. Regulations proposed by the CARB will require that all auto repair shops in the state "check the inflation of every tire during auto repair in their shops to improve mpg for all vehicles."

The vehicle owners cannot refuse this "service" unless the shop charges extra for it and only if they can "prove with documentation that they’ve had their tires checked and inflated in the last 30 days, or if they WILL do so within the next week". In other words, you can no longer inflate your own tires, but must have it done by a "technician" who provides "documentation". The penalty for "violation" of the regulation is up to $1,000.00 per violation and 6 months imprisonment. You simply cannot make this stuff up.

The following likely conversation between two inmates in the "overcrowded" Kalifornia GULAG system can no longer be considered hyperbole:

jailbird 1: So what's your rap for being here?

jailbird 2: I inflated the tires on my '72 Chevy, what's yours?

jailbird 1: Cited twice for driving my '66 Mustang without wearing seat belts.

jailbird 2: But '66 Mustangs didn't have seat belts.

jailbird 1: Tell it to the KHG! (Kalifornia Highway Gestapo)

"Hope and Change"?

2010-01-15T18:23:00.000-05:00

Readers of this blog are obviously capable of noting the discernable and increasing interval between recent postings. I should probably apologize to both of you but in lieu of such an apology I will merely offer an explanation. Simply put, the old Spartan's outrage meter has required several recalibrations. Should either of you choose to reject such a lame "excuse" I invite you to suspend contributing to the lucre that these efforts have directed to the House of ΑΓΙΣ.

As a clue to the main concern of this formerly fearless blogster he will offer up the following laconic quote from a sadly anonymous but eloquent source:

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.” -- Author Unknown

For additional insight I invite the curious reader/scholar to consider the Cloward-Piven Strategy as it relates to recent developments in the "western" world.

ht/: Washington Rebel

Government Assisted Misery

2010-01-14T10:55:00.003-05:00

click to enlarge

The ongoing graphic and poignant images broadcast in the media of the devastation wreaked by the earthquake in Haiti fail to convey the depth of the tragedy.

The island of Hispaniola is shared by two nations: The Dominican Republic and Haiti, both of which are poor by North American standards. In the course of several voyages in his smallish sailing vessel between South Florida and the Eastern Caribbean this writer has made calls at various ports and anchorages along the coasts of both nations. The process of clearing in and out of ports necessarily involves contact with various bureaucracies including port authorities, customs officials and immigration officers. After engaging in the process several dozen times one gets a sense of the frequent bureaucratic pettiness which affects virtually all governments.

On one of these voyages Northwest from the Virgin Islands to Ft. Lauderdale I suffered a re-injury to my lower back while provisioning in Puerto Rico. The pain was aggravated by piloting and shortening sail while navigating the Mona Passage. Upon reaching port in the Dominican Republic your fearless author was unable to make the rounds of the various offices in order to clear into the country and delegated the task to his first officer/cook. This situation persisted during the voyage along the north coast and at the Haitian port of entry, Cap Haitiene.

I was flat on my back in the shade of the cockpit awning at the dock when the blackest and most wizened peddler I had ever encountered hailed me attempting to hawk a hand carved mahogany walking stick for US $25.00. He had obviously bribed the port captain in order to obtain permission to enter the dock area and refused to take no for an answer. I explained that I had no need for such an item and could barely rise from my supine position. My continued refusal resulted in a steady reduction in his asking price until ultimately I made the purchase for one US dollar in order to obtain surcease from his insistence.

It was not until later that I examined the walking stick (pictured above) and found it to be meticulously and ornately carved. The old man (or someone) had obviously spent hours carving the decorations on it. Additionally, as virtually all of the trees in Haiti have been cut down to be converted to charcoal for cooking, where had he obtained the stick? The implications of the depth of poverty this anecdote illustrates finally dawned on me with a deep sadness.

On a previous visit to the interior of Haiti I saw people occupying (as in living in) corrugated tin huts with thatched roofs. Some of the huts were situated on flat ground and recent rains had resulted in all of the rooms being ankle deep in filthy water in which was floating garbage and raw sewage. As bad as the photos of earthquake devastation in Port Au Prince are, one must realize that they depict the most affluent area of the nation. Until my Haitian visits I had found communist Nicaragua to be the poorest of societies.

As an aside, we note that Israel has sent rescue aid to the disaster area of Haiti. Can the worker's paradises of Cuba and Venezuela spare aid as well?

Sound of crickets chirping.

The poverty of virtually all nations is generally proportional to the degree of government corruption.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

A Comparison

2009-12-31T13:18:00.002-05:00

'Tis once again the season when we gaze back on the previous annum and ponder the changes for good or ill that have overtaken both the republic and ourselves. Your humble blogster confesses to never having been a huge fan of the previous occupant of the White House but simply considering him to be the less objectionable of both of the likely alternatives offered by the Democratic party. However, a survey of the occurances of 2009 forces me to admit to a degree of nostalgia for the comparatively "not so bad" old days of GWB. The following is a short list of contrasts of a year ago courtesy of Blackiswhite , Imperial Consigliere:

A year ago, the government wasn’t the owner of two previously privately held auto companies, the largest insurer in the nation, or a large mortgage bank.
A year ago, our President wasn’t buddy-buddy with Chavez or Castro.
A year ago, we didn’t have a tax-cheat as Treasury Secretary.
A year ago, we didn’t have an Executive Order authorizing the immigration and placement of thousands of Palestinians in the U.S.
A year ago, U.S. taxpayers weren’t funding and facilitating abortions in other countries.
A year ago, five percent fewer federal employees made over $100,000.00 a year. It must be nice to get a raise in the worst recession in my memory…especially when you already have the job security of a federal employee.
A year ago, we had a President who wasn’t on record as thinking that the Constitution is “fundamentally flawed”.
A year ago, we had a President who did not bow deeply to the Saudi King and the Japanese Emperor.
A year ago, we had a President who did not avoid the Senate’s advise and consent role by appointing czars in places where they had never been before.
A year ago, we had a President who did not go out of his way to insult average Americans by casting aspersions on their values and the values of their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
A year ago, we did not have a Supreme Court Justice who completely and utterly disqualified themselves before appointment with repeated statements calling their integrity and impartiality into question.
A year ago, we did not have government officials threatening private investors who were trying to protect their legal rights in bankruptcy.
A year ago, we did not have a presidentially appointed self-admitted Communist in government.
A year ago, a government official would not have dreamt of quoting Mao in public as a favorite philosopher.
A year ago, our elected representatives would not have dared to ask constituents for ID before answering their questions, or used union goons and police to silence and remove constituents from public meetings.
A year ago, the conventional wisdom would have laughed at the notion that we need hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending that stimulates nothing in order to turn the rising tide of unemployment.
A year ago, the government did not deign to set compensation levels for employees of privately held companies.
A year ago, the idea of government health care for all was the punchline of a Hillary Clinton joke.
A year ago, we didn’t have a President who has informed a whole sector of the energy industry that he wants to put them out of business.
A year ago, the EPA was not threatening to regulate carbon dioxide emissions if Congress doesn’t.
A year ago, INTERPOL could not operate on American soil without regard to the American Constitution and American due process.
A year ago, we didn’t have an attorney general who believed it was appropriate or necessary to try foreign terrorists in Article III courts.
A year ago, we had a President and administration that recognized that we were already in a war on terrorism, because the terrorists had already declared war on us.
A year ago, a statement to the nation about a terrorist act committed against Americans by the President was a duty, and not an annoyance.
A year ago, carbon dioxide was good because it helps plants grow, and not a pollutant requiring taxes by Congress that will be paid by energy consumers.
A year ago, in was understood that the government cannot force me to buy a government-approved health care plan with the threat of exorbitant fines and/or jail time.
A year ago, it wasn’t the priority of one political party to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to a group of community activists that have engaged in voter fraud and other criminal enterprises…time and again.
A year ago, the government didn’t fire watchdogs who caught influential friends of the government with their sticky fingers in the government till.
A year ago, we had a President and Leader of the Free World who didn’t sit on his hands and “bear witness” to the brutal repression and murder of people resisting a totalitarian regime that is determined to destabilize the region it is in.
A year ago, we had a President who did not support a leader attempting a coup by vilifying the people who lawfully prevented it.
A year ago, we did not face a government that grows fat and belligerent on our tax dollar, while constantly threatening to take more of our money and freedom from us.
A year ago, we [did not have] a President that accused our soldiers of perpetrating war crimes for political gain, or declared police guilty of acting stupidly while admitting in the same breath that he didn’t have all the facts.
A year ago, dissent was the highest form of patriotism; now it’s racist!

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

The End Times for Liberty?

2009-12-23T20:34:00.003-05:00

Those readers who have been following the scribblings of this fearless blogster (both of you know who you are) have noted a somewhat tapering off of his screeds recently. He is tempted to attribute the lack of cogent production to "burnout" but that would be less than candid of him. The truth of the matter is more mundane. He is much less "fearless" than heretofore.

Included among the blessings of youth is the assumption that one is invincible, immortal; bulletproof as it were. This and forced conscription I believe, are two of the contributing factors toward the ability of rulers to mobilize cannon fodder in order to achieve this or that political objective.

As youth fades and the sum of worldly experience increases, the reverse of the coin of life begins to manifest itself to wit, the observance of long term trends. The most depressing trend that Leonidas has witnessed over yea these threescore and thirteen years is the inexorable advance of collectivism to the detriment of individual liberty.

Intervening between the current progress toward collectivism and the re emergence of the value of individual liberty appears to be a descent into what many would characterize as a "dark age" similar to the conditions obtaining subsequent to the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the sixth century AD.

Indeed, as western/Roman civilization disintegrated due to corruption of the political/economic system your humble blogster sees similar forces at work today.

This past week yields on [Greece's] 10-year bonds surged in the wake of downgrades by the bond rating agencies, which finally recognized that Greece does not have the financial resources needed to repay its debts, which now stand near junk levels. Not far behind are Latvia, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom and almost every other country in Europe, even though they may still flog paper rated as “investment grade.” The reality is that the rating agencies just have not yet come to grips with the breadth and depth of widespread government insolvency, or have willingly turned a blind-eye to it. And don’t forget Iceland which of course has already collapsed.
How did we sink to this state of affairs? Nobel Laureate Friedrich von Hayek provides the answer in his brilliantly insightful and prescient book, The Road to Serfdom, penned during the waning years of the Second World War.
Hayek’s central theme is that wars expand the power of the modern state because the national planning to fight the war continues even during times of peace. This perennial government planning then expands the social-welfare state over time, with harmful results. Most importantly, economic activity is impeded by the growing state as people and resources become less productive. In other words, because the government does not create consumable goods and services, it is an economic burden to the productive sector of the economy.

The insolvency of socialist governments invariably results in rioting and chaos in the streets as the proletariat demands the fulfilling of promises made by collectivist politicians who have assured them that there is in fact a "free lunch".

"More people depend on the state than those who provide it with the money the state needs to meet its promises. Most of Europe long ago passed the 50% threshold with more people depending on government than the private sector, but even in the United States – long reigning as the bastion of capitalism, free-markets and limited government – 58% of the population derives their income from government at some level. "

The precise details of how the train wreck is to be played out remain to be seen. This old Spartan is not sanguine as to the medium term outcome and is carefully husbanding his last cartridge.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

cross posted at: Eternity Road

It's A Religion; Stupid

2009-12-16T12:35:00.001-05:00

If there were ever ever any doubts that the AGW movement is a religion, the below video dispels them. Is it only a matter of time before the imams of the religion of "peace™" commission their own "scientific" hacks (as the warmistas have) to create computer models proving that the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven from the Dome of the Rock aboard a huge white horse?

The Joys of Government "Health" Care

2009-12-14T21:50:00.000-05:00

The below video was shot at Havana's Hijas de Galicia maternity hospital in June of 2009. It seems to have escaped the final cut of Michael Moore's production of "Sicko". Guess he just couldn't work it in.

ht: The Real Cuba