Blog Chez Jacq'

The K C Star "reports" the pure rope-a-dope mouthed by the preacher in an attempt to justify his changing his vote on the coverup bill.

Although he says his constituents were overwhelmingly against the $700 billion rescue package, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said he voted for it Friday out of both “fear and education.”

His constituents are overwhelmingly against…? Is he a representative or a recipient?

The Star says further on:

Cleaver was the only member of the Missouri and Kansas congressional delegation to switch his vote from Monday.

...

The four other House members representing the Kansas City region did not change their votes from Monday. Democrats Dennis Moore of Kansas and Ike Skelton of Missouri voted for it both times, while Democrat Nancy Boyda of Kansas and Republican Sam Graves of Missouri remained opposed to it.

These folks at least have some principles. The unprincipled preacher was congratulated on his original stand and called again to urge him to maintain his position. He dropped the ball. Cleaver must go. Vote for a principled Jacob Turk on the 4th.

The entire article says.

Click here for all you want to know about Cleaver.

Labels: constitution, corruption, federal reserve, mendacity, politics

I've admired Fred Reed for years [Semper Fi, Bud] with few exceptions. This is one his best. Might be his best ever.

Fred Throws Sombrero in Ring

The Only Thing We Have to Be Afred of is Fred Hisself

September 24, 2008

I see that I shall have to come out of retirement and become President. It is the only hope for the country and the world. That I am willing to undergo the humiliation of the office is a measure of the depth of my sense of duty. Though perhaps I will do it under an assumed name.

First things first. I will need a stirring bumper sticker, this being the key to high office. What? I’m considering “Fred! Piss Poor but Look at the Rest.” Or “A Fred in Every Pot,” or perhaps “Better Fred than Dead”? Or “Tippecanoe and Frederick Too.” The possibilities are endless. In any event, election is a mere detail. Given the competition, the country will flock to my standard. Or wish it had.

Next I’ll need some promises. How about :When in office, I will do the following wholesome things:

Education. Put a bounty on members of the teachers unions. The season will start with a week for bow hunters and black powder and then be open to all. No bag limit. Think stuffed heads over the mantle. “Ah, yes, Miss Grundy. I knew her well.”

That accomplished, I will require a score of 1200 on the old SATs, before the dumbing-down, for teaching positions. I will then raise salaries until such people take the job. The schools today are in the hands of people too dim to know what schooling is, and resentful of people who have it or might want it. They remind me of vegetarian butchers: The whole concept doesn't work.

Then I will have everyone in the Department of Education strangled (possible electoral slogan: “Strangulation in the Common Interest”). Local governments will run their schools as they damned well please. Ha. Ha ha!

The military: I will support a constitutional amendment requiring that Congress declare all wars. (I know, but it doesn’t work.) This would have spared us Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and perhaps Afghanistan. The first urge of Congress is reelection, and the second, the avoidance of responsibility. They will never spawn a war they have to admit to.

Further (an old favorite of mine), I will require that the mothers of the graduating class at Harvard be strapped to the glacis plates of any tanks sent to foreign wars. Joan Baez will be my Chairman of the JCS. She’s a decent woman, sane, and has a nice voice. I bet the incumbent can’t sing at all.

Under my guidance, the military will assume a new mission of defending the United States rather than being a presidential hobby. I know: This is radical, but radical times require radical solutions.

I will put the defense contractors under Apple Computer. They will then beaver away making groovy if unnecessary gadgets to sell to bored teenagers. This will at least do no harm, and perhaps allow the US to compete with Japan in consumer electronics. Though I doubt it.

Energy. I will issue a cyanide pill to all Americans. When vines begin growing through the fan belts of the SUVs, because there is no gas, they will pop the pill. This will reduce the consumption of energy, and for that matter drop the population to a reasonable level—say, twenty people.

Suicide really is the only practical solution. Democracies have the foresight of retarded rabbits and never notice the inescapable, such as that the world’s demand for oil grows and the supply doesn’t. Anyone who points this out is called a commie, anti-market, un-American, a green, and accused of links to the Sierra Club.

Pills on the way.

Social policy. I will end affirmative action, zap. It does nothing but inspire division and resentment. Well, it also prevents its beneficiaries from doing anything to better themselves, since they don’t have to. Like all federal do-goodery, it is a magnet for grifters, crooked lobbies, charlatans, shysters, and bus-station rabble. If you need affirmative action, you aren’t good enough; if you if you are good enough, you don’t need it; and if you take it anyway, you are a freeloader.

Foreign policy. I will end the embargo of Cuba. It’s stupid, gives the US a terrible rep in Latin America, accomplishes nothing of use, and makes life hard for eleven million perfectly good Cubans. If the professional pseudo-Cubans in Miami object, I’ll have the frauds freeze-dried and air-dropped on some starving country in Africa. (Possible slogan: “Every cloud has a protein lining.”) Cannibalism gets a bum rap.

I will tell the Israelis to get back inside the 1967 borders, be a Jewish state, and shut up—especially the latter—or they will never see another American dollar or F16. I will then give the Palestinians exorbitant aid to build a country unless they attack Israel again, at which point I’ll spray anthrax on the whole place. This probably won’t work, but it has a better chance than anything else.

I pledge to end the lamebrain policy of looking for a war with Russia. The US has now put NATO, an anti-Russian military alliance, in the Baltics, on the Russian border; in Poland, on the Russian border, and is trying to bring Georgia, on the Russian border, into NATO. The US and NATO have large combat forces in Afghanistan, on the Russian border, and want to colonize it. Not smart. Think Canada, Mexico, and Cuba in the Warsaw Pact.

There are three levels of military stupidity: stupid, really and truly stupid, and war with Russia. Right now we’re going for the brass ring.

I will bring the GIs home from Korea. If South Korea wants to defend itself, it easily can. If it doesn’t, I don’t care.

Further, (I’m really getting into this) I will bring the GIs home from Europe. There’s nobody there we need to fight. As for Bosnia and suchlike geographic trash, last time I looked they were in Europe. Europe can worry about them. The US is not Europe’s mother.

Purple-haired dyke feminists: These venomous lynxes have done enough harm that I shall have to be firm. All public doorways will have a spectrophotometer to detect purpleness at hair level. When this happens, a laser will light up and, ssssssssPOP! her head will explode. The entire membership of NOW will be sent to Bangladesh to work in a jute factory. Since most of them look like fire plugs with leprosy, on their return they will be required to wear burqas.

The economy. I am against compulsory redistribution of wealth. This usually means taking money from those who earn it, and giving it to the federal government. If federal employees want to eat, they can plant corn. Or eat their cyanide pills. I will encourage the latter as simpler.

Finally, patriotism will become a capital offense. It serves chiefly as a mechanism allowing rogues and pathological short men to send our puzzled teenagers to kill someone else’s. Iraq can kill its own damn teenagers if it likes. I understand the urge, having had teenagers, but it isn’t my job.

How can I lose? The Age of Fred dawns.

Directly from Fred.

Labels: economics, education, military, politics, taxes

Ron Paul wrote [http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog/?p=582]
His last three paragraphs say:

I continue to wish the Libertarian and Constitution Parties well. The more votes they get, the better. I have attended Libertarian Party conventions frequently over the years.

In some states, one can be on the ballots of two parties, as they can in New York. This is good and attacks the monopoly control of politics by Republicans and Democrats. We need more states to permit this option. This will be a good project for the Campaign for Liberty, along with the alliance we are building to change the process.

I’ve thought about the unsolicited advice from the Libertarian Party candidate, and he has convinced me to reject my neutral stance in the November election. I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.

Vote for Dr. Chuck Baldwin for President of what's left of the United States on November 4th next. While you're you are at it do not vote for any incumbent congressmen or senators.

Labels: constitution, government tyranny, politics

This well reasoned argument was sent by my friend Frank. May I share it with you?

Pat Buchanan has written a brilliant description of the circumstances surrounding our incipient economic collapse [Please see http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=76313] However, he is wrong when he writes of the proposed bailout, "Nevertheless, it must be done, and done now, as collapse is imminent." Mr. Buchanan is wrong for the same reasons President Bush was wrong the other night when he told the nation that government intervention was needed "because financial markets are no longer working."

In fact, the financial markets ARE working. They are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. They are running away from worthless "investments" as fast as possible. Unless and until the market corrects the toxic legacy of decades of market manipulation by the Federal government and the Federal Reserve, economic order will not be restored. That correction is apt to be very painful.

The so-called bailout cannot work for the same reason that one cannot rescue a drowning man by pouring more water in the swimming pool. The U.S. is not in trouble because of insufficient debt. We are experiencing the inevitable end of the world's longest running Ponzi scheme.

The proposed bailout will not add one penny of real value to overpriced houses nor in any way diminish the gap between excessive mortgages and the true value of the houses being held as collateral. The bailout will not increase demand for the houses that account for residential real estate's excess inventory. What the bailout will do is rapidly accelerate the implosion of the dollar, precipitating decisions by foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds to stop purchasing our debt. When that occurs, the wheels will well and truly fall off.

Labels: economics, politics

What/who/when/why caused the financial corruption?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o»

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUM

And "they" tried to take it down. It is back now:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmB93McZeI

Who then stopped efforts to abate the corruption?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo

Labels: government tyranny, Political "Correctness" racism, politics

YouTube of Chuck Baldwin at the National Press Club on 9/10/08

Barr ignores Ron Paul's press conference

Labels: constitution, politics

“What if I told you that a prominent global political figure in recent months has proposed: abrogating key features of his government’s contracts with energy companies; unilaterally renegotiating his country’s international economic treaties; dramatically raising marginal tax rates on the ‘rich’ to levels not seen in his country in three decades (which would make them among the highest in the world); and changing his country’s social insurance system into explicit welfare by severing the link between taxes and benefits?” Michael J. Boskin writes in the Wall Street Journal.

“The first name that came to mind would probably not be Barack Obama, possibly our nation’s next president. Yet despite his obvious general intelligence, and uplifting and motivational eloquence, Sen. Obama reveals this startling economic illiteracy in his policy proposals and economic pronouncements,” said Mr. Boskin, a Stanford University economics professor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

“From the property rights and rule of (contract) law foundations of a successful market economy to the specifics of tax, spending, energy, regulatory and trade policy, if the proposals espoused by candidate Obama ever became law, the American economy would suffer a serious setback.”

Cite: The Washington Times Weekly, August 4, 2008, p. 8

Labels: economics, mendacity, politics

Here's a thought provoking piece I received in my email today:

THE FROG THEORY

If you drop a frog in boiling water he will leap right out. If you
slowly heat the water he will be content until it's too late to get out.
That is exactly how history works. It moves slowly and we never really see any
danger until it's too late.

Remember how suppressed workers were before unions came along? The
unions leveled the playing field. Unfortunately, over a long period of time the
pendulum swung too far. Slowly, businesses and factories closed and jobs left
the country. We were comfortable and didn't see the change coming. We
blamed everyone except ourselves for what happened. We weren't alert to how
slow things change over time.

World War II, and the Korean War, demonstrated how powerful a united
nation could be. Our nation, and our families, were united. The father was the
head of the family and the President was the head of the nation. Both were
highly respected. We were content and happy.

We were good at fighting a hot war but we were unprepared to fight a
cold war with the communists in the 50's. They knew they couldn't change
us but they didn't care. Their philosophy was to wait it out and capture
the minds of our children. They loaded our colleges with many of their
professors and waited. It didn't take long to see the results.

The 60''s ushered in the radicals, drug culture, student
protesters, and the Vietnam War. The aim of the cold war was to divide and
conquer. They divided our families and the nation. The secret to defeating a
polite and respectful people is to scream. The louder and longer you scream the
better your chance of winning. Radicals are masters at this form of attack.
They know if you constantly scream and repeat a lie it will eventually become
the truth.

The media, and Hollywood, hammered us with hate America themes and
stories. Our service men, and women, were jeered, cursed, and spit on. We
lost our first War in history. There was no hero's homecoming for our
fighting men and women.

The Reverend King, who was raised in the old school, peacefully changed
the race issue and united the people. When he died the new breed of leaders
like Jesse Jackson, Lewis Farakon, Al Sharpton, and Rev. Wright put a lid on his
efforts and turned racism into a money-making machine.

Corporations were green-mailed by threats of protests, product
boycotts, or endless lawsuits. Every issue, large or small, became a race
issue. The public recoiled in fear of being called a racist. Their voices were
silenced because one word could cost you a career, get you fired, or get you
sued.

Even politicians buckled under to the pressure. The Florida
legislature issued a formal apology for having slavery 200 years ago. They were
thanked by being asked for compensation. There is no end in sight for this kind
of nonsense. America didn't capture slaves and bring them to America.
Their own people sold them to slave traders from several nations. This
knowledge doesn't stop the screamers. History is what it is and you
can't change it. There have been many tragic events in history. You
acknowledge them and move on.

They divided our nation into two separate Americas. We now have
Americans, and African-Americans, although Africa has nothing to do with being
an American. You can be one or the other but not both. You are what you were
born to be. You do not subordinate our country to any foreign nation. It's
equivalent to flying the African flag above the Stars and Stripes. If you
hyphenate two countries America always comes first.

This election year could be the turning point in our history because
the frog theory has come into play. It's time to step back and look at how
the country has slowly changed since the cold war started. Don't get caught
up in all the hype.

George McGovern was the first Presidential candidate to test the waters
with college students. The Clintons played a big role in his campaign. It was
the worst campaign ever run. He was crushed in the election.

Step two was to infiltrate all the information vehicles such as radio,
newspapers, magazines, TV and movies. They were quite successful at that.
Jimmy Carter was the first President to demonstrate the leadership skills of the
far left. Weak military, high taxes, runaway inflation, 19% mortgage rates, and
plain incompetence ended his career in Washington. Iran, a small country at the
time, took American hostages and kicked sand in our face. By negotiating from
weakness Carter could not get the hostages released.

The big benefit of the Carter years is that they were followed by the
Reagan years. The nation got a clear look at the difference between a weak
nation and a strong nation. Every student should know this difference. When
Ronald Reagan took over the hostages were quickly released, taxes were lowered,
inflation dropped, mortgage rates dropped, and the military was strengthened.
Russia quickly waved the white flag and waited for another Democrat term.

Clinton took over Carter's uncompleted social programs. He
weakened the military and tried to pass large government programs. An Intern
derailed his Presidency. While he was tied up with his personal problems his
lawyers ran the country. He passed up three opportunities to take out Osama Bin
Laden. This eventually cost us the loss of our Twin Towers, thousands of
American lives, and got us involved in a war with Iraq.

By the end of his term the left had captured a large share of the media
and it flexed its muscle in 2000. The hate Bush campaign got off to a roaring
start. The brainwashing theory of repeating the same story over and over again
was launched.

There were endless stories about our evil nation and its President.
Top-secret plans were leaked to the press and printed for the entire world to
see. Hollywood cranked out documentaries about the evil Bush administration and
our evil military. They laid the groundwork for the next election. The ACLU
flooded the courts with lawsuits and the Democrat party became a law firm.
Almost every incumbent, or his or her spouse, is a lawyer.

They now have the perfect candidate because they can squash criticism
by playing the race card. If you don't like Obama, or criticize him, you
are a racist. They can hide his inexperience and background by turning him into
a rock star and singing change and hope. They don't tell us what kind of
change, or how it will be done, only that you should hope for the best. By
keeping the hype going they don't have to put anything of substance on the
table.

The only thing we really know about Obama is that his wife has never
been proud to be an American. They want us to believe that his liberal college
professors, Rev. Pfleger, his ties to radicals Bill Ayer and Lewis Farakon, and
listening to the Rev. Wright's hate talks for 20 years, had no influence on
his thinking. If they didn't, then who did? He wasn't in business and
didn't see fit to serve his country. These people launched his political
career and their organizations received earmarks in return for their campaign
donations and political help. They must have had some influence. Rev.
Wright's church received over $15 million. That's only one small local
church. Think on a national scale.

The change being promoted is a change back to the Carter years. It
started in 2006 when the lawyer party took over. There have been endless
lawsuits and investigations in retaliation for the Clinton years. It keeps the
lawyers busy but does nothing for the economy. The economy has been in a
downward spiral since they took over.

Returning to the Carter years of high taxes, high inflation, and a weak
military is not the change we are looking for. We cannot cower to a bunch of
crazies whose only goal in life is to kill us.

The old sages (over 50) will have to play a big role in this election.
The young people simply don't know what the aged know. The advantage of
aging is the knowledge you accumulated. You know what United States means. You
know what the seldom-heard word respect means. You know how wonderful freedom
and independence is. You know the difference between a strong and a weak
nation; and you know what it takes to keep it strong. You know history because
you have lived it.

Although the old guard is dying off, and getting too tired to fight,
they have to muster one more charge. If they don't, our children, and
grandchildren, will never know the joy and freedom that is the bedrock of our
country. The heat is slowly being turned up and the water is getting hot. The
old frogs better start jumping before it's too late.
________________________________________________________________________-

I don't know who Joe Porter is or if he wrote this letter, but it really
doesn't matter. The content stands on its own.
Dear Friends:

My name is Joe Porter. I live in Champaign, Illinois . I'm 46 years old, a
born-again Christian, a husband, a father, a small business owner, a veteran,
and a homeowner. I don't consider myself to be either conservative or
liberal, and I vote for the person, not Republican or Democrat. I don't
believe there are "two Americas" - but that every person in this
country can be whoever and whatever they want to be if they'll just work to
get there - and nowhere else on earth can they find such opportunities. I
believe our government should help those who are legitimately downtrodden, and
should always put the interests of America first.

The purpose of this message is that I'm concerned about the future of this
great nation. I'm worried that the silent majority of honest, hard-working,
tax-paying people in this country have been passive for too long. Most folks I
know choose not to involve themselves in politics. They go about their daily
lives, paying their bills, raising their kids, and doing what they can to
maintain the good life. They vote and consider doing so to be a sacred trust.
They shake their heads at the political pundits and so-called "news",
thinking that what they hear is always spun by whomever is reporting it. They
can't understand how elected officials can regularly violate the public
trust with pork barrel spending. They don't want government handouts. They
want the government to protect them, not raise their taxes for more government
programs.

We are in the unique position in this country of electing our leaders. It's
a privilege to do so. I've never found a candidate in any election with whom
I agreed on everything. I'll wager that most of us don't even agree with
our families or spouses 100% of the time. So when I step into that voting booth,
I always try to look at the big picture and cast my vote for the man or woman
who is best qualified for the job. I've hired a lot of people in my
lifetime, and essentially that's what an election is - a hiring process. Who
has the credentials? Whom do I want working for me? Whom can I trust to do the
job right?

I'm concerned that a growing number of voters in this country simply
don't get it. They are caught up in a fervor they can't explain, and
calling it "change".

Change what?, I ask.

Well, we're going to change America , they say.

In what way?, I query.

We want someone new and fresh in the White House, they exclaim.

So, someone who's not a politician?, I press.

Uh, well, no, we just want a lot of stuff changed, so we're voting for
Obama, they state.

So the current system, the system of freedom and democracy that has enabled a
man to grow up in this great country, get a fine education, raise incredible
amounts of money and dominate the news and win his party's nomination for
the White House - that system's all wrong?

No, no, that part of the system's okay - we just need a lot of change.

And so it goes. "Change we can believe in." Quite frankly, I
don't believe that vague proclamations of change hold any promise for me. In
recent months, I've been asking virtually everyone I encounter how
they're voting. I live in Illinois, so most folks tell me they're voting
for Barack Obama. But no one can really tell me why - only that he's going
to change a lot of stuff. Change, change, change. I have yet to find one single
person who can tell me distinctly and convincingly why this man is qualified to
be President and Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation on earth - other
than the fact that he claims he's going to implement a lot of change.

We've all seen the emails about Obama's genealogy, his upbringing, his
Muslim background, and his church affiliations. Let's ignore this for a
moment. Put it all aside. Then ask yourself, what qualifies this man to be my
president? That he's a brilliant orator and talks about change?

CHANGE WHAT?

Friends, I'll be forthright with you - I believe the American voters who
are supporting Barack Obama don't have a clue what they're doing, as
evidenced by the fact that not one of them - NOT ONE of them I've spoken to
can spell out his qualifications. Not even the most liberal media can explain
why he should be elected. Political experience? Negligible. He has exactly 143
days of Senate Experience!! Foreign relations? Non-existent. Achievements? Name
one. Someone who wants to unite the country? If you haven't read his
wife's thesis from Princeton , look it up on the web. This is who's
lining up to be our next First Lady? The only thing I can glean from Obama's
constant harping about change is that we're in for a lot of new taxes.

For me, the choice is clear. I've looked carefully at the two leading
applicants for the job, and I've made my choice.

Here's a question - where were you five and a half years ago? Around
Christmas, 2002. You've had five or six birthdays in that time. My son has
grown from a sixth grade child to a high school graduate. Five and a half years
is a good chunk of time. About 2,000 days. 2,000 nights of sleep. 6, 000 meals,
give or take.

John McCain spent that amount of time, from 1967 to 1973, in a North Vietnamese
prisoner-of-war camp. When offered early release, he refused it. He considered
this offer to be a public relations stunt by his captors, and insisted that
those held longer than he should be released first. Did you get that part? He
was offered his freedom, and he turned it down. A regimen of beatings and
torture began.

Do you possess such strength of character? Locked in a filthy cell in a foreign
country, would you turn down your own freedom in favor of your fellow man? I
submit that's a quality of character that is rarely found, and for me, this
singular act defines John McCain.

Unlike several presidential candidates in recent years whose military service
is questionable or non-existent, you will not find anyone to denigrate the
integrity and moral courage of this man. A graduate of Annapolis , during his
Naval service he received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and
Distinguished Flying Cross. His own son is now serving in the Marine Corps in
Iraq . Barack Obama is fond of saying "We honor John McCain's
service...BUT...", which to me is condescending and offensive - because
what I hear is, "Let's forget this man's sacrifice for his country
and his proven leadership abilities, and talk some more about change."

I don't agree with John McCain on everything - but I am utterly convinced
that he is qualified to be our next President, and I trust him to do what's
right. I know in my heart that he has the best interests of our country in mind.
He doesn't simply want to be President - he wants to lead America , and
there's a huge difference. Factually, there is simply no comparison between
the two candidates. A man of questionable background and motives who prattles on
about change can't hold a candle to a man who has devoted his life in public
service to this nation, retiring from the Navy in 1981 and elected to the Senate
in 1982.

Perhaps Obama's supporters are taking a stance between old and new. Maybe
they don't care about McCain's service or his strength of character, or
his unblemished qualifications to be President. Maybe "likeability" is
a higher priority for them than "trust". Being a prisoner of war is
not what qualifies John McCain to be President of the United States of America -
but his demonstrated leadership certainly DOES.

Dear friends, it is time for us to stand. It is time for thinking Americans to
say, "Enough." It is time for people of all parties to stop following
the party line. It is time for anyone who wants to keep America first, who wants
the right man leading their nation, to start a dialogue with all their friends
and neighbors and ask who they're voting for, and why.

There's a lot of evil in this world. That should be readily apparent to all
of us by now. And when faced with that evil as we are now, I want a man who
knows the cost of war on his troops and on his citizens. I want a man who puts
my family's interests before any foreign country.
I want a President who's qualified to lead.

I want my country back, and I'm voting for John McCain.

More»

Labels: constitution, democrats and RINOS, politics

Labels: democrats and RINOS, politics

Larken Rose posted this message today [9 July 2008]...

Just to clear up some confusion people have expressed to me, I now have TWO books in print. (The first was never promoted widely enough for very many people to know that.) The two books are as follows:

1) "How To Be a Successful Tyrant (The Megalomaniac Manifesto)"
http://www.tyrantbook.com

This book, which was written before I spent my year as a political prisoner, but printed only shortly before I got out, is pretty much what it sounds like: a manual for aspiring tyrants. It tells how to trick your subjects into viewing you as a savior instead of a crook, how to use propaganda to control both the thoughts and actions of the peasants, how to all but eliminate resistance, and so on. (Of course, the purpose of the book isn't actually to create more tyrants, but to show their VICTIMS how they function, in the hopes that maybe a few more people might start to see through the tyrant tricks of the all the modern megalomaniacs.)

2) "Kicking the Dragon (Confessions of a Tax Heretic)"
http://www.kickingthedragon.com

This book, which was written almost entirely from inside federal prison (though not printed until a few weeks ago), is the story of my "adventures" with the IRS, the DOJ, and the federal court system, up to and including my trial. While the "861 evidence" is obviously involved in the story, understanding or agreeing with that legal position is NOT essential to appreciating the utter insanity of what happened in my case. I'm happy to say that the book has been getting rave reviews — some of which I'll be sharing soon.

---

If there is still any confusion, my purely unselfish suggestion is that you buy and read BOTH books. (Actually, it's totally selfish and self-serving, but I suggest it anyway.) To make doing so lesspainful, during this fabulous Bush economy we're in, I'll make this deal: If you act now (wow, how cliche was that?), you can get BOTH
books, including shipping, for $30. (It would be $39 if you ordered separately.)

---

This offer is NOT available at the web sites (because we haven't set it up yet), but you can do it now either by sending $30 via PayPal to "cartoonlion@hushmail.com" or by sending $30 in check or money order (or cash, if you dare take the risk) to the address below. Then I'll fling both books in the mail to you right away. Then you can read a story about real-life tyrants in action, AND learn to be one yourself! What could be better? (Freedom, maybe?)

---

Larken Rose
P.O. Box 653
Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006-0653

---

I sent a $30 check today.

Labels: constitution, politics, taxes

There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president...
--Thomas Sowell

More»

Labels: politics, racism

By Paul R. Hollrah

Tuning in to C-Span recently, I found myself listening to a speech by Senator Barrack Hussein Obama, Jr. He was standing in the pulpit of a black church in Selma, Alabama, and as I studied the body language of the dozen or so black ministers standing behind the senator, I couldn't help but be reminded of the little head-bobbing dolls that people used to place in the rear windows of their 1957 Chevrolets. If their reactions are any indication, the new "Schlickmeister" of the Democrat Party is actually a pretty accomplished public speaker.

However, as he spoke, I found my b.s. alarm going off, repeatedly. But I couldn't quite figure out why until I actually read excerpts of his speech several days later. Here's part of what he said:

"...something happened back here in Selma, Alabama. Something happened in Birmingham that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called, "ripples of hope all around the world." Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children.

"When (black) men who had PhD's decided 'that's enough' and 'we're going to stand up for our dignity,' that sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son. His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance.

"So the Kennedy's decided we're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is.

"This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman whose great great-great-great- grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that, (in) the world as it has been, it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. Was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma , Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama."

Okay, so what's wrong with that? It all sounds good. But is it?

Obama told his audience that, because some folks had the courage to "march across a bridge" in Selma, Alabama, his mother, a white woman from Kansas, and his father, a black Muslim from Africa, took heart. It gave them the courage to get married and have a child. The problem with that characterization is that Barrack Obama, Jr., was born on August 4, 1961, while the first of three marches across that bridge in Selma didn't occur until March 7, 1965, at least five years after Obama's parents met.

Obama went on to tell his audience that the Kennedys, Jack and Bobby, decided to do an airlift. They would bring some young Africans over so that they could be educated and learn all about America. His grandfather heard that call and sent his son, Barrack Obama, Sr., to America.

The problem with that scenario is that, having been born in August 1961, the future senator was not conceived until sometime in November 1960. So if this African grandfather heard words that ''sent a shout across oceans,'' inspiring him to send his goat-herder son to America, it was not a Democrat Jack Kennedy he heard, nor his brother Bobby, it was a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Obama's speech is reminiscent of Al Gore's claim of having invented the Internet, Hillary Clinton's claim of having been named after the first man to climb Mt. Everest, even though she was born five years and seven months before Sir Edmund climbed the mountain, and John Kerry's imaginary trip to Cambodia.

As one of my black friends, Eddie Huff, has said, "We need to ask some very serious questions of the senator from Illinois. It's not enough to be black, it's not enough to be articulate, and it's not enough to be eloquent and a media darling. The only question will be how deaf an ear, or how blind an eye, will people turn in order to turn a frog into a prince."

Labels: mendacity, politics

Labels: abortion, politics

Professor Butler Shaffer discusses the undue power granted by the people to the presidency of the USofA. He concludes:

The idea that "we" might be the victims of an attack – instead of the expectation that "we" be the perpetrators of attacks – has struck at the very heart of who and what most Americans believe themselves to be. Faced with the discomfort of such a traumatic awakening, most have been content to make the reptilian response of "see – act" and endorse any kind of violence against anyone who gets in their way and can be made to absorb their projected anger. Ron Paul – the only presidential candidate willing to end this immoral and irrational butchery – receives around 10% of the votes in the primaries. His principal opponent, John McCain, appears to be running away with the party’s nomination, on a platform endorsing the continuation of this war for "one hundred" or even "ten thousand years." What clearer measure of the extent to which most Americans demand the indiscriminate killing of others! It is the continuation of this mindset that, more than any other single factor, will hasten the total collapse of this civilization.

Read Butler's full rant.

Labels: constitution, politics

My friend Sam sent this. Barb really likes it as do I.

Gary Hubbell
February 9, 2008

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Here is Hubbell's original column.

Labels: politics

Labels: democrats and RINOS, politics

Pastor Chuck Baldwin starts his latest saying:

It is time to say it: the two major parties hold a death grip on the American people. Instead of representing the people, both the Republican and Democrat parties are bought and paid for by special interest groups and multinational corporations. Neither party pays any attention to the U.S. Constitution but both are largely marching in lockstep toward bigger and bigger government. Both Republicans and Democrats eagerly sacrifice what's good for the country for what's good for the party. As they now exist, neither major party deserves the support of patriotic Americans.

Read the remainder of his posting.

Labels: democrats and RINOS, politics

Bill Sardi, after outlining the fallacious thinking of the various candidates--and their advocates, selects the one candidate who will solve our nations problems:

The only Presidential candidate who has the resolve to pull America out of this mess, and to keep the ship of state afloat, is Congressman Ron Paul. The TV networks have shunned Congressman Paul because his economic reforms, elimination of the Federal Reserve, down-sizing of the Federal government, dissolution of the Internal Revenue Service, and withdrawal from a war-based economy, would lead to the very demise of the TV networks that rely upon this ongoing ruse to stay in business. So the deception continues. You are being conned, and a huge bill is being rung up on the collective public credit card that you and your children will have to pay.

None of the Presidential candidates, save for Ron Paul, is prepared to save America. America is on the brink of becoming a second-rate nation. With the devaluation of the American dollar, now worth around 65 cents in world trade, the moneyed nations, China, Japan and Indonesia, that provide America with most of the goods that consumers buy, are thinking of buying other currencies. When this occurs, the entire world economy collapses.

Read Sardi's entire piece.

Labels: politics

It is most frightening to see the vicious John McCain gain in the quest for the republicrat nomination. Jack Kelly's column today says in part:

I don't think Sen. John McCain would be a good president. He lacks the temperament for it; he has virtually no managerial experience, and the economy is, as George Will put it, "a subject with which McCain is neither conversant, nor eager to become so."

But there is a big difference between being a mediocre president -- as one could argue George W. Bush has been -- and being an awful one. Yet many conservatives talk about Sen. McCain as if he were Satan's first cousin. What Web logger Roger L. Simon calls "McCain Derangement Syndrome" is as irrational and unbecoming as is the Bush Derangement Syndrome that afflicts so many liberals.

If you wish, here's the entire column.

Labels: constitution, democrats and RINOS, politics, second amendment

Geoff Metcalf discusses the candidates in part. I'm afraid his take on Ron Paul clarifies mine. Oh, dear. Uhn, hey Geoff, it isn't our oil:

Even Ron Paul who is arguably more of a constitutional conservative than anyone else in play is epically wrong on Iraq. He is right about what went wrong, but tragically flawed in suggesting we abandon Iraq to the vagaries of Iran. That alone disqualifies him…for me (and I really really like him otherwise).

Read Metcalf's entire column.

Labels: constitution, politics

Bob Hodgdon is brave enough to say that John Altevogt gets near the cutting edge on his language, but the sentiments and the people mentioned are real. Thanks, Bob, Thanks, John:

From: John Altevogt [mailto:altevogtj@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 9:39 AM
Subject: Avenge Frances Semler

Today is a very sad day for America. An American citizen was forced from her position on the Kansas City Park Board because she believed in the rule of law. While the police chief of Kansas City refuses to enforce the law, this brave woman resigned. The Southern Christian Leadership Council and La Raza with significant aid from the Kansas City Star raped the first amendment and our right to associate with those we wish. Thanks to The Star and these racist groups illegal aliens now have more rights in Kansas City than the citizens of this country. We must make those who engaged in these acts pay and pay dearly for this assault on our fundamental constitutional rights.

Ironically, the reporter who wrote the story about Frances Semler's resignation once called Dwight Sutherland at a time when the Meneillyite hate group was harassing his home and office with phone calls at all hours of the day and night. Dwight first received a call from a Lee Shultz and then one from a John Shultz, holding himself out as a Star reporter. Dwight claims that it was clear from the conversation that Shultz was not writing a story, but seemed to be eliciting information for Meneilly and his bigots. Shortly thereafter, on the breaking news portion of The Star's website Shultz wrote a puff piece promoting an appearance by Meneilly at a Christian bashing forum. The announcement for the event had been up on the site for days, but was apparently placed in the Breaking News section by Shultz to increase attendance for this bigoted program. Dwight, incidentally, had to call the police to stop the harassment. The Meneillyite thugs sent out an e-mail bragging about how they had been contacted by a police officer.

The Star has long had a cozy relationship with Meneilly's hate group, promoting its members and its agenda, even attending its meetings as participants. Despite the fact that The Star is well aware that the group no longer has any legal right to use the name Mainstream Coalition, it continues to do so despite our protests.

There can be no question that the campaign of hate against Frances Semler and the assault on her rights to speak freely and associate with whomever she wished was ginned up and maintained as much by members of The Star's staff as La Raza and the other fascist organizations. The reporting itself was horrendously biased and misleading. The paper repeatedly tried to exaggerate anticipated damages to Kansas City that could be tied to Semler's appointment and pilloried her on a daily basis with one manufactured article after another.

We must make these bigoted enemies of our democracy pay. We must avenge Frances Semler by any means necessary. (legal)

-jda-

Labels: kansas city politics, KC media, politics

Labels: islam, politics

Andrew S. Fischer tells it as it is:

None of the below applies to Ron Paul, of course, the only presidential candidate who is honest, principled, and consistently says what he believes.

The would-be presidents are all spouting "change" now, but of course none of them states exactly what kind of change. It's simply the buzzword of the moment. Vote for me and we'll have change, they assert. Please tell us, then, what kind of change? More freebies for the indolent? More regulation and taxes? Inferior socialist health care for everyone? More government spending, manipulation and money creation? (Perhaps more liberty and a return to the Constitution? Don't make me laugh!)

They are all despicable prevaricators. Certainly there are degrees, and at the top of their parties are Hillary "Schoolmarm Knows Best" Clinton and Rudy "I Was There" Giuliani. The former claims, although her marriage was and is obviously one of convenience, that she was essentially Bill's "prez-partner" when he occupied the White House. If that's true, then is Bill not guilty of some sort of high crime or misdemeanor? I doubt whether many citizens voted for a presidential partnership when they cast their ballots. If Bill wasn't up to the task alone, shouldn't the V.P. have taken over? Or was Hillary truly a trusted advisor, perhaps representing Bill's female constituency? Or is she just a simple liar? These are questions which will never have answers, since the world's sleaziest couple refuses to make public the pertinent records of the Bill Clinton years. (However, we can infer the obvious.)

For his part, Giuliani campaigns on the mere fact that he was mayor of New York during the terrible 9/11 attack. Many say he did a great job, rallying his people. What everyone seems to have forgotten is that his popularity was at its nadir when the tragedy occurred. The attack clearly revived his moribund career, and was simply the best thing that could have happened for him. Furthermore, in my opinion, practically any politician could have done what Giuliani did. After all, how hard is it to broadcast soothing platitudes penned by professional writers, to reassure the citizenry that "we'll get through this," to make lots of public appearances, and to stay up late "working"? Only a cretin would fail to see the opportunity for editorial-proof self-promotion, but only a cad (with a police-protected mistress, no less) would seize that opportunity and use it as a springboard to, and his primary qualification for, the highest office in the land. (Even if he was genuinely sincere during the ordeal, that isn't exactly a major political accomplishment.)

When asked a question, all of them hedge, hem and haw, trying feverishly to concoct a response that won't alienate a single soul, while simultaneously attempting to incorporate the usual something-for-nothing carrots-on-sticks, which amounts to little more than buying votes with empty promises. You can almost see their mental machinations during the debates, as they avoid answering simple yes-or-no questions with convoluted tangential ramblings, which neatly manage to avoid offending anyone and commit to virtually nothing.

When something negative happens to the candidates, their aides-de-camp rush to put a cheery spin on it. Their cadres of writers sit around tables, plotting every word, each calculated to produce a desired effect. When candidates put a proverbial foot in their mouths, they'll soon state something like: "I didn't mean to suggest anything negative about X – only that X is subject to review. If there's a better way, we'll do it." (Perfect: I apologized in a nebulous way, no one can object to a review of something, "better way" equals "I'm always thinking," and "we'll do it" equals action and progress.)

Getting elected president is now all about money (the more TV ads, the better) and strategy. In other words: "buying and conniving." It has nothing to do with genuine ideas, what's good, right, Constitutional or fair. It's about the continued aggrandizement of the presidency, and nothing about Congress making the laws, while the president merely enforces them. It's all about having a new "Fearless Leader" with "vision" (which seldom materializes, except in ugly forms). And it's all repulsive.

January 7, 2008

Andrew S. Fischer [send him mail] is a controller for an investment advisory firm in Pennsylvania.

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

LRC link

Labels: constitution, democrats and RINOS, politics

This is a primary reason I am supporting Ron Paul for the presidency of the U.S.of A.

Ron Paul is the only non-CFR candidate in either party running for President.

Labels: constitution, global, politics, world gov'ment

Here's a well made seventy-seven minute movie that aptly describes why I am supporting Ron Paul, MD for nomination to the presidency.

Labels: constitution, politics

Fred Reed does seem to be obsessive in his need to write. Here is his latest effort, in English:

November 16, 2007

I am going to revitalize the American mayonnaise industry. Yes. Such is the patriotism rampant in this column. We will fill the nation’s swimming pools with the purest domestic variety, and then drown the entire staff of the public school system in it. I personally will tie cinderblocks to them.

My love of country is great: I will use no Chinese mayonnaise.

And then I’ll bring back the one-room school house. Many will denounce me in the public prints as retrograde. Well, when you have driven your car into a swamp full of underfed alligators, retrograde is what you want to be.

Why the one-room school house? Because it rewards initiative and brains and individualism and other things America no longer stands for and in fact can’t stand.

Think about it. In a school of one room, students can advance as they will. If a child of eight can read as well as the fifteen-year-olds, he can read with them. If he is able to do algebra when he is ten, why, he can do so. If he can’t, he can stay with kids at his own level. If the teacher can’t, put her in a tumbrel and take her to the mayonnaise. Is this not a splendid idea?

No. Today, advancement in the public schools depends on race, creed, color, sex, and national origin, on time served, docility, pernicious pseudopsychology, tolerance of pointless make-work, on preference for form over substance. Learning anything is irrelevant. Indeed it is discouraged, as it might increase the self-esteem of the smart. What counts is absorbing group-think like a napkin in a beer spill. The important things are doing witless homework and pasting pictures in stupid projects. This is pure hell for the very bright, and tends strongly to favor girls, who are more likely to do things they know to be stupid.

Next I am going to devastate the schools by giving the students hope. I will set up a comprehensive test, lasting perhaps a week, of everything that a graduate of a high school should learn. And I will tell the students that when they can pass that test, they can pick up their diplomas at the door. Gone, outa there. No more listening, agonized, to mouth-breathing IQ-85 preliterate marginal humans burbling ed-school Marxibabble.

Can you conceive of the academic frenzy that hope of escape would inspire, at least in the bright? A fair few kids in the fifth grade read at a twelfth grade level. (And plenty of affirmative-action teachers, documentably and obviously, don’t.) Lots could advance by broad jumps in all subjects if allowed to. Why not let them, and let them test out when they can? Isn’t the purpose of school to get them to learn?

Of course not. Schools exist to keep children off the streets and off the job market, to serve as day care, to provide submissive drones for the office market, and to instill appropriate values, meaning those that make for political passivity and high consumption. Americans exist to buy things.

Now, again, I understand that any notion of rewarding competence runs against the national character. I am aware of the almost lascivious fascination with the dull, slow, inferior, substandard, puzzled, coarse, shiftless, lame, and useless. We have affirmative action to ensure the perpetuation of these ideals. However, as a titillating venture into intellectual pornography, let’s consider how the schools look to the bright. Yes, yes, I know: the bright are elitist, and contribute nothing to civilization except all of it, and must be crushed. But…consider the bright anyway. Think of it as abnormal psychology, or peeking at dirty pictures.

Ponder Bobby Lou, who carts around an IQ of 145 or 160. Understand that he is innocent of this mistake. He didn’t mean anything by it. No intention of offending motivated him. Think of it as a genetic accident. But there he is: a freak, cursed by nature.

Every day, for all of his young life, he goes to school and does what seem to him appallingly stupid things. They probably seem appallingly stupid to the other kids too, but they are worse for him. He listens to teachers with IQs so far below his that he couldn’t reach them with a rope and a bucket. Globble-gurble. Blah blah blah. Wabble wabble. He squirms. He twitches. He thinks, “Why can’t I read my physiology text that I found at Reiter’s Scientific, or take Peggy Sue into the woods to cop a feel? God, I’ve seen bugs more intelligent than this woman, and more interesting. I’ve seen mothballs more….”

Now, being average is not reprehensible, any more than being unable to bench press Oprah Winfrey. However, there is something to be said for matching capacity to opportunity. If you want to teach Bobby Lou, you get someone bright, and let Bobby advance as he chooses. If you want to elevate Oprah, you get a fork lift.

But undeserved suffering is nonetheless inflicted on Bobby Lou. He rebels, or snores loudly, and the teachers think something is wrong with him. His grades are poor because he doesn’t want to paste pretty pictures in notebooks full of foolishness. In high school he takes to petty delinquency and to drink, becomes morose, and maybe lapses into terrorism. If he does, it is justified. (Come to think of it, I would issue him a hand grenade at matriculation to encourage the teachers not to bore him. Ha.)

In a one-room school, he could move at his own rate, and then test out of the whole fetid business.

Better yet would be separate tests of different subjects. When a kid demonstrates that he can read at the twelfth grade level, no teacher should ever again be allowed to so much as mention reading to him, unless it be to ask him to coach her. If the kid passes what is now the tenth-grade Algebra II, or chemistry or physics, that should be it. He should then have a choice of taking advanced courses, taught by a vertebrate, or going behind the school to smoke and drink beer.

I figure we can generalize the approach. We could have tests of what a student is expected to learn at a run-of-the-mill university (nothing), and at a middling or a first-rate university. (Surely someone remembers what they taught.\?) Really bright students could test out of the degradation in its entirety. The effect would be to unemploy a lot of professors, but we could just stuff them into the mayonnaise along with the rest.

I know what you are thinking. What if we run out of mayonnaise? Improvise. Ketchup. Salad dressing.

Labels: education, politics, satire, western culture

Should you wish to review Ron Paul's exciting and charming appearance on Jay Leno's show on 10/20/2007, click YouTube.

Today, Monday, November 5, 2007, true Ron Paul supporters are to raise $10,000,000.00 in contributions to the campaign of Dr. Paul. I have already donated $100 today, the suggested amount.

What are your intentions? Hey! Just go to http://www.ronpaul2008.com, scroll on down to the button and contribute your $100.

Hitlery will not be able to ignore and censor a one-day total of ten million bucks. All we need are 100,000 folks standing behind their feelings and statements doing it today. Won't that shake up the Trotskyites?

Labels: constitution, politics, taxes

Paul brought this piece to my attention. You should also be aware. Thanks, Paul.

A MAGINOT LINE IN THE SKY [Chinese, Russian Capabiltity to Attack US Satellites]

Source: NY Post
Published: Oct 26, 2007
Author: Ralph Peters

October 26, 2007 -- AFTER the carnage of the First World War, France responded to the horrors of trench warfare by building the ultimate trenches - the infamous Maginot Line, a system of almost 5,000 individual fortifications arrayed along hundreds of miles of front to a depth of 20 miles.

Only the Great Wall of China was longer - and the Maginot Line was vastly more complex. A marvel of military engineering, the problem was that it required an enemy who played by French rules.

What happened? Paris poured so much money and effort into its network of fortresses that the generals couldn't believe it wouldn't work - the Germans would simply have to behave as required.

The Germans didn't. France fell.

Now the United States sits in imagined security behind its own array of crucial strategic assets - our network of satellites.

Beat our satellites, beat us.

The Chinese know it. The Russians know it. And religious fanatics are bound to figure it out.

The Chinese are developing the capability to attack our satellite network; the Russians already have it - and terrorists would love to get it.

Over the years, a number of analysts, such as Lt.-Col. John A. Gentry (ret.) and Prof. William A. Wulf, have tried to raise the alarm about aspects of our "high-tech" Maginot Line - but the warnings never really stuck.

The ultimate vulnerability would come from a globe-spanning war with a power like China. Beijing has no intention of speeding out of its harbors to provide pop-up targets for the U.S. Navy. The Chinese are developing asymmetrical means to fight us on the broadest possible front - not least, striking our homeland in innovative ways.

Beijing has already tested an anti-satellite weapon, and it's honing its cyber-attack skills to interfere with satellite transmissions and data processing.

What happens if we lose key links in our satellite system? We lose our strategic early-warning capability. We lose our ability to track enemy movements. We lose our ability to communicate, from the dirty-boots level to the National Command Authority.

The Global Positioning System goes away. Most of our hyperexpensive weapons systems can't hit their targets - we lose the precision-guided bombs and cruise missiles without which the Air Force and Navy can no longer fight.

And that's just the military side of things. Try daily life without satellite communications.

The Pentagon's aware of this threat - but, like the interwar French military establishment, refuses to treat it with adequate seriousness: We've spent so much money on weapons and support systems that rely on satellites that we "just say no" when it comes to contemplating a war in which the crucial link in our arsenal goes away.

And satellites are the crucial link. Digitized information is to sophisticated 21st-century militaries what petroleum was to the armies of the last century. Turn off the tap, and the war machine grinds to a halt.

Despite some classified programs underway, we're basically counting on our enemies to play nice and leave our satellites unmolested. Well, good luck. Nor do those $100,000-a-page ads that defense contractors run in the print media (ultimately billed to you, the taxpayer) ever explain that the "Network-centric Warfare" they tout fades to black if the satellites go down.

And they're going to go down - unless we get serious, fast.

There are three basic ways to attack our satellite network: physical destruction or impairment of the satellites themselves, jamming the communications links and cyber attacks on the support and user networks (the latter would range from simply taking down sites to entering them and corrupting data - perhaps to the point of retargeting our weapons).

The Chinese and the Russians are working on all three approaches - counting on the synergies achieved to devastate our warfighting capabilities.

What are we doing about it? Buying more systems that rely on satellites to function.

We're so determined to lock this threat in the closet that we haven't even worked out the legal ramifications of an attack, physical or cyber, on our satellite networks. It might seem obvious to you and me that if a foreign power shot down or crippled one of our satellites, it would be an act of war.

But plenty of lawyers today would argue that space isn't U.S. territory and that such an attack falls into a gray area. Nonsense. The obvious legal precedent is the venerable rule that an attack on a U.S.-flagged ship on the high seas constitutes an act of war. But the primary purpose of lawyers today - including some in uniform - seems to be to argue the enemy's case.

What do we need to do? Three things:

• The president and Congress must publish a far-more-explicit "Satellite Security Doctrine" that makes it clear that a surprise attack on the U.S. defense satellite network will be treated not only as an act of war but also as a war crime - and that our response will be swift, asymmetrical and disproportionate.
  
  
• We need to concentrate far more defense dollars on protecting our satellites, rather than on fighter aircraft with no one to fight or the Rube Goldberg missile-defense system that we're determined to foist on the Poles and Czechs (and which relies on satellite communications).
  
  
• We need to declare a moratorium on the purchase of new military systems that depend on satellite links - until we can guarantee that those links will be preserved in wartime.

This issue is second in importance only to the nuclear threat at the height of the Cold War. Just as the French built their entire national defense around a single system, we're constructing the most complex and expensive military in history in a manner that relies on one vulnerable asset - the satellite.

If you were America's enemy, would you charge out to take on our tanks, warships and aircraft?

Or would you rather paralyze them all?

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Wars of Blood and Faith."

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Read the original in the NY Post.

Labels: China, islam, military, politics

Some Hollyweird types seem to favor the Declaration of Independence as written by TJ... Click to see an intriguing youtube presentation.

Once you've watched that 14+ minutes and want to know the experiences of the signers of that remarkable document click here to see a comprehensive [9 minute] youtube.

Labels: politics, western culture

LOL

Labels: politics

My dear friend and like-minded compatriot, Frank, sent this email to Henry Lamb a couple days ago:

For decades the political establishment has been systematically acting in direct contradiction of the Constitution's plain language. If you can read the Constitution, step out into your front yard, and point in the general direction of the government defined and authorized by our foundational law, I will buy your groceries for a year. It no longer exists, Henry. The Constitution and the Republic that it created are as dead as Madison.

That the Constitution is the supreme law of the land is true but irrelevant to the Washington criminals. They believe there are absolutely no constraints on their power that they are obliged to respect. The gigantic intrusive apparatus that rules the people of the United States from Washington DC is has no legal basis whatsoever. It long ago forfeited any claim to constitutional legitimacy. It is corrupt and evil, a facade behind which thugs in suits commit all manner of crimes under the cover of "law." It has devolved over many decades into a gigantic constructive fraud operating a linked series of Ponzi schemes, the purpose of which is to extract money from people who earned it and employ the stolen proceeds to enrich and purchase ever-increasing power for the parasitic malefactors who control the machine at the top.

See you at the barricades.

Here is a link to the Henry Lamb piece to which Frank is responding.

During the French Revolution 'twas: "Aux barricades..." Wonder if les americaines would support use of the guillotine today?

Labels: constitution, politics

Professor Walter E. Williams again pins it down. Why are not Americans up in arms?

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Here's the oath of office administered to members of the House and Senate: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." A similar oath is sworn to by the president and federal judges.

In each new Congress since 1995, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., has introduced the Enumerated Powers Act (HR 1359). The Act, which has yet to be enacted into law, reads: "Each Act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that Act. The failure to comply with this section shall give rise to a point of order in either House of Congress. The availability of this point of order does not affect any other available relief."

Simply put, if enacted, the Enumerated Powers Act would require Congress to specify the basis of authority in the U.S. Constitution for the enactment of laws and other congressional actions. HR 1359 has 28 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

When Shadegg introduced the Enumerated Powers Act, he explained that the Constitution gives the federal government great, but limited, powers. Its framers granted Congress, as the central mechanism for protecting liberty, specific rather than general powers. The Constitution gives Congress 18 specific enumerated powers, spelled out mostly in Article 1, Section 8. The framers reinforced that enumeration by the 10th Amendment, which reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people."

Just a few of the numerous statements by our founders demonstrate that their vision and the vision of Shadegg's Enumerated Powers Act are one and the same. James Madison, in explaining the Constitution in Federalist Paper No. 45, said, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce."

Regarding the "general welfare" clause so often used as a justification for bigger government, Thomas Jefferson said, "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." James Madison said, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions."

Congressmen, openly refusing to live up to their oath of office, exhibit their deep contempt for our Constitution. The question I've not been able to answer satisfactorily is whether that contempt simply mirrors a similar contempt held by most of the American people. I'm sure that if founders such as James Madison, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson were campaigning for the 2008 presidential elections, expressing their vision of the federal government's role, today's Americans would run them out of town on a rail. Does that hostility reflect constitutional ignorance whereby the average American thinks the Constitution authorizes Congress to do anything upon which they can get a majority vote or anything that's a good idea? Or, are Americans contemptuous of the constitutional limitations placed on the federal government?

I salute the bravery of Rep. Shadegg and the 28 co-sponsors of the Enumerated Powers Act. They have a monumental struggle. Congress is not alone in its constitutional contempt, but is joined by the White House and particularly the constitutionally derelict U.S. Supreme Court.

A link to the Townhall.com column.

Labels: constitution, politics

Check out the candidate calculator...

Thanks to Linda

For some strange reason my candidate is Ron Paul ...

Labels: politics

Labels: politics

NEWS FLASH:

Chavez is NOW getting a Russian Weapons Factory built by Putin. The RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle factory in Venezuela , to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups throughout the Americas.

Chavez NOW has IRANIANS operating his oil refineries in Venezuela for him. It is likely only a matter of time, if not already, before Chavez has Iranian built LONG RANGE missiles, with variety of warhead types aimed at: Guess Who?

CITGO is NOW in the process of Changing Its Name to PETRO EXPRESS due to the loss of gasoline sales in the USA due to the recent publicity of ownership by Chavez of Venezuela

Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms. He will start wars here in the Americas that will probably be the death of millions.

Labels: global, politics

The intrepid Fred Reed tells us he's pondering hanging up his curmudgeonly arsenal. Here's his excuse, uhn, explanation:

Today the United States is politically and socially constipated. Nothing moves, or at least not in a desirable direction. Crooks, frauds, revivalists, the over-empowered under-brained, believers and mouth-breathers and unabashed lunatics—all of these have so firmly gummed up the gears that improvement founders. Someone seems to have poured glue into the political kaleidoscope. Little point exists in curmudgeing at the bastards.

A few examples to make a point: The schools are terrible, we know they are terrible, we have known it for decades, and yet they only get worse. The universities are become dumbed-down propaganda chutes, and we know it, yet they only get worse. The War on Drugs is an ineffective farce continued for the benefit of drug lords, and we know it, yet we continue. The racial situation is both grim and stagnant. We have no military enemies, yet spend ever more on “defense.” None of these foolishnesses can be changed. If they could be, by now they would have been.

...

The United States is close to one-man rule. Congress is complicit, the Supreme Court a nursing home. No serious opposition exists. If Bush leaves office in 2008, the incoming president will continue the trends of today. The effects begin to show. People grow ever more docile, accustomed to intimidation, to searches without cause. Several writers of my acquaintance no longer question federal policy.

They are afraid.

You may wish to read the entire column.

Labels: constitution, police state, politics

Labels: democrats and RINOS, politics

Labels: islam, politics

BELLEVUE, WA -- With the announced resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, the Second Amendment Foundation is urging President Bush to make a very careful search for his replacement.

“We’re hoping that the next attorney general will be like the president’s first attorney general, John Ashcroft, someone who understands the Second Amendment affirms and protects an individual civil right,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb. “The next attorney general must also understand that people do not leave their Second Amendment right, or their right of self-defense, at the boundary of a college campus, the doorway of any public building, the gateway of a national park, the border of any state or any city limit.”

Gonzales took heat earlier this year when he dismissed the notion of armed self-defense against campus killers by allowing licensed students and instructors to carry guns on campus. He also angered gun rights activists by supporting S. 1237, the so-called “Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007,” that would give the Attorney General discretionary authority to deny the purchase of a firearm or the issuance of a firearm license or permit because of some vague suspicion that an American citizen may be up to no good.

“We called upon General Gonzales to resign after publicly supporting S. 1237,” Gottlieb recalled. “No attorney general should have the kind of power he was seeking with this legislation.

“General Gonzales opposed legal concealed carry on college campuses, despite evidence that so-called ‘gun-free zones’ are risk-free environments for madmen like Sueng-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre,” he added. “Yet Gonzales admitted days after the attack that neither the government, police nor campus authorities can guarantee complete security.

“We hope the next attorney general is not afraid to admit that civil rights apply to individual citizens, not state governments,” Gottlieb concluded, “and that constitutional rights and freedoms, and the right of self-defense, apply to every square foot of American soil. Such rights should not be subject to the whims of university or government bureaucrats, and a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms should never be subject to suspension merely on suspicion of what someone ‘might’ do.”

Labels: arms, constitution, politics

I don't usually include an entire piece on the blog here. However, this is an unusually comprehensive list of my views. Thanks Professor Bill!

by William R. Tonso

Dear Sean:

It really ticks me off royally when you and your allegedly conservative talk-radio colleagues dismiss all critics of the Iraq War as liberals who are interested in nothing more than winning back the presidency and/or who hate America. There may be liberal war critics out there who are primarily concerned about putting Hillary or Obama or Edwards or any Democrat in the White House, or who hate America, but you know full well that there are many Americans with impressive conservative/libertarian credentials who consider the war to be not only a blunder but downright criminal.

For several months, I’ve considered calling you to take you to task for misleading the listeners who consider you to be such a great American. But I used to listen to you regularly and still listen to you occasionally, and I know how you treat callers or guests with whom you disagree. My intention was to put you on the spot by simply naming a number of prominent conservative opponents of the war and to ask you to explain to your listeners why you don’t acknowledge these folks and their arguments. But I knew that you’d simply talk over me and accuse me of being a liberal, an accusation that to you and your "great American" listeners is enough to discredit anything the person so labeled says. So I considered presenting my anything-but-liberal pedigree first, but I’ve heard you talk over many callers and guests who have tried to resist your dismissal of them as liberals. So I decided to cope with my frustration through an open letter to you, as I once did with one to your pompous colleague, Rush Limbaugh.

You’ll probably never see this letter, but that’s all right, because though I’m writing it to you, it’s really aimed at your listeners, and some of them will have it brought to their attention by friends who aren’t as impressed by your rants as your listeners are. Even if I had called you, I was going to try to avoid arguing with you, as tempted as I’m sure I would have been to do so. No, I’m not afraid to argue with you, because I don’t think you’re that sharp. It’s just that I know your position on the war, I consider it to be simplistic, and I also know that I’m not going to change your constipated mind, so why should I argue with you on your court playing by your rules?

Sean, you’ve had George Will on your show a number of times, and you apparently consider him to be conservative. Yet the following comments he made to the libertarian Cato Institute don’t seem in sync with the prevailing Bush-bunch assumption going into the war that the Iraqis were just chafing for liberty and that a western-style democracy would be established in Iraq in a matter of months.

Tony Blair – a good American – gave a speech about values to a joint session of Congress three months after Baghdad fell. He said that our values are not Western values, they are values shared by ordinary people everywhere. False. The world is full of ordinary people who do not define freedom as we do, who do not value it as we do, who prefer piety, ethnic purity, religious solidarity, military glory, or the security of despotism. There are still all kinds of competing values in the world, and liberty has to be fought for and argued for and defined. It is a learned and acquired taste.

Isn’t George skating on thin ice here? Doesn’t he seem to be questioning the administration and talk-radio-conservative mantra about all those purple-fingered Iraqi voters with their new constitution being good to go if it weren’t for those foreign terrorists causing problems? Is George a closet liberal, Sean?

And then there’s your buddy Pat Buchanan, who you have on your show rather often. I subscribe to his The American Conservative magazine and regularly read his columns on the Internet. Pat seems to think that he’s conservative, yet he’s adamantly opposed to the Iraq war and so are all of those who write about it in his magazine. According to Pat, the war in Iraq "was not thought through. It was not only mismanaged, it was an historical strategic blunder to begin with." And in a recent issue of The American Conservative, he noted that if we buy Bush’s claim that we’re "fighting for the right of Islamic peoples ‘to speak, and worship, and live in liberty,’" we’re caught in a dilemma. "Devout Muslims in Islamic lands do not believe people should be free to blaspheme or insult the Prophet. They do not believe all religions are equal or should be treated equally. They do not believe Christians should be free to preach in their lands. The punishment for those who do, and for those who convert from Islam in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Iran, is death." He goes on to note that wherever free elections have been held in the Middle East Islamists have won over Western secularism and asks: "Should U.S. soldiers die for democracy in the Islamic world, when democracy may produce victory for the political progeny of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is that worth the lives of America’s young?"

One of my favorite contributors to The American Conservative, Andrew J. Bacevich, would have answered Pat’s question with a resounding NO! even before he recently lost his Army lieutenant son in Iraq. Bacevich, himself a retired Army colonel who now is a professor of international relations and director of Boston University’s Center of International Relations is the author of The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War. You probably haven’t heard of this book, Sean, because I suspect that it’s not on the neocon/warmonger reading list. But the blurb on the inside of the dustcover pretty well sums up Bacevich’s argument, and it’s short enough to not tax your attention span.

In this provocative book, Andrew Bacevich warns of a new and dangerous obsession that has taken hold of so many Americans, conservatives and liberals alike. It is the marriage of militarism to utopian ideology – of unprecedented military power wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values.

This perilous union, Bacevich argues, commits Americans to a futile enterprise, turning the United States into a crusader state with a self-proclaimed mission of driving history to its final destination: the world-wide embrace of the American way of life. This mindset invites endless war and the ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy. It promises not to perfect but to pervert American ideals and to accelerate the hollowing out of American democracy. As it alienates others, it will leave the United States increasingly isolated. It will end in bankruptcy, moral as well as economic, and in abject failure.

And Sean, even your late friend the outspoken Colonel David Hackworth (USA retired) believed that going to war with Iraq had nothing to do with combating terrorism and was a blunder. In one of his columns, he wrote:

So, fighting Iraq bears not the slightest resemblance to our triumphant World War II march across Europe. Almost the entire Arab world views us not as liberators occupying that bludgeoned country solely to pull Iraqis up by their sandal straps, but as Crusaders who’ve returned to finish the dirty work the Christian world started a thousand years ago. Deep in the hearts of most Arabs, we’re just the latest wave of infidels who are into violating their sacred land.

Are you beginning to see a pattern here, Sean? Are George Will, Pat Buchanan, Andrew Bacevich, and the late David Hackworth liberals and/or America haters because they’ve pointed out that other peoples aren’t like us and don’t appreciate the attempts by our government to make them like us? And is former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips a liberal for writing in his American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21 Century that while the attack on Iraq was "at bottom about access to oil and U.S. global supremacy," it also had other intentions. "One was to fold oil objectives into the global war against terror. A second was to cement the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic role in global oil sales – and thus in the world economy. A third was to keep the invasion’s purpose broad enough to allow the biblically minded Christian right to see it, at least partially, as a destruction of the new Babylon, on the road to Armageddon and redemption."

I can just hear you – "Phillips is just an establishment Republican, not a real conservative." Okay, then how about columnist Paul Craig Roberts, the assistant secretary of the treasury under your idol Ronald Reagan, and a strong constitutionalist?

The evil that America has brought to Iraq transcends the tens [more likely hundreds] of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and maimed in the conflict. The evil goes beyond the destruction of ancient historical artifacts and the civilian infrastructure of a secular state and the decimation of lives, careers, and families of millions of Iraqis. The violence and killing that Bush brought to Iraq has spread antagonism between Sunni and Shiite throughout the Middle East with potentially draconian consequences. Bush’s war has turned Muslim hearts and minds against America and made terrorism an acceptable means to resist American hegemony. With his mindless war, Bush has created more terrorism than the world has ever seen.

Funny, Sean, how someone like you who is always talking about evil fails to see the evil done by our own government in our name in Iraq and elsewhere.

Here’s another interesting comment from Roberts for you to mull over:

American public opinion is being manipulated. In the name of protecting ‘American freedom and democracy,’ the Bush regime rides roughshod over both as it ignores both the public and Congress and proceeds with a catastrophic policy supported by no one but the Bush Regime and a cabal of power-mad neoconservatives.

Nothing can stop the Regime except the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney. This is America’s last chance.

RIGHT ON!

I doubt if you ever read Charley Reese’s column, Sean, but he’s another strong constitutionalist and he made an interesting observation about a speech Bush made at West Point. "He didn’t talk about world terrorism. He talked about reshaping the Middle East, a fool’s errand if there ever was one. Our precious people are not dying for peace and freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are dying for corporate profits and to make the Middle East a safer place for Israel. The only people who are dying for freedom are the Iraqis and the Afghans who want to free their countries of our presence." Yeah, I know, to you and your simpleminded ilk anyone who comes close to criticizing Israel is an anti-Semite, another label like "liberal" that allows you to stigmatize your opponents and avoid rationally examining their arguments.

Funny how you guys get so understandably rankled when you’re accused of being racists for justifiably criticizing the NAACP, or Jesse Jackson, or affirmative action, but are so ready to label anyone anti-Semitic who justifiably criticizes Israel, our political establishment’s relationship with that country, or even neoconservatives. So here’s another such comment from another strong constitutionalist, columnist and former National Review editor Joe Sobran:

No matter how much you love the Zionist state, it’s absurd to say it represents ‘our vital interests’ [as did Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia]. The opposite is more nearly true. We are embroiled in endless futile wars in the Middle East because our government supports Israel – a state based entirely on what in this country would be flagrantly illegal racial and religious discrimination – no matter what it does. It’s hard to say which is the worst feature of American policy in the Middle East, its shameless venality and hypocrisy or its sheer irrationality. It would make sense only if huge oil reserves were discovered under Tel Aviv.

Not being in his head, I don’t know if Sobran is an anti-Semite or not – but I doubt that he is. I DO KNOW THAT I’M NOT AN ANTI-SEMITE, however, and I agree with his comments. I thought that I’d better capitalize and bold type my disclaimer, because I know that you and your faithful are as good at selective reading as are the liberals you always criticize. Probably still won’t