Third American Revolution, reasons to fight: The burgeoning Police State

The Great Eye of Mordor-on-the-Potomac is upon you:

"...wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant... Barad-dûr, fortress of Sauron."

– Vision of Frodo Baggins

[This is what is built when we give up our liberty]

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 IF WE look beneath the surface of our public affairs, we can discern one fundamental fact, namely: a great redistribution of power between society [Society = you and me, the taxpayers--HM] and the State...

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

--Alfred Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State, 1935



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From yesterday's foxnews.com:


Cherie Anderson runs a travel company in southern California, and she’s convinced the federal government is reading her emails. But she’s all right with that.
“I assume it's part of the Patriot Act and I really don't mind,” she says. “I figure I'm probably boring them to death."

[This is the attitude that is the death of Liberty, this is the great Lack of Eternal Vigilence that dooms the United States of America to police state "homeland" instead of the Land of the Free and the home of the Brave.  This is the abrogation of  the primary responsibility by the American citizen.--HM]


It's likely Anderson is not alone in her concerns that the government may be monitoring what Americans say, write, and read. And now there may be even more to worry about: a newly revealed security research project called PRODIGAL -- the Proactive Discovery of Insider Threats Using Graph Analysis and Learning -- which has been built to scan IMs, texts and emails . . . and can read approximately a quarter billion of them a day.


“Every time someone logs on or off, sends an email or text, touches a file or plugs in a USB key, these records are collected within the organization,” David Bader, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering and a principal investigator on the project, told FoxNews.com.


PRODIGAL scans those records for behavior -- emails to unusual recipients, certain words cropping up, files transferred from unexpected servers -- that changes over time as an employee "goes rogue." The system was developed at Georgia Tech in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army's secretive research arm that works on everything from flying cars to robotic exoskeletons.


Initially, PRODIGAL will scan only the communications of military volunteers and people who work in federal agencies. But the very existence of such a project is sure to unnerve citizens like Anderson. Is the government reading my emails? Are they already monitoring me?


"Some people say it's one step further toward a police state," said Anthony Howard, a book author and security expert who has consulted for the Department of Homeland Security.


Read more in Fox News

How Yankees twist the mind of the human being

Worry for the future when a kid (or a grown-up) has to think twice before responding appropriately to a threat to his person or propterty. There are innumerable examples of this type of BS in the MSM these days, the result of 20 years of politically correct indoctrination.  


Anyone who reads this blog knows I equate political correctness originating with liberal/progressives with Yankeeism.


This is how it is in Bean-town, via Drudge:

verbatim repost


BOSTON (CBS) – A 7-year-old boy is being investigated by his South Boston elementary school for possible sexual harassment after kicking another boy in the crotch.


The first grader’s mother, Tasha Lynch, says she was shocked by the school’s decision.


“He’s 7 years old. He doesn’t know anything about sexual harassment,” she said.


Lynch’s son, Mark Curran, said the boy that he kicked had been bullying him on the school bus ride home from Tynan Elementary last week.


“He just all of a sudden came up to him, choked him. He wanted to take his gloves, and my son said, ‘I couldn’t breathe, so I kicked him in the testicles,’” said his mother.


Lynch described a phone call she received from the school explaining that the case will be treated like sexual harassment, due to what it considers inappropriate touching.


“‘Your son kicked a little boy in the testicles. We call that sexual harassment,’” Lynch said the school told her.


She said she’s been asked to attend a disciplinary hearing at the school Monday.


A Boston Public Schools spokesperson said officials are investigating, but won’t comment further, since it’s a private matter.


Lynch wants an apology and better supervision on the school bus to prevent such fights among students.


“He couldn’t breathe. He was trying to defend himself,” she said. “I don’t find that sexual harassment. I find that defending himself.”

Sexual harassment points

Progressives, never fear!  


A few years in a political re-education camp (you know, an American University) is just the thing that this seven year old needs to come around.

Rand Paul on the recent National Defense Authorization Act S.1867

Editorial from Washington Times:


Verbatim:

James Madison, father of the Constitution, warned, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.” Abraham Lincoln had similar thoughts, saying, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”


During war, there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended. Newspapers were closed. Fortunately, those actions were reversed after the war.


The discussion now to suspend certain rights to due process is especially worrisome, given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to be returned. So we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process, knowing that the rights we lose now may never be restored.


My well-intentioned colleagues ignore these admonitions in defending provisions of the 2012 defense authorization bill pertaining to detaining suspected terrorists.


Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely - without due process or trial - suspected al Qaeda sympathizers, including American citizens apprehended on American soil.


I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely suspected of a crime. We are talking about American citizens.


If these provisions pass, we could see American citizens being sent to Guantanamo Bay. This should be alarming to everyone because it puts every single American citizen at risk.


There is one thing and one thing only protecting innocent Americans from being detained at will by the hands of a too-powerful state: our Constitution and the checks it puts on government power. Should we err and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then the terrorists will have won.


Detaining citizens without a court trial is un-American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of Egypt’s “permanent” emergency law authorizing indefinite preventive detention, a law that provoked ordinary Egyptians to tear their country apart last spring and risk their lives to fight.


Recently, Justice Antonin Scalia affirmed this idea in his dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, saying, “Where the government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in federal court for treason or some other crime.”


He concluded, “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive.”


Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our Founding Fathers.


As Ben Franklin wisely warned, we should not attempt to trade liberty for security. If we do, we may end up with neither. And really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us?


Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and later secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He underscored that “the history of this government in prosecuting terrorists in domestic courts has been one of unmitigated success and one in which the judges have done a superb job of managing the courtroom and not compromising our concerns about security and our concerns about classified information.”


Some say that to prevent another Sept. 11 attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers as criminals. For combatants captured on the battlefield, I tend to agree.


But Sept. 11 didn’t succeed because we granted the terrorists due process. The attacks did not succeed because al Qaeda was so formidable, but because of human error. The Department of Defense withheld intelligence from the FBI. No warrants were denied - the warrants weren’t requested. The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents, agents who were in possession of a laptop with information that might have prevented Sept. 11.


These are not failures of laws. They are not failures of procedures. They are failures of imperfect men in bloated bureaucracies. No amount of liberty sacrificed on the altar of the state will ever change that.


We should not have to sacrifice our liberty to be safe. We cannot allow the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the binding chains of our Constitution, were written so that it didn’t matter who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and our rights from those who hold power without good intentions. We are not governed by saints or angels. Our Constitution allows for that. This bill does not.


Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky.

Jury Nullification: Threat to tyranny; ultimate trump card of the People against unjust laws

Today, the Federal government is sovereign over the States. The State and Local governments over the People. 


The Order of Sovereignty set by the American Revolution has flipped upside down.


And so the State will come down hard on any threat to it's sovereignty.  Any idea that might make the Sheeple "uppish" (uppish: Proud; arrogant; assuming; putting on airs of superiority.).  


Take a look at the Enemy of the State:

Julian P. Heicklen, a 79-year-old retired chemistry professor, has often stood on a plaza outside the United States Courthouse in Manhattan, holding a “Jury Info” sign and handing out brochures that advocate jury nullification, the controversial view that if jurors disagree with a law, they may ignore their oaths to follow it and may acquit a defendant who violated it.


Then, last year, federal prosecutors had Mr. Heicklen indicted, charging that his activity violated the law against jury tampering. Lawyers assisting him have sought dismissal of the case on First Amendment grounds.


But now prosecutors are offering their first detailed explanation for why they charged Mr. Heicklen, arguing in a brief that his “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”


“His speech is not protected by the First Amendment,” prosecutors wrote.


This is an example of what is not protected by the First Amendment:


...“I’m not telling you to find anybody not guilty,” she quoted Mr. Heicklen telling the agent in a secretly recorded conversation.


“But,” he added, “if there is a law you think is wrong then you should do that.”

Whoa.  What unmitigated gall Mr Heicklen has!


And, of course:

Mr. Heicklen, who could face a six-month sentence if convicted, has asked for a jury trial. Ms. Mermelstein, opposing that demand, cited as one reason Mr. Heicklen’s ardent stance that juries should nullify. He would probably “urge a jury to do so in a case against him,” she wrote.


Well, duh.


New York Times article


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Learn more here:


Fully Informed Jury Association

International Society for Individual Liberty History of Jury Nullification

"Most transparent administration in history": Seals records on Brian Terry's murder, related to Operation Gunwalker

From 2009 post on whitehouse.gov:


Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government.

Please excuse me while I LMFAO:

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Verbatim:

And to think that Attorney General Eric Holder is getting testy about congressional calls for his resignation. After all, the Justice Department has nothing to hide, right?


The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.


This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.


The murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent is related to the Justice Department willingly turning over thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs, and Obama administration is hiding information about his death from the public. Amazing.


Link to the Weekly Standard

I am Paddy McCoy ;-)

Paddy McCoy, an elderly Irish farmer, received a letter from the Department for Work and Pensions stating that they suspected he was not paying his employees the statutory minimum wage, and they would send an inspector to interview them.

On the appointed day, the inspector turned up.
"Tell me about your staff," he asked Paddy.

"Well," said Paddy, "there's the farm hand, I pay him £240 a week, and he has a free cottage.

Then there's the housekeeper. She gets £190 a week, along with free board and lodging.

There's also the half-wit. He works a 16 hour day, does 90% of the work, earns about £25 a week along with a bottle of whisky - and, as a special treat, occasionally gets to sleep with my wife."
"That's disgraceful" said the inspector, "I need to interview the half-wit."

"That'll be me then," said Paddy.

The Economist: High risk for disintegration of the Euro within weeks

The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic and dragging the zone into recession. The risk that the currency disintegrates within weeks is alarmingly high

FIRST Greece; then Ireland and Portugal; then Italy and Spain. Month by month, the crisis in the euro area has crept from the vulnerable periphery of the currency zone towards its core, helped by denial, misdiagnosis and procrastination by the euro-zone’s policymakers. Recently Belgian and French government bonds have been in the financial markets’ bad books. Investors are even sniffy about German bonds: an auction of ten-year Bunds on November 23rd shifted only €3.6 billion-worth ($4.8 billion) of the €6 billion-worth on offer.


Worse, there are signs that the euro zone’s economy is heading for recession, if it is not there already. Industrial orders in the euro zone fell by 6.4% in September, the steepest decline since the dark days of December 2008. A closely watched index of euro-zone sentiment, based on surveys of purchasing managers in manufacturing and services, is also signalling contraction, with a reading of 47.2: anything below 50 suggests activity is shrinking. The European Commission’s index of consumer confidence fell in November for the fifth month in a row.


Now an even bigger calamity is looking likelier. The intensifying financial pressure raises the chances of a disorderly default by a government, a run of retail deposits on banks short of cash, or a revolt against austerity that would mark the start of the break-up of the euro zone.


Link to the rest


Perhaps the Eurozone hacks should've read von Mises...

Ron Paul: Monetary freedom and the gold standard

Update on Iceland: Laissez faire approach = faster recovery

I had previously  (here and here) pointed to Iceland's approach to their debt crisis as an example of what the Austrian School of Economics (see Mises.org) recommends: Do nothing.  


In Iceland, the government let insolvent banks fail, people lost jobs, there was a liquidation of bad investments, ... BUT then there was a rapid recovery.
  Contrast that with the European and American approach: keep sapping the economic strength (i.e. looting) of the productive sector of their constituents, and move that money around, print money, obfuscate, etc. 


Kick the can down the road, let it be someone else's problem.


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The OECD has come very close to predicting a depression for Europe unless EU leaders conjure up a lender-of-last resort very quickly, and somehow manage to make the world believe that the EFSF bail-out fund really exists.


Even if disaster is avoided, the eurozone growth forecast is dreadful. Italy, Portugal, Greece will all contract through 2012, while Spain, France, Netherlands, and Germany will bounce along the bottom.


Unemployment will reach 18.5pc in Greece, 22.9pc in Spain, 14.1pc in Ireland, 13.8pc in Portugal.


Yet Iceland stands out, with 2.4pc growth and unemployment tumbling to 6.1. Well, well.



Ambrose Evans Pritchard at the Telegraph

Uh-oh, .gov wants to cross a red line...OFFICIAL de jure repeal of posse commitatus, and establishment of police state powers---Next week

From the ACLU


The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.


The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.


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From: globalresearch.ca


As many Americans know, for over a decade there have been dozens of pieces of legislation and executive orders that have chipped away at the US Constitution, specifically at its Bill of Rights.


The “war on terror” was originally to be waged against foreigners in far-away lands, but Rep. Ron Paul was right, the anti-terror infrastructure is swinging around to be used against American citizens.


This was the design all along.


The intention was always to immobilize the American public with a police-state control grid, now backed by the regular military, so that the process of economic extraction and political subjection could be completed.


The NDAA for 2012 represents a significant step, on the part of the government, towards a “final takedown.”



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This absolutely crosses a red line for me, if enacted.


Please re-read this post for my analysis.

State Sovereignty: America's [First and] Final Solution to Tyranny

At the end of this article is a copy of the proposed state sovereignty amendment that Ron and Donnie Kennedy are promoting as the final solution to federal abuse. They believe that anything less will only continue the course of federal supremacy and the ultimate destruction of real American liberty. I sadly agree with them.


Just following Congress, the 2012 presidential campaign and the inability of citizens to influence government policy makes it clear to every American how broken the US political system has become. A few powerful interests run the entire show and the American people are being forced down a dark road to economic destruction. History shows us that Washington is immune to conventional national political action under the present system. What can freedom loving Americans do?


...There is only one effective, democratic and peaceful tool left to Americans to defend their liberties and restore the original republic of our founding fathers. It is the right of state sovereignty and nullification, so effectively explained by Tom Woods in his book Nullification: How To Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. http://www.tomwoods.com/books/nullification


Many other freedom advocates have proposed nullification and state sovereignty, including the Kennedy Brothers who have developed a State Sovereignty Amendment strategy that should be launched in all 50 states. Although the elites ruling our nation have total control over the federal government and the two-party system nationally, they have neglected to extend this top-down control to the state level. This is because over the last 50 years states have become mere powerless appendages of Washington without influence – and this is an opportunity for the Freedom movement.

Read the rest at The Daily Bell


Proposed State Sovereignty Amendment to the Constitution at the end of the article.

Ten things we Evil Capitalists really think...

...That is, true laissez faire capitalists...


Let's see if Mr Hannan and I cannot help some OWS protesters to define their terms a bit more precisely:


Verbatim post


Dan Hannan, Conservative Party, UK, Member of European Parliament, writing in the Telegraph:

Chatting to some Occupy protesters this morning, I was struck by how wide of the mark were the beliefs they attributed to me as a Right-winger. In the interests of deeper understanding, here are ten things which – trust me – most of the Tory scum I hang around with think. Obviously, I don’t expect to turn my Leftie readers in a single post; still, they might get a clearer idea of what we actually believe.


1. Free-marketeers resent the bank bailouts. This might seem obvious: we are, after all, opposed to state subsidies and nationalisations. Yet it often surprises commentators, who mistake our support for open competition and free trade for a belief in plutocracy. There is a world of difference between being pro-market and being pro-business. Sometimes, the two positions happen to coincide; often they don’t.


2. What has happened since 2008 is not capitalism. In a capitalist system, bad banks would have been allowed to fail, their profitable operations bought by more efficient competitors. Shareholders, bondholders and some depositors would have lost money, but taxpayers would not have contributed a penny (see here).


3. If you want the rich to pay more, create a flatter and simpler tax system. This is partly a question of closing loopholes (mansions put in company names to avoid stamp duty, capital gains tax exemption for non-doms etc). Mainly, though, it is a question of bringing the tax rate down to a level where evasion becomes pointless. As Art Laffer keeps telling anyone who’ll listen, it works every time. Between 1980 and 2007, the US cut taxes at all income levels. Result? The top one per cent went from paying 19.5 per cent of all taxes to 40 per cent. In Britain, since the top rate of income tax was lowered to 40 per cent in 1988, the share of income tax collected from the wealthiest percentile has risen from 14 to 27 per cent.


4. Those of us who believe in small government are not motivated by the desire to make the rich richer. We’re really not. We are, in most cases, nowhere near having to pay top rate tax ourselves; our most eloquent champions over the years have been modestly-paid academics. We believe that economic freedom will enrich the country as a whole. Yes, the wealthy might become wealthier still, but we don't see that as an argument against raising living standards for the majority.


5. We are not against equality. We generally recognise the benefits in Scandinavian-style homogeneity: crime tends to be lower, people are less stressed etc. Our objection is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity.


6. Nor, by the way, does state intervention seem to be an effective way to promote equality. On the most elemental indicators – height, calorie intake, infant mortality, literacy, longevity – Britain has been becoming a steadily more equal society since the calamity of 1066. It’s true that, around half a century ago, this approximation halted and, on some measures, went into reverse. There are competing theories as to why, but one thing is undeniable: the recent widening of the wealth gap has taken place at a time when the state controls a far greater share of national wealth than ever before.


7. Let’s tackle the idea that being on the Left means being on the side of ordinary people, while being on the Right means defending privileged elites. It’s hard to think of a single tax, or a single regulation, that doesn’t end up privileging some vested interest at the expense of the general population. The reason governments keep growing is because of what economists call ‘dispersed costs and concentrated gains’: people are generally more aware the benefits they receive than of the taxes they pay.


8. Capitalism, with all its imperfections, is the fairest scheme yet tried. In a system based on property rights and free contract, people succeed by providing an honest service to others. Bill Gates became rich by enriching hundreds of millions of us: I am typing these words using one of his programmes. He gained from the exchange (adding fractionally to his net worth), and so did I (adding to my convenience). In a state-run system, by contrast, third parties get to hand out the goodies.


9. Talking of fairness, let’s remember that the word doesn’t belong to any faction. How about parity between public and private sector pay? How about being fair to our children, whom we have freighted with a debt unprecedented in peacetime? How about being fair to the boy who leaves school at 16 and starts paying taxes to subsidise the one who goes to university? How about being fair to the unemployed, whom firms cannot afford to hire because of the social protection enjoyed by existing employees?


10. Let’s not forget ethics, either. There is virtue in deciding to do the right thing, but there is no virtue in being compelled. Choosing to give your money to charity is meritorious; paying tax is morally neutral (see here). Evidence suggests that, as taxes rise, and the state squeezes out civic society, people give less to good causes.
Well, there you go, comrades. I don’t expect the tents outside St Paul’s to fold overnight. But perhaps we might at least engage honestly on some of these issues rather than talking past each other. ¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

Remember: it's not Capitalism that is the problem. The problem is Corporatism: Crony businesses and banks in bed with, and receiving protection from government power.

Check your premises: Who benefits?

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders--what would you tell him to do?"

"I … don't know. What … could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."--Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged, 1957

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Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. 


Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government.


In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers. --Ron Paul




Now contrast the idea of corporatism with true competitive laissez faire capitalism:

"Inasmuch as the formula of Rearden Metal is my own personal secret, and in view of the fact that the Metal costs much less to produce than you boys can imagine, I expect to skin the public to the tune of a profit of twenty-five per cent in the next few years."


"What do you mean, 'skin the public', Mr. Rearden?" asked the boy [reporter-HM]. "If it's true, as I've read in your ads, that your Metal will last three times longer than any other and at half the price, wouldn't the public be getting a bargain?"


"Oh, have you noticed that?"

--Hank Rearden at a press conference, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Southern Music break: Simple Man

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say
And if you do this it'll help you some sunny day


Oh, take your time don't live too fast
Troubles will come and they will pass
Go find a woman you'll find love
And don't forget son there is someone up above


And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can?


Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul
And you can do this, oh baby, if you try
All that I want for you my son is to be satisfied


And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can? Oh yes, I will


Boy, don't you worry you'll find yourself
Follow your heart and nothing else
And you can do this, oh baby, if you try
All that I want for you my son is to be satisfied


And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can?


Baby be a simple, be a simple man
Be something you love and understand
Baby be a simple kind of man

Europe: Combine socialism and then add economic austerity, this is what you get:

Europe...in this case the Catalan state within the Spanish nation...

Catalonia is not Spain! Notice the Bonnie Blue Chevron?  Sorry...shameless plug for secession...couldn't help it.

And this is what you get when you combine socialism, socialized medicine, central planning, and then run out of money:


Among other things...Rationing (read: death panels)...brain drain of doctors leaving for greener pastures...and awfully disappointed, nay, really mad  "constituents".


To the Democrats of the United States: Still think it's a good idea raising people's hopes of universal health care as a "right"? That is a right to loot others. Eventually, you run out of other people's money...





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"Folks, this political game of lie, lie and lie some more cannot go on forever. Eventually the waiter appears with the check and you either pay it, wash dishes, or get arrested for theft." --Karl Denninger, Market-ticker.org.

Good feelings and inspiration to start the holiday season: The Franz Family

Incredible talent, beautiful song, delivered in high Southern style.


How did they get so good? Gd given talent, a lifetime of practice, great parents, and homeschooling:



Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Lesson for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs beware: Never get into a project unless you are able to deal with positive or negative contingencies.


Case in point:

Rachel Brown, who runs the Need a Cake bakery in Reading, Berkshire, launched an offer via the money-saving website (Groupon) in the spring in which she offered a 75 per cent discount on 12 cupcakes, which normally cost £26.

However Mrs Brown vastly under-estimated the popularity of the deal and was besieged by 8,500 people who signed up for the £6.50 bargain.

She ended up losing between £2.50 and £3 on each batch she sold. She also had to pay £12,500 for the extra costs of hiring staff and sending the products out, wiping out profits for the year for her business.

Mrs Brown, who had only expected a few hundred orders, said that the experience was “without doubt, the worst ever business decision I have made”.

“It's been an absolutely nightmare,” she said.

Link to the Telegraph.

Thanks, Groupon!


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The lesson goes for most professions, actually. In the hospital once, I heard a radiologist who had done a breast biopsy, calling for a surgeon to do skin stitches for him when he inadvertently vacuumed the skin into the biopsy device, resulting in a hole in the patient's skin that couldnt be closed by the usual butterfly bandages. 


The surgeon fumed to him: "Never do a procedure unless you know you can deal with the complications of that procedure!" 
(Not to mention simple stitching is usually learned in med school...)

Smith Enterprise's Vortex Flash Eliminators

No night flash visible to the naked eye, very suppressed with night vision.


Watch:





Comes in 9 mm, 6.8/6.5, 5.56, 7.62 x 39, 7.62 x 51, and 50 BMG.  


It's a 2006 news report, so it costs more than $31 now:
for the AR it's $60, for .308 it's $90 on Brownell's.

Play TSA Bingo! Everybody pick a card!

via very good website, Homeland Security Theatre by cartoonist Bill Forster, who suffered through being a TSA employee at LAX, now blogs about it, and how ridiculous the TSA is.  

Letter to the SPLC from a Montana "Extremist"

by Brandon Smith of Alt-market.com


I’ll be the first to admit, people who refuse to compromise their principles under any circumstances can be utterly terrifying. Defiance, in its purest form, requires fearlessness; a brand of fearlessness we have little experience of today. For many in our society, fearlessness in the face of immeasurable opposition is unthinkable, and (unjustly) considered a sign of “madness”, or of “extremism”. To go against the tides of a culture, a collective, and point out its crimes and inconsistencies, is so counter to what they have been conditioned to expect, any sign of dissent triggers in them feelings of confusion and fury.

The Liberty Movement, and all it’s more specific and specialized branches, represents a resurgence of the immovable ideal. We refuse to set aside the truth. We refuse to relinquish our freedoms. We refuse to be silent. We refuse to negotiate. Regardless of the consequences, and despite contrary impositions of so called “national security”, we simply will not go away. This kind of philosophy is a serious obstacle for any establishment system which seeks to maintain or even expand its base of power. If you cannot buy off a person, if you cannot co-opt a person, and if you cannot frighten him into compliance, then all that is left to do is to demonize his public character, lock him up, or kill him. Men of conscience force the agents of centralization to expose their inherent tyranny before they are ready for the citizenry to know who they really are. Frankly, the Liberty Movement is a considerable pain in the neck for those who would see the American dynamic distorted to the benefit of a select few.


We wear this distinction like a badge of honor. If we were not a threat to the globalist corporatist strategy, then they would not consistently go out of their way to attack us. They attack us, because we are doing something right.

Link to the rest of the article at Zerohedge.com, which I am very pleased has published such a document. Their readership is in the tens of thousands per day, at least.

The last viable ballot box solution to our economic problems and reverse the Police state

If you don't vote for Ron Paul, chances are you're voting for a Statist. Don't punish the current Statist in chief by voting for someone who will keep the Nation/Empire going in the same direction.  Vote for the Constitution. Here's your only chance to vote for a return to the Constitution in 2012; watch the whole thing:



About 9 1/2 minutes in, listen to Huckabee's Lincolnist/Collectivist comeback to Paul. The other Republicans care about the State, not the Individual. The government, not the People.


This is a powerful video, one worth propagating.