Pak Starz: 06/09/11

Texas Monthly iPhone App Tracks BBQ Across the World

ŠįlěƝţ ŁøvȜř Thursday, June 9, 2011

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If I had a cell phone I would get this app.

http://eater.com/archives/2011/06/08/texas-monthly-bbq-app-competitive-barbecue-consumption.php

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Mitt Romney Endorses Global Warming Hoax

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http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/06/mitt-romney-end.html

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FINALLY! The biggest RINO in the Senate introduces a noble piece of legislation

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FINALLY! The biggest RINO in the Senate introduces a noble piece of legislation

barenakedislam | June 9, 2011 at 5:59 PM | Categories: Military stories | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-v6D

Senator Olympia Snowe (ME) has introduced the Sanctity of Eternal Rest for Veterans Act of 2011, so lunatics like Fred Phelps and his so-called Westboro Baptist Church, will not be able to disrupt the funerals of our military heroes. The United States Supreme Court ruled that Fred Phelps' actions are protected under the First Amendment. [...]

The Case against Raising the Debt Ceiling

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The Case against Raising the Debt Ceiling
Thursday, June 09, 2011
by Robert P. Murphy

A recent NPR story on the debt ceiling seeks to correct the American public's "misunderstanding" of the issue. But as we'll see, whether through ignorance or deception, the analyst on whom the story relies makes claims about the debt ceiling that are simply not true. It turns out that the public's gut reaction to politicians' piling on ever more red ink is right after all.

Denying the Obvious

The opening hook of the story -- which, remember, is seeking to correct how poor American rubes think about these difficult issues -- left me speechless:

Despite all the hand-wringing over raising the federal debt limit, and the prickly debate between Democrats and Republicans, there's some confusion about what it actually means. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 48 percent of Americans believe raising the limit would lead to more government spending and higher debt. It's a figure that, according to many experts, reflects public misunderstanding.

"The deficit and the debt have become big issues, and it's largely a proxy for concern with the economy," Andrew Fieldhouse, federal-budget-policy analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, told The Root. "People are under financial strain, so when they see a number like [the debt limit of] $14.3 trillion, they expect the government to act as frugally as they are. But it's a false comparison. We can't choose not to raise it." (emphasis added)

I admit that the Pew Research Center poll annoyed me, but for the opposite reason. Why didn't 100 percent of Americans think that a higher debt ceiling would lead to a higher debt? How can anyone possibly deny that? That's the whole point of raising the ceiling after all you want to increase the debt above the existing ceiling.

Now the other half of the claim, namely that raising the government-debt ceiling would lead to more government spending, doesn't follow by definition. For this claim, we just need to use a little common sense and knowledge of how politicians have behaved throughout recorded history.

The so-called experts who deny the link between raising the debt ceiling and increased government spending have in mind that Congress makes spending decisions and then separately authorizes the Treasury to borrow money to fund it. Even here, the 48 percent of Americans are right, and the NPR story itself agrees with them (though the author doesn't realize it).

How do I know that? Because later in the story, it scares the reader with the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling. The story lists nine things that the reader needs to know about the issue. Here's number six:

6. Without a raise of the debt ceiling, certain things just won't get paid.

"If the U.S. Treasury is out of borrowing authority, as bills come to it, it cannot pay all of them," says Fieldhouse, explaining that there's not enough revenue to repay creditors. Theoretically, Medicare, Social Security, military paychecks, veterans' benefits, unemployment benefits and tax refunds would all be interrupted. "The federal government would cease to function the way it's supposed to in every sense."

So there you have it. The NPR story opens by shaking its head that 48 percent of Americans think raising the debt ceiling would (a) lead to a bigger debt and (b) lead to more government spending. We can all agree that (a) is true by definition. And for (b), the NPR story itself agrees that without raising the ceiling, "certain things just won't get paid." So those 48 percent of Americans were on to something, notwithstanding the "experts" who disagree.

Running Up a Bigger Debt to Keep Down Interest Rates?

Throughout the story -- and this also suffuses the entire public debate on the issue -- the writer conflates two different things: raising the debt ceiling and servicing existing debt. Treasury Secretary Geithner and others keep arguing as if failure to raise the debt ceiling necessarily means the government will default on outstanding Treasury interest payments, but that's simply not true. The government can refuse to raise the debt ceiling while continuing to service preexisting debt. Therefore, it's nonsense when the NPR article warns that

2. Not raising the debt ceiling would make the national debt worse.

If the government is unable to borrow and keep paying for its obligations, then the federal debt, and any future borrowing, will accrue higher interest rates. In other words, we would end up owing more money than we would if the issue were confronted by raising the debt ceiling. "You can't wish away the debt of the United States," says Fieldhouse.

Debt service currently consumes about one-sixth of incoming revenues (not spending). So if the government would simply cut spending elsewhere, it would still have plenty of cash coming in the door with which to pay existing bondholders. If the government actually put in place a serious plan to balance the budget, while not jeopardizing interest payments, there is no reason for interest rates to go up. In fact, it would be a signal that Uncle Sam was more likely to pay off his debts, as he capped the total debt.

Only in the political realm could it have ever become a standard talking point to claim that we need to go deeper into debt to reassure our creditors that we will pay them back.

Do We Need to Raise Taxes?

The NPR story and its alleged expert go on to explain why cutting spending is no solution to stop the red ink:

7. The GOP-proposed spending cuts alone wouldn't work.

Republicans want $2.4 trillion in budget cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. "You can't feasibly cut spending by enough to avoid a debt-ceiling increase, and you can't balance a budget simply by cutting spending," Fieldhouse says of the drastic proposals being pushed, adding that the government will have to raise revenue. But he says that raising the debt ceiling should not be contingent on any long-term deficit plan, no matter the approach. "Congress operates very slowly, and we're in a hyperpolarized period in our politics. You cannot expect Congress to resolve long-term budget problems between now and the beginning of August."

As I pointed out in a previous article, if the government merely returned to its 2003 spending levels, then the current revenue stream would be enough to pay for everything -- including interest on existing debt. I personally don't remember the country falling apart in 2003 from lack of federal-government expenditures.

Admittedly, it would be tough for Congress to slash about $750 billion in spending between now and the end of September (when the fiscal year ends), which is what it would take to live within its means.

There is another option that could be used to buy time: sell off assets. This is what any private-sector organization would do if it wanted to start digging out of a massive debt problem. In this article I rattled off more than $1 trillion in highly liquid assets that the federal government currently owns and should return to the private sector in any case. Doing so right now would allow the Congress more time to make the necessary cuts in spending without raising taxes or the debt ceiling.

Conclusion

Much to the chagrin of the so-called experts, a sizable portion of the American public can smell a rat: they know that raising the debt ceiling is not needed to avoid calamity, and they know it would just let the politicians continue to waste our money.

Robert Murphy is an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, where he teaches at the Mises Academy. He runs the blog Free Advice and is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, the Study Guide to "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market," the "Human Action" Study Guide, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, and his newest book, Lessons for the Young Economist.

http://mises.org/daily/5362/The-Case-against-Raising-the-Debt-Ceiling

Oh, BOO HOO! Muslim students are being teased in North Carolina schools

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Oh, BOO HOO! Muslim students are being teased in North Carolina schools

barenakedislam | June 9, 2011 at 7:50 PM | Categories: Islam in America | URL: http://wp.me/peHnV-v70

The Islamic Center of the Triad sent a letter to Superintendent, saying there have been at least 27 incidents in the past few months of several Muslim students being teased about their stupid names and being called terrorists. Mike Neel with the Islamic Center said some Muslim students have gone as far as changing their [...]

Anthony Weiner as The Swamp Thing

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Anthony Weiner as The Swamp Thing

Scotty Starnes | June 9, 2011 at 8:11 PM | Tags: Anthony Weiner, drain the swamp, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-5qX

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Why TSA, Wars, State Defined Diets, Seat-Belt Laws, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, and Efforts to Control the Internet, Are Essential to the State

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Why TSA, Wars, State Defined Diets, Seat-Belt Laws, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, and Efforts to Control the Internet, Are Essential to the State
by Butler Shaffer

Whenever justice is uncertain and police spying and terror are at work, human beings fall into isolation, which, of course, is the aim and purpose of the dictator state, since it is based on the greatest accumulation of depotentiated social units.
-- Carl Jung

The title of this article encompasses topics that arouse attention and criticism among persons of libertarian persuasion. The discussion of such matters usually treats each issue as though it were sui generis, independent of one another. Most of us respond as though the woman who is groped at the airport has no connection with the man who is tasered by a police officer; that the person serving time in prison for selling marijuana is unrelated to the men being held at Guantanamo. The belief that one person's maltreatment is isolated from the rest of us, is essential to the maintenance of state power.

What we have in common is the need to protect one another's inviolability from governmental force. When we understand that the woman being groped by a TSA agent stands in the same shoes as our wife, mother, or grandmother; when the man being beaten by a sadist cop is seen, by us, as our father or grandfather, we become less willing to evade the nature of the wrongdoing by invoking the coward's plea: "better him than me." The state owes its very existence to the success it has had in fostering division among us, a topic I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. Divide-and-conquer has long been the mainstay in political strategy. If blacks and whites; or Christians and Muslims; or employees and employers; or "straights" and "gays"; or men and women; or any of seemingly endless abstractions, learn to identify and separate themselves from one another, the state has established its base of power. From such mutually-exclusive categories do we draw the endless "enemies" (e.g., communists, drug-dealers, terrorists, tobacco companies) we are to fear, and against whom the state promises its protection. By becoming fearful, we become existentially disabled, and readily accept whatever safeguards the institutional fear-mongers impose, . . . all for our "benefit," of course!

Look at the title of this article: do you find any governmental program or practice therein that is not grounded in state-generated fear? Each one -- and the numerous others not mentioned -- presumes a threat to your well-being against which the state must take restrictive and intrusive action. Terrorists might threaten the flight you are about to take; terrorist nations might have "weapons of mass destruction" and the intention to use them against you; your children might be at risk from drug dealers or from sex perverts using the Internet; driving without a seat-belt, or eating "junk" foods might endanger you: the list goes on and on, changing as the fear-peddlers dream up another dreaded condition in life.

It is not sufficient to the interests of the state that you fear other groups; it is becoming increasingly evident that you must also fear the state itself! Governments are defined as entities that enjoy a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory. Implicit in such a monopoly is the recognition that there be no limitations on its exercise, other than what serve the power interests of the state. In relatively quiet and stable periods (e.g., 1950s) the state can afford to give respect to notions of individual privacy, free speech, and limitations on the powers of the police. In such ways, the state gives the appearance of reasonableness and respect for people. But when times become more tumultuous -- as they are now -- the very survival of the state depends upon a continuing assertion of the coercive powers that define its very being.

For a number of reasons -- some of it technological -- our social world is rapidly becoming decentralized. The highly-structured, centrally-directed institutions through which so much of our lives has been organized (e.g., schools, health-care, government, communications, etc.) no longer meet the expectations of many -- perhaps most -- men and women. Alternative systems, the control of which has become decentralized into individual hands, challenge the traditional institutional order. Private schools and home-schooling; alternative health practices; the Internet, cell-phones, and what is now known as the "social media," are in the ascendancy. With the state becoming increasingly expensive, destructive, economically disruptive, oppressive, and blatantly anti-life, secession and nullification movements have become quite popular.

Of course, such transformations are contrary to the established institutional interests that have, for many decades, controlled the state -- and, with it, the monopoly on violence that is its principal asset. Having long enjoyed the power to advance their interests not through the peaceful, voluntary methods of the marketplace, but through such coercive means as governmental regulation, taxation, wars, and other violent means, the established order is not about to allow the changing preferences of hundreds of millions of individuals to disrupt its traditional cozy racket.

Because the institutional order has become inseparable from the coercive nature of the state, any popular movement toward non-political systems is, in effect, a movement away from the violent structuring of society. The corporate interests that control the machinery of the state may try to convince people that government does protect their interests vis-à-vis the various fear-objects. Failing in this, the statists must resort to the tactic that sustains the playground bully: to reinforce fear of the bully, who controls his victims through a mixture of violence and degradation.

Neither the TSA nor the alleged "war on terror" have anything to do with terrorism. The idea that the TSA came about as a consequence of 9/11 ignores the fact that the state's practice of prowling through the personal belongings of airline passengers goes back many decades. I recall how upset a friend of mine was -- in the early 1970s -- when government officials went through his hand-luggage, and ordered him to unwrap a birthday gift he was carrying home to a relative. The purpose of such a search then, as now, was to remind passengers of the bully's basic premise: "I can do anything I want to you whenever I choose to do so." It is for the purpose of keeping us docile -- an objective furthered by degrading and dehumanizing us -- that underlies such state practices. The groping of people's genitals and breasts is but an escalation of this premise, and should the TSA later decide that all passengers must strip naked for inspection, such a practice will go unquestioned not only by the courts, but by the mainstream media who will ask " . . . but if you don't have anything to hide . . . " Those who cannot imagine state power going to such extremes to humiliate people into submission, are invited to revisit the many photographs of German army officers at such places as Auschwitz, who watched -- as "full body scanners" -- as naked women were forced to run by them.

The extension of wars -- against any enemy that any president chooses as a target -- serves the same purpose. It is not necessary that there be any plausible rationale for the bombing and invading of other countries: it is sufficient that Americans and foreigners alike be reminded of the violence principle upon which government rests. "I will go to war against you if it serves my interests to do so, and any resistance on your part will only confirm what a threat you are to America!" The state directs its wars not so much against foreign populations, as against its own. War rallies people into the mindset of unquestioning obedience because, by engaging in such deadly conduct, the state reminds us of its capacities to destroy us at its will. I elaborated on this topic in an earlier article.

You can apply this logic to any of the aforementioned government programs. The state -- and the corporate order that depends upon the exercise of state power -- is fighting for its survival. Rather than treating this as a "war against terrorism," it is more accurate to consider it as a "war to preserve the hierarchically-structured institutional order." There are too many trillions of dollars and too much arbitrary power at stake for those who benefit from controlling the state's instruments of violence to await the outcome of ordinary people's thinking. If the survival of the corporate-state power structure required the extermination of two billion people, such a program would be undertaken with little hesitation. Destructive violence becomes an end-in-itself to an organization that is defined in terms of its monopoly on such means.

On the other hand, I continue to remain optimistic that these institutional wars against life will come to an end. I believe that the United States of America is in a terminal condition; its fate already determined. But America -- whose existence predates the United States -- may very well survive in a fundamentally changed form. What is helping this transformation process are innovative technological tools for the decentralized exchange of information; mankind is rapidly becoming capable of communicating with one another in the most direct ways, methods that make traditional top-down forms less and less relevant. The Internet is one system that is the tip of an iceberg whose deeper challenges have thus far not captured the attention of crew members of the ship-of-state. Wikileaks is another step in the evolution of decentralized information systems that will bring greater transparency to the activities of the ruling classes. In the process, men and women will discover just how liberating the free flow of information can be. When the rest of the world has access to the same information that political systems try to keep secret, the games played at the expense of people begin to fall apart.

An awareness of the dynamics of change being brought about through decentralizing forces has not, however, managed to inform members of the established order. For all of their pretended knowledge and expertise about the world, they just don't get it. They seem to imagine that their decline-and-fall can be prevented by keeping the Bradley Mannings and Julian Assanges locked up; and that the political ramifications can be deterred by distracting attention away from a Ron Paul -- who does understand the nature and direction of these changes -- and toward a comic-opera Sarah Palin.

In the meantime, in an effort to keep Boobus and other members of the herd within their assigned stalls, the ever-present threat of force and its consequent degradation of the individual will be invoked as the state works feverishly -- and futilely -- to shore up its collapsing foundations.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer237.html

Patriotism Is the Last Refuge of an Idiot

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Patriotism Is the Last Refuge of an Idiot
by Mark R. Crovelli

While Dr. Johnson was no doubt correct to write that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," he just as easily could have written that patriotism is the last refuge of an idiot. The latter phrasing is arguably more useful to commit to memory, given the higher likelihood of bumping into patriotic idiots on the street than of bumping into patriotic scoundrels (outside of Washington D.C. and New York, of course).

The catchphrase of the patriotic idiot is "love it or leave it," which means, in the parlance of idiots everywhere, that anyone who happens to doubt the government's greatness or legitimacy should expatriate. The phrase is invariably used in a last-ditch attempt to avoid having to confront political ideas that are challenging or uncomfortable. Unfortunately for the idiot, and I suppose this is part of what makes him an idiot to begin with, the phrase is as absurd as it is hackneyed.

In the first place, it is instructive to note that even idiots do not use the phrase "love it or leave it" on every occasion. For example, the idiot never shrieks out "love it or leave it" during a simple discussion of Roe v. Wade or current tax law. Even an idiot is aware that he will sound like a complete fool if he tells people they should either love Roe v. Wade or get out of the U.S. The fact that idiot cannot utilize the phrase on all occasions without looking like a fool ought to be a sign to him that there is something terribly wrong with it in general.

It is in the context of discussing fundamental political questions involving the government's legitimacy that the idiot believes the phrase "love it or leave it" constitutes a powerful argument. If the debate turns to the question of whether taxation is morally and legally synonymous with robbery, for example, the idiot thinks that anyone who doubts the government's legitimacy should simply leave. It completely escapes the notice of the idiot that the question of what dissenters can or should do is completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not the government is legitimate.

What also escapes his notice is the circularity of his reasoning in trying to use the phrase "love it or leave it" as a serious argument. The question at hand, after all, involves the legitimacy of the government, not some trivial question about government policy. But, the phrase itself assumes that the government and its policies are legitimate from the outset, because it assumes 1) that dissenters are the ones who should leave, and 2) that the dissenter's only legitimate options are to love the government as it now stands or to leave. If these are not assumed to be the dissenter's only legitimate options, then what's the problem with hating the government? But, how could those be the dissenter's only legitimate options unless government itself is assumed to be legitimate? In other words, the idiot's only argument to defend the legitimacy of the government boils down to nothing more than saying "government is legitimate because government is legitimate." Needless to say, unless one is speaking to an idiot, this sort of circular reasoning is silly and absurd.

The phrase "love it or leave it" is sometimes used in a pathetic attempt to demonstrate that people "consent" to live under their particular governments. According to this moronic line of thinking, because most people do not flee their countries for…well, somewhere else, they have thereby "consented" to their government's existence. "Since they haven't left," the idiot blusters, "they must love it." That the conclusion does not follow from the premise is obvious to anyone with a working brain, however. A person might stay in his country of birth for many different reasons unrelated to "consent." He may not have the money to move, or he may not be permitted to leave, as in North Korea. Or, he may be aware that every piece of inhabitable land on Earth is claimed by governments more or less similar to his own, so his situation will not improve by moving abroad. Like the branded slave, he has no place to go where he will not be recognized and treated as he is right now. He has been branded with the word "taxpayer," and every government in the world will treat him as such. However, finding oneself without a place to run does not constitute "consent" to being raped, robbed or taxed.

Perhaps the most obvious problem with the idiot's catchphrase, however, is the fact that he has no way to make people either "love it" or "leave it." He lacks the muscle to deport people who disagree with him, and he lacks the mental abilities to convince them to "love" the government. The best that his feeble brain can muster is to rub the government's existence in the face of his intellectual opponents as if that resounded to his own glory. It is tragic in the true sense of the word, since the poor idiot cannot see that the institution he mindlessly defends is his true enemy, not the lonely government dissenter.

Interestingly, governments themselves are every bit as impotent as the idiot to enforce the phrase "love it or leave it," because they have no way to force their subjects "love it," and they cannot possibly hope to deport or incarcerate everyone who doubts their legitimacy. They are reduced to making their presence and brutality known by stomping on minorities that can't fight back, and, like the idiot, making asinine and propagandistic statements about their own magnificence and beneficence. Once a significant number of people wake up to the fact that governments everywhere are nothing more than unnecessary criminal gangs, however, there is nothing governments can do to keep from being smashed to pieces.

When that glorious day arrives in the West, as it has in the Middle East, the idiots of the world who mindlessly defend their governments with the phrase "love it or leave it" will finally have a chance to heed their own advice.

http://lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli62.1.html

What Better Time than Now to End the Drug War?

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011
What Better Time than Now to End the Drug War?
by Jacob G. Hornberger

The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex and other drug-war proponents must be reeling over recent reports on the federal fiasco known as the drug war.

Two of the reports were issued by the U.S. government itself. According to the Los Angeles Times, those two reports show that "as drug cartels wreak murderous havoc from Mexico to Panama, the Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States."

The other report was issued by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which consisted of former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volker, former president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo, former UN Secretary Kofi Anan, and others. That report concluded:

Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.

This sure sounds like a no-brainer to me. After all, the U.S. government is up against its debt ceiling. Its spending far exceeds its tax revenues. It needs to slash spending. So, why not simply abolish the drug war, immediately?

Not only would drug legalization save the government (i.e., the taxpayers) billions of dollars, it would also put all the drug cartels and drug gangs out of business, immediately.

It would also mean no more drug-war death and destruction, such as the 40,000 dead people in Mexico in the past 5 years alone.

It would mean no more drug-war corruption (i.e., bribery) with judges, prosecutors, and law-enforcement personnel.

Forty years of failure, death, and destruction. Who could possibly advocate that the drug war be continued, especially with financial bankruptcy looming on the horizon due to out-of-control federal spending?

The Pentagon, that's who. And contractors in the military-industrial complex too. They are among the drug-war's biggest cheerleaders.

Why?

Money. Big money.

According to the Times, in the past 5 years, U.S. contractors have been paid more than $3 billion to help train Latin American prosecutors and police to fight the drug war. The article states, "The majority of U.S. counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT and ARINC."

In a time of ever-growing federal expenditures and a debt ceiling that was approaching, "Counter-narcotics contract spending increased 32% over the five-year period, from $482 million in 2005 to $635 million in 2009. DynCorp, based in Falls Church, Va., received the largest total, $1.1 billion."

Moreover, "The Department of Defense has spent $6.1 billion since 2005 to help detect planes and boats heading to the U.S. with drug payloads, as well as on surveillance and other intelligence operations."

Unfortunately, despite 40 years of failure and with financial bankruptcy on the horizon, many drug warriors just won't let go. According to the Times article, Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute says the solution is to have the military, rather than private contractors, train foreign armies and police. James Gregory, a Pentagon spokesman, says the Defense Department's drug war efforts "have been the most successful and cost-effective programs" in decades.

You might be tempted to ask, "What are these people smoking?" After all, look at what Mexican military involvement in the drug war has wrought in that country 40,000 deaths in the last five years.

But there's another thing to consider. The Posse Comitatus law prohibits the U.S. military from engaging in law-enforcement operations here in the United States. That law reflects a judgment of the American people that having the military enforce domestic law is a bad idea. We want the police, not the troops, to be enforcing criminal law.

Such being the case, then why are we sending the military into Latin America to do what is considered a bad thing here for Americans? If it's bad for Americans, then it's equally bad for Latin Americans. The U.S. military has no more business enforcing the drug war in foreign countries than it does enforcing the drug war here within the United States.

Forty years ago, drug warriors could argue that victory in the drug war was just a few years away or even right around the corner. Today, that argument is just plain hogwash. If they've haven't won the drug war after 40 years of vicious failure, another five years of death, destruction, and corruption aren't going to make any difference whatsoever. The only thing more drug warfare will do is enrich the coffers of the military, the military industrial complex, the judges, prosecutors, cops, and drug lords, while accelerating the federal government's move toward bankruptcy.

What better time to end the drug-war fiasco than now?

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-06-09.asp

Serious Mob Attacks in Downtown Chicago

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Serious Mob Attacks in Downtown Chicago
Posted by Robert Wenzel at 1:22 AM

Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society experiment is in full bloom and it is downright ugly. LBJ's attempt to coddle the lower classes with free money for going fatherless and even more money for mother's having more children, without husbands around, has perhaps reached the third generation of such fatherless, uncontrollable youth. The experiment has resulted in roaming bands of criminals.

In Chicago this weekend, downtown pedestrians and bicyclists faced roaming mob attacks.

The first weekend attack happened around 8:25 p.m. Saturday when a man was attacked after parking his motor scooter near the Northwestern University campus, according to CBS News in Chicago.

A few minutes after that attack, man riding his bicycle on the lakefront path at 701 N. Lake Shore Dr. was attacked by a group of teenagers, who punched and kicked him.

Three teens – Dvonte Sikes, 17, of the 7500 block of South Normal Avenue; Travolus Pickett, 17, of the 8400 block of South Dorchester avenue; and Derodte Wright, 18, of the 3500 block of South State Street – have been charged as adults with felony robbery and mob action.

Sikes' bond was set at $250,000. Pickett's at $300,000 and Wright's at $200,000.

Two other 16-year-olds were also charged as juveniles and their names were not released.

Earlier this year, retailers on North Michigan Avenue reported several instances in which young people would suddenly gather inside a store and ransack the place.

Also, on Sunday morning, a male University Of Illinois-Chicago student was on a westbound No. 12 CTA bus on Roosevelt Road at Throop Street, when a group of eight to 10 men wearing white T-shirts boarded, UIC police said. One of the men hit the victim on the back of the head with a glass bottle and stole his iPad. Then the robbers got off the bus.

Police also shut down North Avenue beach on Memorial Day–officially because of the heat and huge crowds. However, police sources say, concerns about the potential for violence was behind the decision as well.

Remarkably, most of these attacks are occurring on the Gold Coast and Streetersville sections of Chicago, the high rent districts of the city. I know them well. If people can't feel safe in these areas, the city is out of control.

Paul Huebl, the week before, saw this coming:

They are calling them "Wildings", the latest fad for idle young Blacks. They use texting and social networks to form large groups to take control of stores, businesses and now beaches. The plan is simple, to rob, beat and molest as many non-Blacks as they can.

Police resources are very slim and the thugs have easy and cheap transportation to the areas they have victimized. Make no mistake these are serious and violent hate crimes. Intended victims are justified in using deadly force to end attacks involving multiple offenders.

White Chicagoans should stay away from the Gold Coast, beaches, or other entertainment spots for the entire summer. The police can't do much but write reports after the violence.

I have seen similar reports out of Boston, New York and Miami. With the state of California under order to release 40,000 inmates because of overcrowding, who really knows what is going to happen in that state.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/06/serious-mob-attacks-in-downtown-chicago.html

Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong

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Thursday, Jun 9, 2011 09:01 ET
Everything you know about the Civil War is wrong
Almost. Historian David Goldfield exposes how evangelical Protestants turned a conflict into a bloody conflagration
By Joan Walsh

On the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Americans are engaged in new debates over what it was about. Southern revisionists have long tried to claim it wasn't about slavery, but rather "Northern aggression" – which is a tough sell since they seceded from the Union despite Lincoln's attempts at compromise on slavery, and then attacked the federal Fort Sumter in South Carolina. That would be Southern aggression, by any standard.

But there's still room for smart revisionism. Instead of the traditional view that finds the Civil War a great moral and political triumph, David Goldfield calls it "America's greatest failure" in his fascinating new book, "America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation." It killed a half-million Americans and devastated the South for generations, maybe through today. And while many Northern Republicans came to embrace abolishing slavery as one of the war's goals, Goldfield shows that Southerners are partly right when they say the war's main thrust was to establish Northern domination, in business and in culture. Most controversially, Goldfield argues passionately -- with strong data and argument, but not entirely convincingly -- that the Civil War was a mistake. Instead of liberating African Americans, he says, it left them subject to poverty, sharecropping and Jim Crow violence and probably retarded their progress to become free citizens.

Whether or not you accept that premise – more on that later – Goldfield shows definitively that Northern evangelical Protestants were the moral force behind the war, and once they turned it into a religious question, a matter of good v. evil, political compromise was impossible. The Second Great Awakening set its sights on purging the country of the sins of slavery, drunkenness, impiety -- as well as Catholics, particularly Irish Catholic immigrants. Better than any history I've seen, Goldfield tracks the disturbing links between abolitionism and nativism. In fact, he starts his book with the torching of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Mass. in 1834, a violent attack on Catholics which Goldfield shows was "incited" by Lyman Beecher, the father of the Beecher clan, most of whom turned out to be as anti-Irish Catholic as they were anti-slavery. To evangelical Protestant nativists, Catholicism was incompatible with democracy, because its adherents allegedly gave their loyalty to the Pope, not the president, and the religion's emphasis on obeying a hierarchy made them unfit for self-government. Also, rebellious Irish Catholics didn't show the proper discipline or deference to conform to emerging industrial America. The needs of Northern business were never far from some (though not all) abolitionists' minds.

Still, though nativism was widespread in the North, and within the Republican Party (which absorbed some old Know-Nothing and nativist Whig party remnants), abolitionism remained at the party's fringe. Most Republicans were seeking compromise, not the abolition of slavery, in the years before the war, including Abraham Lincoln. Our first Republican president didn't like slavery, and he fiercely opposed its extension to the Territories, but he also expressed doubts about African-Americans' capacity for democracy, and he opposed black suffrage. Lincoln supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which let slave-owners call on law enforcement even in free states to capture their runaway "property." (As a lawyer, he'd represented a slave owner trying to recapture a fugitive slave.)

And as a strict constitutionalist, Lincoln resisted abolitionism, because like it or not, the Constitution made room for slavery. The president disliked slavery, but his priority was the union. He famously told abolitionist Republican Horace Greeley (who later turned against Reconstruction and ran for president as a Democrat, abandoning African Americans as did too many other abolitionists): "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

In fact, during Lincoln's 1860 presidential campaign, Republicans went so far as to argue that they were the real White Man's Party, because their commitment to keeping the Territories slave-free wasn't about the evils of slavery; it was about keeping the West white, so white families alone could enjoy the bounty of the frontier without competition (except from Indians, who would be eradicated.) Democrats insisted they were the White Man's Party, because slavery liberated white men to be the property owners and entrepreneurs God intended them to be, while an inferior race did their manual labor, for free. Most Republicans and Democrats agreed on white supremacy; they differed on the right way to maintain it.

Yet as the war went on, Lincoln came to see slavery as a moral cause, and he wouldn't entertain compromise armistice proposals that let the South keep black people in bondage. In a book with few heroes, Lincoln emerges as one over time, virtually alone as an American politician in blending compassion for slaves with compassion for white Southerners. It's popular to suggest that had Lincoln lived, Reconstruction would have been more successful. But Lincoln's pattern of compromise throughout his political career makes speculating on what he'd have done very difficult. Goldfield makes clear, though, that Lincoln wanted reconciliation with the South, not Southern humiliation. In his subdued Second Inaugural Address, he refused to blame the war on the Confederacy, or trumpet the righteousness of the Northern cause. Because the Founders legalized slavery, he believed the country, North and South, shared responsibility for it. Lincoln closed with words made more poignant by the fact that the outcome he envisioned didn't come to be (and still hasn't):

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln even proposed a plan to compensate slaveowners for their losses. That might make our blood boil today, but it was actually the way slavery had been abolished in other countries. Clearly, the Southern economy was destroyed, and families suffered hugely. Most of the war took place on Southern battlefields, destroying farms, homes, churches, businesses. A quarter of Southern men between the ages of 20 and 40 died; more than 28 million Southerners, white as well as black, fled the devastated Confederate states in the decades after the war. And while Northern wealth increased 50 percent between 1860 and 1870, the South lost 60 percent of its wealth in those years, roughly half of it human "property." Lincoln proposed legislation establishing a $400 million fund to compensate Southerners for giving up slavery, if they would recognize national sovereignty and ratify the 13th Amendment emancipating the slaves. We don't know what Southern leaders would have said; Lincoln's own cabinet nixed the idea.

It's also possible Lincoln might not have taken from Confederate leaders the right to vote and hold office away, while giving it to former slaves, as Congress did after his death. Again, however fair that may seem from our distant (presumed) consensus that the pro-slavery Confederacy deserved whatever it had coming, it let Southern leaders complain they'd been "disenfranchised," even though the stricture only affected a fraction of the Southern male population. It was also rank hypocrisy, as eight northern states rejected black suffrage, while forcing it on the former Confederacy. But we'll never know what Lincoln would have done; he died. Meanwhile, the view of Henry Ward Beecher, staunch anti-Catholic (and a villain in this book, if it has one) prevailed: In a speech just before Lincoln's death, he gave a sermon at Fort Sumter:

The whole guilt of this war rests upon the ambitious, educated, plotting, political leaders of the South…A day will come when God will reveal judgment and arraign at his bar these mighty miscreants…And then [they] will be whirled aloft and plunged downward forever and ever in an endless retribution."

Contrast that with Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and then try to figure out which man is the actual Christian leader.

….

Goldfield's book has been well-reviewed, because if it's sympathetic to Southern whites, it depicts the savagery of slavery and post-war white terrorism with unflinching and gut-wrenching clarity. (Literally. The book's tales of slaves' abuse and Southern white post-war savagery will make you sick.) Still, this Civil War history challenges the absolutism of the "Northerners were heroes, and Southerners were vicious, violent racists" school of history. He exposes and excoriates Southern whites' violence against black people before and after the war. But he also links the war to the pro-business evangelical Protestant crusade to eradicate native American Indians, Mexicans, Irish and German Catholic immigrants, and an emerging class of landless Northern laborers – anyone who stood in the way of their vision of clean, hard-working, business-friendly American progress. And he counts the South as a victim of that Northern evangelical crusade. Southerners were another group that simply wasn't conforming to their doctrine of "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men," as the title of Eric Foner's equally complicated and fantastic Republican Party history puts it.

Republicans were first and foremost the party of small business, an emerging class of industrialists, the nascent middle class, and anti-Catholic nativists. They despised the working class – or denied it existed. Lincoln himself talked of the emerging caste of wage-earners optimistically as "young beginners," who would work for a time, save money, then buy land and/or their own business. Republicans either couldn't imagine an America with a permanent class of laborers (like Lincoln), or they dreamed of one, but found ways to convince those workers it was all in their interest. In their defense, in the decades after the Civil War, the Horatio Alger, rags to riches story was never more true.

It's indisputable that Republican zeal for the liberation of black people was always a fringe sentiment – and even among that fringe, it was short lived. After the war, Northerners wanted to get back to business, and they did, with a vengeance. During the war, the federal government had flexed muscles of taxation, conscription and land annexation. The post-war era's emerging robber barons pointed to the Union army's successes as a justification of their march toward monopoly. "Who can buy beef the cheapest – the housewife for her family, the steward for her club or hotel, or the commissary for the army?" Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller asked. Oil and steel businesses boomed. The transcontinental railroad was completed -- as was the near-eradication of American Indians.

Goldfield shows how leading Union generals almost immediately became warriors on the frontier, bringing the zeal with which they decimated the backward South to the task of decimating backward "savages." That new crusade had direct ramifications for Southern blacks. Even when President Ulysses S. Grant tried to use the military to beat back white Southern paramilitary groups literally massacring African-Americans trying to execute basic rights, he couldn't, because soldiers were deployed out West in the new Civil War against Indians. One hero of the book, Mississippi Republican Gov. Adelbert Ames, tries to use his power to protect blacks from Southern Democratic violence, but there were no Federal soldiers left in his state to call upon, they were all on the anti-Indian front. As the state's "White Line" paramilitary group tore through Mississippi to violently intimidate black voters, Ames was forced to give up his governor's position and flee. Early in the book, Goldfield quotes a Northern newspaper editor proclaiming "We can have no peace in this country until the CATHOLICS ARE EXTERMINATED." Near the end, he finds a Birmingham News headline that reads: "We intend to beat the negro in the battle of life, and defeat means one thing: EXTERMINATION." That doesn't feel heavy handed; it's fact, and it's tragic.

Meanwhile, attacks on Irish Catholics continued. Although the famed Civil War Irish brigades fought bravely, the Organization of Union Veterans wouldn't include them – or black Union veterans, either. And if certain abolitionists hadn't already shamed themselves with their anti-Irish Catholic bias, they would later, when they dropped their concern for African Americans – and in fact, joined slavery advocates in concluding that blacks were unfit for self-government. After the war, Henry Ward Beecher began hawking watches and preaching "The Gospel of Prosperity;" he also wrote a novel whose hero was an industrious white Southerner, and whose main black character was a stupid, drunken man-child incapable of self-support. Beecher remained viciously anti-Irish Catholic and opposed to the emerging labor movement (those two things were connected, by the way, for quite a few abolitionists), arguing that the era's strikes showed that the working class was "unfit for the race of life." During the Great Railway Strike of 1877, he denounced the strikers in his loathsome "bread and water" sermon, where he thundered: "Man cannot live by bread alone but the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live." A few days later he proclaimed: "If you are being reduced, go down boldly into poverty." I wonder if Scott Walker is an admirer.

Harriet Beecher Stowe moved to former Confederate Florida, became an Episcopalian, wrote a best-selling book about home decorating for women, and never again troubled herself about the (former) slaves. Abolitionist Horace Greeley gave up on Reconstruction and black rights quickly. His New York Tribune, which once crusaded against slavery, began to feature "exposes" of Reconstruction, including tales of black "corruption" and political incompetence. Even the Nation magazine, which we remember as a journal of abolitionism, soured on the experiment with black suffrage. Editor E.L. Godkin proclaimed that the "blackest" legislators were the worst, particularly in South Carolina, where blacks possessed an "average of intelligence but slightly above the level of animals."

Part of the problem was that at the same time, the North was experiencing its own political growing pains, which former egalitarians suddenly blamed on universal (male) suffrage. New York recoiled at the Boss Tweed corruption scandal of 1870. Tweed himself wasn't Irish, but some of his on-the-take top lieutenants were, and he relied on the votes of Irish Catholic immigrants – who produced votes in excess of their already large, pro-Democratic numbers, thanks to the Tammany machine, as vote fraud was rampant. The New York Times used Tweed's corruption as "an example of the Irish Catholic despotism that rules the City of New York." At the same time, the once-abolitionist paper blamed "ignorant Negroes" for South Carolina's corruption issues, which had of course predated black suffrage and would survive it.

Suddenly white Northern Republicans had a reason to sympathize with white Southern Democrats: Universal suffrage blighted both sides of the Civil War conflict. There's no better symbol of the transformation of Northern abolitionist sentiment than the work of cartoonist Thomas Nast: The pro-Union Harper's artist once graphically depicted the perfidy of Confederates and championed civil rights for slaves. But his most famous cartoon, from 1876, depicted Irish Catholics and African-Americans – two simian creatures labeled "Paddy" and "Sambo" -- as "The Ignorant Vote." Northerners had new appreciation for the South. It made the country whole: The North stood for reason, the South romance. Northern industrialists were happy to preserve the Old South in amber, a land of sweet magnolias and even sweeter women, who hadn't been "masculinized" by either labor or freedom, as Northern women were. It became a shrine to our agrarian past as worshipped by the founders, permanently left behind.

……….

In this same period, even a couple of liberal heroes fell down too. Mark Twain and Walt Whitman both lamented the messiness of universal suffrage. Their worries, paradoxically, came out of a certain kind of populism. Whitman concluded that "the appalling dangers of universal suffrage" seemed to be empowering a rapacious post-war business class. Likewise, Twain railed against the greed of "The Gilded Age," a searing term he coined to describe the cruel era of robber barons, but he believed poor uneducated voters were letting the rich run rampant. A dinner companion reported Twain railing against "this wicked ungodly suffrage, where the vote of a man who knew nothing was as good as the vote of a man of education and industry; this endeavor to equalize what God has made unequal was a wrong and a shame." Both troubadours of democracy believed that universal suffrage was dooming democracy, as uninformed voters backed politicians who colluded with robber barons to destroy the country. Thus they concluded, Goldfield writes, "It might be prudent to restrict democracy in order to save it."

For many reasons, Northern Republicans gave up on the early goals of Reconstruction: to grant free blacks civil and economic rights. Goldfield quotes a Northerner observing a general desire to forget the war, and particular "apathy about the Negro" – shades of the "compassion fatigue" that would be diagnosed by neoconservatives 100 years later, after the Great Society. The parallels between the backlash against Reconstruction, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's civil rights reforms, are unmistakable and chilling. The Republican Party of the 1860s, just like the Democratic Party of the 1960s, paid dearly for championing the rights of African Americans. And both parties backed away from their commitment to addressing the economic barriers to black inclusion once they dealt with the era's pressing moral problem: In Lincoln's case, Southern slavery, in Johnson's, violent Southern suppression of black civil and voting rights. After each morally overdue reckoning, the parties suffered, and then they changed sides. Republicans were trounced after Reconstruction, as Democrats became the party of the South; 100 years later, Democrats were trounced, and Republicans became the party of the South. The Civil War is still not over.

Here is where Goldfield's scrupulously fair and heart-breaking story softens up even the most ardent civil rights advocate, to begin to sympathetically contemplate his notion that the Civil War could have been avoided, and slavery eradicated without it. As much as I love this book, and believe anyone concerned about race relations and the country's current political stalemate should read it, I couldn't quite get there. I understand Goldfield's reasoning. In an interview with Leonard Lopate, he contended that the abolition of slavery was inevitable "in a world that was hurtling toward the Industrial Revolution." I can imagine that, had a more politically creative group of politicians tried to compromise on a way out of slavery – perhaps offering to compensate slaveholders for their slaves, the way every other country that abolished slavery did – we maybe, maybe, might have avoided the Civil War.

But that's such starry-eyed conjecture, it's hard to go there. One of the most persuasive arguments for Goldfield's theory is the fact that it took another hundred years to end Jim Crow. And almost 50 years after that, African Americans still aren't completely free: the legacy of what we lamely call "structural racism," in the criminal justice system, the health care system, the housing and job market, lives on. That makes it easy, in a way, to fantasize: Hell, yeah, there had to be a way to do this in less than 150 years!

I wish. While it's possible, I just don't see the evidence in Goldfield's meticulously researched, passionately argued book. Yes, decent Southerners had doubts about slavery, and even some of those who didn't tried desperately to save the union. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens of Georgia was an old Whig friend of Abraham Lincoln's, and he didn't want war. But he couldn't compromise on slavery, not even when he met Lincoln for a secret peace summit early in 1865, as the Confederate Army lay bleeding after Sherman's march and Grant's late victories. And after the war, which perhaps made Southerners bitter in a way that foreclosed compromise, Goldfield depicts few if any ex-Confederates voicing contrition about their role in the war, as Lincoln did, let alone a desire for reconciliation – and certainly not support for equal rights for former slaves.

Still, with half a million Americans dead on Civil War battlefields, and 150 more years of bitter conflict, it's worth pondering Goldfield's challenge -- if only because it might give some modern visionary a way to see beyond our current social, racial and economic stalemate. I have no doubt about Goldfield's premise that we are still fighting the Civil War. We still need a way to end it. This book models the complicated, even contradictory, compassionate vision that might make that possible. Eventually.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2011/06/09/civil_war_america_aflame/index.html

Killing Animals to Stop Global Warming

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Killing Animals to Stop Global Warming
June 9, 2011 by Kel Kelly

Yes, we are now at that point. The Australian government is proposing to kill Camels in the wilds of the country in order to reduce methane output. Experts say the camels are a menace: they are doing damage to physical property, trampling vegetation, and invading remote settlements. Thus, it would be good to kill them. The government would pay sharpshooters in the form of so-called carbon credits.

This makes one wonder how the word existed without global warming being at the "tipping point" for tens of thousands of years while camels, as well as numerous other methane-emitting animals existed.

It also sets a precedent. For whatever animals are a menace, and can be traced to damage or nuisance of one form or another, let's just kill them all. We could start with the cows (thus reducing our supply our food supply).

Similarly, we could kill groups of people who are seen to be a menace or nuisance. After all, humans are emitting methane as well, and leaving huge carbon footprints (thankfullyor we'd all be dying of starvation, cold, heat, or disease).

After all, one Australian medical expert has called for a $5,000 tax on all children born, and an annual carbon tax of up to $800 per child, due to the supposed negative effect on the environment each person produces. The environmental group The Voluntary Human Extinction Program, which has the slogan, "May we live long and die out," consists of volunteers who have made decisions to remain childless, so that other species can live instead. The group's founder states, "As long as there's one breeding pair of homosapiens on the planet, there's too great a threat to the biosphere." A University of Texas biology professor claims that humans must die for earth to live, and states that disease "will control the scourge of humanity. We're looking forward to a huge collapse." These people certainly must be the life of the party at summer cookouts. Do you doubt that they would support government action (government force) to advance their cause?

(See page 379 of my book for supporting documentation of these facts)

For all you geetar slingers... Google Les Paul guitar

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Put your mouse pointer in the box next to the red record button to
hear what you type.
Or press the record button to record the sounds.

i.e. type your name, handle, or that of politicians to hear what their
name sounds like.

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

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Petty hypocrite Republitards scared to death of Wieners wiener

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He lied about his Twitter! Throw him out!

Bush Jr. lied about Iraq! Re-elect him!

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Re: Keith In Köln, please explain Germany for us

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On Jun 9, 1:14 pm, Mark <markmka...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One cannot be unemployed if one has never been employed.

I know wealthy people who retired when they were 40 years old and
never looked for a job again.
Only a Republitard would call that "working".

I conveniently forgot about how Bush Jr.'s $1 trillion war and how he
used to ask Congress for an extra $150 billion every 6 months.

I conveniently forgot about how Bush Jr. had the wars put in an off-
line budget so the costs wouldn't be realized.

I conveniently forgot about how wealthy people used their tax breaks
to invest in foreign markets and create 10 times the amount of jobs
there as here in the US (10 times there, nothing here).

I conveniently forgot about how de-regulation of financial markets
bankrupted the US and how Bush Jr. needed an extra $700 billion to buy
more political kickback contributions from Wall Street.

I conveniently forgot about how much the wealthy have sacrificed.

Well, I didn't forget, but that's how dumb you hope the American
people are.
Newsflash: they're smarter than you'll ever give them credit for.

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Re: Keith In Köln, please explain Germany for us

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On Jun 9, 4:47 am, Keith In Köln <keithinta...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would only add:
>
> That in my opinion, the unemployment in Germany is far higher than the
> numbers reflect, at least in the Köln/Dusseldorf/Bonn region where I am
> currently residing.

But it's still lower than the US...
how can that be when we have no socialized health care system and
higher schooling costs?

> The rest of Europe is literally envious, and looks to Germany
> (through the EU) to bail them out. Germans are pissed off about the fact
> that they are now financing Portugal, Spain and other EU Nation State's
> retirement plans, (and entire government's!) which are far more lavish than
> the German retirment benefits.

Yet German retirements are more lucrative than US also.
Not to mention their vacations while they're working.

> Another observation: I have had a chance now to experience the German
> socialized medicine program first hand. It doesn't work, unless you have
> money to buy your way out of the socialized portion of it. To be dependent
> upon the "free" socialized medicine, means that you will die. If Germans
> knew how our system worked, there would be a revolution in this Nation to
> instill a capital market system much like what we have. It is very similar
> now anyway, those that can afford to pay, do so, those that cannot, depend
> upon the government, but the services are not nearly as good as what one
> expects or receives in the United States.
>
> Although I possess a Juris Doctorate, I am not a member of the Florida
> Bar.

Care to mention the company your doing legal work for, and why they
would need you?

> I pay no taxes to Deutschland, (other than the normal value added tax, rent
> tax, and every other socialistic tax that the Germans have instilled) but
> instead, pay taxes to my Nation, the United States of America.

Then you're paying taxes.
It makes no difference to me whether it's local or federal.

> Once Again, more Moonbat spin and rhetoric by communists such as Studio, who
> believe that Socialism, Communism, Maoism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Marxism,
> Engelsism, *et. al*, are all really wonderful economic and political social
> systems, if we only had the right folks to implement them and run them!

Oh, the old Republitard; "I'm an American and studio isn't routine".
Well Keith, I live here all the time and you don't.
I've never been out of the country and have no desire to.

This is what makes you a lousy lawyer; you're disconnected from the
reality of the here and now, while you protect the wealthy's wealth
and not the rights of the poor.
I got news for you Keith, Americans by overwhelming majority do not
give a rats ass about the wealthy and their tax breaks and non-
sacrifice to their country in time of war.

More Wingnut spin and rhetoric by crony capitalists who don't even
live here, such as Keith and Annointed,
who believe that crony capitalism, de-regulation, religious
indoctrination, police states, prisons and *et. al*, are all really
wonderful economic and political social systems, if we only had the
right folks to implement them and run them!

Keith no matter how many times you say it, or pay for it to be said;
the facts are the American people overwhelmingly *do not* believe your
philosophy that states; "if only the rich had just a bit more money
from not paying taxes, everything would be so much better".
If only the CEO's made 500 times earnings above the average American
instead of the 350 times earnings they currently enjoy...

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Care to remind us how Bush Jr. stated the above?
No I doubt it, I'd be embarrassed to repeat it also.

> Finally, I will be returning back to Tampa (and Washington D.C.) here
> soon, as my visa is going to expire at the end of this month. I will be
> back!

I never left.
Have a safe flight.

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Re: Busting the rituals that are destroying the USA.

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Dear J. Ashley: Do me a favor. Please elucidate any supposed fallacy
in my New Constitution. I applied simple, unselfish principles to
write everything. The Founding Fathers never explained the principles
they used. Do you dislike their work, too? — J. A. A. —
>
On Jun 6, 4:23 pm, Jonathan Ashley <jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
wrote:
> John,
>
> I certainly don't want you repeating your fallacies.
>
> On 06/06/2011 12:04 PM, NoEinstein wrote:
>
> > Dear J. Ashley: I read you reply, below, in the 'lead-in' to my
> > posts. I replied to this at another location you are sure to see.
> > Forgive me for not repeating things, here. ï¿½ J. A. A. ï¿½
> > On Jun 4, 9:38 pm, Jonathan Ashley<jonathanashle...@lavabit.com>
> > wrote:
> >> John,
>
> >> 1) You wrote, "Since the Secret Service seems more inclined to go along
> >> with the 'protocol' of ritual, than they are inclined to obey their
> >> sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution..."
>
> >> Where can one find the oath "to uphold the Constitution" you continue to
> >> claim Secret Service members have sworn to uphold?
>
> >> As far as I have been able to find, agents are sworn to sacrifice their
> >> life for the President and be ï¿½worthy of trust and confidence.ï¿½ I am
> >> hoping your superior intellect can point me in the right direction.
>
> >> 2) If you are looking for "true American patriots" you won't find them
> >> among any of the folks you mention in this diatribe.
>
> >> 3) You should look into the proper usage of "(sic)." Just because you
> >> placed "President" in quotes before using it does not make its usage
> >> appropriate.
>
> >> On 06/04/2011 02:12 PM, NoEinstein wrote:
>
> >>> Memorial Day rituals include watching TV broadcasts from the Capital
> >>> lawn. There, thousands of smiling people sway to the patriotic music
> >>> while feeling good about the sacrifices made by so many thousands of
> >>> men and women to keep our country free. Military officers in pristine
> >>> uniforms carry our Stars and Strips. The sameness of such solemn
> >>> rituals helps maintain the delusion that all things areï¿½ well in this
> >>> country. Instead of active revoltsï¿½like author Dick Morris manages to
> >>> bypass advocating in his bookï¿½Americans have their ï¿½fighting
> >>> instinctsï¿½ placated by harmless ï¿½bombs bursting in airï¿½. The fact is,
> >>> such fireworks displays are little more than loud eye-candy that
> >>> effectively cause most Americanï¿½s to figure the battles have been
> >>> fought. But has any ï¿½warï¿½ to right our countryï¿½s course been won?
> >>> Dick Morris consistently misses the point when he figures the needed
> >>> ï¿½revoltï¿½ to save the USA, economically and socially, can be won while
> >>> saving the failed rituals that brought this country to the brink of
> >>> ruin in the first place. He talks about some vague ï¿½conservative
> >>> candidateï¿½ winning the 2012 Presidential raceï¿½ against Barack Obama.
> >>> Morris, like most at Fox News, smiles so broadly in talking about the
> >>> 2012 race for President, that he, effectively, is endorsing having an
> >>> unconstitutionalï¿½ Manchurian Candidate President from Kenya, who is
> >>> THE most hurtful man to the USA in our entire history, get aï¿½ ï¿½second
> >>> chanceï¿½ at the White House.
> >>> I almost gag each time Barack Obama bounces down the steps of Air
> >>> Force Oneï¿½every bit as well as Fred Astaire could have done. At the
> >>> bottom of the planeï¿½s stair our ï¿½Presidentï¿½ (sic) is greeted by
> >>> saluting, smiling soldiers. Those are caught in the God Damned ritual
> >>> of looking up to whatever crook happens to be squatting in the White
> >>> House. None of those soldiers, not even generals, have yet to honor
> >>> their sworn oaths toï¿½ ï¿½protect this country from all enemies, foreign
> >>> and domestic.ï¿½ The vote is still out whether Barack Obama can qualify
> >>> as a domestic enemy. *** Unless the US Secret Service says,
> >>> definitively, that Obama isï¿½ domestic, then I side with the thousands
> >>> of computer savvy graphics experts who know that all LAYERED PDF files
> >>> are contrived documents. And if Barack Obama, indeed, presented such
> >>> a contrived ï¿½long formï¿½ birth certificate, then he should be hanged
> >>> for TREASON on that fact alone! Since the Secret Service seems more
> >>> inclined to go along with the ï¿½protocolï¿½ of ritual, than they are
> >>> inclined to obey their sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution, every
> >>> compliant member of the Secret Service looking the other way to W. H.
> >>> criminality is giving aid and comfort to the enemyï¿½treason. A lot of
> >>> strong, and should have been smarter men, are going to hangï¿½ unless
> >>> one of those men is moral enough to DO what is right for America, and
> >>> to crap-on any ritual that would do otherwise!
> >>> The reason Fox News and other media outlets play down Obamaï¿½s
> >>> contrived citizenship in this country is because all of those know
> >>> that nothing would shoot-down faster, the (G. D.) rituals of our
> >>> unconstitutional two party political system, and the spaced-out (in
> >>> time and place), unconstitutional presidential primaries. Our country
> >>> would forever be changed, not by me, but by Donald Trump. Heï¿½s the
> >>> first ï¿½public figureï¿½ brave enough to point out that Barack Obama
> >>> isnï¿½tï¿½ lily white. Sarah Palin, reportedly, has urged Trump to
> >>> consider running as an independent. I want ALL serious candidates for
> >>> President to run as independents! That way they can say to HELL with
> >>> the wasteful, unconstitutional and immoral political primaries!
> >>> Instead of spending billions on the primaries, the candidates would
> >>> only need to raise, like, five million dollars each to support the
> >>> needed preparation for the several, aired presidential debates and the
> >>> nationally televised personal interviews (Barbara Walters and Katie
> >>> Couric excluded). The advent of their being TVs in every home has
> >>> shot-to-hell any rationale for having a bunch of FOOL presidential
> >>> candidates crisscrossing the country to press-the-flesh with typically
> >>> apathetic voters. Making unkeepable promises to those same disparate
> >>> voters borders on bribery. ï¿½Vote for ME, and I will do this for you!ï¿½
> >>> is the promise that got Obama elected (gag). But never more! It will
> >>> only take one or two other public figures, with the strength of
> >>> character of Donald Trump, to ï¿½fire the SECOND shot heard round the
> >>> world.ï¿½ ï¿½Revoltï¿½, Dick Morris! ï¿½Revoltï¿½, Bernie Goldberg! ï¿½Revoltï¿½,
> >>> Rick Santorum! ï¿½Revoltï¿½, Sarah Palin! ï¿½Revoltï¿½ all true American
> >>> patriots who are out there!
> >>> Itï¿½s appropriate to honor our military on Memorial Day. I think it
> >>> would be nice to have a few people be vocal regarding my spending
> >>> fifteen years of my life Penning and Polishing my New Constitution of
> >>> the USA. Over the past few years, Iï¿½ve written essays totaling more
> >>> words than the novel ï¿½War and Peace.ï¿½ The theme of most of those
> >>> could be: ï¿½Economic doom or Capitalist prosperityï¿½! Read my book
> >>> touting the latter cure for our woes. The simple cures are the best!
> >>> Respectfully submitted,
> >>> ï¿½ John A. Armistead ï¿½ Patriot
> >>> AKA NoEinstein on Googleï¿½s sci.physics news group.
> >>>http://groups.google.com/group/politicalforum/browse_thread/thread/eb...
> >> --
>
> >> Freedom is always illegal!
>
> >> When we ask for freedom, we have already failed. It is only when we
> >> declare freedom for ourselves and refuse to accept any less, that we
> >> have any possibility of being free.
>
> --
>
> Freedom is always illegal!
>
> When we ask for freedom, we have already failed. It is only when we
> declare freedom for ourselves and refuse to accept any less, that we
> have any possibility of being free.

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