Royal Bacon Society - Bacon Meatballs

Royal Bacon Society - The Ultimate Bacon Resource

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Bacon Meatballs Posted: 03 Oct 2011 03:00 PM PDT Last month I came up with this little recipe in order to participate in a Spaghetti Western fundraiser…you can't do a pasta event without meatballs, right? Turns out, the meatballs were a hit and, since my husband missed that event, I decided to whip some more together yesterday. This time I had the foresight to take photos and share the recipe with you, the talented and wildly attractive interwebs.   Ingredients 1/2 pound each: bacon, ground beef, and ground turkey* 2 large eggs 1/2 c. bread crumbs 1 tsp. each: black pepper, cayenne, oregano, garlic powder *Any ground meats will do…pork, lamb, veal. Just be sure to use equal parts of each. Roughly chop bacon and place in the bowl of a food processor or blender. Blend until bacon is a paste-like consistency. Remove from processor and place in a large bowl with other ground meats. Add eggs, spices and bread crumbs and mix well with a silicone spatula. (Or use your hands…they'll get plenty goopy once you start forming the meatballs anyway.) Once ingredients are well-mixed, form a small portion of the mixture into a patty and fry it in a skillet until cooked through. Taste the patty; adjust seasonings to taste. I think the bacon gives the meat plenty of salt flavor, but you may wish to add salt or, if you prefer a spicier meatball, a little more cayenne. Form meat mixture into 2 inch balls. Add to skillet in batches and brown on all sides. (Mine always go from balls to weird boxy shapes while browning…anyone know how to keep them round??) Once browned, you have two options for completing cooking: 1) place all meatballs in baking pan and bake in pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, or 2) add to a sauce pan with your favorite pasta sauce, bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for 30 minutes. This recipe makes 20-24 meatballs. I think that by using 1/3 bacon, you get the meaty consistency you want in a meatball, but the salty, smokey flavor still has a chance to shine through. Also, when using very lean meats like ground turkey, the bacon lends the fat content you need to make sure the meat stays tender and juicy throughout the cooking process. The best news about this recipe is that it makes way too many meatballs for two people to eat in one sitting… meatball sandwich, anyone? Subscribe to the comments for this post? Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Facebook Post on Google Buzz Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Tweet This! Get Shareaholic

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Obama impeachment a possibility, says Ron Paul

Obama impeachment a possibility, says Ron Paul
By DAN HIRSCHHORN | 10/3/11 3:52 PM EDT

Ron Paul said Monday that President Barack Obama's targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki might be an impeachable offense.

Asked at a Manchester, N.H. town hall meeting about last week's killing of the American-born Al Qaeda leader, the Texas congressman said impeachment would be "possible," but that he wants to know more about how the administration "flouted the law."

Paul called the killing a movement toward "tyranny."

"I put responsibility on the president because this is obviously a step in the wrong direction," Paul said. "We have just totally disrespected the Constitution."

The comments once again put Paul at odds with his Republican rivals over foreign policy and the war on terror in the latest indication of how his foreign policy views stray far from Republican orthodoxy even in a GOP that's taken on an increasingly isolationist bent. Candidates like Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney ­ who included the president in a list of people he commended in a statement released Friday ­ have generally been supportive of the killing. No one else in the field has spoken out against it.

But Paul's stuck with the civil libertarians who've criticized the targeted killing of an American citizen without public due process.

Paul, speaking at the University of New Hampshire's Manchester campus as part of a brief swing through the state, also made another pitch for eliminating the federal income tax.

"If our lives and our liberty are our own, we ought to be able to keep the fruits of our labor," he said.

But he modulated a bit when asked about eliminating social welfare programs, offering a caution that he said "might be a bit too pragmatic for some."

"I have an ideal of what we should strive for and a goal, and that would be no social services," he said. "But for me it's trying to work our way out of this. … I don't argue we should drop those cold. I don't even believe in closing down the Federal Reserve in one day."

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65035.html#ixzz1Zl5E65Ba

Ronald Reagan Backs The Buffett Rule?

Ronald Reagan Backs The Buffett Rule?
Benjy Sarlin October 3, 2011, 1:42 PM 2608

Progressives are hoping that if Republicans won't listen to President Obama on the Buffett Rule, then maybe they'll listen to President Reagan.

The Center for American Progress unearthed video of Reagan making the case in 1985 for closing tax loopholes on the rich in strikingly similar terms to Obama, even leading an audience to cheers over the idea to tax millionaires at the same rate as bus drivers. Obama is currently promoting a plan to reform the tax code in order to prevent a billionaire like Warren Buffett from paying less than their secretary.

"In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that's crazy," Reagan says in the video. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cgbJ-Fs1ikA

"We continue to see support for the Buffett Rule growing in unexpected quarters," Jennifer Palmieri, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund told reporters in a conference call on the footage. "Now we have President Reagan speaking to us from 30 years ago to argue for the same type of equity."

Democrats aren't the only ones who've tried to use former presidents' decades-old words in today's tax fights. The CAP video bears a resemblance to a memorable ad by Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) in which he used footage of President Kennedy calling for lower taxes to sell himself to Democratic voters.

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/ronald-reagan-backs-the-buffett-rule.php?ref=fpb

Balanced budget or empire? You can’t have both.

Balanced budget or empire? You can't have both.
By Bruce Fein   11:02 PM 10/02/2011

The defense of an annual $1.2 trillion bloated national security budget mounted by Jamie Fly and Robert Zarate (9/29/11) was reminiscent of a dog walking on its hind legs. It was not done well; but it was surprising to see it done at all.

The two do not dispute the $1.2 trillion waste. Nor do they deny that the sum equals or exceeds the collective military spending of the rest of the world, accounts for approximately one-third of federal government expenditures and equals the current federal budget deficit. Fly and Zarate also accept that the military spending of China and Russia are a tiny fraction of the United States' national security extravagance, and they do not question that al Qaida perpetrated the 9/11 abominations on a shoestring budget.

But the duo absurdly argues that since unsustainable entitlement programs should be slashed, then squandering staggering sums under the false banner of national security is fiscally harmless. Even Winnie the Pooh with very little brain would recognize the compatibility of dramatically downsizing both entitlement programs and a bloated national security edifice. Ron Paul would transition quickly to ending all entitlement programs. But he would also cease wasting trillions of dollars annually on maintaining and expanding an American Empire. The perpetual and global warfare keenly relished by Fly and Zarate is making Americans less safe by creating more enemies than are destroyed and by employing American soldiers in quixotic efforts to plant democracy in foreign countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in lieu of defending Americans and individual liberty at home.

The genuine gripe of Fly and Zarate does not concern fiscal responsibility, but pivots on Ron Paul's creed that echoes the Founding Fathers, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for Empire." Then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams captured Paul's national security thinking perfectly in a July 4, 1821 address to Congress:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force … She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit ….

John Quincy Adams was a student of James Madison, father of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, chief author of The Federalist Papers, and president of the United States. Unlike Fly and Zarate, Madison understood that contrived dangers from abroad are chronically brandished to destroy liberty at home. He explained:

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

Aping the Romans, Fly and Zarate inflate danger from abroad logarithmically to justify permanent global warfare, crippling individual liberties and the right to be left alone. They condone spending $1.2 trillion annually to subsidize the military-industrial complex denounced by President Dwight D. Eisenhower ­ a national security version of TARP. The two deliriously insinuate that a handful of al Qaida associates in South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa would commence war against the United States if all our troops and weapons abroad were re-deployed to defend our borders and were equipped and pledged to incinerate any aggressor. They hysterically suggest that North Korea, Iran and Syria would launch military attacks against the United States if the American Empire were abandoned in favor of an American Republic fiercely committed to defending American lives in lieu of the lives of Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis, Yemenis and others who have no allegiance to the United States. They preposterously suggest that Russia and China are strong candidates for invading and overthrowing the Government of the United States.

Russia's shriveled army finds difficulty in suppressing primitive Chechens or Georgians over South Ossetia. It has no allies in Europe or Asia. Its weapons systems are light years behind the United States'. Alcoholism and corruption are rampant. The Russian economy sputters because the rule of law is a joke.

China is plagued by chronic uprisings or insurgencies among Tibetans, Uighurs and Han Chinese who crave political freedoms. Its military is untested and was smartly defeated by Vietnam in 1979. Like Russia, China's military arsenal is backward. China has no allies in Northeast Asia except perhaps the albatross of North Korea.

Fly and Zarate sneer at the vandalizing of individual liberties of citizens in the United States to propitiate their fanatical zeal for empire. They ignore that the United States stupidly funded Osama bin Laden, Gulbudden Hekmaytar and the Haqqani network in Afghanistan to play the empire game against the Soviet Union. They voice no criticism over presidentially ordained assassinations of American citizens, indefinite detentions without accusation or trial, suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus, state secrets to thwart judicial redress for torture or kidnappings, or indiscriminate spying on Americans unsuspected of crime or terrorism. Yet the two champion freedom abroad coerced at the heads of American bayonets.

In sum, their allegiance is not to the United States, but to world government with the United States sitting on a global throne. They would have defended King George III in the Revolutionary War, not George Washington. For them to malign Ron Paul as unfit to serve as commander in chief because of his unwavering commitment to an invincible defense of America and repudiation of empire betrays insolence, impertinence and infidelity to the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.

I would eagerly welcome a debate over Ron Paul's national security policies with the ventriloquist of Fly and Zarate, William Kristol, a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. Mr. Kristol may choose the moderator, audience, time and venue.


Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer who served as an associate deputy attorney to President Ronald Reagan and is a senior adviser to the Ron Paul 2012 campaign.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/02/balanced-budget-or-empire-you-cant-have-both/

The Day America Died

The Day America Died
by Paul Craig Roberts

September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.

Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from "patriots" who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.

In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president's authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences.

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a "threat," without due process of law.

In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.

On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington's use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington's indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington's argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama's assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America's First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama's assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama's decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America's fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution's requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates' acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki's assassination terminated the Constitution's restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.

Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki's murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States.

The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants.

The point isn't that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation.

Terry Eastland's book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents.

As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back.

Indeed, as the neoconservative "Project For A New American Century" makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world.

As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference.

Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists.

"Terrorist" and "giving aid to terrorists" are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to "domestic extremists."

It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving "aid and comfort" to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity's greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime's opponents and be treated as such.

This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two "enemies of the people" have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.

Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize "enhanced interrogation techniques," an euphemism for torture.

Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon.

Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition.

A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned.

So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as "evidence" of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs.

What do Americans think will be their fate now that the "war on terror" has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law.

Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the "war against terror" is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs.

War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into "antiwar activists," perhaps a step below "domestic extremists." Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington's wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves.

Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair's announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it.

Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government's "righteous intent" in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as "it doesn't serve our interests."

Voting has no effect. President "Change" is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is "the most disastrous president in our history." Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.

To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.

http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-day-america-died

We Were Warned

Monday, October 3, 2011
We Were Warned
by Jacob G. Hornberger

In a Fourth of July message to Congress, John Quincy Adams suggested that if America were ever to embrace the principles of empire and militarism, she would become a dictatress of the world. What better evidence of Adams' wisdom than President Obama's assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, a state-sanctioned murder, one without any judicial process whatsoever?

Look at what an interventionist and imperialist foreign policy has wrought: a perpetual threat of terrorist attacks, which has been the government's excuse for assuming extraordinary emergency powers ­ the same powers that many of the brutal U.S.-supported dictators in the Middle East wield: arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, indefinite detention, rendition, torture, kangaroo tribunals, and assassination. 

After the 9/11 attacks, statists cheered the assumption of these extraordinary emergency powers, naively believing that they would be exercised only against foreigners. But President Bush, whose CIA assassinated an American travelling in Yemen in 2002, always made it clear that these emergency powers extended to Americans. President Obama's assassination of al-Awlaki is another reminder for the American people­that the U.S. government wields the post-9/11 power to kill its own people without any due process of law or judicial interference. It is a power, of course, that dictators throughout history have wielded.

Adams wasn't the only one who warned Americans what would happen if they embraced empire, militarism, and interventionism.

Madison pointed out that of all the enemies to liberty, war is the biggest because it encompasses the germ of every threat to the liberty and well-being of the citizenry. Not only are civil liberties damaged or destroyed, but also economic well-being owing to out-of-control spending, debt, and inflation that inevitably comes with war.

Who can deny that the so-called war on terrorism, with its much-vaunted Patriot Act, illegal NSA spying, and airport groping has infringed our civil liberties? Who can deny that it has contributed in a major way to out-of-control federal spending, debt, and inflation that now threaten out nation with bankruptcy?

After World War II, defenders of America's non-interventionist, anti-imperialist legacy warned that the establishment of a permanent military establishment and an imperialist, interventionist foreign policy would forever change the character of our nation­ into one resembling totalitarian regimes.

At the same time, libertarian economists like Friedrich Hayek were warning Americans about the road to serfdom they were traveling with welfare statism.

But the statists prevailed, with both the welfare state and the warfare state.

In the National Security Act of 1947, America became saddled with a permanent and ever-growing military-industrial complex, the CIA, and a never-ending obsession with "national security"­all with the notion that the United States was charged with policing and defending the world from its old World War II ally and partner, the Soviet Union.

It wasn't too long after that that the CIA began engaging in coups, assassinations, and regime-change operations, for example, in Iran, Guatemala, and Cuba.

On December 22, 1963 ­ exactly one month after President Kennedy was assassinated ­ former President Truman wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post telling Americans that the CIA had grown into something dark and sinister that no one had ever envisioned. He stated: "We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it."

But it was not corrected. Things only got worse.

Then, by the time that President Eisenhower was leaving office, it was obvious that he had come to realize the dangers posed by America's embrace of the national-security state. He warned Americans of the grave threat to America's democratic processes posed by the military-industrial complex.

By the time he was assassinated, it is clear that President Kennedy had recognized what Truman and Eisenhower had seen. Before he was murdered, Kennedy promised to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and was exploring ways to end the Cold War, over the fierce opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military establishment.

Ever since Kennedy's assassination, every president has bought into the national-security state concept, even after the Soviet threat disintegrated. National security has become a permanent national shibboleth at which federal officials in all three branches of government worship, even though­or perhaps because­its only purpose is to serve as a tool that enables the government to do whatever it wants and to keep it secret.

Militarism and empire are glorified all across America, and Americans get their sense of national purpose and meaning in life through the invasions, occupations, assassinations, kidnappings, torture, detention, kangaroo tribunals, and renditions that empire, interventionism, and militarism have brought us.

Some argue that the battle America confronts is between al-Qaeda and the United States. They are wrong. The real battle is between libertarians and statists. Libertarians are committed to dismantling America's welfare state and warfare state and restoring liberty and prosperity to our land, while the statists are committed to maintaining the welfare and warfare empires and their ever-growing destruction of the liberty and well-being of the American people.

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-10-03.asp

IN RESPONSE TO THE EMAIL CONCERNING MY DOG....

Please be advised I am sick and tired of receiving questions about my
dog
who mauled six illegal aliens wearing Obama tee shirts, four wearing
Pelosi
tee shirts, two rappers, nine teenagers with pants hanging down past
their
knees, eight customer service desk people speaking in broken English,
three
flag burners, and a Pakistani taxi driver.

FOR THE LAST TIME... THE DOG IS NOT FOR SALE !!!

TRYING TO TALK HIM INTO STOPPING SMOKING, BUT HE SAYS IT HELPS GET THE
NASTY
TASTE OUT OF HIS MOUTH.

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Why Obama Refuses to Run on His Record…By the Numbers

New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog Why Obama Refuses to Run on His Record…By the Numbers by Scotty Starnes This is what Hope and Change looks like in real numbers: This is Obama's record. Nothing more needs to be said. H/T toAce of Spades Scotty Starnes | October 3, 2011 at 4:06 PM | Tags: Barack Obama, deficit, Food Stamps, gas prices, home value, housing, inflation, insurance, insurance premiums, jobs, median household income, poverty, President Obama, unemployment, unemployment rate | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-5VF Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/why-obama-refuses-to-run-on-his-record-by-the-numbers/

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Shocking Pictures of Obama Marching with New Black Panther Party in 2007

New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog Shocking Pictures of Obama Marching with New Black Panther Party in 2007 by Scotty Starnes Gee, I wonder why those charges of voter intimidation were dropped by the Obama Department of Justice? It seems Obama has deep connections with the radical race-hustlers at the New Black Panthers Party. Obama's mentor, Charles Olgetree, was a Black Panther. Now we learn Obama spoke and marched with the NBPP in 2007. Obama loves his radicals as we have come to learn. From BigGovernment.com New photographs obtained exclusively by BigGovernment.com reveal that Barack Obama appeared and marched with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Alabama in March 2007. The photographs, captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before it was scrubbed, are the latest evidence of the mainstream media's failure to examine Obama's extremist ties and radical roots. In addition, the new images raise questions about the possible motives of the Obama administration in its infamous decision to drop the prosecution of the Panthers for voter intimidation. The images, presented below, also renew doubts about the transparency of the White House's guest logs–in particular, whether Panther National Chief Malik Zulu Shabazz is the same "Malik Shabazz" listed among the Obama administration's early visitors. Tomorrow, J. Christian Adams, the Department of Justice whistleblower in the New Black Panther Party case, will release his new book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department(Regnery). The book exposes Obama administration corruption far beyond the Panther dismissal, and reveals how the institutional Left has turned the power of the DOJ into an ideological weapon. Adams's book also describes, in detail, the Selma march at which then-Senator Obama was joined by a group of Panthers who had come to support his candidacy. Among those appearing with Obama was Shabazz, the Panther leader who was one of the defendants in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed. Also present was the Panthers' "Minister of War," Najee Muhammed, who had called for murdering Dekalb County, Georgia, police officers with AK-47's and then mocking their widows in this video (7:20 – 8:29). Injustice includes a disturbing photo of Shabazz and the Panthers marching behind Obama with raised fists in the "Black Power" salute. There are even more photographs. I have learned that Regnery initially received approval from a person who took pictures of the events in Selma to publish these additional photographs in Injustice. After the photographer wrote Regnery reversing his permission to include the photographs in Injustice, the images were removed from the photographer's Flickr account.  Yet we were able to capture them before they disappeared.     Continue reading>>> Scotty Starnes | October 3, 2011 at 4:35 PM | Tags: Alabama, Black Power, Department of Justice, J. Christian Adams, Malik Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz, Najee Muhammed, NBPP, New Black Panther Party, President Obama, Selma, voter intimidation | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-5VK Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/shocking-pictures-of-obama-marching-with-new-black-panther-party-in-2007/

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Motorcycle that runs on poop to take its debut cross-country journey

http://www.tokyomango.com/tokyo_mango/2011/09/motor.html

 

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WSJ.com - White House Brushed Off Solyndra Worries, Emails Show

* Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified.       Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!             Click the following to access the sent link:       WSJ.com - White House Brushed Off Solyndra Worries, Emails Show* This article will be available to non-subscribers of the Online Journal for up to seven days after it is e-mailed.                 Get your EMAIL THIS Browser Button and use it to email content from any Web site. Click here for more information.   *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204524604576608952821321690-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwMzEwNDMyWj.html?mod=wsj_share_email

ChrisInMaryville's Blog

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ChrisInMaryville's Blog
Date: Monday, October 3, 2011
Subject: ChrisInMaryville's Blog
To: majors.bruce@gmail.com


ChrisInMaryville's Blog <http://chrisinmaryville.net>
<http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/ChrisinmaryvillesBlog>

________________________________

*Breaking* Libertarian Conspiracy Exposed! <#132caa6f3b996ea4_1>
The Philosophy of Liberty <#132caa6f3b996ea4_2>
The American Dream <#132caa6f3b996ea4_3>
How Automatic License Plate Recognition Tracks Your Steps <#132caa6f3b996ea4_4>
The EPA Gets Caught in a Big Fat Lie <#132caa6f3b996ea4_5>
FBI intercepts its own terrorist plot against US Capitol, Pentagon <#132caa6f3b996ea4_6>
The Fluoride deception [Full Length] <#132caa6f3b996ea4_7>
Freedom of Food <#132caa6f3b996ea4_8>
Infowars Hidden Camera – Fluoride Treatment Facility: Nightly News Report <#132caa6f3b996ea4_9>
Caught Red-Handed: Pesticides in Organic Strawberry Plants <#132caa6f3b996ea4_10>

*Breaking* Libertarian Conspiracy Exposed! <http://chrisinmaryville.net/breaking-libertarian-conspiracy-exposed.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 08:05 PM PDT

Just saying

The Philosophy of Liberty <http://chrisinmaryville.net/the-philosophy-of-liberty.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 06:06 PM PDT

This is the real battle folks.  Not this fake left vs. right game, both under the same control.  They divide and conquer well, and the sheep follow the marching orders and jump off the cliff, wtf?

The American Dream <http://chrisinmaryville.net/the-american-dream.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 05:55 PM PDT

Sometimes you just need to simplify things to get others to understand.  Not saying that for anyone but as a suggestion to share with others.

How Automatic License Plate Recognition Tracks Your Steps <http://chrisinmaryville.net/how-automatic-license-plate-recognition-tracks-your-steps.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 02:38 PM PDT

Source: http://www.truth-out.org As the surveillance state continues to expand, the push to track the movement of individuals across state borders has also expanded. Automatic license plate recognition technology is at the forefront of this move

The EPA Gets Caught in a Big Fat Lie <http://chrisinmaryville.net/the-epa-gets-caught-in-a-big-fat-lie.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 02:28 PM PDT

Source: http://canadafreepress.com The notion that the Environmental Protection Agency uses "science" to justify their regulations is false, just like most of the claims they issue on various aspects of the nation's environment. Their favori

FBI intercepts its own terrorist plot against US Capitol, Pentagon <http://chrisinmaryville.net/fbi-intercepts-its-own-terrorist-plot-against-us-capitol-pentagon.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:48 PM PDT

Source: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com Boston: FBI Thwarts Own R/C Bomb Another case of FBI entrapment, proving the only terrorism Americans must fear, comes from within the bowels of their own government. Tony Cartalucci Prisonplanet.com S

The Fluoride deception [Full Length] <http://chrisinmaryville.net/the-fluoride-deception-full-length.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:31 PM PDT

The hidden history of water Fluoridation. Fluoride & the Reproductive System: fluoridealert.org/health/repro/ Fluoride & Bone Disease: fluoridealert.org/health/bone/ Fluoride & the Brain: fluoridealert.or

Freedom of Food <http://chrisinmaryville.net/freedom-of-food.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 01:05 PM PDT

Source: http://livingnotsurviving.com It's interesting to note that the founding fathers of the United States did indeed have thoughts on freedom of food because the same issues we face today were faced during that time period and many others.

Infowars Hidden Camera – Fluoride Treatment Facility: Nightly News Report <http://chrisinmaryville.net/infowars-hidden-camera-fluoride-treatment-facility-nightly-news-report.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 11:50 AM PDT

September 30 edition of the Infowars Nightly News features an in-depth special report AIRING AT 7PM CENTRAL on the turning tide of water fluoridation across the Western world, with nearly 250 cities across the United States opting out of the mass

Caught Red-Handed: Pesticides in Organic Strawberry Plants <http://chrisinmaryville.net/caught-red-handed-pesticides-in-organic-strawberry-plants.html>

Posted: 02 Oct 2011 11:14 AM PDT

Source: http://www.care2.com Thought those organic strawberries you picked up at the market are pesticide-free? You should think again, according to the Pesticide Action Network and several organic farmers in California. In a letter written to
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Herman Cain Denies Federal Reserve Flip-Flop, Economic Cluelessness

Herman Cain Denies Federal Reserve Flip-Flop, Economic Cluelessness
Written by Thomas R. Eddlem   
Friday, 30 September 2011 00:02

Republican presidential contender and former Federal Reserve Bank official Herman Cain complains about "stupid" questions from supporters of Rep. Ron Paul, a fellow GOP presidential contender, in a new campaign memoir. Cain, who handily won the September 24 Florida straw poll and is the frontrunner in some recent national polls, complains in his new book This is Herman Cain that "Paulites" are lying about his record when they say he opposed an independent audit of the Federal Reserve Bank.

"I have never said that," Cain wrote in his book scheduled for release October 4, according to the Daily Caller. "I have said: 'I don't think you're going to find anything to audit on the Federal Reserve.' But they want you to believe that Herman Cain doesn't want the Federal Reserve to be audited."

Cain has indeed stated recently that he favors an audit of the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank. But critics of Cain point out that the former chairman of the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve Bank told a radio audience less than a year ago that he opposed an audit. While guest-hosting the the Neil Boortz Show on December 29, 2010, Cain said:

Some people say we ought to audit the Federal Reserve. Here's what I do know. The Federal Reserve already has so many internal audits it's ridiculous. I don't know why people think we're going to learn this great amount of information by auditing the Federal Reserve.... Here's the advice I've given to people who are worried about an audit of the Federal Reserve. Call them up and ask them! You can stop by and have one of their P.R. people or one of their public relations people explain to you how the Federal Reserve operates. I think a lot of people are calling for this audit of the Federal Reserve because they don't know enough about it. There's no hidden secrets going on in the Federal Reserve to my knowledge. And I tell people, we've got 12 Federal Reserve Banks. Find out which district you are in, call them up and go from there. We don't need to waste money with another commission or an audit. That is not necessary because folks, we've got a lot of other problems we've got to worry about. [Emphasis added.]

Cain has flip-flopped on the audit issue, however, and he now favors an independent audit of the Fed. But Cain continues to say the Fed has no secrets. He told Glenn Beck in a May 24, 2011 interview, "I do not object to auditing the Fed. I absolutely do not object to auditing the Fed.... Because I don't believe they are going to find anything, to be perfectly honest, based upon what I know about the Fed."

Of course, investigators have already discovered a burgeoning secret multi-trillion dollar program the Fed initiated in recent years. Former Congressman Alan Grayson (with Committee Chairman Barney Frank) jousted with Federal Reserve Bank Vice Chairman Donald Kohn in a January 13, 2009 hearing before the House Financial Services Committee over the Federal Reserve's $1.2 trillion slush fund for banks:

Alan Grayson: Is it fair to say that when hundreds of billions of taxpayer's money are being spent the taxpayers have a right to know how?
Donald Kohn: Yes.
Grayson: Mr. Kohn, how much has the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve increased since September 1?
Kohn: It's increased from around $800 billion to about $2 trillion.
Grayson: And what was that money spent on?
Kohn: That money was lent. It was lent to banks, investment banks. It was spent on lending through the commercial paper market and it was lent to foreign central banks that lent dollars to their banks to take pressure off the U.S. dollar market. So it wasn't spent, it was lent.
Grayson: Which institutions received that, and how much for each institution?
Kohn: I don't know which institutions ­ which specific institutions ­ received it, but by categories of institutions, that's captured in our balance sheet that we publish each week.
Barney Frank: But we would like that in writing, Mr. Kohn, for the hearing record.
Kohn: Okay.... I'm sorry, what in writing, Mr. Chairman?
Frank: The answer that you did not have right off the top of your head, to that question.
Kohn: But I think I would ... you're going to hold a hearing on this, Mr. Chairman, and I think I would be very, very hesitant to give the names of individual institutions. In fact, I think it would be a very bad idea, because I think it would undermine the utility of the facilities that we are giving. But I think we should say more about the categories of institutions.
Grayson: Mr. Kohn, you just said that $1.2 trillion has been lent or spent, as the case may be, that's $4,000 for every man, woman or child in this country. Don't Americans have a right to know how you spent that money?
Kohn: Uh, yes. They have every right to know the purposes for which we spent it, the types of spending, the types of lending that's going on. The types of collateral we are taking and what we expect to accomplish with that.
Grayson: All right. Well, specifically, I'd like to know how much was given to Credit Swisse, and what you got in return. How much was given to Citibank, and what you got in return? If you've put out $50 billion to Credit Swisse, the taxpayers need to know that.

Kohn didn't tell Grayson, which was not surprising considering that Credit Swisse had been involved in promoting illegal tax evasion. The company was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2009 on charges related to helping clients break tax laws. The company avoided prosecution only by paying a $780 million fine.

Citibank became the single largest bank recipient of federal bailout funds under the Federal government's TARP bailout program (a program which Cain backed), getting a $45 billion direct investment and an additional $306 billion asset guarantee from the federal government. But the TARP bailout was peanuts compared to the Federal Reserve's loans to Citigroup during the crisis years. According to the General Accountability Office (GAO), Citigroup received $2.5 trillion in loans from the Fed (equivalent to over $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America).

CNN reported in December 2010 ­ just weeks before Cain made the statement above on the Neil Boortz show ­ that the Fed had loaned out an astonishing $9 trillion in taxpayer dollars to big banks: "The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in overnight loans to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial crisis, according to newly revealed data released Wednesday."

But even though Cain told Boortz's radio audience there would be nothing to be gained from an independent audit and greater transparency from the Fed, the secret loan figures continued to increase. The actual loan amounts according to the GAO were almost double that amount, $16 trillion, or more than the entire U.S. national wealth produced in a year (U.S. Gross Domestic Product in 2011 will not even top $15 trillion). CNBC noted on July 22, 2011 that the federal GAO was not allowed to audit the Fed, and that the information only was released to the GAO after a lawsuit: "The GAO looked at data made public by the Fed in response to a court order."

That Cain did not know or seem to care much about the secret programs of the Federal Reserve Bank, a quasi-government agency in which he was once a high official, has led some to question his economic credentials. Indeed, he had no idea about the looming housing and resulting financial crisis as late as April 21, 2008. Cain's column bearing that date reveals his general economic cluelessness, wherein he claimed that the Bush economic policy was a success: "An article in U.S. News & World Report dated Friday, April 18, 2008 reported that the current six-year economic expansion dates from November 2001 through the present time, despite some recent slowing. This was the same year George W. Bush took office as president, so how could these be failed economic policies?... So, how is this fiscally irresponsible and failed economic policy? It is not. Of course you can find some reports that downplay the economic expansion of the last six years, but they have to dig really deep to construct some irrelevant factual basis for their view."

Cain has long supported Federal Reserve policy and its bailouts. On October 20, 2008, just days before the 2008 elections, Cain wrote in a syndicated column that praised the efforts of both the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve to bail out Wall Street banks with taxpayer dollars. He wrote:

Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It's trying to solve a problem.... These actions by the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank and the actions by the Federal Depositors Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are all intended to help solve an unprecedented financial crisis. Unlike steps taken prior to and during the Great Depression, these actions have a high probability of success. In order for these collective actions to work, the media needs to calm its crisis rhetoric, and Congress needs to just shut up with its political rhetoric.

By way of contrast, Rep. Ron Paul has criticized the Federal Reserve incessantly. Paul also suggested as early as September 6, 2001 that the Fed's suppression of interest rates caused an unusual investment in the real estate market. Paul called it an emerging "real estate bubble" at that time and noted then that "this too will burst, as all bubbles do." Paul issued repeated warnings about the real estate bubble throughout the years leading up to the collapse.

Representative Paul has been the author of the " Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011" (H.R. 459/S.202). An earlier version of the bill garnered co-sponsorship by every House Republican in 2010 as well as a third of House Democrats.

http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/9207-herman-cain-denies-federal-reserve-flip-flop-economic-cluelessness