The American Principle 101

We now see that the top down politics that has come to a head in the Obama Administration is against human nature. Only the individual man knows what it takes to keep him looking forward to and wanting to take on life. (The moral is that which causes that desire in the individual human being. He must pursue happiness or his lust for life will die.) All orders and dictates from a top-down government chafe against that individual right. When it interferes too much, it must be changed as the Declaration of Independence makes clear.

The people of Vernon NJ are a beacon for what is possible and will need to take place all over this country. As it is learned in the incubators of liberty such as Vernon, so it shall grow into the full-fledged power of the possibility that only the United States has ever presented to mankind.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -- Declaration of Independence, 1776

Politicians, the New Criminal Class

We are coming to a new realization in America: Politicians comprise the new Criminal Class. They decide everything about our lives from what we shall eat, how we use our property and how we shall spend our time. Apparently, all they care about is how to loot us for their purposes. Their rhetoric is the con's front which always proves to be a lie in the end. Even Michelle who advocates the right foods, takes every opportunity to stuff her face with French fries.

Apparently they take glee in impoverishing and disenfranchising their own people. Every success of theirs and their cronies is at our expense (Solyndra, e.g.) and they show no remorse for their heinous acts. They cultivate an alternate universe, oblivious to citizen violation and pain, much, most?, of which is because of them.

The idiots now are those who think they will now or ever could benefit from this criminal activity. All of these are now accessories to the crimes. They provide the complicity required to keep them in existence. When you see someone who argues for the politicians and holds out the hope that one of them will somehow save us from this scourge, you are talking to a person who can justify criminal actions.

This current state of affairs must now drive itself off the cliff, maybe taking liberty with it for 100, 200, 500 years.

If you notice, the thing that has the politician = the criminal is that he can tell you what to do with your property - all of it, from your body to your extra-body possessions. He does so with the threat of taking if from you, even your life itself. He has no right by nature to do this. Even if he has been granted that right in some measure by some people, that does not make it right with what life requires. Man-made documents and agreements are always subject, ultimately, to the laws of reality. It is this fact and the acceptance of this fact that has the politician be a criminal and advocate criminality. He does not check reality to make sure he is true to that and thus true to what life requires. He willfully departs from reality allowing, even encouraging, man to cannibalize man.

For the politician to become, for the first time in history, a man of honor, he will have to give up usurping individual rights. He will have to be a protector of every man's individual rights. No man can be entitled to live off the body and work of another man except by the agreement of that man. The honorable politician protects as a first principle, every human life's right to his life - at, by nature, the expense of no one else.

For this to happen on a consistent basis, there must be the separation of the economy from the state.

The role for a legitimate state is to protect individual rights. That's it. Every activity which it takes on must be for this purpose and must always prove that it is for this purpose. The army protects our borders because it is protecting the citizens-of-this-country's right to live their lives.

Even paying for the government's activities has to be voluntary. In other words, the government provides services - police, courts and a militia to protect the people's individual rights - and their value is such that citizens would want to pay for them. For example, the right to use the government's court would follow from paying a fee whenever you created and registered a contract with the government for future potential adjudication. The same principle of the government earning its money based on the value it offers would apply to every individual-rights-protecting service the government offers.

A lot of people think my position is ridiculous and not within the realm of possibility. "Government is always going to be this way," they say. They are telling me, in so many words, they will put up with a thief living in their house (which he is, you know), so long as they don't have to think about and work out a new system that honors individual rights. My answer? "May you rot in the hell of your own making. For me, I'm not interested."

"Need" as the Ultimate Justification

I believe the liberal mind is a more socially accepted version of the criminal mind. Both justify taking other people's money and property for their purposes.

The human condition at bottom is that one must traverse the gap from "need" to "value produced" which satisfies the need. The need is generated by a living organism using its energy to maintain its life. That process, life, gives rise to needs which must be fulfilled if the life is to continue.



The blue arrow is "the gap." To mature as a human being means that one is able to navigate that gap and provide for his needs in a way that works while at the same time doesn't undermine his continued ability to provide for his needs.

The criminal mind and the liberal mind emphasize "need" as a lack - ultimately a lack of stuff or status. They think it unfair that the needy are not provided for. They believe that it is fundamentally unjust that everyone is not provided for - that it is some kind of cosmic injustice and that the world, because of this, is basically unfair. Because this is unjust, they say, they feel justified to correct this injustice and that is why they can, with a straight face, advocate taking your stuff, destroy a country such as America that has a system that allows people to traverse the gap of being human and create value, giving away other people's values (money) to poor people and poor nations, etc., etc.

Every time they open their mouths, they reinforce the "goodness," the "appropriateness" of being needy. When Obama brings some poor person or crippled person or in some way needy person onto the stage with him, he wants to hear about their neediness - the more needy the better - and he adds importance to their being needy. (I find this embarrassing for the person he is using.) He gives them his ear and kindness, attention and ultimately some money or goods. The one thing he doesn't do is talk about how they resourcefully went from need to results that satisfied their need. To focus on that would mean he would have no reason to exert his power over us and take our stuff.

Because Obama and Michelle, the current point people for this view, and the rest of the liberals do this, I consider them and their kind the embodiment of evil in mankind. (I'm not talking about evil in the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments manner. Because man possesses volition, he chooses his course of action. He can choose to get across that gap, using his talents and mind to do that or not and this is his fundamental choice - to live as a human being or not.) There is nothing evil about having needs. We all have them by virtue of being alive. Granting them ultimate status and holding them aloft rather than supporting getting across the gap - by being creative and productive - is evil.

The ultimate joke, though, is on those that hold aloft need as the ultimate in importance. Although evil appears potent because it counts on fear and causes havoc in human lives by destroying their values and it always seems pleasurable in the short run, it is ultimately impotent. That is because it is not about developing the means for producing real value and satisfying needs. To continue, the mind besieged by evil must feed off the people who do traverse the gap since they are the ones who know how to get from need to value produced. (Frederick Douglas made clear that taking care of the needy for its own sake provides nothing lasting: "A man, at times, gets something for nothing, but it will, in his hands, amount to nothing.")

When I hear/see Obama, Michelle, the Pope, mother Theresa when she was alive, Pelosi, Schumer, Reid, Weiner, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and thousands of other such people, I see evil incarnate. They foster a world that doesn't and cannot work, and they work to create parasites wherever they go. There is nothing more hideous that that. (If you think Mother Theresa was humane, she had millions of dollars and would not spend a frickin' dime on having the dying people she cared for have some measure of comfort as they went through the dying process. She could have conditioned the air because she could have easily have afforded it. Why? Because she thought suffering was the way to becoming whole - and holy, i.e., coming to know god. Source: The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.)

The criminal mind is always justified to commit his crime. Why? Because to his mind, the world is not just and did not treat him fairly for him to properly mature when he was dependent on others. To him, this shouldn't be. (I wonder if some portion of humanity is pissed because their God or their ancestors' God threw they out of the Garden of Eden? There everything was provided. Now they must work for the values they need.) He stays needy rather than find a way to clear away his fears and his grievances such that he become a value producer.

A person stuck in need ends up hating the good (value production) for being the good. (The good is value production and virtue is action which produces value.) Hating the good for being the good is envy and this mental orientation is sourcing the destruction of values now upon us.

So how do we get through this? Create and produce value. In everything you do. You will love it and will feel so nourished by it.

The torch represents the value you seek to produce that
lights your way. The stiffened arm is your moral strength
to get on with it and produce the result!

Dictatorship - The Anti-Industrial Coup

Here is all the evidence you need to know that we live under a dictatorship. The reality of that is getting clearer and clearer. This analysis is produced by Robert Tracinski of the TIA Daily, a daily analysis of current events from an objectivist perspective. SCB

The Anti-Industrial Coup

Intellectual climate change seems to be transforming Australia first. For example, a prominent new article in The Australian summarizes recent scientific findings that refute the basic assumptions behind the global warming hysteria.

"What this means is that the IPCC model for climate sensitivity is not supported by experimental observation on ancient ice ages and recent satellite data.

"So are we justified in concluding that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is not the only or major driver of current climate change? And if so, how should we re-shape our ETS legislation?

"I don't know the answer to these questions, but as Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman observed: 'It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.'"

In America, the biggest sign so far of the political impact of Climategate is a new op-ed in the Washington Post by Sarah Palin using Climategate as a springboard to dismiss global warming and call for the US to stay home from the Copenhagen conference.

Palin is not significant because she carries any scientific authority. She is significant because her public statements on this are a bellwether for the political right.

Until a few months ago, the typical position on global warming within the right could be described as "moderately skeptical." There was doubt that we could know about global warming with certainty or that we could do anything about, but the view that global warming is flat-out wrong—much less that it is a fraud—was still considered somewhat extreme. And that's how someone like John McCain, a global-warming believer, could still get the Republican nomination.

Attitudes were already beginning to harden a bit, but Climategate was a major turning point. The left has ignored the scandal as best it can, and I am not sure how much independent voters have been permitted to hear about it in the press. But it is now the mainstream position within the right that global warming is a fraud, a hoax, a dishonest power grab.

This is important because it means that one major political party—which just might regain a majority in Congress next year—is willing to fight against cap and trade.

And we'll need such a congressional majority. Before he left for Copenhagen, President Obama pledged to enact reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Congressional leaders immediately reminded him that he couldn't act without the approval of Congress. The Obama administration's response was to declare: yes, we can.

They have announced their intention to stage an anti-industrial coup, using the authority of the EPA to impose a "command-and-control" global warming dictatorship on the American economy. They are then using this as a threat against Congress: pass cap-and-trade legislation, or we'll impose something even worse by executive decree.

The only answer to this is strong action by Congress to reassert its power by explicitly denying the EPA any legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide. But to do that will require a Republican majority with the confidence to reject global warming as a fraud and a threat to liberty. And that is precisely what we may get in 2010.


"Administration Warns of 'Command-and-Control' Regulation Over Emissions," FoxNews.com, December 9

The Obama administration is warning Congress that if it doesn't move to regulate greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency will take a "command-and-control" role over the process in a way that could hurt business.
The warning, from a top White House economic official who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity….

[W]hile administration officials have long said they prefer Congress take action on climate change, the economic official who spoke with reporters Tuesday night made clear that the EPA will not wait and is prepared to act on its own.

And it won't be pretty.

"If you don't pass this legislation, then...the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area," the official said. "And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."…

The economic official explained that congressional action could be better for the economy, since it would provide "compensation" for higher energy prices, especially for small businesses dealing with those higher energy costs. Otherwise, the official warned that the kind of "uncertainty" generated by unilateral EPA action would be a huge "deterrent to investment," in an economy already desperate for jobs….

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, said Tuesday he is going to attend the Copenhagen conference to inform world leaders that despite any promises made by President Obama, no new laws will be passed in the United States until the "scientific fascism" ends.

"I call it 'scientific fascism,'" Sensenbrenner said during a press conference with fellow climate change skeptics. Sensenbrenner said, "The UN should throw a red flag" on scientists who support global warming to the exclusion of dissent.

The Insanity of Government Health Care

For all those that think that public health care, i.e., Government Health Care, is good, this man, Representative Rogers of Michigan, is very clear as to what the issues are and what’s more important, the insanity of the plan and the callous, arrogant, disgusting attitude of the government toward the people of the United States.

I suppose there are some sweet little old ladies out there advocating government health care who we think are soooo innocent that they would never be so evil and anti-human as to advocate a system of institutionalized evil - which is what government health care is. It’s time to call them, all of them, no matter what form they come in, to account. They are not your friend, not my friend, not humanity’s friend.

There should be no Government Health Care. None. Freedom which provides innovation in every aspect of that field is the answer if we want health care. The last anyone should want is the dead, corrupt, entangled, unaccountable, violently costly, political hand of government. I can't think of anything worse than that. No man should have to live with that institution directing his life. It is simply anti-human and sucks the life out of HIS life.

Apparently during this time in our history, a large number of people want the "mommy" state. Whatever that means, one thing is for sure. The state will not fulfill on that requirement. It has none of the characteristics of a mommy unless your view of a mommy is a "Mommy Dearest."

There is a place for government, but a proper government is nothing like the government we have today. For one thing - and for a teaser - it must not be able to arbitrarily levy taxes. There has to be another, voluntary way for the state to raise money. It must, as all of us must, be created to depend on enrollment and registration, not force of arms to obtain money from the people who it is designed to protect.

Great minds ought to be creating how, and the system required for a voluntary payment to government to work. Then it should be tried in small, and then increasingly larger, jurisdictions until it gets perfected as a working method for the government to raise money. We are never going to be politically free until we get rid of the arbitrary force of Caesar. I'm not persuaded by the Bible's command to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." I might be persuaded just to keep myself from having to go to prison, but I definitely am not persuaded as a design principle for a moral, principled and just government.

Freedom: Our Protector

Something unfamiliar has descended on this nation. As Americans, it is a feeling we have never known. It is a fear of men.

Never has there been such an assault on people - as human beings - as we are experiencing now. The assault is coming from all sides at once. Every day there is a new assault.

The personification of this massive assault is President Obama. Behind him are all the men who seek new powers over us, who seek to force or profit from the force of our every action. Government men are leading the way. Businessmen and dependents of all kinds who want to use or have what they are handing out are standing in line to work with them. Whether by outright directive as in the forcing of banks to take government money; government orders and intrusions into their very hiring, firing and pay; stripping people of their lawful contracts, i.e., assets, and the risks and benefits associated with those contracts; or by telling you, directly or indirectly through taxation, what you can take into your body, be it nicotine or nourishment - everywhere, we live under the threat of moral directive and compulsion.

President Obama is working overtime to undermine every working relationship we have. He tells us that our doctors prescribe unneeded surgeries (I'm sure there are A FEW unscrupulous ones that do.) and prescribe the more expensive pills (Red or blue, I can't remember which.). He tells us to fear the cops when they come to our aid. He tells us that he knows or his young appointee knows how to run a car company. He does not stand up for people seeking freedom in foreign lands but instead plays buddy-buddy with the world's bloody-handed dictators. He forsakes our allies for the world's criminals. He wants to stunt our industry with pernicious and penalizing taxes on energy. He knows what people, especially cops, are thinking (and it's not good) even if they are not.

He seeks to turn black against white, customer against businessman, patient against doctor, investor against Wall Street, worker against management, citizen against cop, and government against the people.

There is one battle he will not allow - us against the government. But that one is coming whether he likes it or not.

And now he wants to be our doctor, our surgeon, and our nurse? On those days when we may be sick or hurting, we are going to be told to wait in line for weeks or months to get the attention and care we need and want, to perhaps save our lives. You will no longer be a patient. You will be a ward. As we see in Canada, a dog has better health care. The same will be true here unless Obama nationalizes animal care too.

If you want to see what your health care will be like under Obamacare, remember how he told you to save gas? That's right, blow up your tires. This past week when asked if an old woman with arrhythmia who has a good spirit should get a pacemaker, he suggested a painkiller. Jeez.

And if this weren't bad enough, he appoints czars with wild ideas such as "population needs to be controlled" if the earth is to live, and animals have rights and can sue humans. I didn't know they could speak, let alone read and write. Is it no wonder we are scared out of our wits?

Add to this his ingenuously telling us that when the government takes over health care, we will save money and the country will be running right once more, that no one will lose the health care they now have and that we will be as free as we have always been to conduct our lives. This we are to believe in the face of the fact that the government has run its health care programs into the ground and that all government health care plans the world over suffer from shortages and must ration their treatments and their time. Is it no wonder doctors and surgeons run from these Animal Farms?

Further he has gone abroad and apologized wholesale for America. Never has he said a good thing about us. When he mouths what America has stood for, it is obvious he lies insofar as his believing that it ever was a good thing. He wants positive rights, he says, knowing full well that he must enslave someone to provide them.

Obama doesn't know what it is to be an equal. Either he's on top or he's making sure he's lower than the king. Meet a man as an equal? Who ever heard of that? This is Obama's problem.

Government's hand is a dead hand - no vitality there - only laws, rules and regulations. You dutifully follow them, or else. Used correctly they support human life. Used as Obama wants to use them, they deaden and destroy it.

So far he has not be able to get us to march in lockstep, but he has his plans for that too: the Obama corps in the form of AmeriCorps. Already set up and being further formulated in the background, he wants to give students money to go to college. For that they will pay with X years of their lives in his corps. He says he wants this as well funded as America's military. Does anyone doubt that this will be an indoctrination machine? By all means, increase the deadness!

We are starting to get in spades that Freedom is Our Protector, and Obama is an enemy of freedom. By our minds and our choices, we sort the good from the bad - the good doctors from the bad doctors, the good teachers from the bad teachers, the good bankers from the bad bankers, the good businesses from the bad businesses, the good friends from the bad "friends" - you name it. Obama says that's bad. He wants to limit choices - outlaw them. Nowhere is this more obvious nor fundamentally destructive than in Government Health Care.

As an American, I have the right to my life, my liberty and my pursuit of happiness. I pursue my happiness by taking the property I own, starting with my own life - body and mind - and developing it and building it to provide for what I need. Seeking values is the essence of being alive. Political freedom is my only requirement.

Other Americans are not my enemies as Obama paints them - neither the doctors, the bankers, the car makers, the cops, the news organizations, the factory owners, the investors, the rich or the poor. All are available to talk to and work with if I need them and they provide what I need. They are the people I seek to meet and learn about so I may be able to satisfy my needs. Obama, on the other hand has turned the poor and the rich and the fat into parasites, the doctors and the bankers into predators and industry into plunderers. All are scapegoats. We are supposed to hate them. They are bad. Obama is no friend of America.

He's no friend of people anywhere. Although his outstretched hand may hold candy, his hidden hand holds a club.

Freedom is MY friend and protector.

The Real Issue of Universal Health Care

The real issue in Universal Health Care is moral.

When I say MORAL, what do I mean? I mean the actions you take to live your life the best you can live it which in turns gives you more desire for life. These are moral actions and they do not come from just anywhere and they are not arbitrarily socially constructed. They come from the fact that you are a living being who must act to maintain your life.

My concern is not what Universal Health Care will do to your pocketbook. Of course it will be expensive - far more than Medicare. And that in itself can undermine a person. My concern here is what it will do to your motor, the engine of your energy that generates everything you do. What will it do to that?

It kills it. Drip, drip, drip. And it kills it at every level and in every person who is involved in government controlled health care. Even those who want it.

Why?

Because it places an arbitrary, irrational factor between you and your actions to achieve the health care you want to live and not physically/mentally suffer. That arbitrary factor is the government.

Why is it arbitrary?

Because its interests are not aligned with your interest in pursuing health care. To be alive, you must value. You must take actions that keep your life in existence. These are YOUR values.

Today you go to a doctor and he diagnoses your condition and prescribes one or more alternatives to help you. His interests are your interests.

But this isn't true with the government. It has a plan and a gun, force, to cause the result it wants. You will get whatever it decides you should get and it won't necessarily be what you want or what works. When the government controls anything, it is the law and politics which control how that will go.

The government drives you out of integrity with yourself. This will be Obama's scar on every soul in the country.

Speaking of politics, if you want corruption, universal health care will bring it in spades. Cronyism and bribes of all kinds and at every level of society will suddenly be abundant. What wouldn't you pay under the table for something that would save your life or relieve your suffering? And if you don't understand that there will be a kind of black market of those who will take bribes, I know you are crazy.

This gets no more clear than what the government plans to do with the elderly. (Section 1233 of H.R. 3200) When you get to a certain age, you will have to set up all the paperwork for your final days. And the government will determine what it will give you in the way of care when the time comes. This does not have to match what you want, what a real medical doctor would recommend or you are willing to work for. It is completely arbitrary. For anyone who wants the best for their parents, their grandparents, their children and above all, themselves, this is bone-chilling in its lack of concern. (Some people are discussing this here.)

The day will come that you will not trust anyone in the government health care system. Once it is cut off from your interests, it will become a threat to your life. You will go to a quack in a back alley who you think is aligned with your interests before you subject yourself to someone you know is not aligned with your interests.

In this video which I have featured a number of times, the resignation of the people under the Canadian system is present for you to see. They accept it. Some make excuses for it. All they can do is whine. They don't demand better because it is useless to make such demands. Their moral fire is gone.

And this is what is going to happen to America if universal health care is passed. It will be the end of America as the home of the independent spirit.

What will be left? A moral grayness that is inconceivable to most Americans. It is the end of what you so take for granted being American. The bureaucracy will be so big and so all-powerful that most people will never be able to fight it. They will just give up. That's what I see in the Canadian video.

This will happen to every strata of society as well as the health care industry, except those who can escape it. The politicians have themselves insulated from this, of course.

It will happen to your doctor. Many will leave the profession. The Hippocratic Oath will no longer be operative as his ideal. It will happen to nurses too as they watch people waste and suffer pain before them because they cannot be treated as they would otherwise have been. It will happen to hospitals, ambulance drivers and secretaries as the evidence will accumulate that strips away the pretense of the universal health care plan.

Pretense?

Oh yes, pretense will become more important. Health care workers will be coached on how to "serve" and present themselves in a way that you can tolerate. This will become the new industry. All to maintain and grow the pretense.

Is it really a pretense? Yes. It was never intended to provide better health care. It can't. It was only intended to concentrate power in the hands of the government and to ride the wave of an immoral moral which says that it is your duty to take care of your neighbors. There is nothing that distinguishes this from that hideous institution of slavery that it took centuries for America to get clear of. There were plenty of reasons for it too, but it is no advance to make everyone slaves.

Has Obama become America's Jim Jones luring us to our death? It's the same immoral moral that he used. Hmmm.

Wake up!

A Cartoon from 1934

Chicago Tribune
1934

Those unwilling to learn the lessons of the past
are condemned to repeat them.

An economic bubble takes an average of two years to correct itself - with one requirement: that the economy is free to make the correction. In the 30s, that correction was stretched to 10 years and even then it was not in the process of correcting itself. It was the war that drafted the unemployed (many to their death) and put the women and old folks to work.

A free economy designs itself to provide whatever the people in the economy need and are willing to work for. It is constantly correcting itself unless the government intervenes and thwarts the corrective process - the mechanism that led to the crash in 1929 and the collapse in 2008 as well as other bubbles between those times. The rational government action is to cut spending, get rid of onerous and irrational regulations, and sell off assets, all in order to lower taxes so that people can use their resources for productive effort. No one, including the individual, the county, the state or the country, can borrow and spend their way out of lost income. The way out is to create and produce some value that one can live on, either directly or through exchange with other people for the things one needs. Political freedom, including economic freedom, is the underlying requirement for this to occur.

Ask yourself: Is this happening now? If not, why not? And the answer is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Then socialism was an erroneous, but inspired ideal. Its failure was not perceived until the fall of the Berlin Wall whereupon the whole world could see the utter poverty, the imprisoned and tortured people who didn't agree with the system, the starving of millions and the massive waste of resources - all caused by government planning and control. Given that socialism is a failure, what is different now? The motive? Looks like it could be. So, what is the motive now?

Hint: The Greater Good is not the motive. That is the cover, the drapes that soften the window so the unvarnished truth is not realized.

Think about it.

Why Are Things Upside Down?

[I posted this comment on the Ann Althouse website where she was taking on Maureen Dowd for blasting Palin.]

If you go to a basketball, football or baseball game, you go to see the game. You don't go to see the referees.

The government is supposed to be in the background making sure the players, the individuals in society, are playing the game according to the rules. Government only makes sense as a background activity.

Now the government is a foreground activity. Everything revolves around it. It changes the rules and the score at whim - whatever it wants to do, thinking only of itself, not its purpose.

Of course, MDowd is attracted to this reversal. The government is where the bullies hang out. They love it. And bullies are not nice nor fun people. Few like them, not even the other bullies.

Who wants to play on any team that gets jerked around in this way? Not me.

Democrat Rebuff of Fannie & Freddie Clean-up

This video speaks for itself. Caught red-handed!



And I'm supposed to think the Democrat Party is the best Party (maybe that should be a small "p") for the economy?

In the bailout bill being hammered out and festooned with earmarks right now, a huge grant of any profit (20%) is scheduled to go to ACORN, supposedly a low-end housing organization. What it really is a voter registration organization and its purpose it to register Democrats. It has been charged with illegal activities in a number of states. This is more corruption - pure and simple. Definitely it is an infringement of your right to free speech. Tax money extracted from you by force and given to an organization that may not express your views is a whopping injustice. By what Right? This is "Taxation without Representation!!"

!! N O P A S S !! N O P A S S !!

The CRISIS IN CONFIDENCE in the US Government worsens!

Is Alinsky's Principle Turning on Obama?

Saul Alinsky is Obama's primary mentor. He was powerful because he had a specific plan of action for gaining power. Alinsky was a psychopath, pure and simple. He appeals to people who want power and are angry. Hillary liked him and so does Obama.

"Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' (Saul Alinsky) That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain." (or a President, George Bush - SCB) (This quote from here.)

The internet is abuzz with articles about Obama's underhanded dealings and being the thug behind the scenes. This was mentioned a few weeks ago related to other people and organizations but had died down. Now it is back.

And what a perfect place to put all the frustration and outrage over the general government incompetance. It's clear to me there is a crisis of confidence in the US Government. Two of the biggest crooks, Frank and Dodd, at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco are making pronouncements, yelling in response to every question, as if they have moral authority - which they don't.

McCain supporters are increasingly frustrated. Their hope has been that given all the mess maybe McCain would have enough belief in freedom to at least forestall the complete capitulation of our relatively free society to liberal fascism and the socialist state.

All of this is now accentuating Obama's fascism and willingness to operate via threats of force. What follows is a list of links that I gleaned from the internet, thanks to a friend sending them to me. Further most of these links came from http://www.instapundit.com/, a middle-of-the-road website written by a law professor.

Start with this one about Alinsky and his tactics.

Then read this from the UK on how Obama undermined our government's negotiations with Iraq leaving them confused.

Then how about this one on how Obama is silencing the voice of Gun Owners. Also here.

One comment on a blog: "I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."

And here is evidence of that already. Two elected officials are protecting the Obama campaign and only the Obama campaign. How unjust is that?

And here is a video showing how prosecutors and sheriffs are becoming part of the Obama's truth squad. And even the Justice Department is working for Obama.

Here in Reason Magazine's website is an article explaining why Obama is vulnerable on the Second Amendment. Notice how, in Obama's world, you have no rights. That means that you are not and independent human being who gets to live his life as he chooses. You are the property of the Government and the politicians get to decide. Your life is to be negotiated by someone else. Whatever that is, it ain't American and individual rights.

Or how about this Alinsky tactic to undermine free speech?

Here's an article regarding the NRA's response.

Obama's attempt to interrupt and silence a Chicago radio show back in August when Stanley Kurtz who investigated the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was featured.

And just a couple days before that stories were run on how Obama threatened the major TV stations who might run the ad produced by the American Issues Project. I detailed that here.

Although the Left may have overriden your voice at the US Justice Department, if you want to file a complaint, the numbers are at the link.

Race

There are some very bad signs for the future of our polity in this election. The attempt to divide and conquer. to drive a wedge between the dependent-minded people and the creative, independent-minded people; the employee and the employer, black and white (remember Reverend Wright?) is coming strongly into the picture. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized here this morning, this needs to stop.

Yesterday the WSJ ran an article on the funding of Acorn, a "community organizing" organization which corrupts the ideals of social justice for poltical purposes to gain power and government grants. This amounts to voter registration for the Democrats, although by law they cannot specify a political party. Why President Bush stupidly signed this into law as part of the mortgage bailout I do not know. Here

To clarify, I do not agree with the ideals of social justice because it is a collectivist idea and attempts to redress what it sees as economic injustice, a reversal of the law of cause and effect. I do agree with them when their work is consistent with the application of individual rights.

ACORN although it justifies itself in terms of social justice it is not a legitimate expression of social justice. See the link above on the ideals of social justice to grasp what a person dedicated to these ideals got into when he worked with ACORN.

The gold standard for legitimate social justice looks like the movement Martin Luther King created to right the wrongs of Jim Crow. It wasn't funded by Washington. It was a man with a vision for all mankind who enrolled people to peacefully demonstrate such that the American people could see the racial injustice for themselves on their own TVs and be moved to purge racial injustice from the country's laws.

It is completely legal for a political party to register people to vote - on their own dime. It is obscene to steal people's money by law (if you don't think the gun is behind the law, try not paying your taxes) to fund this kind of campaign, a corruption of authentic principled justice based on every single person's right to HIS life.

If this isn't challenged in the Supreme Court, we've had it. When the "takers" outnumber the "makers" and vote your money into their pocket, dissolution is imminent. It violates the First Amendment which covers the freedom of political speech. And if the government expropriates your money, what resources do you have left to actively pursue this freedom? The Democratic Party is way over the top on this matter and those Congressmen, President Bush and all the agitators for this kind of action deserve to be publicly and vociferously sanctioned.

It cannot help the African-American who is going to be so crudely lumped by his skin color into a category that distinguishes nothing regarding his character or merit. See Racism. He will be used for greedy unscrupulous men's political power and he will end up paying a price that the honorable blacks do not deserve. So unjust. This breaks my heart - for them and for my country.

This appeared in National Review Online. Ward Connelly, an African-American, has been in the trenches fighting for the equality of all men under the law and has worked by any means he can find to get rid of quotas and preference based on race, ethnicity or any group privileges. He is hated by the victimologists of his race. Nevertheless, he's inspired by MLK's vision for mankind.

My Preferences
John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.

By Ward Connerly

One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.

Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”

Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.

Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.

In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.

Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”

I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.

If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”

It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.

And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.

Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.

— Ward Connerly is the author of Lessons from my Uncle James and a former regent of the University of California.

You can judge Barack Obama for yourself. I'm clear about my judgment of him.

Wall Street Got Drunk?

The hell they did. Bush's statement is absurd, not from the standpoint that Wall Street didn't run with the openings they saw because of Washington's regulation, but because he places the cause as Wall Street.

A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.

Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.

The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.

The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.

The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.

All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.

The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.

The Unfree Market has Failed

With the economy slowing and the home mortgage industry reeling from the stupidity of government fostered regulations and money which obviated the need for sound financial judgment, we hear frantic cries, "Save us! Save us!!" directed to the government. If a person is trying to drown you, what good is it to scream for him to save you? Alas, this is the widespread response.

I read an argument last night the point of which was that gas prices are rising not because of rising demand but inflation. I hear scant mention of inflation as the cause and none of those come from Washington. We know when other currencies are rising relative to the dollar our currency is worth less. The dollar has been the currency of choice around the world for years and now people don't want it.

Government control of the money supply is certain, albeit sometimes slow, death and the expanding (once in a while it deflates) money bubble is where we have been perched for about a hundred years. Obviously money is something whose reputation has to be earned, as we are now seeing. It is done by the judicious maintenance of value, a quality that the US Government cancelled via the legal tender laws. See below: Money by Consent Not Force posted June 20.

The government is a political institution, not a business that must maintain its value to the world in order to exist. The governement deals with everything by the use of force, not value, and once it steps beyond the protection of individual rights, that force becomes an enemy of its people.

Every major industry is now regulated to the point that people cannot make rational decisions. Time is spent doing what we can get permission to do rather than what is creative, intelligent and prudent. The human mind is the source of values, production, wealth and happiness. The government, on the other hand, acting beyond its proper purpose, cancels the human mind except as a slave to its needs and whims.

Bribes to the legislators and regulators are commonplace because no other way to get their blessing to be their slave is possible. If you don't know how you are paying them bribes, think about it a minute. You buy a license to drive your car. You buy a license to open a business. You pay them fees and taxes to have a phone. The list is endless and would not be if these goods and services were the products of businesses creating appealing values and we were free. Now isn't this a mess? Nevertheless, it's true.

Government to Blame for Housing and Financial Crisis
by Yaron Brook (7/22/08)

Irvine, CA--In “The Government Did It,” an opinion piece published last Friday on Forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that our government’s massive control over the housing and financial markets has led to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.

“The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Dr. Brook pointed out, “should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.”

Citing the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, Dr. Brook argued that “our government contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually,” Brook concluded, “the bubble burst.”

“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘steering.’ What we need to do,” said Brook, “is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”

Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

If Obama Were Great

Some people hold out the hope that Obama is a "racial healer." Part of the reason, they say, is because he is of mixed race - black and white. It is clear that although he has identified himself as black, he has attracted many whites. This is a good start.

But I'm not hopeful. Obama's history is that of a community organizer in South Chicago. I'm not aware that a community organizer has ever healed anything. Their means are usually guilt, victimhood, threats, extortion and raw power to get what they want. Obama's mentor was Saul Alinksy. Saul and his followers were/are "concerned with social justice without having socialism thought to be their primary agenda. Alinsky promoted greater awareness of community organizing in academic circles, and those affiliated with Alinsky trained a generation of organizers, including César Chávez."

All the socialists I know who rose to the heights of political power ended creating an "out" group of people that they either imprisoned or murdered. I'm not saying that Obama will go to this extreme. It's just that his background is not good for racial healing.

If Obama were a healer, I would expect something like this:

"Since the days of Civil Rights, we have labored to take our place in American society. Laws were passed that removed discrimination and laws were passed that gave us access to economic benefits that we did not have before. Although this was deserved and in some cases generous, we still labor under second class status. Today, I say, we are ready to step up and take our place, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of American society. We can. We want no more special privileges implying we aren't up to full participation and competition. We are ready to earn our way, not have it handed to us on a polite plate. And we can. We are, by the declaration of our independence, EQUAL and FREE."

"FREE AT LAST. FREE AT LAST. THANK GOD ALMIGHTY WE ARE FREE AT LAST."

Imagine the immediate shift that would take place in society. That tacky victimhood would be over. New challenges would open up. Respect would be present; before it was absent. However scarey for black and white, the fear would not last. The effect of such leadership would be enormous. Obama would be a great man.

One more thing: No white man can do this. The way for the black man's equality in every and all respects has been paved for over 40 years - with government discrimination being removed from the laws of the land. The final step, the step into his own power is something he must give himself. There is an old saying, "Take what you want and pay for it." Obama would grant a new moral sanction for every black man, woman and child. This would be an enormous gift and an enormous achievement not just for the United States, but for the entire world. This, in essence, would complete the racial struggle and the effect would roll down through the generations.

Using this as a standard, is Obama a "racial healer?" I am not hopeful.