# – # – #
A Co-worker sent this to me.
My thoughts went like this:
*** begin quote ***
Would you consider that “race”, whatever that is, is an obsolete paradigm and an erroneous meme?
Changing paradigms is easy; memes are painful.
What did MLK say? “Content of their character” …
and Gandhi “be the change you want to see in the world” …
and the old Catholic hymn “let their be peace on earth and let it begin with me”.
Sigh, I’m just a fat old white guy injineer …
and I “Dona Nobis Pacem”.
–30–
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/133198.html
March 3, 2013
The Early Stages of ObamaCare
Posted by Karen De Coster on March 3, 2013 04:06 PM
Here is a great talk given at The 21 Convention in 2012, by Doug McGuff, MD, a prominent member of the ancestral health (paleo-primal) community: “Fitness, Health, and Liberty.” Doug, an emergency room physician, is well known for his ‘Body By Science’ program, a high-intensity interval training program.
This is an important presentation because Doug presents the historical picture on how the physician-patient relationship went from a fiduciary relationship between provider and consumer to a 3rd party morass of collectivized medicine that sacrificed individual services to the needs of the masses in general in order to conform to the rules outlined by the medical establishment-insurance industry alliance.
*****
Yes, if the “golden rule” is the driver — he who has the gold makes the rules — then the patient can no longer trust the objectivity of the doctor or the medical establishment.
–30–
http://lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w242.html
From the Right To Resist the ‘Duty To Submit’
by William Norman Grigg
*** begin quote ***
Eventually Oborski got so close that Buehler actually breathed on him – which gave him a pretext to accuse the witness of “spitting” on him. With some difficulty, and Snider’s help, Oborski wrestled Buehler (who offered only passive resistance) to the ground and handcuffed him. The cops took Beuhler to a BAT van – a patently unreliable mobile alcohol testing unit – in the hope of documenting that the witness was intoxicated, which he wasn’t. The cop finally settled on charging him with “harassing a public servant” – a third-degree felony – and “resisting arrest.”
As is always the case in incidents of this kind, Buehler wasn’t arrested for an actual crime; he was vindictively punished for “contempt of cop.”
“You don’t f*** with cops,” Oborski snarled at Buehler. “You don’t get in our f***ing way. You don’t question us, and we’re going to teach you a lesson.”
Norma Pizana’s plight was strikingly similar to that of Anne Dekins, with at least one critical difference: Dekins and her rescuers were blessed to live in 18th Century England, a relatively civilized society that recognized and protected a free individual’s indispensable right to resist State-licensed criminal violence.
*** end quote ***
This brings up some interesting affronts to our liberty.
Remember that if you give just a fraction of an inch, then next thing you know you are on a railroad car heading to the death camps.
Can’t happen here? Read up on the Japanese American Internment.
http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle524-20090621-02.html
*** begin quote ***
All police officers at state, county, and local levels will be required to wear uniforms on duty and be forbidden to act in a professional capacity when off duty, or wearing civilian clothing. All uniforms must bear individual name patches and badge numbers easily legible from a distance of fifty yards, and it will be unlawful to cover or obscure them in any way. It will also be unlawful for police officers to conceal their facial features with any sort of helmet or mask, or to wear camouflaged or military-style clothing.
All vehicles employed by local police must be clearly marked and readily identifiable, with highly-visible registration numbers. With the exception of emergency medical and rescue services, agencies at every level of government will be forbidden the use of helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, or unmanned drones which, in recent years, have become instruments of state terrorism and statist oppression.
It is long past time to demilitarize the police. To reestablish a proper relationship between them and the people they’re supposed to serve, officers may not possess, carry, or use any weapon prohibited to civilians within their jurisdiction, nor carry a weapon of any kind off duty, concealed or otherwise, until all laws forbidding civilians to do so in exactly the same manner have been repealed.
*** end quote ***
What is the penalty for police abuse?
It must be at least an immediate suspension leading to termination. No excuses!
If it’s especially egregious, criminal proceedings should be mandatory.
Argh!
# – # – # – # – #
WHY I WON’T CALL IT INDEPENDENCE DAY or RECITE THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE!
>Happy 4th of July!….
It’s supposedly Independence Day. Why don’t I feel very free?
① The Gooferment taking an obscene percentage of our income and wealth (it’s incalcuable with taxes and fees hidden everywhere). The only true measure of how much wealth we pay in taxes is to consolidate all the gooferment spending on and off the books. (Yes, they keep multiple sets of books!) It stunning when you add it all up. And “We, The People” pay it.
② The Gooferment has the largest prison population (by number and percentage) in the world. (Let’s free all non-violent drug offenders immediately and lower that number by half!)
③ The Gooferment has economically enslaved 52% the people (i.e., the 52/48 split between welfare / work) and has a huge number of gooferment “employees”.
④ The Gooferment has encumbered us and future Americans with an unrepayable national debt and crushing unfunded liabilities while continuing to “give” us “free” stuff (i.e., health care; porkulous; global warming relief) and wage undeclared wars (i.e., Afganistan, Iraq, Pakistan).
⑤ The Gooferment has re-instituted Prohibition. Instead of alcohol, it some other drugs. It has seized control of our bodies; determining what we can and can not put in them. Is not this the essence of freedom and liberty? Along the way, they have destroyed our cities with Drug Prevention, enabled a massive mafia of drug criminals — foreign and domestic, militarized our police, brought corruption to a massive scale, and killed all sorts of people almost at random.
⑥ The Gooferment has, and continues, to indoctrinate children in Gooferment Skrules. It inculcates the future voter into the cult of gooferment worship. It impoverishes us with its costs. And fulfills the Prussian model: cannon fodder for the army, workers for the factory, and useful idiots to be led by the elite. (Where do Presidents and the elite send their children? Not Gooferment Skrules!)
⑦ Since 1970, the dollar has lost 98% of it’s value. The Constitution says only gold and silver are money. The Federal Reserve System is a banker’s monopoly cartel that has allowed the Gooferment unlimited spending. It has created a “rubber yardstick” where money is concerned. All statistics are “inflation adjusted”; thus meaningless.
⑧ The income tax has been a disaster of special interest meddling. The death tax has destroyed more family farms and small business than can be counted. Corporate taxes bury taxes in both every day items and the capital cost of everything that makes stuff. We can’t even guesstimate what we pay in taxes.
⑨ Gooferment welfare has created four generations of “welfare farmers”. Entire families are trapped in the cycle of poverty and despair. Corporatism, or corporate welfare, has done the same thing to our once vibrant economic industries. Shipped overseas to make the elite wealthier. And the Gooferment has disabled America making it a ward of the State unable to do even daily tasks without assistence and direction from the elite.
⑩ The psuedo war on (some) drugs has, first and foremost, allowed the GOoferment to tell us what we can and can’t put in our own bodies. Isn’t this the very essence of freedom and personal liberty? In doing this, they have really hurt us with unintended consequences: empowered our foreign enemies with drug money; destroyed the inner cities and the minority communities with drugs; militarized the police to kill / maim us while trampling on our supposed rights; filled our prisons; killed our youth with bad drugs; AND driven it as a wedge issue between people (i.e., scared people don’t understand it’s about Gooferment control of one’s own body) and making them believe it can be stopped.
It’s hard for me to say “independence” with a straight face.
>I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE
The Pledge is un-American.
Written by an American Nazi who was a flag salesman.
To indoctrinate school children. (The whole American education system is designed to create dummies. Cannon fodder for the Army> Workers for the factories. Designed to be led by the Elite!)
It’s propaganda. Designed to delude people into nationalism.
We, The People don’t need to “pledge” anything.
And, certainly not “allegiance” to an out-of-control corrupt Socialist gooferment.
Remember: Gooferment is the meme that kills. Only Gooferment can commit genocide.
Argh!
So I’d be happy to sing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”. Or, “America, The Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates – 1913. Or, even Amazing Grace by John Newton 1725-1807.
Before I can, we have to:
Then we can truly call ourselves the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave”.
Declaration of Independence
(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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 to 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776
Until then … … …
… … … don’t talk to me about Independence!
# # # # #
http://www.thestatenj.com/engine/2010/02/do-constitutional-rights-end-at-the-schoolhouse-door/
Do Constitutional Rights End at the Schoolhouse Door?
John Witherspoon February 4th, 2010
*** begin quote ***
This week, the NJ State Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion upholding the ability of a school administrator to search a student’s car parked on school property using a reasonableness standard of proof, rather than the more stringent, probable cause standard that would apply to a police officer’s search.
*** and ***
Another nugget of fact appears from a close reading of the opinion. The Egg Harbor Township High School, where the events leading up to this case occurred, utilizes a school resource officer, employed by the Egg Harbor Township Police Department. After the school administrator searched the student’s vehicle, the officer took possession of the evidence and transported the student to the police station. So the officer was available to take the student into custody, but couldn’t be available to perform the search. Is that because the officer would be held to a higher standard of proof before he could perform the search?
*** end quote ***
Unfortunately, if we were being true to the Constitution, then the school, which is the gooferment disguise, MUST observe the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment!
Why do we have gooferment skrools again?
To allow the gooferment to propagandize the yutes so they always vote the “right” way!
Silly sheeple, just do what your betters tell you to do. Or, else!
# # # # #
http://peadarroe.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/focus-on-this/#comment-285
Focus On This!
January 31, 2010 · 3 Comments
*** begin quote ***
Sometimes, you know, my mind takes me to another place. That ever happen to you? Take this, for instance…
*** and ***
I’m talking about the one where this fellow Tebow says he’s happy his Mom let him get born.
Thirty seconds the ad is supposed to take. Thirty seconds squeezed in between all the beer ads with pretty girls and the car ads with pretty girls and the insurance ads and all the other ads with pretty girls, and the half time lollapalooza with pretty girls and ancient guitar players singing about how great it is to be us. Thirty seconds that cost the group that made the ad, Focus on the Family, about two and a half million bucks.
Now, Focus on the Family is one of those groups that says kids should be allowed to be born. I happen to think this is a good idea. They say some other stuff, too, that I happen to agree is a good idea. They say and do some stuff that I don’t happen to agree is so good an idea at all. But, that’s not what I’m on about, here.
*** end quote ***
Well said, good sir, well said. But then, I’m just an injineer who had a low index. Seems obvious that: (1) potential human beings are getting killed; (2) a lot of people, without their tuckus on the line, have a lot of opinions about how others should live; and (3) getting the gooferment involved in a tough moral, ethical, and economic problem is like bringing that proverbial bull to help select china. Nice writing to bring light, not heat, to a tough subject. Glad I’m a man and will never have to make such a tough decision. I pray for all those that do. They’re better folks than I. Who knows what I’d do? Math is easier.
# # # # #
Patient sues after learning UCH records search could top $1 million
By Shelley Rossetter, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, January 9, 2010
*** begin quote ***
TAMPA — A man attempting to learn whether his surgeon made mistakes at University Community Hospital found that access comes at a high price.
To search through years of records for adverse incident reports on his surgeon, William D. Raulerson would have to pay UCH more than a million dollars, he discovered.
*** end quote ***
An “interesting” legal tactic to defend a malpractice suit.
My thought is that after we get Obama-care, who will the injured sue? A government hospital, in a government court. Good luck with that! And who are you expecting to win?
Argh!
# # # # #
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091228/D9CSJBM80.html
NJ lawmaker proposes public pension reform
Dec 28, 5:49 PM (ET)
By ANGELA DELLI SANTI
*** begin quote ***
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – A New Jersey lawmaker is planning to introduce legislation that would bar nongovernment workers from enrolling in the state’s taxpayer-funded pension system.
Assemblyman Paul Moriarty’s bill would restrict eligibility to the Public Employees Retirement System by keeping lobbyists and others out.
Currently, employees of some 17 private groups are eligible for state pensions.
“Why should the taxpayers pay even $1 to someone who is not a state employee, but a lobbyist who is trying to get special favors,” asked Moriarty, D-Turnersville.
*** end quote ***
Why do we have such “public pension funds”?
Private industry has gone to 401ks for “pensions”.
The “State” hasn’t made a contribution to the pension fund in a dog’s age. Surely that’s a bigger problem then a few bottom feeders pigging out at the trough.
Perhaps it’s time to “reform” the whole problem.
# # # # #
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/smith-g.f5.1.1.html
How Much Money Do We Need?
by George F. Smith
*** begin quote ***
There will always be people who wish to live at the expense of others. Government does this through taxes and inflation – which is here used as an increase in the money supply – and in modern times, inflation, because it is generally misunderstood by the public, is a politically safer method of confiscation than taxes.
*** and ***
Fiat paper money regimes are not designed to promote a healthy economy. They are designed as a means of wealth distribution for the benefit of a few.
That probably doesn’t include you, and it definitely doesn’t include me.
*** end quote ***
It sure isn’t me!
Here in two paragraphs the author explains the problem with gooferment paper money.
I’m not sure how this all unwinds. We can see in history that: in France, the aristocrats lost their heads; in Germany, Hitler came to power; and in Zimbabwe, the people starve despite the fact that when it was Rhodesia it was Africa’s breadbasket.
As an “old guy”, I may not be here for the final act of this morality play. I think it’s going to make the Great Depression look like fun. All empires pass. And, the passing isn’t pretty for those in the empire.
Argh!
How do we fix it?
Civic virtue. Honest money. No more Ponzi schemes like Social Security. End welfare. End the Psuedo Drug War. Bring the troops home.
Will it happen?
I pray it will.
# # # # #
http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2009/09/helping-unemployed.html
Monday, September 21, 2009
Helping the unemployed
*** begin quote ***
Wall Street may think we’re coming out of this recession, but there are millions of workers who may disagree. That’s why Congress is considering another extension of unemployment benefits that “would provide 13 weeks of extended unemployment benefits for more than 300,000 jobless people who live in states with unemployment rates of at least 8.5 percent and who are scheduled to run out of benefits by the end of September.”
*** and ***
Unemployment is designed to help people as they seek other work
*** end quote ***
“Unemployment is designed to help people as they seek other work”
Herb, herb, herb, typically muddled “liberal” (not classical liberal) left thinking.
“UNEMPLOYMENT” is the invisible hand of the marketplace telling you that it doesn’t “think” it needs what you are selling. You then have some choices. Seek other ways to server your fellow man. For which service, the marketplace will award, or reward, you suficient “Certificates of Appreciation” to reinforce that you are doing “good”.
Thus, “unemployment” is designed to TELL people to seek other work!
Unlike a beehive, we need the individual bee to figure out how to make their contribution to “the hive”. We’ve discovered that cooperation (i.e., division of labor) makes “prosperity” (i.e., support a larger number of people). “Subsistence farming”, as opposed to “division of labor”, which is in vogue in Africa, is less prosperous.
Since humans take direction very badly unless very motivated, it has been found that “liberty” seems to be a very good strategy to get those pesky humans to “produce”. It’s all very messy. And, has all the appearances of chaos. But, like a crowded city street, it does have the result of getting everyone where they want to go. With a minimum of friction.
So.
Unemployment is a necessary evil to motivate those pesky humans.
On the other hand, “unemployment insurance” is a gooferment program that PREVENTS humans from engaging in a host of beneficial behaviors. Saving, planning, training, … just to name a few. That bad gooferment program steals from every WORKER to REWARD unemployment. Also, the gooferment has bureaucrats to administer this supposed “insurance” program. (Note that insurance is for those semi random things that are beyond the individual’s control. Like a hurricane, flood, or other natural disaster. Unemployment is NOT unforeseeable, NOT random, and NOT beyond the individual’s control.)
Imagine if there was NO gooferment unemployment insurance, then workers would save for the future. Those savings would provide capital to the marketplace for growth.
It’s hard to underestimate the damage that these so called “insurance” programs do to the people and the economy. It trains people to look to Mommy Gooferment to “save” us. The gooferment creates the problem and then rushes in to “save” us. Often making the problem much much worse.
Sigh, today’s left liberals have to learn that it is only by VOLUNTARY participation do we secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. (Think I’ve read that somewhere.) Keep your gooferment “solutions”. There’s a reason that African, seeking to emigrate here, to “the land of fat poor people”.
# # # # #
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/35350.html
September 8, 2009
On Larken Rose, Libertarian Organizations, and the Means to Achieving Liberty
Posted by Karen De Coster on September 8, 2009 09:17 AM
*** begin quote ***
I think, at this point, that nothing can be fixed via the political process. No ballots, no politicians, and no libertarian-lite legislation is going to restore liberty, because the political process has become so corrupt and its agents are immensely wealthy and empowered. We don’t have the political power to defeat them outright, but we do have the individual power – working in concert with one another – to resist them, impede them, protest them, deny them, and ally with others who wish to do the same.
*** end quote ***
She thinks it’s too late for a peaceful solution. Hope he’s wrong.
# # # # #
FROM FACEBOOK
*** begin quote ***
I drove in upstate with a friend of mine whose a libertarian. We saw all the road constructions (quite annoying to be honest) and he stated it’s unfair he needs to pay for any construction to the roads in an area he never drives in. I had no good answer. Thoughts?
*** end quote ***
MY RESPONSE
OK, he’s absolutely correct. THe gooferment one size fits all requires us to pay for stuff we will never ever use. It’s the only entity, with its monopoly on initiation of force, which can require us to pay for what we don’t need, don’t want, can’t use, and a absurdly high price. Roads are the third rail of Libertarian philosophy. Because the sheeple can’t conceive of roads being “done” by anything other than the government. Walt Disney, private home owner associations, and private roads all exist in the “real world”. There needs to be a revolution in our memes. How about selling the interstate to WalMart and UPS? Think they would have construction delaying their paying customers? ROFL! SO why ask me? You know I am a raving little Llibertarian!
# – # – #
You expected me to say something different?
# # # # #
GA: Schoolteacher exchanges gunfire with carjackers
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
*** begin quote ***
“A DeKalb County schoolteacher carjacked early Sunday scored a measure of revenge against his attackers — thanks in part to their poor sense of direction. Derek Harper, 47, had just returned to his Lithonia home around 1:15 a.m. when two unidentified gunmen surprised him from behind, forcing the Evansdale Elementary teacher out of his car and onto the ground, demanding money. ‘After they figured out I didn’t have any cash on me they got into my van,’ he said. His narrow garage helped Harper sneak away. ‘One of them was having trouble getting into the passenger’s side, so while he was doing that I took off,’ said Harper, also the assistant track coach at Stephenson High. As he ran the gunmen started firing, striking Harper once in the arm before speeding off in his van, heading directly toward a dead end on Phillips Place. Knowing they’d be forced to turn around, Harper ran inside and grabbed his .380 pistol. ‘I was waiting for them,’ he said. Harper estimates he fired two to three bullets, which might have contributed to the driver crashing the van less than a block away.” (08/03/09)
*** end quote ***
380, a girllie gun. A 1911 45 would have been much more effective.
But better than nothing.
# # # # #
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=537777419&story_fbid=94104019058
Tsvi Gal Y aren’t we marching in front of the UN 2 demand the security council calls iran 2 stop slautering its own? Y all the thousands who r willing 2 come 2 the streets any time a palestinian is killed by israel, terrorist or not (2 clarify: israel also has no right 2 kill innocent people just the right 2 protect itself) show so much understanding 2 Iranian “internal” affairs?
MY RESPONSE:
(1) The UN is an ineffective gang of thugs (i.e., Cuba on the Human Rights committee); (2) we need to be more circumspect about what we beleive versus propaganda. Who REALLY knows what is going on in Iran. (3) Appealing to the UN is asking for trouble. They don’t settle stuff. “Peacekeepers” are trouble. (4) The US has a history of screwing “… Read Morefreedon fighters” (e.g., Hungary). So let’s not kid the people in Iran that we will help. (5) Their country, their freedom. Sad to say. All power does come fromt eh barrel of a gun. They’re most effective weapon is Ghandi. (6) We have our own set of problems here. We’re broke. Drunken sailors in Congress and the White House don’t know it.
Government is the meme that kills and enslaves us.
Peace!
# # # # #
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/the_hidden_cost.html?nc=16#comment-378824
Bruce Schneier
A blog covering security and security technology.
June 15, 2009
The “Hidden Cost” of Privacy
*** begin quote ***
Forbes ran an article talking about the “hidden” cost of privacy. Basically, the point was that privacy regulations are expensive to comply with, and a lot of that expense gets eaten up by the mechanisms of compliance and doesn’t go toward improving anyone’s actual privacy.
*** end quote ***
I’m a fan of simple non-gooferment solutions. It would seem that “copyright” is an already existing “solution”. If your stuff (e.g., your NAME, your SSN, your PHONE NUMBER, and your EMAIL NAME) was “yours” (i.e., copyrighted), then each entity that wanted to “copy” it (i.e., save it in a database) should have to have your permission by some type of written agreement. Seems that would prevent Credit Reporting Agencies, Google, and such from being disinterested in our collective satisfaction. imho! Copyright metadata for privacy?
# # # # #
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/44667772.html
May. 10, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Obama ‘bitterly clinging’ to his fake gun numbers
*** begin quote ***
“ATF Special Agent William Newell tells Fox News that between 2007 and 2008, around 11,000 guns used in Mexican crimes appeared to come from the United States and were submitted to the ATF for tracing. Of those, only 6,000 could be successfully traced. Of those, only 5,114, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover, were found to have come from the United States.
“Obama’s ’90 percent’ number refers, not to the percentage of ‘guns recovered in Mexico,’ as Obama claims, but to the ‘percent of the traced firearms’ according to an ATF spokeswoman.
“Mexican authorities report that in those two years, a total of 29,000 guns were recovered at ‘crime scenes.’ That means 68 percent of the guns recovered by Mexican police did not even appear to come from the United States. That means only 5,114 out of 29,000 guns used in Mexican crimes were found to have come from the United States,” the Libertarians conclude. “That figure would be 17 percent, not the 90 percent repeated by Obama.
During his term in the Senate, Obama earned an “F” rating from Gun Owners of America, as well as from the National Rifle Association. In an April 11, 2008, campaign speech in San Francisco, Obama claimed gun owners are simply “bitter,” racist people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”
“Obama is ‘bitterly clinging’ to falsified numbers, hoping he can take away the constitutional rights of ‘people who aren’t like’ him,” The Libertarian Party concludes.
*** end quote ***
Guns are a right.
But Spooner was right, the Constitution is powerless.
# # # # #
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96590
# – # – #
What flag will you fly on Memorial Day?
While in Obama’s liberal America we still have one!
# # # # #
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/026190.html
The End of the “Voucher” Argument
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at April 4, 2009 05:09 PM
*** begin quote ***
Proponents of a form of “market socialism” known as “school vouchers” have long ignored the argument that along with government money would come government control of private schools that accept voucher students. This would in turn destroy the private schools, eventually. This argument against vouchers was always unanswerable, but the current antics of the Obammunists should prove once and for all what a hoax it is to call voucher welfare a “libertarian” idea.
*** end quote ***
As a past fan of “vouchers”, I thought they could be useful as a transition mechanism from the Socialistic “School” system we currently have to a Free Market version. Now that we’ve seen the damage the Gooferment can do with its rules (i.e., “mark to market”; “short sale uptick rule”; taxe preferences) and its help (i.e., killing one Lehman but “saving” a competitor AIG; GM; the “bonus” executives).
In short, we just have to close it down! It’s too big, too powerful, and too dangerous.
# # # # #
http://theglennbeck912project.com/2009/04/06/binghamton-victims-died-seeking-better-lives/
Binghamton victims died seeking better lives
# – # – #
Glen Beck’s site doesn’t place the blame squarely on the politicians who set up the conditions necessary to allow this to happen — victims who were un_Constitutionally disarmed.
Naturally, I left a comment:
*** begin quote ***
Sorry, the Binghamton victims died because of New York State’s unconstitutional victim disarmament, aka gun control, laws. The center had no security. People rely on the “police” that are merely paper pushers. One concealed carry permit in that crowd and we would have a vastly different story. It works. Sprinkle a few “sheepdogs” in among the sheep and everyone is protected. Sorry, but it’s a fact of life. You have to protect yourself and your loved ones. Ignoring the security problem doesn’t make it go away. Even if the police were perfect; they can’t be there when the problems occur. Only a well armed citizenry can be the “police”. Take any of these mass murders and do a mental experiment. If we have, even under these draconian laws, 130 million guns in a population of 300 million, lets ASSUME that 10% of the populace chooses to arm themselves. That means that in the 14 dead, there would be one armed defender. And, in the 30 or so people in the center, there might be three armed defenders. I’m happy to give my fellow Americans — citizen or not — their right to defend their own lives. Just as I would want the same right. Glenn has a long way to go before he’s a “libertarian”. First, he has to put the blame squarely on the gooferment for setting up the conditions for this disaster, and so many others! imho!
*** end quote ***
# # # # #
WHICH DREW A RESPONSE:
CENTERLEFT said: “You assume that all these gun-toting, would be heros can shoot straight in the high stress situation of a crazy gunman opening fire on a crowd. That would not be my assumption. I feel I would be in as much danger from a stray bullet from a bystander. as I would be from the crazy shooter himself.“
*** begin quote ***
@centerleft No I don’t assume that anyone can shoot straight under stress.
(Humorously, the police are far worse shooters than dedicated amateurs. Just check with any police range officer who will be honest or any cun club open event. It’s scary that we give these people guns. That’s where you should be afraid!)
My assumptiona dn hope is that just the threat of “sheepdogs” mixed in with the sheep will dicourage any would be gun man. There have been several examples of gunman being shot while they reloaded by an armed bystander.
The point is that the police can’t be everywhere. And, We The People are the “police”. See Katrina after the evacuation. It’s our willingness to stand up for what’s right and our fellow human beings that will count.
If I had a Concealed Carry Permit, I’d got o Front Sight for their four day training and spend more time at the range to maintain my proficiency. But, the Pepuls Republik of Nu Jerzee doesn’t permit its “citizens”. See the elite remember the American Revolution.
*** end quote ***
# # # # #
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5565&Itemid=48
The Money Meltdown: A Conversation with Thomas Woods Jr. by Brian Saint-Paul 3/11/09
*** begin quote ***
Q: We’ve had bailouts and stimulus packages, and possibly more of both in the near future. If you were to look into a crystal ball, where are we going to be in 20 years? Where is all of this heading? Will we reach a point of total economic collapse? Or will we wind up as the newest Euro-style state?
It seems to me that the best-case scenario is a kind of European third-way stagnation: high unemployment, anemic growth (if any), and a whole bunch of people scratching their heads and wondering why this is happening. That could be our fate.
Of course, it could be worse. It may turn into something like what Japan endured in the 1990s and beyond — though at least Japan had some domestic savings as a cushion. Or there could well be a complete collapse of the system, with the dollar destroyed. This is all conditional, because it depends in large part on what the government does. Its cure is almost sure to be worse than the disease.
I’d love to think that if a collapse came, people would say, “Obviously, intervention doesn’t work, so let’s try what the Austrians have been suggesting.” But I think instead a demagogue would rise up to say — as usual — that the problem is not enough government involvement, and that he’s going to rescue us.
That’s the most likely outcome.
*** and ***
Thomas E. Woods Jr. is senior fellow in American history at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of nine books, including two New York Times bestsellers: The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and the just-released Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, as well as the award-winning The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy. Visit his new Web site.
* end quote *
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gaddy/gaddy49.html
Another Bright Shining Lie
by Michael Gaddy
*** begin quote ***
The state has many weapons in its arsenal to keep Boobus ignorant of their illegal, unconstitutional activities and in compliance with its confiscatory tax and slavery system. In all likelihood, the two most often used of these weapons are fear and prevarication.
Our new US Attorney General/Race Agitator, Eric Holder, last week used a bright shining lie in his advocating the introduction of a new Assault Weapons Ban. (AWB) He stated:
“Putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border. I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”
What a crock; believing the fantastically wealthy drug cartels actually secure their weapons from America is analogous to taking a hamburger to a steak dinner. The drug cartels use their millions, if not billions, to purchase some of the finest weaponry that can be had, far exceeding the firepower of their state-armed opponents in both Mexico and the US.
*** end quote ***
I agree that Holder is peddling “barbara streisand”!
We could pacify the Mexico, Columbia, and Afgan drug lords with one stroke of a pen.
End the psuedo-Drug War now!
What does a Drug Kingpin do when WalMart becomes your competitor? Drive a cab.
All we have to do is recognize that people make bad choices. We just don’t have to use the guns or government to inflict more pain on everyone.
I’ve read estimates that there is a “residual addiction rate”. Some people you will just be unable to keep from being addicted; no matter what you do.
I’ve seen estimates that ending the drug prohibition will actually reduce the addiction rate to the residual since there will no longer be the allure of “doing something illegal” to the young people.
I’ve read estimates that the cost of “illegal” drugs will drop to the cost of aspirin and that the marketplace’s (i.e., WalMart, RiteAid, Walgreen, CVS) “drugs” will be USP grade. (No more deadly overdoses from too strong street drugs or side effects of it being cut with rat poison.)
And, what does the gooferment have to do to accomplish this. Absolutely nothing but pass a law decriminalizing drugs. Closing the DEA, BATF, and FDA would also be a good idea.
Why won’t they? Money, power, and a scary “issue”.
President Obama could pardon ALL non-violent drug offenders.
And a cow could jump over the moon!
It’s all “barbara streisand”!
The powers that be like it this way so this is the way it will stay.
We have to end this nonsense the same way “We, The People” ended alcohol prohibition. In the jury box.
When you’re in the jury room hearing a drug case, and no one got killed, vote “NOT GUILTY”. Don’t discuss it. Don’t preach. Don’t say anything but “The State didn’t prove their case!”
The Drug War will be over in a heartbeat. The Gun Violence will follow soon after that.
WalMart will be selling drugs. Think they will sell to children? Think they won’t offer help? THink that they will have gun battle with the near by WalGreens?
Over stuff that has the profit margin of aspirin?
It’s all “barbara streisand”! And, we put up with it!!
Argh!
# # # # #
Ron Paul rocks on Bill Mahr’s show!
# # # # #
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30490
Globalism vs. Ethno-nationalism
by Patrick J. Buchanan
01/30/2009
*** begin quote ***
Standing before the Siegessaule, the Victory Column that commemorates Prussia’s triumphs over Denmark, Austria and France in the wars that birthed the Second Reich, Barack Obama declared himself a “citizen of the world” and spoke of “a world that stands as one.”
Globalists rejoiced. And the election of this son of a white teenager from Kansas and a black academic from Kenya is said to have ushered us into the new “post-racial” age.
Are we deluding ourselves? Worldwide, the mightiest force of the 20th century, ethnonationalism — that creator and destroyer of nations and empires; that enduring drive of peoples for a nation-state where their faith and culture is dominant and their race or tribe is supreme — seems more manifest than ever.
*** end quote ***
It does seem that the USA is bucking history. Fighting against a tide of religious zealotry. Seeking to maintain freedom in an ever increasing climate of tyranny.
We need to launch a new effort for “political freedom”, just like we have “religious freedom” here. With calm civility. Tolerance.
But we must stand firm that “all men are created equal”.
Unfortunately, e seem to also be swept into intolerance of any idea that doesn’t match our own.
Freedom for everyone!
# # # # #
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_mccaughey&sid=aLzfDxfbwhzs
Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan
Commentary by Betsy McCaughey
reported on Bloomberg
*** begin quote ***
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.
Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).
The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
*** end quote ***
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
We’re like the Jim Neighbor’s character, the village idiot, and we’ll be “suprised” that this “stimulus bill” has a lot of “interesting ideas” in it.
DownSizeDC is right: Read The Bills (make the congresscritters read what they are voting on), One Subject At A Time (No mash ups), and all their other suggestions. (www.downsizedc.org)
This is a disaster. It has NO —- none, zero, nada —- redeeming value.
It’s going to send us down the road to debt and a ultimately societal collapse. Not in the next thirty minutes. Thankfully, I won’t have to pick up the pieces, but a terrible legacy to leave behind.
I wonder if the citizens of the Roman Empire saw it coming as well? Debt, Inflation, Circuses, collapse.
Privacy and security down the tubes. There are no computer break ins or leaks. The gooferment can’t secure its prisons, but your medical records will be just fine. Ask ARod how it feels to have private medical records discussed by the President on National TV!
# # # # #
# # # # #
Where does the Ron Paul revolution (i.e., peace, nonintervention, economic freedom, personal liberty, sound money, and a drastically limited government) go?
The shell game of Republican and Democrat bigger gooferment prevents any other “choice”.
Argh!
# # # # #
Reinke Faces Life 