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Tuesday Night Open Mic for May 4, 2010
Another fine day for an Open Mic. The legalization of Marijuana debate was interesting yesterday. I have to say, however, that I didn't see a single coherent argument against legalization. A lot of supposition, rhetoric and ignoring of the facts that legitimate studies show. But very little in the way of evidence to support the idea that cannabis should be illegal. I was afraid that many would be so stuck in their ways that they wouldn't even be willing to entertain ideas or facts that flew in the face of their beliefs. I was fortunate to find that there are many willing to think for themselves and really attempt to learn and discuss. For tonight we have a few articles, and I am sure there will be more added by all of you. We deal with the GOP panicking over candidates that don't toe the party line, climate change legislation, terrorists who are simply misunderstood, and the "transparent" White House working to block an audit of the Federal Reserve.
Filed Under: Open Mic, Politics Tagged With: BP, Crist, Federal Reserve Audit, GOP, MSNBC, Oil Spill, Open Mic, Rahm Emanuel, Rubio, Terrorism, White House
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Why The Michigan Trip was Dumb, but not Wrong »
USWeapon Topic #1
Rubio Slams Crist Over Independent Senate Bid
Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio on Sunday slammed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for bolting the GOP to run as an independent in his state's Senate race, saying voters will never be able to hold him accountable.
Crist announced Thursday that he would launch an independent bid for the open Senate seat in Florida, after polls showed him sliding from party favorite to underdog in the Republican primary contest against Rubio.
Rubio, former Florida House speaker, told "Fox News Sunday" that Crist's departure from the party should come as no surprise.
"One of the things that's missing in politics today is people that will run on a platform and then go to Washington, D.C., and actually carry it out," he said. "And I think with Charlie Crist, we don't know what that platform is and we never will. You are never going to be able to hold him accountable to anything, because his opinions are going to change based upon what the polling tells him or his political convenience tells him."
Crist, though, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that he made the decision to leave the GOP — just one month after pledging to stay in the party — after "a lot of listening on my part."
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/02/rubio-slams-crist-independent-bid-senate/
I initially read this article and wondered to myself whether I would be able to stomach yet another partisan attack meant to make people from one party feel that another is a traitor to the party. Fortunately, this article did not disappoint. Interestingly, I find all the things that Rubio is saying about Crist to be a positive instead of a negative.
This is not an article in support of Crist for the seat he is seeking. I don't know enough about him to make that call at this point. What it is, is a recognition that he has determined that the Republican party no longer fits the bill for him. He claims to have listened to the party lines, the constituents he would represent, and his friends and family, and come to the conclusion that he doesn't belong in the GOP. I can certainly understand that sentiment. After all, I also chose to walk away from the Republican party because they no longer represent my views. In fact I see them as only a hairs width better than the Democratic party.
Rubio claims that you don't know what his platform is because he skipped out on the party. I disagree. I will know what he tells me that his platform is. I will simply be getting his platform based on what he believes it should be instead of based on what the corrupt Republican party believes it should be. Rubio claims that his political stance changes to match what is politically convenient. I tend to like that in some respect, because I think that the candidate should change to match what the people he represents want him to be. Rubio doesn't like that Crist will not be taking his platform from the GOP. He hates that the GOP will not get to dictate what is important to the people, but instead that the people will dictate the issues.
Another interesting claim from Rubio is that voters will never be able to hold Crist accountable because he has gone to being an Independent. Exactly how much more accountable would they be able to hold Rubio, who enjoys the backing of a massive political entity and will thus answer to the party, not the people.
See Rubio's rant for what it is…. fear. The two major parties want anything but folks that don't answer to the two big parties. The idea of someone who would answer to the people rather than the party is VERY dangerous ground for the two big parties. This is why you see things like Mitch McConnel going to bat for a GOP faithful in a primary in order to thwart an "insurgent candidate" (his words not mine). This is why the GOP is working so hard to mesh with the Tea Party movement. The last thing that they want is someone being elected to Congress that is not under the control of the major players in Washington. Look for this to be a sign of what is to come. Crist will not be the last to leave the GOP to become free of their political stranglehold. The next election (2012) will see a similar thing happening to the Democrats.
Cyndi P says:
I've been a legal resident of Florida since 1997. From what I can tell Crist is a political hack/RINO. He knows voters are fed up with both parties, thus is going 'independent'. I don't think many voters will fall for this trick. Not this one, anyway.
I'm with you Cyndi.. and Glenn Beck.. If you're up (for re-election) you're out! I started voting no on incumbents in '08. Now just give me someone good to vote for.
Bottom Line says:
Crist = Republicrat in independent clothing.
USW – "See Rubio's rant for what it is…. fear."
USW – "This is why the GOP is working so hard to mesh with the Tea Party movement. The last thing that they want is someone being elected to Congress that is not under the control of the major players in Washington."
Cyndi – "He knows voters are fed up with both parties, thus is going 'independent'. I don't think many voters will fall for this trick. Not this one, anyway."
BL – I have to agree with y'all's scrupulous interpretation. Crist is just a republicrat in independent clothing. They're losing and they know it. They're grasping for solutions and sqirming. I wonder how many of them realize that their dilema could have easily been avoided if they had just done their jobs by representing their constituants.
"What it is, is a recognition that he has determined that the Republican party no longer fits the bill for him."
I think you give him too much credit. If he could have won the republican nomination, he would have taken it and we all know that. This is just political posturing, same as Arlan Spector in PA. Maybe he doesn't agree with the republican party on many things, but that's not why he is leaving it!
Agree, JB. Charlie Crist is not willing to give up the public job and was not going to win the primary so changed tactics. Nothing about constituents going on here at all.
Bama dad says:
I kind of like Marco Rubio, he made the news in Florida a few years ago with a cut taxes and a smaller Florida government platform. The platform did not go anywhere with the rest of the politicians and died. When he started his run he was way behind Crist and no one took him serious, but apparently his message has gained traction with a lot of Floridians as he was well ahead of Crist when Crist jumped ship. Rubio seems to be more of a peoples person and I think that has helped him take the lead over Crist. I view Crist as a career politician that does what ever it takes to be reelected. In my mind it remains to be seen if Rubio is just another career politician, only time will tell.
PeterB in Indianapolis says:
USW,
Sorry to disagree with you completely on this one, but this only had to do with ONE THING.
Crist calculated that he had ABSOLUTELY no chance of defeating Rubio in the primary, so his ONLY path to retaining his seat of power was to go independent.
Crist's quest to retain power is the ONLY thing that factored into his decision, nothing more, nothing less.
No need to be sorry for disagreeing Peter. That is what I want on this site, as many differing opinions as I can get. I don't live in the illusion that Crist is a good guy who simply saw the light and moved towards serving the people. The main point of the article to me was not Crist and why he moved, but was instead the reaction and rhetoric coming from Rubio and the GOP.
Oh yes, the reaction and rhetoric Rubio and the party are completely predictable.
The Republicans are still CLAIMING to be the party of "less government" in spite of the well-documented fact that they are the party of "more government, just ever-so-slightly-slower than the other guys!"
However, I think that the accusation that Crist doesn't stand for anything is probably a valid accusation. At least when Lieberman went independent most people knew where he stood on most issues and could support him based on that knowledge, so his win as an independent was not surprising.
In Crist's case, I would be SHOCKED if he won as an independent, because I am pretty sure no one knows his stance on any major issues (or they strongly suspect his stance changes when the wind changes direction).
So, from my point of view, at least SOME of Rubio's criticism of Crist appears to have some validity.
The Republicans, IMHO, are more worried about the vote that will now be split…
Rahm Working With Fed To Beat Back Audit
The White House, Federal Reserve and Wall Street lobbyists are kicking up their opposition to an amendment to audit the Fed as a Senate vote approaches, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the lead sponsor of the measure, said on Monday.
Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who is shepherding the bill through the Senate, told Sanders Monday afternoon that "there's a shot we'll be up tomorrow," Sanders told HuffPost.
In the spring of 2009, Sanders brought a similar amendment to the Senate floor and won 59 votes. Eight senators who voted against it then are now cosponsors of his current measure.
"I think momentum is with us. But I've gotta tell you, that on this amendment, you're taking on all of Wall Street, you're taking on the Fed, obviously, and unfortunately you seem to be taking on the White House, as well. And that's a tough group to beat," said Sanders.
He's been trading calls, he said, with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.
Earlier on Monday, HuffPost reported that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan wanted dissent kept secret so that people outside the Fed wouldn't involve themselves in their debates.
"We run the risk, by laying out the pros and cons of a particular argument, of inducing people to join in on the debate, and in this regard it is possible to lose control of a process that only we fully understand," Greenspan said, according to the transcripts of a March 2004 meeting. "I'm a little concerned about other people getting into the debate when they know far less than we do."
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/03/rahm-working-with-fed-to_n_561505.html
And again we see the movement moving forward to audit the Federal Reserve. I have made it clear in the past that I am in favor of auditing the Federal Reserve. I think that they are a completely corrupted organization that, in my opinion, never served a good purpose since its inception. The Fed's manipulation of the economy has put us in the very economic situation that we are currently in, and it may, in fact, be too late to reverse course on the damage the Federal Reserve, along with Wall Street, have caused.
What is interesting to me is that the very White House administration that came to power on the promises of transparency is working so diligently to stop any move that puts transparency on the Federal Reserve. No one is asking for the Federal Reserve to release every piece of information that they have to the public. What we are asking for is that the most secretive economic institution in the world be held accountable to the very system that it is supposed to serve. The question I am forced to ask is, WHY does the Obama administration want to stop the audit of the Federal Reserve? What is it that they are afraid will be found?
Watch this with skepticism, dear readers. Something foul is afoot. Every President faced with it has squashed down the idea of an audit of the Federal Reserve, and that list now includes the very administration who ran a campaign almost entirely on the idea of transparency and a more open government.
I am interested in the opinion from some of the more economic folks at SUFA. Why do you think they are so averse to an audit on the FED? If you had to guess, what do you think they will find? Would an audit completely destabilize and eventually destroy the US economy? Is that the worry? And if it is, is this a valid reason to stop the American people from knowing what crooked things are going on there?
Jon Smith says:
Maybe they know it will come out that it is a monster:
an interesting read if you have time, a little conspiratorial, but not out of the realm of possibility. 🙂
Ray Hawkins says:
I may get skewered for this, but I do bring some first hand experience so please bear with me…….
I have little confidence in a truly independent audit being conducted and properly identifying risks and cutting through smoke screens that are typically put up to shield the eyes of the auditor from lies beneath. After working with auditors for many years, one comes to realize they operate like much any other business. They are there to make a buck first. Whether the public interest is actually served is coincidence. I have seen way too many auditors shirk their professional responsibility because they are afraid of losing an account, having their fees cut, and having to (gasp) put off buying that third vacation home. It is pervasive through most all the big firms and bleeds down to regionals and boutique firms (since those last two are usually made of ex-big firm folks anyway).
Place this on the scale of the Fed – how do you see things playing out for the firm that truly reveals the stench and practices and root cause that plague the Fed? Want to talk about being black balled or wearing a permanent Scarlet Letter? "They" will find things for sure – but only enough to whet the appetite and shut people up long enough.
The only way I see this working out well is if a Ron Paul or someone who is at the end of a career with nothing to lose takes up the cause. Anything else is face-washing.
Agreed, there is a high probability that an audit would be a farce. However, if that is that case, why is there so much resistance to having one? Are the violations so blatant?
I know the whole "what do you have to hide" argument does not always mean that there is something, but I find it incredible that even a farce of an audit has not been allowed.
Dub says:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/22/news/economy/paul_sanders_fed.fortune/index.htm
Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders are already working on this together according to Fortune.
The audit will not happen….this time.
The situation has done what it is supposed to do….wake the People up.
Most people didn't even know what the FED was – now a lot more do and a lot more know it is not the government but a company made up of 5 largest banks.
…and it runs the country.
If anything that smokes the anti-"Conspiracy Theorists" its this….
Don't audit the fed, dissolve the fed; it has done nothing to benefit the citizens in its 97 year life, in fact it has caused great harm. In 1800 if you bought $100 worth of apples in 1913 (the year the fed was formed) you would pay $58 for the same amount of apples. In 1913 if you bought $100 worth of apples, today that same amount of apples would cost you $2144 a 2098% increase. I know the fed did not do all this by its self, big government helped along the way but hey that is a different topic.
Democrats: New drilling 'dead on arrival'
A group of Democratic senators said Tuesday that the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has rendered plans for new offshore drilling "dead on arrival."
"I will make it short and to the point: the president's proposal for offshore drilling is dead on arrival," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said. "If offshore drilling off of the coast of the continental United States is part of it, this legislation is not going anywhere.
"If I have to do a filibuster, which I had to five years ago.. I will do so again."
Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, along with Nelson, unveiled a bill Tuesday that would raise the liability cap for oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion. But their liability bill was overshadowed by the senators' insistence that there would be no new oil drilling provisions in any climate change legislation that comes through the upper chamber. Lautenberg referred to the Gulf spill as an "environmental nuclear bomb."
Offshore drilling provisions in a sweeping energy and climate change bill were considered an olive branch to the GOP to get them on board with the legislation, and the Obama administration had backed the drilling proposals.
Despite Nelson's comments, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the lead negotiators on climate change, insisted that drilling was still on the table.
"There are good reasons for us to put in offshore drilling," Lieberman said. "This terrible accident is very rare in drilling. Accidents happen. You learn from them, and you try to make sure they don't happen again. This is the first accident of this scope since the Valdez."
But while drilling may be a heavier lift in the climate bill, Democratic senators believe the environmental disaster in the Gulf only increases the need for a comprehensive energy and climate bill.
"I would like to think that instead of hurting climate change [legislation], the spill has actually thrust it into light why we, in fact, are demanding an end to dependence on fossil fuels, demand that we stop polluting our planet," Menendez said. "If anything, this bill should act as a rallying cry for comprehensive climate and energy legislation."
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36751.html
A couple of thoughts on this article and the sentiments that are put forth in it. First, to the fact that the Democrats in Congress are going to use this spill as a justification to continue their crusade against off-shore drilling in it's entirety. I am not at all surprised. It plays to the emotional side of things, which is very often the politically expedient path of the two parties.
My personal opinion is that this disaster in the gulf does not mean anything in terms of whether or not we should be drilling for oil offshore. As the article stated. It is an accident, and a devastating one. We must, MUST learn from it. We should demand that oil companies operate both in a more safe way and a more responsible way. But not drilling is simply short-sighted and further enslaves our economy to the whims of the Middle Eastern countries that drill. Additionally, I am not yet convinced that this was an accident. I find the fact that it happened on Earth Day and that it happened at the least opportune time (just weeks after a Dem President offered support for offshore drilling) to be suspicious. I would lean towards this being an act of sabotage of some sort. From either a well funded environmental group or another nation that wants to impact our policies. Time will tell, I suppose.
The other aspect of this article that I find baffling is that the Democrats are going to make a claim such as this disaster bolsters the cause for climate change legislation. The Cap and Trade idiocy that is currently proposed is both proven ineffective and philosophically unsound. To claim that an accident involving oil drilling is an argument for a trash legislation that is meant to do little more than take more money out of American taxpayer's pockets is typical of the lost in space mindset of the modern politician. These two parties have a common goal of stripping Americans of liberty and property. They are willing to use any excuse to further their cause. The question is how many of you will be stupid enough to fall for their games?
USW – "My personal opinion is that this disaster in the gulf does not mean anything in terms of whether or not we should be drilling for oil offshore. As the article stated. It is an accident, and a devastating one. We must, MUST learn from it. We should demand that oil companies operate both in a more safe way and a more responsible way."
BL – That, my friend, is the obvious logical solution. I see a red flag pop up anytime there is a crisis and the proposed solution deviates from simple common sense and sound logic.
USW – "But not drilling is simply short-sighted and further enslaves our economy to the whims of the Middle Eastern countries that drill."
USW – "To claim that an accident involving oil drilling is an argument for a trash legislation that is meant to do little more than take more money out of American taxpayer's pockets is typical of the lost in space mindset of the modern politician."
BL – And that is the REAL motivation for not letting a crisis go to waste.
USW – "The other aspect of this article that I find baffling is that the Democrats are going to make a claim such as this disaster bolsters the cause for climate change legislation."
BL – And that is how they sucker people into going along with it. It just happens to as good for the Saudis (and whoever else gets the $$) as it is for the environment…But the environment is the reason they give.
Since I live just north of New Orleans, this hits home for me. US, you said:
"Additionally, I am not yet convinced that this was an accident. I find the fact that it happened on Earth Day and that it happened at the least opportune time (just weeks after a Dem President offered support for offshore drilling) to be suspicious. I would lean towards this being an act of sabotage of some sort. From either a well funded environmental group or another nation that wants to impact our policies. Time will tell, I suppose."
That is very interesting as I was thinking the same. That is not to mention just weeks before there was a COAL mine explosion…HMMM…two of the envirowackos biggest targets…oil and coal. It makes me wonder…what is next, a hydroelectric damn…a nuclear power plant?
I actually read an article that played off of the sinking of the South Korean ship, supposedly by some sort of high tech mini sub. The article pointed out that a North Korean transport veered off course to come within 110 miles of the Deepwater Horizon…supposedly the transport could have easily been carrying one of those mini subs, and the subs range is around 175 miles, and that this would have been a one way trip for the submariners. The article also mentioned that there were 3 naval salvage ships headed for the disaster, that never took part in any of the recovery efforts, and hinted that perhaps they were looking for debris from a N. Korean mini sub.
Would N. Korea want to do something like this to possibly hurt the US economy? Sure they would. Did they? I have sincere doubts, but it was an interesting take nonetheless…
You're kidding me right?
Evidence please?
If I can't "wonder", then this administration has gotten out of control…
Mathius says:
Terry, the word you're looking for is ThoughtCrime.
naten53 says:
I started thinking the same thing this morning when reading about what they are doing about it now with putting that box thing over the leak. Then when I saw you write this I think it is very suspicious.
All kinds of things are suspicious. I find lots of things suspicious. Without any sort of evidence, however, you can construct elaborate and baseless conspiracy theories which are un-falsifiable and conveniently paint those you already don't like in a negative light. See how that works?
Why is it that environmentalists, foreign powers, liberals, Al Gore, and Obama are somehow always at the core of these suspicions, but never Beck and Limbaugh?
Mathius,
Because Beck and Limbaugh are NOT the ones holding the guns of legal violence.
The likes of "Man-Bear-Pig" Gore and Obama ARE!
I see.. ok, then why aren't the theories blaming Republicans?
Katrina seriously harmed Bush's presidency, so the Repubs in congress create a man-made equivillency (even going so far as to do it in the same area) in order to damage the Obama Presidency.
See? Makes sense to me. But that's not the conspiracy theory people are reaching for – it's dems and/or "suspiciously well-funded environmentalist wackos."
I have a theory. I think people like to construct theories that support what they already think. Dems and enviros are bad, they might be behind this, that only support my belief that they are bad.
V.H says:
What is wrong with saying this exact case is suspicious?
In a previous article USW talked about the off shore oil executive order (or whatever it was) that Obama did, and said how it was nothing else other then what Bush had already done. (I will try to find this article later)
So Obama "allows" off shore drilling, pissing off the environmentalists and getting the support of pro drilling people. Then a tragic oil spill threatening the gulf coast and we will be seeing them say, "unfortunately we cannot allow off shore oil because we don't want this to happen again." Political spin on this event and the topic of off shore drilling is only going to confuse the evidence regardless of what it shows.
can only find a mention by D13 about it when it came out. "Tuesday open mic for March 30th" comment #9. Also here is a link to an article talking about what obamas offshore drilling plan is. As you can see the article is dated March 31st
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/31/obama-unveil-offshore-oil-drilling-plans/
also I find it suspicious that aliens have not landed here yet. It is clear to me that they set the oil rig on fire to cause an environmental catastrophe that would promote more government regulation that results in the eventual uprising and fall of humanity against corrupt governments. Then the aliens can just come in here and take what they want.
Black Flag says free men and women can defend themselves, thank you very much. We'll see once they start their invasion.
And, lest we forget, V.H. has already admitted to being an alien. I urge caution in what you say here.
John May lives!
actually, I have seen shloads of theories blaming Beck and Limbaugh for all sorts of stuff. Hang out in the comments section at Huffpost a while and tell me I am wrong.
That said, I do agree with your theory that people make theories based on what they already think.
BTW, is that what you think about people, thus you came up with that theory???
I have a theory that hanging out in the comments section of huffPo (or infoWars, etc) causes brain cancer.
I am not willing to risk it.
You are just saying that because its what you already think!
If I wanted to say things I don't think, I'd let the Dread Pirate out of his cage. (Yes, I keep him in a cage now)
Just A Citizen says:
You only think he is in the cage because he is there when you check on him.
That would explain how all the grog disappeared from my fridge the other day…
D13 says:
He is bootlegging it and it is delicious…do you have more?
From The Times
US had burn-off plan for oil spills but the equipment wasn't there
The White House faced claims last night that the Gulf Coast oil spill could have been contained and kept far from land within days of the Deepwater Horizon explosion if oil from the gushing wellhead had been burnt off in line with a plan drafted by the US Government for precisely this sort of disaster.
The plan requires the immediate deployment of specialised "fire booms" capable of burning 95 per cent of a slick— but not one boom was available on the Gulf Coast at the time of the blast, according to a supplier who eventually provided one eight days later.
"The whole reason the plan was created was so that we could pull the trigger right away," Ron Gourget, a former federal oil spill response co-ordinator and one of those who drafted the document, said yesterday.
The disclosure came as officials analysed the bodies of 23 dead sea turtles found on Mississippi beaches to see if they were poisoned by the growing slick, and the Port of New Orleans planned to start scrubbing ships' hulls as they enter the Mississippi River.
Thirteen days into the disaster, engineers were no closer to shutting off the flow of oil at its source 40 miles from the entrance to the river, whose lowest section is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. The spillage continues to run at 5,000 barrels of oil each day.
So far, merchant vessels have been guided round the slick. But if it grows to the point that they have to plough through it, they will be scrubbed with high-pressure hoses at two cleaning stations being set up in the delta region, 75 miles southeast of Louisiana's main container port.
"The crucial question is whether the ship is transporting oil into clean water," Chris Bonura, of the Port of New Orleans, said. Cleaning is not yet mandatory, but the US Coast Guard could require it if there were a risk of contaminating the river with the heavy oil at the centre of the slick.
Hopes of reactivating the blowout preventer, whose failure caused the spill, appeared to be fading yesterday as BP shifted its public focus to three giant structures being built from steel and concrete to be lowered over the three separate leaks 5,000ft (1,5000m) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
The box-like structures, called cofferdams, could be in place by the end of the week. They are designed to collect the rising crude oil but they have never been used before at this depth.
The race to cap the well and contain a spill the size of Puerto Rico continued against a background of fingerpointing by the US Government and BP. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, repeated what is becoming the Administration's favourite metaphor, saying the Government would "keep a boot to the throat" of BP to make sure it fulfils its responsibility to lead and pay for the clean-up.
Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive, accepted responsibility "for the oil and for dealing with it and cleaning the situation up", but he surprised George Stephanopoulos, the ABC news anchor and former White House press secretary, by saying that "this wasn't our accident". Despite the negative press that BP has received for appearing to split hairs on who is to blame, Mr Hayward insisted: "This was a Transocean rig. It was their equipment that failed."
Such arguments are likely to be eclipsed, however, by the claim that the Government's own burn-off plan could not be put into action because the equipment was not available.
A single fire boom of the kind required by the "In-Situ Burn" plan drafted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for Gulf Coast spills can burn up to 75,000 gallons of oil an hour – roughly a third of the estimated daily leakage from the Deepwater Horizon site.
"They said this was the tool of last resort," Jeff Bohleber, a supplier of the booms, said. "No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning the oil before the spill gets out of hand."
So far federal officials have authorised only one test burn eight days into the disaster, using a boom obtained from Mr Bohleber in Illinois, when it became clear that none was available in the Gulf region. Instead of burning, emergency workers are relying on chemical dispersants being injected by submersibles directly into the leaks in the collapsed riser pipe that connected the wellhead to the rig.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7115273.ece
I often shy away from stories of sabatoge and "it was on purpose", but in this case, there are a LOT of people who stood to gain by sabatoging this thing.
1) green wackos
2) green/anti-local drilling politicians
3) cap and trade advocates
4) middle eastern countries
5) Venezuela
6) any other exporter of oil
7) any international competitor of ours
8) rival oil companies who have most of their infrastructure tied up in distribution and importing, rather than drilling or production
9) People who hate sea turtles.
Not sure how many of the last one there are, but its still a big list…
grrr, 8) should read "8 )"
Stupid sea turtles.. I was scuba diving in Hawaii one time and turtle came out of nowhere and slammed into my tank with its shell.. It was huge and moving fast.
What a jerk.
Adding, other people who could have gained:
1.) employees wishing to fake their own deaths
2.) disgruntled former employees
3.) Republicans wishing to embarrass the President after he endorsed off-shore drilling
4.) coal producers
5.) Tesla Motors
6.) Bill Gates (just because)
7.) Me (stupid turtles)
8.) Tea Partiers wishing to 'prove' the impotence of the government
9.) Bottom Line (borrowing D13's submarine)
10.) The Atlantans
Mathius
Sorry young fella but #10 is out of the question. The Atlantians lived in the Mediterranean not the Caribbean.
The Atlantans live in Georgia.
I don't trust either or them.
Mathius – "9.) Bottom Line (borrowing D13′s submarine)"
Okay, okay, I admit it. I did it.
I hate sea turtles, those damn things thinking they can just crawl up and take over our beaches just to breed. Who do they think they are!
I have my own submarine. I burrowed the Colonel's because I wanted to frame him.
I'm really a government agent working on a false flag operation intended to discredit those that are working hard at keeping those poor illegal immigrant kidnappers and rapist out of our country.
I guess you can add "stupid turtles" to the list with women's tennis..
Adding.. waaayy too many people in SUFA have their own submarines and/or pirate ships for my comfort. I am never doing in the ocean again.
I am a land guy myself. I have an invincible van.
Are you a member of the A-Team?
Yes, I am Murdock, the crazy one. 🙂 And Mr. T is my blood brother.
But, he could not figure out how to fire the damn thing and rammed the rig….bent up the nose and diving planes….SIGH…..what is a guy to do when he cannot loan out a simple nuclear submarine…..not to mention that DPM and THOR were running escort….WHEN you THOUGHT he was in the cage….recommend stronger security for your basement and your fridge. Good grog tho…..
T-Ray says:
I will respond more to this tonight after work. The report I read said it definitely was not sabotage but a large gas (vapor) leak that settled into low areas on the platform since the vapors were heavier than air. Once this occurs, a small spark can ignite the whole thing. Great efforts are made to make sure that all electrical components on platforms are intrinsically safe (do not have enough energy to cause a spark) or are explosion proof (can contain an explosion without igniting anything outside its enclosure). There are strict standards for these devices. Regardless, the response by government has been pathetic and shows a gross lack of readiness. Our CA gubinator has no flipped on offshore drilling not that it would happen in CA anyway.
T=Ray
Thanks for the info. Yours is the first thing I have seen that explains what might of actually happened.
I did find some stuff today that the drilling company who owned and operated the platform had been given a SAFETY award by the Govt regulatory agency that inspects the rigs. It seems the company had a "spotless" record during these inspections. That's right. Not a single violation.
What I read was a transcript of the Mark Levin show where he interviewed a caller claiming to be a survivor of the fire. Levin claimed to have confirmed his identity but I have no way to confirm it. The link is here:
http://www.marklevinshow.com/article.asp?id=1790422
I found another link by a lawyer for one of the families that claims the caller could have been an oil company shill. Here is that link:
http://www.antemedius.com/content/interview-deepwater-horizon-explosion-survivor-explains-cause-accident-what-happened-11-miss
Obviously I do not know the truth. Until a full investigation is conducted and all survivors are publically interviewed will we have some idea of what happened. Oil rigs, refineries, chem plants are all inherently dangerous places to work. Especially oil rigs on the ocean as you can not run very far when things go wrong. While negligence and cutting corners do occur, many of the accidents in these plants are simply accidents. A crane can swing a pipe in the wrong direction of drop it (Maration Texas City HF spill.) Unusually cold weather can shrink pipes causing flanged joints to open (Chrismas eve '91 Exxon Baton Rouge). The probability of some sort of acccident on deck is higher than external sabotage. It is unlikely to be sabotage by someone working on board unless they had a death wish as again, there is no truly safe place hide.
From what I see so far, the response by our government has been pathetic. The response by politicians is even worse but fully expected. I would say the Chinese and Russians have a clear shot at extracting the Gulf oil now without competition from us.
http://www.pddnet.com/news-ap-ap-impact-rule-change-helped-bp-on-gulf-project-050510/
A rule change two years ago by the federal agency that regulates offshore oil rigs allowed BP to avoid filing a plan specifically for handling a major spill from an uncontrolled blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project — exactly the kind of disaster now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil rig operators generally are required to submit a detailed "blowout scenario." But the federal Minerals Management Service issued a notice in 2008 that exempted some drilling projects in the Gulf under certain conditions.
BP met those conditions, according to MMS, and as a result, the oil company had no plan written specifically for the Deepwater Horizon project, an Associated Press review of government and industry documents found.
In a series of interviews, BP spokesman William Salvin insisted the company was nevertheless prepared to handle a blowout at that project because it had a detailed, 582-page regional plan for dealing with a catastrophic spill anywhere in the central Gulf.
"We have a plan that has sufficient detail in it to deal with a blowout," Salvin said.
Still, the lack of a specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon project raises questions about whether the company could have been better prepared to deal with the oil leak, which is still spewing out of control at a rate estimated at more than 200,000 gallons a day.
MMS, which is part of the Interior Department, has long been criticized as too cozy with the industry it regulates.
Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs, Miss., environmental lawyer, said the lack of a blowout scenario "is kind of an outrageous omission, because you're drilling in extremely deep waters, where by definition you're looking for very large reservoirs to justify the cost."
"If the MMS was allowing companies to drill in this ultra-deep situation without a blowout scenario, then it seems clear they weren't doing the job they were tasked with," he said.
The disaster was set in motion when the offshore platform 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico exploded April 20 and sank days later in 5,000 feet of water. Eleven workers were killed in the accident.
AP pressed MMS for an explanation of why the rules were changed, but no official would speak on the record. However, one MMS official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss the matter said the rules were changed because some elements were impractical for some deepwater drilling projects in the Gulf.
But Wiygul said: "The MMS can't change the law just by telling people that they don't have to comply with it. I think it really indicates that somebody at MMS was asleep at the switch on this."
Moreover, an AP review of BP's regional oil-spill plan found that it failed to specifically address all of the points required by the MMS in a blowout scenario.
The blowout scenario rules, contained in the Code of Federal Regulations, require rig operators to estimate how much oil could flow from the well per day and the total amount that could leak from a single incident.
They also require such things as an explanation of how a spill would be stopped, the methods that would be used, how long it would take to stop the leak, how long it would take to drill a relief well, and the potential for a well to stop leaking on its own.
The MMS rule change, made in April 2008, says that Gulf rig operators are required to file a blowout scenario only if one of five conditions applies.
For example, an operator must provide a blowout scenario when it proposes to install a "surface facility" in water deeper than 1,312 feet. While Deepwater Horizon was operating almost 5,000 feet below the surface, Salvin said the project did not meet the definition of a surface facility. The MMS official agreed.
"The production platform is what's considered a surface facility," Salvin said. "This was an exploratory well, not a production well."
Brendan Cummings, a Joshua Tree, Calif.-based lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the exploration plan submitted by BP for Deepwater Horizon failed to adequately analyze the project's oil spill risks. Cummings has filed a notice of intent to sue the government over another offshore drilling operation, by Royal Dutch Shell in Alaska.
"The technology used on the now-sunken Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf was supposed to be the most advanced in the world, including various mechanisms to prevent or cap a blowout," Cummings wrote in the filing. "None of these mechanisms worked, and the state-of-the-art technology completely failed to stop the spill."
In its 2009 exploration plan, BP strongly discounted the possibility of a catastrophic accident. Similary, Shell's environmental impact analysis for its Beaufort Sea drilling plan asserts that the possibility of a "large liquid hydrocarbon spill … is regarded as too remote and speculative to be considered a reasonably foreseeable impacting event."
The Deepwater Horizon disaster is not the first time MMS has been criticized as too close to the oil industry.
In 2008, the Interior Department took disciplinary action against eight MMS employees who accepted lavish gifts, partied and — in some cases — had sex with employees from the energy companies they regulated. An investigation cited a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" involving employees in the agency's Denver office.
MMS workers were given upgraded ethics training.
Sorry USW – I could not leave this one alone….
"We should demand that oil companies operate both in a more safe way and a more responsible way."
How do you propose to do so? More regulation? Should I stop by the local gas station on my way home with a bullhorn?
Do tell!
"I am not yet convinced that this was an accident. I find the fact that it happened on Earth Day and that it happened at the least opportune time (just weeks after a Dem President offered support for offshore drilling) to be suspicious. I would lean towards this being an act of sabotage of some sort. From either a well funded environmental group or another nation that wants to impact our policies. Time will tell, I suppose."
= Emotional reaction
You are correct Ray, it was an emotional reaction. I apologize for my part in it. That is why I usually shy away from this stuff, it just happens to be a really nasty coincidence, so it is easy to at least wonder about this stuff. Not that the report on the cause entirely clears it of the potential for sabatoge, but more evidence would be needed for an accusation.
Who I can accuse is washington for using this crisis to destroy decent energy policy.
You mean regulations like these-that never seem to be followed-I can't help but wonder if we need new regs. or if maybe, just maybe we need to follow the ones we already have-and it probably wouldn't hurt to actually use the emergency plans that I'm sure we spend a fortune on developing.
U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study
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By Juliet Eilperin
The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.
The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions — show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
Rethinking the rules
Now, environmentalists and some key senators are calling for a reassessment of safety requirements for offshore drilling.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who has supported offshore oil drilling in the past, said, "I suspect you're going to see an entirely different regime once people have a chance to sit back and take a look at how do we anticipate and clean up these potential environmental consequences" from drilling.
BP spokesman Toby Odone said the company's appeal for NEPA waivers in the past "was based on the spill and incident-response history in the Gulf of Mexico." Once the various investigations of the new spill have been completed, he added, "the causes of this incident can be applied to determine any changes in the regulatory regime that are required to protect the environment."
"I'm of the opinion that boosterism breeds complacency and complacency breeds disaster," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) on Tuesday. "That, in my opinion, is what happened."
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said it is important to learn the cause of the accident before pursuing a major policy change. "While the conversation has shifted, the energy reality has not," Gerard said. "The American economy still relies on oil and gas."
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 — including a specific evaluation of BP's Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon — in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.
In one assessment, the agency estimated that "a large oil spill" from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a "deepwater spill," occurring "offshore of the inner Continental shelf," would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.
"They never did an analysis that took into account what turns out to be the very real possibility of a serious spill," said Holly Doremus, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who has reviewed the documents.
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The MMS mandates that companies drilling in some areas identify under NEPA what could reduce a project's environmental impact. But Interior Department spokesman Matt Lee-Ashley said the service grants between 250 and 400 waivers a year for Gulf of Mexico projects. He added that Interior has now established the "first ever" board to examine safety procedures for offshore drilling. It will report back within 30 days on BP's oil spill and will conduct "a broader review of safety issues," Lee-Ashley said.
BP's exploration plan for Lease 206, which calls the prospect of an oil spill "unlikely," stated that "no mitigation measures other than those required by regulation and BP policy will be employed to avoid, diminish or eliminate potential impacts on environmental resources."
While the plan included a 13-page environmental impact analysis, it minimized the prospect of any serious damage associated with a spill, saying there would be only "sub-lethal" effects on fish and marine mammals, and "birds could become oiled. However it is unlikely that an accidental oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver "put BP entirely in control" of the way it conducted its drilling.
Agency a 'rubber stamp'
"The agency's oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum's self-serving drilling plans," Suckling said.
BP has lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality — which provides NEPA guidance for all federal agencies– to provide categorical exemptions more often. In an April 9 letter, BP America's senior federal affairs director, Margaret D. Laney, wrote to the council that such exemptions should be used in situations where environmental damage is likely to be "minimal or non-existent." An expansion in these waivers would help "avoid unnecessary paperwork and time delays," she added.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were talking Tuesday about curtailing offshore oil exploration rather than making it easier. In addition to traditional foes of offshore drilling such as Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and centrists such as Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said they are taking a second look at such methods.
"It's time to push the pause button," Baucus told reporters.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html?wprss=rss_politics
I must respond to this one.
Who ever is putting forth the idea that the use of a Categorical Exclusion is the cause in anyway for the accident or the failure to contain the oil or the response afterward are full of shit.
The type of documentation used has nothing to do with the type of analysis of risk and potential damage nor of the safety measures taken.
Given the past records it seems that a Categorical Exclusion was justified. The next step would have been an Environmental Assessment. But an Environmental Impact Statement should not have been needed nor would it have changed anything.
I do find it strange, however, that companies can drill for oil in the ocean with a C.E. but the USFS or the BLM, another Dept of Int. agency, must prepare an E.I.S. to harvest a few hundred acres of dead trees killed by fire or insects.
One more point of order for the order…………Max Baucus is NOT a freaking centrist. He is as left as they get. He just can't show his full nature and expect to get re-elected. He is a supporter of the Clean Water Act amendments that give the Federal govt full control over all waterways.
Steam has now been blown off.
Thanks for your patience.
He HE-Glad you feel better-but the point is we have all these regulations and no one follows them, they just want to continue to make more and more and more.
V.H.
Actually in the case of a C.E. or using an E.I.S., they DID follow the regulations.
A Categorical Exclusion is just one of the available methods for meeting the NEPA requirements.
You are correct though in that what is going on with this article is an attempt to MAKE IT LOOK LIKE they avoided a regulation due to their LOBBYING POWER and thus to justify more stringent regulations.
I am hanging my head in shame for being so gullible 🙂 If they had broken the rules it would still have been the governments fault, it's their responsibility to see to it that the regulations are followed.
YES. Just as if there should have been an EIS done then it was the govt agency that made that decision, not the oil company. In fact, the NEPA regulations apply to government agencies, not to the private sector.
Do not hang your head in shame. The Greens and others have been confusing the public about the NEPA rules for decades. If you do not understand them you are simply one of millions on this issue.
Sorry – I need to throw the bullshit flag for a 15 yard penalty here……
I read yesterday how G.A. was absolutely raked for not looking at facts, for playing to emotion and rhetoric and yakkitty yak yak yak……
And lo and behold today we have folks insinuating/suspecting/postulating that the BP Oil and maybe even the West Virgina mine "accident" were the result of enviro-whacko/terrorists/Obama-plants?
Can I get a big WTF?
And can we quit replaying more and more Rush-lingo?
Actually Ray, that's what we are doing….looking at the facts. Right now, they are sketchy at best and it makes you wonder. Too early to tell anything but very suspicious in many ways.
As BF said last week when we discussed this same thing:
Black Flag said
Yes, it is very coincidental.
However, be careful of creating conspiracies where simple incompetence explains the circumstance.
If the incompetence begins to require complexity to achieve the circumstances, that's when the 'hair on the back of the neck' should stand up.
I don't see anything but simple incompetence in this matter.
I can see that the conspiracy angle has gotten a lot more play than I thought that it would. I am not set on any idea that this was done on purpose. But I don't see the harm in simply saying that I find it suspicious. It is dangerous in some ways to speculate that this was an intentional act. It is just as dangerous to simply assume that it was not. Every angle should be looked at. You don't find the circumstances and timing of this disaster odd?
According to the Precautionary Principle, if there is even the slightest possibility that it was intentional, we must treat it as if it WERE intentional, no?
This seems suspicious to me also. Just like the $550 Billion coming out of the markets on 17 Sept 2008, which just so happened to be five weeks before a close election. Even more suspicious is the lack of investigative journalism/curiosity on the matter. Couple that with R. Emmanual's comment of not letting a crisis go to waste, and well……Now, I wonder, if a person with an R after their name won the election, would there still be such silence over the incident? For the record, if circumstances were the same except for the people benefiting from these crisises had Rs after their names instead of Ds, I'd be equally suspicious.
USW – It looks like a duck. It has feathers, a beak, and webbed feet.
Ray – But so do penguins and geese. You're nuts to just asssume it is a duck.
USW – It walks like a duck too. See the waddling?
Ray – Again, so do penguins and geese. Waddling is common for many species of bird. It could be anything.
USW – It even sounds like a duck. Listen and you will hear it go "quack quack"
Animal in question – AFLAC!
Ray – That didn't sound like a quack. I couldn't quite make it out, but it definately wasn't a quack. I don't think it's a duck.
USW – It's a duck Ray. So it didn't exactly quack, but it sure sounded like a duck anyway.
Ray – You just want it to be a duck so you're using an emotional appeal to try to convince me.
USW – WHAT! What emotional appeal? I am just trying to anylize the situation logically! Would you not agree that there is sufficient evidence to at least suspect it is a duck? I think it's worth investigating.
Ray – See, there you are raising your voice. You're getting emotional.
USW – But I didn't raise my voice until you accused me of being emotional. I find your claim rediculous. Is it not reasonable that I raised my voice?
Ray – Rediculous claims? How can they be rediculous if you are proving me right by raising your voice? And you're the one making rediculous claims. You're assuming it is a duck with no real concrete evidence.
USW – Oh, c'mon Ray. I'm not assuming anything. I am simply trying to take the evidence presented and analyze it in order to determine what it actually is. It looks, walks and sounds like a duck. I think it's reasonable theory.
Ray – There ya go again with another wild theory. And it didn't quack like a duck. It did something else. Your logic is faulty. There simply isn't adequate evidence to say either way.
USW – Look at it Ray. It looks just like a duck. It acts like a duck, and IMHO, it sounds like a duck too.
Ray – We already went through this, and there are lots of birds that look and act like a duck. How do you know it's not something else?
USW – How do you know it's not a duck?
Ray – Ducks quack, and it doesn't. Listen to it.
USW – Okay, so it doesn't quack. It still sounds like a duck though. Combined with all the other evidence, it's perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of it being a duck. That's all I'm saying.
Ray – What evidence? All you have managed to convince me of, is that it is some type of bird. Without a DNA sample, it is a futile argument.
USW – Be realistic Ray. If we try and get a DNA sample, It'll just fly away. And who are we to violate his personal freedoms by forcing him to give up his DNA? He has a natural right to protection of his property. Maybe we should wait till it loses a feather or poops.
Ray – I say we just lure it with free food and housing, then pluck a feather when it's close enough.
USW – But we can't violate his personal liberties. That is HIS feather. We don't have the right. Just wait till he poops. Surely he doesn't want to save it. I think it's a worthy sacrifice if it means protecting freedom and liberty.
Ray – Okay, sure. But you better get to it because he's pooping right now.
(later after te DNA test)
USW – See Ray, I told you it was a duck.
Ray – I know. I never said it wasn't. I was merely trying to make the point that we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Besides, It didn't really sound like a duck to me.
Matt – Ray is right, It sure doesn't sound like a duck. His speech is kinda odd.
BF – It's the government's fault.
Matt – I think we should enrole him in a taxpayer funded speech therapy rehabilitation program. We can keep him focused by restricting him to campus property. We could motivate him by regulating the amount of corn kernals he is given. The more he tries and the better he learns to quack, the more corn he gets.
BF – You cannot justify evil action in the name of rehabilitation.
Matt – It isn't evil. We have a social obligation to help him learn to quack so he can become a better duck. Is it fair that the other ducks can quack and he can't
USW – Maybe he doesn't want to quack. Who are we to suggest that we know what's best for him. What about his freedom to choose?
BF – Matt, The duck is non-violent. By initiating violence against the non-violent, you are doing evil. Are you willing to submit yourself to the same coercion and violence? More kernals for learning to quack?
Matt – But, it isn't violence if he complies.
BF – That is irrelevent. By forcing him to attend therapy you are still initiating violence on the non-violent through coercion. Which is an act of evil. Evil statists!
BL – It's all phuqd up god damn bullshit! It's just a duck. Who gives a shit whether he quacks or not. It's not our responsibility.
G-man – I'm suspicious of it. It doesn't quack because it's not a duck. It's a NWO agent in a duck suit. Did you hear him when he tried to quack? I could have sworn I heard him say "AFLAC".
Cyndi – AFLAC? Isn't that an insurance company? Maybe he is a lobbyist for the insurance agency. And where's it's birth certificate? Is it even eligable to recieve therapy?
Anita – Can we get him high?
BL – Hell yeah! Great idea Anita! 420!
G.A. Rowe – All drugs are extremely evil. If you give him pot all hell will break lose and the duck population will become extinct. Satan will rise up and aliens will invade the planet. A meteor will hit and we will all die. Trust me on this,…I know because I once quite smoking cigarettes.
D13 – Just don't do it around me Anita. I don't have a problem with it. It's just illegal. Wrong or right, It's the law.
Duck – AFLAC!
Yeah, where's that damn birth certificate!
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
:lol 😆
I couldn't resist taking a little time to make fun a few of us(myself included of course).
Did you happen to catch the Youtube video that I posted a couple of weeks ago where Michelle Obama called Kenya "Dear Reader's" home country?
I thought of you when posting it.
The more I see, the less doubt I have that it is true.
You thought of sweet, little ol' innocent me?? Aww, shucks….. 🙂
Yeah, I saw it. I spent almost an hour downloading it, but I managed to get it. I watched it several times, too. I tried to get my O-worshiping boyfriend to watch it but he refused. I find it hard to believe wifey doesn't know where her hubby was born. Sheesh. You'd think more people would seriously begin to question.
Cyndi – "You thought of sweet, little ol' innocent me?? Aww, shucks….."
Well of course I did.
In fact, when I put the video title and a little information above vids that I post, It is primarily for your benefit as I know you sometimes have a little trouble downloading. I put it there so you can find it outside of SUFA if need be.
Cyndi, I don't alway reply to your comments, but know that I agree with most of the things you say in here.
I always appreciate your perspective.
You are the Anti-sheeple.
Okay, I'm gonna tip a cool one in your honor this weekend. And thanks for letting me know you appreciate my perspective. Some folks certainly let me know when they don't, and I'm not just talking SUFA here, either 😉
Hugz to you, BL.
I FEEL honored.
Thanx cyndi.
Hugz back at ya.
Cyndi – "I find it hard to believe wifey doesn't know where her hubby was born."
That's precisely why I consider that video to be pretty damning evidence(unless it's doctored), athough it doesn't PROVE anything.
Damn right she knows. And in that video, she is speaking very clearly and slow enough to eliminate the possibility of any confusion.
She didn't mis-state it. She slipped up and spilled the beans.
Cyndi – "You'd think more people would seriously begin to question."
You'd think people would question a lot of things.
Sigh—-
Okay, now you're tied with G-Man for giving me warm fuzzies!
Such nice men, so far away…..**sigh**
Eat yer heart out G.
I'll fight ya for her.
JAC – I don't care if its a duck or not. Its an animal and does not have human rights. So off with its head and roast it for dinner.
ROFL!
ROASTED DUCK – YUM!
Sorry I didn't make fun of you too, JAC.
I suppose I could have kept going and included everyone, but I would be here for quite a while longer.
No need for apology. I didn't feel left out. And I thought it was funny as hell, and pretty darn accurate.
I just couldn't resist butting in. 🙂
Hope all has been well with you.
All has been well lately. Busy, but well. Hope you're doing just as good(or better).
I'm glad you butted in. I certainly got a laugh out of it. Thanx.
Oh, I love it! Thanks for the humor~
I'm happy to bring a smile or laugh to you.
I'm also relieved my goofing off was received as humor as intended.
I am glad that I afford you so much amusement.
Now put out that joint and get up against the wall . . . .
I'm not sure how to interpret that.
I'd like to think you're kidding around as you can appreciate my odd sense of humor.
If not, don't be offended. I'm just goofing off.
Try not to take me TOO seriously. I certainly don't.
BTW, Unfortunately, I happen to be out of pot. I think I still have a roach in the ashtray though. Thanks for reminding me.
OK, OK BL, Calm Down… I'll share..Meet me out behind the shed 🙂
I too have a warped sense of humor.
Even though I know that literally everyone who hangs out here regularly does not share my opinion about narcotics, I still understand why you don't. I do not take your disagreement personally, even though your attitude sometimes gets my dander up. I understand that none of you have been where I have been or seen what I have seen, and I pray that you never do.
P.S. Anita . . . I know where that shed is 😉
Dangit GA, Well then just let it be legal for us then.. Reminds me of my dad seeing it in my home one day years ago (which at the time I rented from him) He left me a note saying "this breaks my heart". I'd have rather heard him say "get the hell outta my house dammit" 🙂
G. A. Rowe,
I do know what drug abuse does to people – I lived on the streets for awhile.
But they are not you
To justify beating OTHER PEOPLE for THEIR choices about THEMSELVES just because YOU DO NOT LIKE THEIR CHOICE is evil.
G.A. Rowe,
Response below – (#29)
There are a lot of people with stakes on CapNTrade and the need for it to get through Congress. Glenn Beck does a nice job of filling in some of the names during a show last week:
http://watchglennbeck.com/video/2010/April/Glenn-Beck-Show-April-29-2010-Crime-Inc/
NBC News Host 'Frustrated' Times Square Bomber Is Muslim
MSNBC host Contessa Brewer appeared on the liberal Stephanie Miller radio show on Tuesday and lamented the fact that the person arrested for the attempted Times Square bombing is a Pakistani American. She complained, "I get frustrated…There was part of me that was hoping this was not going to be anybody with ties to any kind of Islamic country."
Brewer continued, "…There are a lot of people who want to use this terrorist intent to justify writing off people who believe in a certain way or come from certain countries or whose skin color is a certain way. I mean they use it as justification for really outdated bigotry."
The News live host didn't explain which ethnicity or religion she had been hoping the bomber would have been affiliated with. She did defensively mention members of a Michigan militia group arrested in March and asserted that they were "from far different backgrounds then what this guy is coming from."
Attempting to understand the mind set of Faisal Shahzad, Brewer speculated, "Were there failed family ties? Did he have a strong community network here in the United States? Did he feel isolated?" She opined that these types of terrorists are "guys who are, I don't know, isolated in some ways from their families."
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.thefoxnation.com/contessa-brewer/2010/05/04/nbc-news-host-frustrated-times-square-bomber-muslim
What can I tell you Contessa? No matter how much you want the major threat to be from a radical christian group, the fact remains that the greatest threat to Americans in terms of terrorist activity comes from people who are rooted in fundamentalist muslim sects.
I know that those who are very far to the left, which anyone on MSNBC generally qualifies, are desperate to have it proven that muslims are not a threat to Americans. Believe me, I get the whole "religion of peace" thing, and I don't fall into the 'all muslims are bad' trap. But the fact remains that today's terrorists overwhelmingly come to us from the muslim faith. And this apparently just kills the far left. So much so that they immediately fall into their very favorite tactic, screaming bigotry, a nice way of saying racist. No one on the right advocates that all muslims are bad, or that we have treat muslims in a bad way.
But I refuse to fall into the realm of stupid the way that the far left does. They are so eager to call everything bigotry and racism that they are absolutely unable to realize the truth of the matter. The truth is that the people perpetrating the vast majority of terrorist attacks against Western targets….. are muslims. Deal with it, far left. I know you don't like it. I know you want it to be not true. But it is.
And then she goes on to lament that people who perpetrate these types of crimes are simply misunderstood souls who didn't have a good mommy and daddy relationships growing up. They feel isolated in their new community and it causes them to act out. Bullshit. This man came to this country with the intent of doing harm. It isn't a lack of parental relationships that is causing this madness in terror suspects. It is a fundamentalist version of the muslim faith and a severe hatred for all that we represent in the USA. The longer idiots like Contessa Brewer continue to falsely identify the underlying causes of these actions and spout their lame-brained ideas on national television, the harder it becomes for Americans to accept the reality that stands in defiance of her ignorance.
Like it or not, folks, we are in a battle with the fundamentalist muslims. They hate us, and we hate them right back. They are going to take whatever shots they can at hurting us, and we will do the same, albeit more effectively. Until the left realizes this, they are doomed to be the next victims when a bomb blows up a public transportation vehicle or levels a city block.
Remember this readers: The big cities are overwhelmingly liberal in their demographics. The far left populates New York City more than any other city in America. Conservatives tend to congregate out in the midwest and the southeast. The terrorists seem to only be going after New York and DC. Perhaps they are doing us all a very big favor. I don't want to see ANY Americans die from a terrorist attack. But if we are forced to sacrifice some lives for the greater good…. Can we nominate Congress?
I hate to see it happen but IF a liberal packed city gets seriously nailed, again, by islamic extremists, it just might be the much needed kick in the ass from reality. Maybe then they'll understand what we're dealing with. Then again, maybe not.
G-Man says:
Three interesting failed attempts, one guy tries to blow his shoe up, one tries to blow his family kewels up, and now a failed bomb in NY. Makes one wonder how the terrorist types could have managed something so complex as 9/11.
G!
Sup G,
You touched on a re-occuring thought I've been having. I have taken note of the same inconsistency.
WTC 1,2, & 7 were brought down via controlled demolition which is indicative that 9/11 was done by experts. Presumably/allegedly Al-Queda.
If Al Queda is expert and powerful enough to pull off 9/11 and truly mean us harm, then why are they messing around with bullshit made with M-80's?
Do they mean us no harm, are they lame, or are the failed attempts not affilliated with Al-Queda?
If they pulled off 9/11 and mean us harm, then the failed attempts are lone wolves. Al-Queda would have succeeded.
If they are not lone wolves, then Al-Queda is lame and could not have pulled off 9/11.
So which is it? Are they lone wolves or Al-Queda?
What are we being lied to about? Is the lie about Al-Queda's capabilities, Terrorist affiliations, Or who did 9/11?
Of course there is another possibility…
Failed attempts are not enough to hurt anyone but just enough to keep people fearful.
Failed attempts are just enough to demonstrate the need for protection.
Would there still be the same support for "The War On Terror" if nothing else had happened since 9/11?
Not that I am necessarily suggesting the failed attempts are false flag operations, but, like you, I am damn sure paying attention.
Common Man says:
Guys/Gals;
Please don't even suggest that 'we' might benefit from "any" American dying to further promote the 'greater good'; it is a terrible thing. Remember we have some very good people chatting on this site that live in NY and DC. Despite the fact that some of their ideas are a bit warped I would not wish them any harm in any way regardless of the alleged benefit.
God knows we have enough American's dying overseas now.
I don't even wish any harm on members of Congress other than they all loose their jobs and are forced to make ends meet like the rest of us.
Nothing can be gained by the sacrificing of innocent people (liberals, conservatives or other)
I would suggest that our country might benefit by promoting some racial profiling as it might keep some or all of these shitbags out of our country. Maybe if we started closing the borders to people from certain countries we could eliminate a great many threats. Maybe we should bring the troops home, leave the Middle East alone and promote a position of "Stay home, we don't want you." Hell it might reduce or eliminate a great many threats.
I know, I sound like a racist bastard, OK I'm a racist bastard, better that than a dead liberal, conservative or progressive.
I guess I just don't understand the mentality displayed by the liberals who promote such moronic rhetoric that these people are mis-understood, or supressed or have bad mommies and daddies. The bottom line is that they don't like us, so why do we promote the idea of inviting them in to our home so that they can learn to appreciate us.
I have never been one to pander to individuals that have openly displayed hate for me; I just ignore them. From an individual level we would never think about inviting someone that openly claimed to hate us into our own house, so why are we doing so as a country.
Maybe leaving them to their own ways in their own country will eventually help to change their point of view, but keeping them at arms length in the mean time will certainly reduce the chances of violence.
I suggest a "do-over". Anyone with a suspicious background not born in the US go home and re-apply for the right to enter.
Racist Bastard
Along these lines….some one explain to me why all the references to terrorism, islamic terrorism, terrorists have been taken out of the records and briefings of the Obama administration and there were to be no referencees because it was considered inflammatory…that there are no terrorist attacks but they are "man made disasters" or some such description……and now, all of a sudden the administration is claiming terrorist now that Obama is in charge and wants to appear strong in an election year? I only know two ways to spell Hypocrisy…..(Ijust did) and the new way….Obama administration.
I was willing to try to cut some slack to this administration and at least support it in some things….now I see NOTHING good coming from it and this administration has now lost all credibility with me…..not that they give a shit.
And this new hype of now blaming BUSH for this new terrorist try? Give me a break. There is no credibility left. None. If anyone blames Bush for this one….they are just as guilty of hypocrisy as Obama is. This is terrible.
When are we, as a people, going to recognize that there is Islamic Terrorism and the United States is not repsonsible for it and there is nothing that we can do as a country to stop it except fight it. I am being proven right everyday.
Gotta go fly…..be back tonight.
Contessa Brewer – "Were there failed family ties? Did he have a strong community network here in the United States? Did he feel isolated?""
BL – Who gives a shit about his family life. He tried to blow people up(.)<—Period
USW – "And then she goes on to lament that people who perpetrate these types of crimes are simply misunderstood souls who didn't have a good mommy and daddy relationships growing up. They feel isolated in their new community and it causes them to act out. Bullshit."
BL – Bullshit indeed. She is trying to deflect blame on behalf of a terrorist. What an idiot.
I didn't have the greatest upbringing either. I was independent of both parents by around age 12 or 13. You could say that I "didn't have a good mommy and daddy relationships growing up". Being semi-nomadic and having done a bit of travel, I have often been isolated in a new town. And I am probably just as disgusted with our government as he is…
…BUT YOU DON"T SEE ME TRYING TO BLOW PEOPLE UP IN TIMES SQUARE!
Ms. Brewer is obviously rationalizing her belief system, the rhetoric of the lame stream liberal media, the left/right paradigm, and how it relates to the recent terrorist plot. She's filling in the gaps with a BS explanation.
Brewer's idealism – Liberalism = good – Racism and bigotry = bad
Liberal media = Conservatives are ignorant racist
Conservatives – Radical Muslims are out to get us
Situation = Radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorist tries to blow people up
Brewer's thought process – I am a liberal and I don't approve of racism and bigotry. I side with other liberals and watch liberal media. The liberal media says that conservatives are ignorant bigots. Conservatives consider the pattern of Islamic terrorist attacks and anti-American rhetoric and say that we have a problem with Islamic terorists because Islam has a problem with us. But Conservatives are ignorant bigots, I know because Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman said so. The conservatives make alot of sense, But if I side with them, I side with bigotry, and I'm not a bigot. Conservatives cannot possibly be correct in their assessment because that would make me a bigot. It MUST BE something else that motivated the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist. Ummm…Ummm…I KNOW! It's because he didn't have a good relationship with his parents, family and community. It's his parent's fault. The Islamic fundamentalist terrorist that tried to kill people in Times Square is the victim.
Ms. Brewer is stuck so deep in the left/right paradigm and her own ignorance that she probably has no idea how internally conflicted she is.
Bahahahahaahahahaaaah!
USW – "I don't want to see ANY Americans die from a terrorist attack. But if we are forced to sacrifice some lives for the greater good…. Can we nominate Congress?"
BL – Oh, now that's funny. A little sick in a cynical kinda way, but very funny. I like it.
Its like Chris Rock's take on the "trenchcoat mafia", the kids that attacked their school. They were whining because they had no friends. Chris said, "You didn't have any friends? There were six of the M%$&^^&*rs. I didn't have six friends in high school, I don't have six friends now!"
A rough life does not excuse violence.
We expect this garbage from NBC, but would hope CNN can do better. Apparently not. It's the pressure of the foreclosure…you know…that would make this poor man do this….
CNN: 'Pressure' of Foreclosure Contributing Factor to NYC Terror Plot?
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2010/05/04/cnn-pressure-foreclosure-contributing-factor-nyc-terror-plot#ixzz0n4MrEV3d
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2010/05/04/cnn-pressure-foreclosure-contributing-factor-nyc-terror-plot
Well, well, well, I have been hearing for years that Bush's tax cuts were only for the rich. But per this article out of 2.2 Trillion only $678 Billion went to anyone making over $250,000. They are suddenly hesitant about canceling those evil for the rich tax cuts because it would be breaking Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class.
"'Bush-ama' tax cuts: The $2.2 trillion decision
bushama1.gi.top.jpg By Jeanne Sahadi, senior writerMay 4, 2010: 12:10 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — They're often called the "Bush" tax cuts. But at this point they might as well be called the Bush-ama tax cuts.
That's because President Obama has embraced the tax relief measures introduced in 2001 and 2003, proposing they be extended indefinitely for most Americans. If lawmakers do nothing, the measures expire Dec. 31.
The tax cuts lowered income and investment tax rates, boosted the child credit, reduced the estate tax, and narrowed inequalities affecting married taxpayers.
Another reason for the new Bush-ama moniker: Like President Bush, President Obama has not called on Congress to pay for the cost of the tax cuts. In fact, the extension of the cuts is exempt from the new "pay-go" rules that Obama signed into law recently.
Extending the tax cuts for most Americans will increase the federal deficit by an estimated $2.2 trillion over 10 years.
Deficit hawks are uber-frustrated.
"Why do you spend over $2 trillion in your budget — the most you spend on any single policy item — on your predecessor's tax policy, which you repeatedly explain is to blame for the deterioration and unsustainability of our nation's fiscal outlook?" Diane Rogers, chief economist for the Concord Coalition, wrote in her blog Economistmom.com.
In a nod to deficit reduction, Obama did propose that lawmakers let the tax cuts expire for high-income households, couples making more than $250,000. Doing so would reduce the deficit by $678 billion from where it would be if the cuts were extended for everyone.
But recently, while he didn't say so explicitly, Obama seemed open to rethinking his campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle-class. In an interview last month, he said he would weigh recommendations from the bipartisan fiscal commission he created to suggest ways to put the U.S. fiscal house in order.
"We should be able to solve this problem without putting a burden on middle class families," he told CNBC. "Having said that, I'm also going to wait for the fiscal commission to provide me [with] their best recommendations. … At a certain point, what we've got to do is match up money going out and money coming in."
The next 7 months
The commission won't report its recommendations until Dec. 1. In the meantime, it's not clear when Congress will take up the issue of the 2001/2003 tax cuts. One theory is that they'll vote to extend them before their August recess to score political points before the midterm elections in November.
"It would look ugly to go home and campaign for five weeks without having done something for the middle class," said Clint Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte Tax LLC.
On the other hand, the legislative agenda is already fairly packed.
Anne Mathias, director of research at Concept Capital's Washington Research Group, is in the camp that believes Congress may not address the issue until December.
It's also not clear yet how long lawmakers might opt to extend the tax cuts. There had been a push by both parties to make them permanent. But some believe extending them for a year or two may be the smartest move given current political and economic constraints.
0:00 /6:53'IOUSA Solutions': Deficit explosion
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, proposes that lawmakers extend the tax cuts to the end of 2012, and then use the prospect of making them permanent as a "sweetener" to draw votes for a serious deficit-reduction deal. No deal, no tax cuts.
"This would turn the expiration of the tax cuts at the end of 2012 into a realistic action-forcing hammer … . Otherwise, the task of stabilizing the debt goes from really hard to nearly impossible," MacGuineas wrote in a blog post.
No matter how long the tax cuts are extended, no one should bank on low rates forever, Stretch cautioned. The country's long-term fiscal condition is too precarious for that.
"No matter what happens, Americans' taxes are going up one way or another. The middle class is going to have to be called on to help reduce the deficit. There's not enough fiscal capacity if we just tax the top 3%," Stretch said. "
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/04/pf/taxes/bush_obama_tax_cuts/index.htm?cnn=yes&hpt=Sbin
This is a test:
The government is your friend. You can trust the government. It is highly competent and always operates in your best interests.
The A-Team will rescue you from your ignorance! *van bursts through a reinforced concrete wall*
But- but- the wall was reinforced…
I will not bite – I don't think you believe that load of garbage. 🙂
Oh, you'll bite.. They all do sooner or later. I just have to play with the line a little bit..
We would all be much better off if we just had a little more government.
Now that I believe you mean -so I will bite-I am sputtering. 🙂
Hehe.. easy as shooting fish in a barrel.*
*mythbusters tried this.. it's actually pretty tough unless you count it when you kill the fish by shock wave.
Click….click….
Here, sharkey.. I have this nice tank for you to chew on..
Your tests bore me.
No they don't.
If they did, you would just ignore them.
But you don't.
Ergo, you are being contrarian.
Your big-sounding words attempting to charachterize me as something I am not bore me.
Big words? You want a big word?
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphioparaomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon
I suspect someone in "big government" came up with that word 🙂
It's from Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae. The word itself is an English transliteration of the Greek word λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοκαραβομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοκεφαλλιοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερύγων.
It is the name of "a dish compounded of all kinds of dainties, fish, flesh, fowl, and sauces." It's a fricassée, with at least 16 sweet and sour ingredients.
Greece is getting ugly.
Athens bank blaze kills 3 as Greeks protest cuts
Outraged demonstrators hurl paving stones and Molotov cocktails at police
ATHENS – Three people died when a bank went up in flames Wednesday as tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets to protest harsh spending cuts aimed at saving the country from bankruptcy.
Rioters hurled paving stones and Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with heavy use of tear gas.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou denounced what he called the "murder" of the three bank workers, and vowed that those responsible for the deaths would be found and brought to justice.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36958519/ns/world_news-europe/?GT1=43001
Our future.
I think it may be worse for us, snice we have the race grievance industry in full bloom. My mom just sent me a photo of an anti-immigration law protestor (non-white) with a sign that says "Give us FREE house, job, no taxes, free health care, free food. YOu OWE us America. We will shoot more police in Arizona until we get free."
I will gladly send this photo to anyone who would like to see it. Before I'm accused of 'racism', my mother was born and raised in PERU. She came to the US legally. She even had familiy members deported back in the 50s. She is very active in the anti-illegal movement. She is angry at what she's sees happening in the US. She's beleives La Raza is a racist and dangerous organization. The group even has a government in waiting. She and her family, came legally, followed the laws and became Americans. Why shouldn't this latest group of immigrant be expected to do different? Both of my parents are immigrants, BTW.
Judy Sabatini says:
Hey Cyndi
I've seen that picture and a lot of people think that the bottom of it is cropped on, or somehow super imposed. Either way, I don't like what they said on the bottom of the sign. We don't owe these people anything, not one iota.
My mother's parents came from Poland, did it the legal way, my husbands dad, and both sets of grandparents came from Italy, did it the legal way, and I couldn't agree with you more. What makes these people think they are owed anything and why?
I think the only ones who have a legitimate gripe, are the Native Americans and what the white man did to them. They have reason, and just cause.
MHO anyway.
I agree with you about the Native Americans. Those folks really did get screwed. The Africans who found their way to these shores, were for the most part, captured by their fellow Africans first. So I'd say Africans are at least partially responsible for the slave trade. Jim Crow laws, unfortunately, were the responsiblity of American Whites. I think there's been a lot of progress toward fixing that.
Yes, there has been, but, there are still some who still resent what the white man did to their ancestors. But, you don't really hear about them asking for reparations either.
Maybe I'm just partial because I have Sioux blood in me too. My great, great grandfather married a Sioux woman from the Dakota Nation in the early 1800's.
I just get tired of hearing how this country owes everybody everything and I'm not just talking about people in this country, I'm talking about other countries as well. I'm tire of all this race bit too. Always with the race card being played, doesn't mater if your black, white green or blue, it's getting very tiresome.
Many people feel that they are automatically entitled to your stuff if you have more stuff than they have.
Some bullcrap about "fairness" is usually invoked in some manner. It doesn't matter that you worked your ass off to obtain all of your stuff, and they never lifted a finger (hence the reason why they have no stuff), it simply just isn't FAIR that you have more stuff than they do, so BY RIGHT, some of your stuff must ACTUALLY BELONG TO THEM!
I was married to an Englishman with that attitude. I put up with it for over ten years. When I finally divorced him he didn't get much. Why? Because I got wise to his game and quit killing myself. Like him, I began to do the bare minimum. He bitched about it too. Oh well. Guess what, you reap what you sow.
It's just the gimme, gimme, gimme attitude. My mom and dad worked their butts off for over 30 years to get what they had. Nobody asked for anything from them, but my dad was always there to help with what he could too when and if asked. He didn't have much growing up in during the depression, and neither did my mom, and they were grateful for what they had when they had it. They knew what hard work meant to them.
Sadly, people who are simply given things without having to earn them never seem to have any gratitude. They simply expect the stuff and get angry when they do not get it. However, if somehow they DO get the stuff they demand, they are never thankful for it.
You've got that right! I could be here all day citing examples of that……
Where I come from, we call that "spoiled rotten".
Same with my folks. Maybe that's why we have conservative leanings???
As for your above post. My mother's family has Inca blood mixed in with the European. The Incas suffered greatly under the Spanish, but that was, what, 500-ish years ago? Why do I want to snivel about something no one on earth can change? Isn't it better to focus on things I can control, like my education, work ethic, personal responsibility, choices, etc? I learned a long time ago that no one owes me any free stuff, so I might as well get off my butt and earn it like almost all other humans through out history have had to do. Children of the uber-wealthy seem to be excluded from this. I don't give them much thought because they're a small percentage of the total human population. The overwhelming majority of humans, have to earn their keep somehow.
We may not have very much, but at least we have a roof over our heads, food on the table and I drive a 1995 Chevy Lumina that's paid for, and it's all mine, and I am very grateful for that. We both have worked our butts off to get what we have even though I am out of work right now, but we're managing and don't ask anybody for anything, and I won't. I have been looking for a job now since October, but not going so good, not a lot of places hiring right now, plus with my mother living with us and me taking care of her, kind of hard to go looking, except for online around here. I do what I can when I can if someone is here to stay with my mom. With her Dementia, she cannon be left alone for any amount of time.
I think that's a lot of the trouble too with the youth of today, they expect to have everything handed to them on a silver platter instead of going out there and trying to make something for them themselves. Not all, but a lot anyway for what I can see.
Threaten to take away "free stuff from the government" and I guarantee you will get rioting in the streets.
Greece is just the first example of many to come.
Most governments have made a critical error. They have actively worked to make people more stupid, more lazy, and more dependent on government. Such people will STILL revolt when their "livelyhood" is threatened. When stupid lazy people revolt, they resort to the easiest path of revolution possible, which is mass violence.
Greece is lucky that the bloodbath hasn't really started yet.
The biggest problem is when stupid lazy people revolt, if they WIN, the one thing that they want back is all of the "free" stuff that allowed them to exist comfortably in spite of their stupidity and laziness, so they CANNOT HELP but duplicate the massively failed system which they just revolted against.
Sad, ain't it?
It IS sad, and scary too. You cannot convince these folks that a 'free ride' or lunch doesn't exist. Somebody, somewhere paid for it.
The other day I was at the SEIU website monitoring their plans for our 401ks, IRAs and pensions. One of the commenters said that workers are entitiled to a comfortable life, job, and retirement, and that if employers don't hand it over, well, workers will just take it. Wow. To the credit of other commenters, they pretty well set the guy straight on the matter, but the whole thing makes me wonder how many people are there in the world who feel entitleed to just take whatever they want from others?
TANSTAAFL
Sorry, can you spell that out for me?
TANSTAAFL = There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
Duh……thanks!
reminds me of the movie 'Idiocracy'
YES! Always looking for signs of hope. Here's a great one today. He's not the Rep for my area but getting him out of Washington is a big plus for all.
David Obey won't seek reelection
House Appropriations Committee Chairman will not seek re-election and an announcement of his plans is expected as early as Wednesday.
The Wisconsin Democrat faces tough poll numbers at home, but until Tuesday night his staff had insisted he was running aggressively and had hired campaign staff. But a person close to him confirmed the decision to POLITICO Wednesday and said Obey was preparing to make a statement.
A news conference has been called at 1 p.m., and Obey staff indicated he would announce his plans then.
Elected in 1969, the liberal is a major institutional figure who played a leading role in the anti-war and reform movement of the House in the 1970's. As the Appropriations chairman, he has been a close ally to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who came up through the same panel before moving into the leadership. And his departure follows on the death of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) this winter, a second Pelosi ally and veteran of the powerful committee.
Indeed, the death of Murtha—and a second Obey associate—former Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas— may have influenced the chairman's decision. At 71, he is only about five years younger than his late friends, and given the hard road ahead this election year, "he's bone tired and reached a point in his life where he has to think about how much time he has left."
Obey's frustration with the White House has been no secret either, and his unhappiness helps explain the repeated delays in the House over moving ahead with new funding for the war in Afghanistan. He himself is torn about President Barack Obama's commitment of increased U.S. troops at a time of continued economic troubles at home. And after first setting a Memorial Day deadline, Democrats admit privately that Congress may not complete action on the package until the July Fourth recess.
The combination of his retirement—and Murtha's death—means a major change in the hierarchy of the Appropriations panel itself. And if Democrats retain power, Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.) will be pushed to the forefront after serving until recently as chairman of the Interior and natural resources subcommittee, overseeing one of the smaller of the dozen annual bills.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36812.html#ixzz0n4cxaG2R
We should be very thankful that a lot of these career politicians that were 30 in 1968 are now around 72. Hopefully as they retire/die off, some of their philosophies will go with them.
Of course, as we have seen even on this site, their flawed philosophies have managed to infect some of our younger minds in spite of the fact that these younger minds seem otherwise bright and reasonably intelligent… Oh well, sometimes these types of infections find fertile ground with "thinkers".
Last one I promise!
I love John Stossel and he's come up with an "ist" for Obama – an (arrogant) interventionist. Those of you that don't like the Socialist and Marxist tags, try interventionist on for size.
http://www.thefoxnation.com/president-obama/2010/05/05/stossel-obama-arrogant-interventionist
Question for BF,
I recieved this ad. How can dollar devaluation go on forever? Wouldn't the dollar become worthless paper? Wouldn't confidence in the US government dissolve? At some point, won't America become irrelevant?
The Dollar's Devaluation Can Go On FOREVER
When $13 trillion of freshly minted U.S. dollars floods the markets, the dollar is going to waltz off the edge of a cliff. Just look at what the Fed's frenzy of money printing has done to the purchasing power of the dollar. What cost $1 in 1913 — when the Fed was created — now costs $20! A 95% devaluation of your money. And it's only going to get worse.
And by the way, every time the dollar falls 50%, your real cost of living goes up at least 100%. When it falls 75%, your cost of living goes up 300%.
The dollar's 95% fall since the creation of the Fed means that everything that once cost a dollar… now costs $20! A 1,900% tax!
Imagine what will happen when the full impact of the current administration's bailout is finally felt… There will be no end to this dollar devaluation… No "absolute zero"… No rock bottom…
The Fed is trying to put out the fire with gasoline. They're trying to cure America's addiction to debt, by injecting it with a $13 trillion overdose. While this might lend us a great short-term high, it'll soon send our economy into cardiac arrest.
Long-term it will be disastrous for America, the dollar, and every citizen in the country. That's why it's vital you take the steps set out in this report, like shorting the dollar and U.S. Treasuries, and diversifying your assets immediately into foreign currencies and AAA-rated foreign bonds. You'll learn all about these investments, and about a whole new generation of revolutionary currency products in the FREE reports you'll receive when you sign up for a risk-free trial subscription to The Currency Capitalist.
The next leg down of 'history's longest bear market should be the sharpest yet.
Some of their premises are correct, but most of their conclusions are FAULTY.
Most other currencies are in terrible shape too!
Why do you think that the value of the dollar is currently RISING vs. the yen and the euro? These other currencies are EQUALLY SCREWED!
Gold, on the other hand, is going up again…
I agree. I'm not just getting their conclusions, that's why I asked. Check this out:
http://www.oldglorymint.com/reports/7_Key_Forces_Impacting_US_Economy.pdf
I would short the dollar, the yen, the pound, the euro, and many other "major currencies". I would also short virtually ANY government debt, regardless of which government.
Tangible assets are the way to go right now, at least until Chris Devine gets his way and we have a tangible assets tax 🙂
Right now, for the next year or two, the dollar is actually going to out-perform the yen, pound, and euro, so being in dollars probably isn't that bad short-term. Long term, the dollar is just as screwed as the rest.
The main problem is, NO CURRENCY HAS ANY INHERENT VALUE currently. THEY ARE ALL VALUED RELATIVE TO EACH OTHER. Because of this, the dollar should do quite well for the next year or two, even though it is worthless paper.
How can dollar devaluation go on forever?
Essentially, yes. Eventually the people will hold the currency as "valueless" – but it can continue forever, technically.
Zimbabwe dollar was 2/1 USD 10 years ago. At one point it took $100trillion Z-dollars per USD$.
Wouldn't the dollar become worthless paper?
Yes – to the People.
Inflation destroys creditors and benefits debtors. Who is are the largest debtors in the world? To whose benefit, then is the destruction of currency?
Wouldn't confidence in the US government dissolve? At some point, won't America become irrelevant?
Yes, to first part.
No, to second part.
The People are still productive – a different currency would need to arise. When this occurs – during devaluation of dollar or after – will make a difference of millions of dead people.
Peter is correct.
All currencies suffer this problem.
Hint: Don't depend on the long term viability of government paper.
Many possible triggers for wider euro debt crisis
Brian Love, European Economics Correspondent – Analysis
PARIS (Reuters) – Europe may be months, conceivably weeks away from an expanded debt crisis that cuts more countries off from access to the markets and forces fresh emergency action by rich governments or the European Central Bank.
Why do I have the feeling that this much touted Recovery-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel is really a freight train????
I don't mean to be a downer, but mainly you have that feeling because it IS a freight train.
The only thing that the world governments know how to do is to keep pumping more and more "money" into their defunct systems. This is kinda analogous to pumping more and more water into a toilet which has been clogged with shit.
There might be some initial hope that the gallons and gallons of extra water will "get things moving again", but in the end, all you will have is a far bigger and far smellier mess than if you had just bit the bullet and pulled out the snake and plunger and set to work at unclogging the system.
"This is kinda analogous to pumping more and more water into a toilet which has been clogged with shit."
Good visual and analogy, this am… 😉
I'm experiencing a bit of gallows humor. Hope your day is a good one.
Most of my days are quite good (this one included) thank you 🙂
If I brightened your day (albeit in a bit of a bizarre way), then I have done my job.
"The amount of pain and joy in the universe is constant; however, one CAN be converted into the other."
You did, and before 4am, too!
A few days back we discussed true freedom and liberty.
I wonder then why the media, government and "Joe Citizen" are arguing over the miranda rights of Faisal Shahzad. Isn't he entitled to be processed as a US Citizen and dealt with just like any other US Citizen.
Now on the other hand Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the "Underwear Bomber" is not a US Citizen but he too was given his miranda rights.
I am corn-fused. Whay are we treating non-citizens like citizens, but argue that citizens should be treated like terroists????
Don't get me wrong, neither of these two individuals warrants any respect from me and if they are proven guilty we should put them in jail and toss the key, however Faisal is a US Citizen and according to the laws of this nation he is innocent until proven guilty, has the right to legal counsel, a speedy trial by a jury of his peers (although I wouldn't trust a jury of his peers to pronounce a guilty sentance even after a confession) and right to post bail.
Even though I have no respect for Eric Holder isn't he doing what he was apponted to do in this case?
Faisal should be tried in a US court for the crimes he is accused of. If he is found guilty beyond a resonable doubt he then should be tried for treason by proxy.
WE cannot use double standards here, and Miranda rights should be given to only US Citizens.
Anybody else think different?
CM – "Anybody else think different?"
Not me. I think you pretty much nailed it.
I think differently. I think they should be given to everyone accused of a crime. Period. US citizen or not.
Buck the Wala says:
US Citizen or not, the underwear bomber was 'captured' (actually: arrested) on US soil and charged with a crime. America is (or should be ) better than throwing non-citizens in a secret offsite detention center. Mirandize them, have a jury convict them, and throw them in jail and throw away the key.
In fact, JAC says it perfectly below.
We have discussed this before.
The Constitution assures the same rights to all "PERSONS" within the jurisdiction of the USA.
The rights to privacy, speedy trial, etc apply to anyone accused of a crime within the USA or within areas under US jurisdiction. Citizens and non-citizens are treated the same.
Non citizens captured over seas on the battle field are subject to Geneva Conventions.
Non citizens captured over seas for crimes in the USA are subject to the laws of the country where captured. If extradited they are subject to our laws.
So if we were invaded by a foreign army, would we have to read the POW's their miranda rights and give them a fair and speedy trial because they were captured on American soil?
If they were combatants as described in Geneva Convention, those articles dictate the treatment of prisoners.
Or, they are "Protected" persons per Geneva Convention and are subject to law of the Occupying Power (which ever side).
If that, then the Constitution dictates treatment as a "Person".
I knew half of that. Thanks for the other half, Flag.
I thought this was an interesting take on the oil spill….
Mises Daily
Today's other Mises Dailies:
Human Cooperation by Ludwig von Mises
The Cairo Garbage Calamity by Anders Mikkelsen
Feel Sorry for BP?
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. on May 5, 2010
It was 21 years ago that the Exxon Valdez leaked oil and unleashed torrents of environmental hysteria. Rothbard got it right in his piece "Why Not Feel Sorry for Exxon?"
After the British Petroleum–hired oil rig exploded last week, the environmentalists went nuts yet again, using the occasion to flail a private corporation and wail about the plight of the "ecosystem," which somehow managed to survive and thrive after the Exxon debacle.
The comparison is complicated by how much worse this event is for BP. Eleven people died. BP market shares have been pummeled. So long as the leak persists, the company loses 5,000–10,000 barrels a day.
BP will be responsible for cleanup costs far exceeding the federal limit of $75 million on liability for damages. The public relations nightmare will last for a decade or more. In the end, the costs could reach $100 billion, nearly wrecking the company and many other businesses.
It should be obvious that BP is by far the leading victim, but I've yet to see a single expression of sadness for the company and its losses. Indeed, the words of disgust for BP are beyond belief. The DailyKos sums it up: "BP: Go f*** yourselves." Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that the government intended to keep "its boot on BP's neck."
How about reality? The incident is a tragedy for BP and all the subcontractors involved. It will probably wreck the company, a company that has long provided the fuel that runs our cars, runs our industries, and keeps alive the very body of modern life. The idea that BP should be hated and denounced is preposterous; there is every reason to express great sadness for what has happened.
It is not as if BP profits by oil leaks, or that anyone reveled in the chance to dump its precious oil all over the ocean. BP gains nothing from this. Its own CEO has worked for years to try to prevent precisely this kind of accident from occurring, and done so not out of the desire to comply with regulations, but just because it is good business practice.
In contrast to those who are weeping, we might ask who is happy about the disaster:
the environmentalists, with their fear mongering and hatred of modern life, and
the government, which treats every capitalist producer as a bird to be plucked.
The environmentalists are thrilled because they get yet another chance to wail and moan about the plight of their beloved marshes and other allegedly sensitive land. The loss of fish and marine life is sad, but it is not as if it will not come back: after the Exxon Valdez disaster, the fishing was better than ever in just one year.
The main advantage to the environmentalists is their propaganda victory in having yet another chance to rail against the evils of oil producers and ocean drilling. If they have their way, oil prices would be double or triple, there would never be another refinery built, and all development of the oceans would stop in the name of "protecting" things that do human beings not one bit of good.
The core economic issue concerning the environment is really about liability. In a world of private property, if you soil someone else's property, you bear the liability. But what about in a world in which government owns vast swaths, and the oceans are considered the commons of everyone? It becomes extremely difficult to assess damages to the environment at all.
"The liability for environmental damage should be 100% at least."
There is also a profound problem with federal government limits on liability. That is central planning gone mad. The liability for environmental damage should be 100% at least. Such a system would match a company's policies to the actual risk of doing damage. Lower limits would inspire companies to be less concerned about damage to others than they should be, in the same way that a company with a bailout guarantee faces a moral hazard to be less efficient than it would be in a free market.
But such a liability rule presumes ownership, so that owners themselves are in a position to enter into fair bargaining, and there can be some objective test. There is no objective test when the oceans are collectively owned and where huge amounts of territory are government owned.
And it is precisely the government and the Obama administration that gain from the incident. The regulators get yet another lease on life. They are already sending thousands of people to "save" the region. "Every American affected by this spill should know this: your government will do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to stop this crisis," Obama said.
Are we really supposed to believe that government is better able to deal with this disaster than private industry?
Meanwhile, the Obama administration must be thrilled to have an old-fashioned change of subject, so that we don't have to notice every single day that its economic stimulus has been an incredible flop, with unemployment higher today than a year ago and the depression still persisting.
And why, by the way, when every natural disaster is hailed by the Keynesian media for at least having the stimulative effect of rebuilding, is nothing like this said about the oil spill? At least in this case, losses seem to be recognized as losses.
The abstraction called the "ecosystem" — which never seems to include mankind or civilization — has done far less for us than the oil industry, and the factories, planes, trains, and automobiles it fuels. The greatest tragedy here belongs to BP and its subsidiaries, and the private enterprises affected by the losses that no one intended. If the result is a shutdown of drilling and further regulation of private enterprise, we only end up letting the oil spill win.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of The Left, the Right, and the State. Send him mail. See Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s article archives.
Ann is on a roll with this one….. 😉
Obama National Security Policy: Hope Their Bombs Don't Work
by Ann Coulter
It took Faisal Shahzad trying to set a car bomb in Times Square to get President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to finally use the word "terrorism." (And not to refer to Tea Party activists!)
This is a major policy shift for a president who spent a month telling Americans not to "jump to conclusions" after Army doctor Nidal Malik Hasan reportedly jumped on a desk, shouted "Allahu Akbar!" and began shooting up Fort Hood.
After last weekend, now Obama is even threatening to pronounce it "Pack-i-stan" instead of "Pahk-i-stahn." We know Obama is taking terrorism seriously because he took a break from his "Hope, Change & Chuckles" tour on the comedy circuit to denounce terrorists.
In a bit of macho posturing this week, Obama declared that — contrary to the terrorists' wishes — Americans "will not be terrorized, we will not cower in fear, we will not be intimidated."
First of all, having the Transportation Security Administration wanding infants, taking applesauce away from 93-year-old dementia patients, and forcing all Americans to produce their shoes, computers and containers with up to 3 ounces of liquid in Ziploc bags for special screening pretty much blows that "not intimidated" look Obama wants America to adopt.
"Intimidated"? How about "absolutely terrified"?
Second, it would be a little easier for the rest of us not to live in fear if the president's entire national security strategy didn't depend on average citizens happening to notice a smoldering SUV in Times Square or smoke coming from a fellow airline passenger's crotch.
But after the car bomber and the diaper bomber, it has become increasingly clear that Obama's only national defense strategy is: Let's hope their bombs don't work!
If only Dr. Hasan's gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.
The administration's fingers-crossed strategy is a follow-up to Obama's earlier and less successful "Let's Make Them Love Us!" plan.
In the past year, Obama has repeatedly apologized to Muslims for America's "mistakes."
He has apologized to Iran for President Eisenhower's taking out loon Mohammad Mossadegh, before Mossadegh turned a comparatively civilized country into a Third World hellhole. You know, like the Ayatollah has.
He has apologized to the entire Muslim world for the French and English colonizing them — i.e. building them flush toilets.
He promised to shut down Guantanamo. And he ordered the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to be tried in the same courthouse that tried Martha Stewart.
There was also Obama's 90-degree-bow tour of the East and Middle East. For his next visit, he plans to roll on his back and have his belly scratched like Fido.
Despite favorable reviews in The New York Times, none of this put an end to Islamic terrorism.
So now, I gather, our only strategy is to hope the terrorists' bombs keep fizzling.
There's no other line of defense. In the case of the Times Square car bomber, the Department of Homeland Security failed, the Immigration and Naturalization Service failed, the CIA failed and the TSA failed. (However, the Department of Alert T-Shirt Vendors came through with flying colors, as it always does.)
Only the New York Police Department, a New York street vendor and Shahzad's Rube Goldberg bomb (I do hope he's not offended by how Jewish that sounds — Obama can apologize) prevented a major explosion in Times Square.
Even after the NYPD de-wired the smoking car bomb, produced enough information to identify the bomb-maker, and handed it all to federal law enforcement authorities tied up in a bow, the federal government's crack "no-fly" list failed to stop Shahzad from boarding a plane to Dubai.
To be fair, at Emirates Airlines, being on a "no-fly" list makes you eligible for pre-boarding.
Perhaps the Department of Homeland Security should consider creating a "Really, REALLY No-Fly" list.
Contrary to the wild excuses being made for the federal government on all the TV networks Monday night, it's now clear that this was not a wily plan of federal investigators to allow Shahzad to board the plane in order to nab his co-conspirators. It was a flub that nearly allowed Shahzad to escape.
Meanwhile, on that same Monday at JFK airport, approximately 100,000 passengers took off their shoes, coats, belts and sunglasses for airport security.
But the "highly trained federal force" The New York Times promised us on Oct. 28, 2001, when the paper demanded that airport security be federalized, failed to stop the only guy they needed to stop at JFK last Monday — the one who planted a bomb in the middle of Times Square days earlier.
So why were 100,000 other passengers harassed and annoyed by the TSA?
The federal government didn't stop the diaper bomber from nearly detonating a bomb over Detroit. It didn't stop a guy on the "No Fly" list from boarding a plane and coming minutes away from getting out of the country.
If our only defense to terrorism is counting on alert civilians, how about not bothering them before they board airplanes, instead of harassing them with useless airport "security" procedures?
Both of the attempted bombers who sailed through airport security, I note, were young males of Middle Eastern descent. I wonder if we could develop a security plan based on that information?
And speaking of a "highly trained federal force," who's working at the INS these days? Who on earth made the decision to allow Shahzad the unparalleled privilege of becoming a U.S. citizen in April 2009?
Our "Europeans Need Not Apply" immigration policies were absurd enough before 9/11. But after 19 foreign-born Muslims, legally admitted to the U.S., murdered 3,000 Americans in New York and Washington in a single day, couldn't we tighten up our admission policies toward people from countries still performing stonings and clitorectomies?
The NYPD can't be everyplace.
Can't stand to watch her speak but she always has valid points. Good post, Cyndi
Birdman says:
I thought this was a well written article. I think Black Flag and others may agree.
To Reduce Them Under Absolute Despotism
by L. Neil Smith
lneil@netzero.com
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise
The smirky caller asked, "You really believe Barack Obama is a socialist?" He went on to assert that the President is pro-business, a capitalist.
The show's host—amazingly, one of talk radio's Big Three—stuttered and stammered inarticulately, never really answering the caller's question, until he was finally rescued by the next commercial break. The fact is, even if he'd known exactly what socialism is, and how to spot it in the people all around you, he wouldn't have dared to say so, because Republicans, conservatives, have a dirty little secret.
Just like Barack Obama, they are socialists, too.
I don't know whether anybody tries, these days, to teach school kids about such things. I was in grade school at the beginning of the Cold War, and I was the son of an officer in Strategic Air Command. Herbert Philbrick (look him up) was very big back then, as was a little book called What We Must Know About Communism, by Harry A. Overstreet and Bonaro Wilkins Overstreet. You can still find it at Amazon.com.
Despite several years spent reading extensively about communism, for school and on my own, and studying the lives and works of self- described socialists like H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, I remained as ignorant as that radio talk show host, and for a very good reason: not one of the "experts" I was reading had any clearer an idea what socialism is than I had. Most of them still don't, to this very day.
Once you get past all the mystical gobbledegook of the Hegelian Dialectic—inserted as a smokescreen, to elevate common thievery, rape, and murder to a level of nobility—what you saw then, what you still see even now, is a boring and inaccurate economic definition, of socialism, all about who gets to own and control "the means of production".
Economics is, at best, a secondary or tertiary concern to folks who think about such matters. It is necessarily a product, in the proper order of things, of a whole lot of thinking that has to come before it. You must begin with metaphysics—which tries to answer the question, "What is the nature of reality?"—or better yet, you can start with epistemology, which asks us, "How do I know what I know?"
Between epistemology and economics, there's ethics, which asks the question, "What is the good?" or, more pertinently, "What should I do?" The order in which you approach this is critical. If you try to base your ethics on your economics, you'll end up organizing Death Panels.
It is the ethical definition of socialism that's critical here—and dangerous to conservatives. Socialists believe that the needs and wants of society are more important than the rights of the individual. (Individualists will argue that there is no such thing as "society" in an ethical sense, since it consists of nothing more than individuals.)
"Society" can also be defined as "the group" or "the collective", manifesting itself in various different ways, as your community, your race, your school, your fraternity, your military unit or the military in general, your corporation, your union, your party, your government, your nation, your family, your lodge, or your church, each claiming to be, in some sense, larger than the individual and for that reason more important.
To socialists, who are inclined to perceive other people as bees or ants, eternally and unquestioningly loyal to hive or hill, size matters. And yet when you examine all of these august entities closely, and observe that they are comprised of nothing more than the individuals who make them up, such a point of view becomes absurd and pathetic.
A word about family. Of all the groups that sometimes claim to own your life, family is the hardest to defend your individual sovereignty from. For the most part, we love our families. Although there are occasional exceptions, not everyone experienced a terrible childhood or suffered nightmarish parents, the way it's often portrayed on television.
Our first job in life is to grow up, achieve autonomy, make our own decisions without regard to whether our parents may approve or not. If we have the right parents, they'll want us to do exactly that. At the other end, as parents, we owe it to our kids to help them along the same path to independence, even if it's sometimes difficult or painful.
As a husband and father, what I do with my life remains my choice. While I would willingly give my life to protect my wife and daughter, this doesn't mean that they own me or that they have more rights—as a group—than I do. It simply reflects their inexpressibly high value to me. Among billions of husbands and fathers, I am obviously far from alone in this outlook. And in the natural world, where the operating system is evolution by natural selection, it makes good sense.
Individual family members share with one another freely, without regard to the ability of any one of them to pull his own weight. (For a surprisingly long period after she was born, my daughter was unable to deliver newspapers.) That's just the way it is, and the way it has to be. I believe it was Ludwig von Mises who pointed out that socialism is a misguided attempt to apply what happens in the family to society at large, an attempt that usually ends in privation and violence.
But I have digressed.
Go back and look over that list of things that you're expected to give your loyalty to and even sacrifice your life for. Over the centuries, they've learned to make it all sound wonderful and noble. However when you begin to see these institutions as nothing more than bunches of individuals, each with no more rights in the natural world than you have (and no extra, or bonus rights miraculously obtained by claiming to be something other than what they are, nothing more than a bunch of individuals), they start to look like tribes of cannibals or vampires, eagerly anticipating the tasty sacrifice of another deluded victim.
And when you suddenly notice that, of all these institutions—community, race, school, fraternity, military, corporation, union, party, government, nation, family, lodge, church—more than half are treasured by conservatives, their dirty little secret is exposed by the hot, bright light of the truth: your rights, provided they exist at all, come in a distant second to the needs and wants of these aggregations.
Conservatives—Republicans—are socialists.
True, they may desire to hold you down atop the stone altar and cut your still-beating heart out with an obsidian knife for a set of entirely different reasons—national security, Judaeo-Christian traditions, "common" decency—than the liberals or "progressives" or Democrats do, but to you, the important part is cutting your heart out with an obsidian knife, not whatever excuse they may offer for doing it.
This is why, no matter which political party happens to be in power, ordinary people—whose thinking and hard work maintain this civilization each and every day—never seem to get an even break with regard to their individual liberty or holding onto the fruits of their labor. It's why the late philosopher Robert LeFevre referred to Democrats and Republicans as "Socialist Party A" and "Socialist Party B".
Never forget that it was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who freed not a single, solitary slave, but merely nationalized slavery in the form of income taxation and conscription, who presided over the violent deaths of 620,000 Americans to preserve a political abstract, to retain his political and military power, to enrich his mercantilist friends, and to suppress the basic human right of an entire region of the country to associate—or disassociate—with whomever they wished.
Never forget that it was a Republican, Richard Nixon, who imposed wage/price controls on what had been a relatively free economy, kept an enemies list, and quit when his minions were caught in a criminal act.
Never forget that it was a Republican, George W. Bush, who created the massively unconstitutional Department of Homeland Security, the no-fly lists, pushed through and signed the Constitution-shredding USA Patriot Act, plunged the country into two unnecessary wars, and created trillion-dollar deficits surpassed only by those of Barack H. Obama.
When we are forced to obtain and carry national identification, it will be Republicans who did it, in the name of eliminating illegal immigration.
Vote for the socialist of your choice.
As with any other socialist culture, "some animals are more equal than others" in Sovietized America. Its elected nomenklatura in the House and Senate are paid between $165,200 and $212,100 every year, can look forward to pensions considerably larger than most of their constituents' salaries, and enjoy endless additional privileges and benefits.
Socialists, every one of them.
Let's talk about fascism. When it became obvious as early as the 1920s that socialism doesn't work—the instant it's adopted, the economy heads for the toilet, people begin starving, and leaders, self-convinced that their failures are caused by stiff-necked, selfish bastards who refuse to become New Soviet Man, start putting people up against a wall and shooting them—a modified system was devised under which, instead of owning the means of production, government allows the productive class to believe they own them, while it controls them through regulations and siphons off the profits as taxes.
Other common names for fascism are "crony capitalism", "state capitalism", "corporate socialism" and "mercantilism". Sometimes members of the mercantile class become partners with the state and, in certain circumstances, even end up controlling it. The whole thing looks like a different system than ordinary socialism until you apply the ethical definition. What's more important in a fascist society, the needs and wants of the group, or the rights of the individual? As Mr. Spock once famously observed (in the original James Blish novel Spock Must Die), "a difference that makes no difference is no difference."
Or was it the other way around?
Fascism, then, is a variety of socialism, nothing more, nothing less. The genuine opposite of fascism is a completely voluntary society.
Completely.
Voluntary.
That means no coercion of any kind is tolerable. No censorship. No zoning. No conscription. No taxation. Government deserves no more money than it can raise with bake sales. Anything else involves setting the value of the individual's rights at something less than the needs or wants of the group. Or as Robert LeFevre put it, "To any extent that you have a 'public sector', to that extent, you have socialism."
Nice find, Birdman!
Excelllent!
Excellent find indeed.
And I was just saying the other day how I consider the insurance industry and government partnership to be Fascism.
Birdman, thanks for sharing.
Ver here , BL!
No need to fight. Would you believe I'm a lover, not a fighter, LOL???? 😉
I DO believe that.
Being confident and headstrong doesn't mean you're incabable of empathy and compassion.
incapable*
Alright you two, get a room….
LOL! I though about asking him that but I didn't want to hurt G-man's feelings. G-Man knows how to charm the ladies, too!
Hey what's everyone doing out so late? The street lights are on!
I'm slaving away – we are having a garage sale tomorrow. A necessary evil every few years to unload "stuff". The town coordinates one every spring and every fall and if you need to have one, it's best to do it on one of those weekends as a lot of people come to town for it.
Hate them though!
And of course, even though we've been planning and working on it for some time, my teenager JUST NOW brings out a basket of stuff from his closet. URGGHHHH!
We have one huge yard sale in town here too Kathy. This year I'm on a mission for a working junk lawn mower to keep the weeds down in my woods at the lake. Got one of those up for grabs? I'll give ya $20
I'm just about ready to leave the shop and off to the chowhall, and then the grocery store…..
ROFL @ "get a room"
Cyndi – "G-Man knows how to charm the ladies, too!"
Too? So I've still got it – WOO-HOO!
Hi BL,
Check this out….Oooops, she did it again! I wonder how many more videos similar to this, will trickle out?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/05/is_michelle_obama_a_birther.html
Great find Cyndi.
Cyndi – "I wonder how many more videos similar to this, will trickle out?"
(Assuming there ARE more)Hopefully, all of them. It'd be great if FOX would air the vids, But that aint gonna happen.
…Which prompts a lot of questions about the legitimacy of the MSM.
I see Michelle O's slip ups as significant. And when considering the other evidence suggesting he was born in Kenya, I think it warrants an official investigation. But that ain't gonna happen either,…which prompts a lot of questions about the legitimacy of our government as well.
If a foreigner has managed to get elected as POTUS, It's a BIG deal. Everything he has signed in the last year and a half is null,void,and moot. It needs to be looked into. I would much rather have the chaos from an upset, rather than a usurper in charge.
Personally, I don't recognize BHO as POTUS. If it's not a definate "YES" then it is an automatic "NO". I don't like maybe and sort of. With BHO, his legitimacy is not a "YES", but rather a maybe, which means "NO".
The Kenyan needs to go.
"Personally, I don't recognize BHO as POTUS"…..welcome to the Dark Side, my Brother! 😉
I don't think it would matter one wit if Dear Reader stood before the teleprompters, reading that he was indeed born in Kenyan and then stood back gave Aemrican's a double fingered salute. The Left would STILL defend him. He would not be romvoed from, nor the legislation he signed invalidated. No, he be permitted to complete the tasks for which he was installed into office. Imagine a world without a America.
How long 'till we don't have to imagine?
Maybe not too long?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a7xa5KbKtC48
I have to go fly again today but as I was tunring off the news, there was an expose on some new laws that Congress is considering….. I heard these two…that stood out.
Congress wants to pass a law to make it illegal to charge for amenities and extra bags saying that is a "right" to carry on baggage without charge and…
Obama is apparently upset that ball players are chewing gum and tobacco. It is not a proper image, apparently.
I am not sure that I heard all of it as I was frantically grabbing charts and my flight bag…..but…………………………………..
And KUDOS to the Ameican Airlines pilot that declared an inflight emergency and changed runways because ATC was insisting on landing on an unsafe runway due to crosswing compnents that would require a very tricky if unsafe crosswing landing at JFK airport.
Re: Flying: Have been up plenty with my dad back in the day. He was 1/4 owner on two Bonanzas. Also belonged to a club which owned Pipers, Cessnas, and Cherokees. Those were the days. How bout flying into DTW and taking me for a spin? Wanna go Kathy? 🙂
At some point I will be making a trip to DFW to visit D13. I want to get some of that good stuff he's hoarding down there,.
From the Bob Cesca files…………
Figured that would get someone's attention….
So Bob posted a piece on HuffPost yesterday that was part screed but also part WTF with the current case involving Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad.
The relevant section:
"This week, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said about the failed Times Square car bomb suspect, "Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still."
I know he's an American citizen but still. This easily catapults to the top of the list of awful, creepy, dangerous things Republicans have said in the context of terrorism since 9/11 — the same list that includes: "None of your civil liberties matter much if you're dead," and, "I have had it with members of your party undermining our troops, undermining a commander in chief while we are at war."
Republicans from King to John McCain to John Cornyn and Jon Kyl are engaged in some sort of weird penis-measuring contest over the Faisal Shahzad case, each attempting to prove how quickly they can subvert the basic rights of American citizenship in order to appear "tough" on terrorism.
Marco Rubio, who is the tea party favorite for the U.S. Senate from Florida, said, "If this individual has information that could help us prevent future attacks and loss of life, nothing should stand in the way of that, including Miranda."
So nothing except, again, the basic rights of American citizenship.
Pseudo-Republican Joe Lieberman wants to change the law in order to strip would-be terrorists of their American citizenship. Hey, why not expand that to encompass all violent crime. Before long, we're not going to need Amendments Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight and Fourteen.
Liberty! Freedom! Constitution! Except when we're scared."
The link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/republicans-and-teabagger_b_564974.html
I guess what concerns me most is the folks who proclaim to hold truer to our Constitutional rights and values are the ones most adamant to revoke or suspend those rights on a whim. I would have included SCOTUS decisions as part of the package but there is a history of staunch conservatives rejecting Miranda as inconvenient or some legal pain-in-ass. I especially enjoy serial nut-case Joe Lieberman's idea that if you're suspected of being a terrorist (who gets to write that definition?) your citizenship should be suspended.
This is government truly gone bad.
All ANY of them, be they Republican or Democrat, want is POWER. The more rights they can strip from anyone, the more power they gain.
We are in a dire need for a 3rd party that truly has the people's best interest at heart…
But Alas, what exactly is "the people's best interest"?
That is the question.
You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.
I am with you except Lieberman's proposal was much more nuanced than Huff Po reported and Cesca describes.
He pointed out that such a law already exists but has not been used. That perhaps it should be reviewed and updated. What I got from his comments was that this would require open debate and Congressional action. And, the person would be convicted of "terrorism". As I recall he used convicted and suspected both in the same comments.
Now that said, I still have problems with the concept. First of all, it does nothing. We can't put them adrift on the ocean so what the hell is the point. The only thing I can think of is that they would be required to carry a passport and visa with them at all times. But if they were convicted of terrorism would they be in prison or on the street? Of course there is also that little requirement that we are ALL innocent until proven guilty, before a jury of our peers. I just don't think I want to give that up for some idiotic assumption it will stop a crazy person from committing an evil act.
YES! Our government has truly gone bad. It is rotten to the core.
Best to you and yours this fine Thursday.
Cesca shows a bit of actual sanity and insight for once! Good on him!
I disagree with what he says 99.5% of the time… this particular point he has made would be representative of the other 0.5%.
Grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
Health care law's massive, hidden tax change
By Neil deMause, contributing writerMay 5, 2010: 11:00 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.
Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.
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The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year.
Right now, the IRS Form 1099 is used to document income for individual workers other than wages and salaries. Freelancers receive them each year from their clients, and businesses issue them to the independent contractors they hire.
But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they'll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.
The bill makes two key changes to how 1099s are used. First, it expands their scope by using them to track payments not only for services but also for tangible goods. Plus, it requires that 1099s be issued not just to individuals, but also to corporations.
Taken together, the two seemingly small changes will require millions of additional forms to be sent out.
"It's a pretty heavy administrative burden," particularly for small businesses without large in-house accounting staffs, says Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Eliminating the goods exemption could launch an avalanche of paperwork, he says: "If you cater a lunch for other businesses every Wednesday, say, that's a lot of information to keep track of throughout the year."
Why did these tax code revisions get included in a health-care reform bill? Welcome to Washington. The idea seems to be that using 1099 forms to capture unreported income will generate more government revenue and help offset the cost of the health bill.
A Democratic aide for the Senate Finance Committee, which authored the changes, defended the move.
"Information reporting improves tax compliance without raising taxes on small businesses," the aide said. "Health care reform includes more than $35 billion in tax cuts for small businesses … indicating that during these tough economic times, Congress is delivering the tax breaks small businesses need to thrive."
The new rules could drastically alter the tax-reporting landscape by spotlighting payments that previously went unreported. Freelancers and other independent operators typically write off stacks of business expenses; having to issue tax paperwork documenting each of them could cut down on fraudulent deductions.
More significantly, the 1099 trail would expose payments to small operators that might now be going unreported. If you buy a computer for your business from a major chain retailer, the seller almost certainly documents the revenue. But if you buy it from Tim's Computer Shack down the street, Tim might not report and pay taxes on his income from the sale.
The IRS estimates that the federal government loses more than $300 billion each year in tax revenue on income that goes unreported. Using 1099s to document millions of transactions that now go untracked is one way to begin to close the gap.
While all but unnoticed at the time — a Pennsylvania business group issued the first warning last October as the idea emerged in draft Senate legislation — the 1099 rule changes began sparking attention in the blogosphere in the last week. The libertarian Cato Institute called it a "costly, anti-business nightmare"; Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., introduced legislation last week that would repeal the new 1099 requirements.
The notion of mailing a tax form to Costco or Staples each year to document purchases may seem absurd to small business owners, but that's not the worst of it, tax experts say.
Marianne Couch, a principal with the Cokala Tax Group in Michigan and former chair of a citizen advisory group to the IRS on small business and self-employed tax issues, thinks the bigger headache will be data collection: gathering names and taxpayer identification numbers for every payee and vendor that you do business with.
But she also sees a silver lining in the new law.
Her firm already recommends collecting tax data on all vendors, since the IRS requires that you have it on hand at the time of the transaction, not just at tax-filing time. And eliminating the corporate and goods exemptions at least means that businesses will no longer have to pour over every transaction to determine if it needs a 1099. The new rule is simpler: If it crosses the $600 threshold, it's in.
"There are probably going to be some hiccups along the way, because systems will need to be redesigned," says Couch. "But overall I believe it will make compliance on the payor end a lot more streamlined and easier."
In any case, the final impact of the law won't be known until the IRS issues its regulations on the new law, which aren't expected to arrive until sometime next year. The IRS has not yet commented on when it will release regulations or schedule public hearings, and an agency spokesman was unsure when it will do so. The new requirements kick in January 1, 2012
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/05/smallbusiness/1099_health_care_tax_change/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
I realize that this was just one principal but good grief-have we come to the point that any possibility that someone will be offended means that we can be controlled.
California Students Sent Home for Wearing U.S. Flags on Cinco de Mayo
Administrators at a California high school sent five students home on Wednesday after they refused to remove their American flag T-shirts and bandannas — garments the school officials deemed "incendiary" on Cinco de Mayo.
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The five teens were sitting at a table outside Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., on Wednesday morning when Assistant Principal Miguel Rodriguez asked two of them to remove their American flag bandannas, the Morgan Hill Times reported. The boys told the newspaper they complied, but were asked to accompany Rodriguez to the principal's office.
The five students — Daniel Galli, Austin Carvalho, Matt Dariano, Dominic Maciel and Clayton Howard — were then told they must turn their T-shirts inside-out or be sent home, though it would not be considered a suspension. Rodriguez told the students he did not want any fights to break out between Mexican-American students celebrating their heritage and those wearing American flags.
"They said we were starting a fight," Dariano told the newspaper. "We were fuel to the fire."
The boys told Rodriguez and Principal Nick Boden that turning their shirts inside-out was disrespectful, so their parents
decided to take them home, the newspaper reports.
"I just couldn't believe it," Julie Fagerstrom, Maciel's mother, told the newspaper. "I'm an open-minded parent, but it's got to be on both sides. It can't be five kids singled out."
Galli told NBC Bay Area, "They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it."
In a statement released on Wednesday, the Morgan Hill Unified School District said it did not agree with the school's actions.
"In an attempt to foster a spirit of cultural awareness and maintain a safe and supportive school environment
, the Live Oak High School administration took certain actions earlier today," the statement read. "The district does not concur with the Live Oak High School administration's interpretation of either board or district policy related to these actions."
Attempts to reach school officials early Thursday were not successful. A secretary told the Morgan Hill Times that Boden and Rodriguez were unavailable for comment on Wednesday.
According to its website, Live Oak High School is a 1,300-student institution in the southern part of Santa Clara County, with most students residing in the nearby cities of Morgan Hill and San Jose.
"The student population reflects the rich ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the community," the website reads.
More than 100 students were spotted wearing the colors of the Mexican flag — red, white and green — as they left school, including some who had the flag painted on their faces or arms, the Morgan Hill times reported.
While bandannas of any color are banned at the school, its dress code policy does not contain references to American flags.
"However, any clothing or decoration which detracts from the learning environment is prohibited," the policy reads. "The school has the right to request that any student dressing inappropriately for school will change into other clothes, be sent home to change, and/or be subject to disciplinary action."
Freshman Laura Ponce, who had a Mexican flag painted on her face and chest, told the Morgan Hill Times that Cinco de Mayo is the "only day" Mexican-American students can show their national pride.
"There was a lot of drama going on today," Ponce told the newspaper.
Some other Mexican-American students reportedly said their flags were taken away or asked to be put away, but no other students were sent home
on Wednesday.
Lis Wiehl, a former federal prosecutor and a Fox News legal analyst, said the incident appears to a "blatant" violation of the students' First Amendment right to free speech. She noted that inciting violence is an exception to a First Amendment legal defense, but Wiehl said she saw no indications that the students provoked anyone.
"Unless I'm missing something, this seems like a blatant violation of the First Amendment," said Wiehl, adding that uniforms are not required at the public school. "And they're wearing, of all horrific things, the American flag.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/06/california-students-sent-home-wearing-flags-cinco-mayo/
�Unknown
He didn't like the casserole
And he didn't like my cake,
He said my biscuits were too hard
Not like his mother used to make.
I didn't perk the coffee right
He didn't like the stew,
I didn't mend his socks
The way his mother used to do.
I pondered for an answer
I was looking for a clue.
Then I turned around and
smacked the shit out of him….
Like his mother used to do.
I love a good poem, don't you?!?!
Looks like the FCC is getting ready to go against the 1988 decision that the Internet was NOT the equivalent of a "traditional telephone system" and reverse the past 22 years of treating it as a new and independent entity.
If the FCC reverses course and declares the internet to be a "traditional telephone system", then it can be dragged into the realm of a "public utility" just like your land-line phone, your electricity, your heating oil/natural gas, and your water/sewer.
If this happens, it will be yet more clear evidence that in spite of the inability of Obama to get what he wants using congress and/or the courts, he will simply redefine what something is in order that he be able to regulate it.
It used to be that the Statists would simply use activist courts to get around congress. Now the Statists have graduated to using unelected regulatory "authorities" to get around both congress and the courts.
There are no "checks and balances" anymore. The executive branch has finally figured out that it can do whatever it wants unchecked.
This is extremely dangerous (but perfectly predictable unfortunately).
PB: There are no "checks and balances" anymore. The executive branch has finally figured out that it can do whatever it wants unchecked.
Cyndi: Yep.
As time goes by, more and more, I'm seeming more correct in my initial predictions/assessments of Dear Reader. I take no pleasure in vindication…..
For anyone interested
American-Expatriation-Guide
Cyndi: This has your name all over it. There's a lot to the process
I downloaded it on my slow home connection but didn't have time to read it before I had to head out the door. I'll look at it tonight when I finish my shift. Thanks….
From the "dumb shit passing itself off as "science"" files:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100506/hl_nm/us_cancer_usa
Looks like they're laying the ground for several things, including few medical tests under Obama(doesn't)Care:
Several government-sponsored reports have pointed to cancer risks from X-rays and CT scans, and industry and physician groups are already working on ways to lower the doses given to people.
More from the "dumb shit masquerading as "science"" files:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/04/agw-to-reach-the-edge-of-wetness/#more-19231
If you weren't tired of it yet, YET MORE from the "complete and utter unfounded nonsense in Marcel Marceu attire attempting to appear "scientific"!"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/05/gavins-sensitive-side/#more-19257
Just to prove to you I am not biased, here is some REAL science (spectrum analysis as opposed to "computer modeling"), but unfortunately you will need a Finnish translator in order to read it.
Unfortunately the US and UK stopped doing actual science some time ago, when no one seemed to be watching….
http://www.ts.fi/online/kotimaa/124484.html
I've met Jurki years ago at symposia and read many of his papers over the years. He does good work and has an excellent reputation in high resolution IR spectroscopy.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/02/weekinreview/02marsh.html?ref=global
Review this graph.
Then think, what happens if Greece falls….
Then think, what happens is the European Central Bank monetizes the debts.
Cute how they made a pentagram out of that…
I guess European Debt = Summoning Baelzebub or something like that….
Probably an apt comparison 🙂
Saw that… ugly..
I'd be very interested in seeing one for the whole world. (Look at all the arrows pointing away from the US.. hmmm..)
CAN WE JUST STOP SPENDING FOR A WHILE???????????
Ron Paul is speaking on this live on Fox right now
Sorry.. the economy doesn't work that way..
If we stop spending, people stop earning. If they stop earning, they will also stop spending. This means that more people will stop earning, so even more people stop spending. And around and around it goes.
The only safe way is to gradually scale back over the course of 20 years or so. I'm in favor of this, generally speaking.
Basically, place a hard cap on spending, but don't index it to inflation. Over time, income will surpass outflows and the deficit becomes a (real) surplus. Eventually the debt starts to shrink. Huzzah!
Oh, in a perfect world…
Not buying it Matt. I'm speaking of all the unnecessary spending like research on minnows or the bridge to no where. We're talking billions. It is sure to have an impact. Or how about Buy American. Simple common sense stuff. It all adds up.
Or do you prefer the alternative which is what we are seeing?
If we stop spending, people stop earning.
How one guy can pack so many fallacies into one sentence – it must be an inherited skill.
No one can stop spending. You need resources to live. You need to buy them. That is called spending.
People earn, then spend – not the other way around.
People do not wait around until someone say "I have money, give me something" before you figure out what to provide.
People create a product then offer it for trade into the market. Then the market decides what to trade for it.
If they stop earning, they will also stop spending. This means that more people will stop earning, so even more people stop spending. And around and around it goes.
Typical classic Keynesian mush.
No such spiral has ever existed in all history.
Keynes based this on a fallacious premise of money and admitted such to Hayek.
Such a thing is impossible. No one can plan 20 years out with the assurance that such planning will be flawless in its implementation. Thus, any such promotion of this idea is doomed.
Financial reversals happen instantly.
If the People know tomorrow the dollar will be worthless, the dollar will be worthless instantly today as people act on it. Thus, no future knowledge of when disaster will happen can be determined because it it is KNOWN, it will be acted on NOW.
This forces all such circumstances to always be a "surprise".
This is why "gentle landings" always create "crushing collapses".
It would work, if government wasn't in control.
It won't work because government cannot cap spending. There are too many people dependent on government money.
Speaking of collapse, Dow down 660 points just a bit ago, now trying a heroic "climb out of the hole" as computerized "buy programs" have kicked in as unheard of (low) valuations were reached within a matter of literally minutes and tons of automatic "buy" signals went off.
If it were not for such automated electronic trades, the market would be down 1000 points right now easily.
When there's blood on the streets, buy real estate.
The thing about systems traders (black boxes), is that they are not emotional. They use math and logic. Sure, they don't know everything they would need to know, and sure there's some emotion and illogic involved in the market, but they have models of what things are worth and will buy if the price is right.
So when there's blood on the street, it's the calm, emotionless machines that buy up the real estate. And when the market comes back, it is the machines which will make all the money.
In short: SkyNet is behind it all.
G.A. Rowe – "I too have a warped sense of humor."
BL – Perhaps I should start another commonality list.
1. Warped sense of humor
G.A. Rowe – "Even though I know that literally everyone who hangs out here regularly does not share my opinion about narcotics,…"
BL – Yeah, we kinda ganged up on ya the other day. Of course, that's to be expected when you state that half of SUFA is of lesser intellect than an ape. I think That I speak for many here when I say that I hope it didn't discourage you from speaking your mind. I have a feeling it didn't. While I'm thinking about it…I have to say that athough I disagree, I respect that you stay true to your convictions-stick to your guns. And I have to add that we may not disagree about drugs and alcohol as much as you think, we just disagree about pot in particular.
G.A. Rowe – "I still understand why you don't."
BL – And I understand your perspective as well. We have rather contrasting views on marijuana, probably the two most contrasting veiws here. As foreign as your opinion is to me, I still get it.
Through the course of your life, you've been conditioned to believe that drugs and alcohol are just plain bad news. The idea has been repeatedly reinforced through your experiences. You've witnessed a number of instances where drugs have have had a damaging effect on people, and you've had your own bout with alcoholism. What else would you think? You've also invested a bit of time as a narc officer. In some respects, you have little choice but to be anti-pot. Because approving of pot would be a contridiction to the justification for your career.
Where I think your ideas are flawed is that you appear to fall prey to the misconception that marijuana is like all narcotics. Hence your reference to "narcotics" as opposed to saying "marijuana". MJ is simply different than most. It's in a class of it's own. You're one of those people I would love to get high just to have the pleasure of enlightening you to the reality of what MJ actually is. I'd do it just to hear you say something like…"You mean that's it? That's all it does?"
As for me, My experiences have repeatedly reinforced that marijuana is mild and harmless. I've tested the limits. I've experienced the extremes of what pot is about. Like I said in my post the other day, I 've been smoking off and on for 25 years. And I've done quite a bit of reading on the subject. I KNOW all about it.
I suppose that's why your perception of MJ seems a little rediculous to me. You demonize it by comparing it to Pandora's Box and state the unimaginable horrors of a post-legalization society. From where I sit, that is a rather gross exaggeration. If I didn't know better, I would have thought you were joking.
G.A. Rowe – "I do not take your disagreement personally, even though your attitude sometimes gets my dander up."
BL – I'm glad that you don't take it personal. And I'm well aware that my attitude sometimes has that effect on people. I'm usually pretty perceptive when it comes to people, and part of that is knowing what buttons to push and how to push them. Admittedly, I was doing a little bit of just that to you the other day. I didn't really mean anything by it, just picking at you a little. I do get in my moods where I am outspoken, blunt, and even crude. But for the most part I have a rather calm and rational demeanor. It doesn't always come across that way in script/text, but if you were to hear me in person, you'd get it. For the most part, I am rather mellow and non-confrontational. Enough about me…
G.A. Rowe – "I understand that none of you have been where I have been or seen what I have seen, and I pray that you never do."
BL – I've seen a few things of my own, which is why I stated above that we may not disagree about drugs and alcohol as much as you might think. I've seen SO many folks ruin their lives over addiction. I've lost a few friends that way. I've seen people do the most incomprehensibly vile and disgusting things while hopped up on…whatever(but not pot). I've been victim to the reprecussions of drug abuse by others as well. I've literally been beaten and denied nourishment for the sake of someone getting/not getting their cocaine fix. (God I'm glad she divorced that asshole.) Although quite brief, I've even had my own bout with alcoholism years ago. I could go on and on. The examples are seemingly endless.
I can only imagine some of the things you've seen as a cop. I've worked with DEA and have known a few cops. I've heard a few stories that rival and often out-do my own.
Drugs and alcohol generally have the potential to be quite dangerous. We certainly agree there. The individual and social consequences of drug abuse are something to seriously consider for anyone thinking of experimenting. It's so easy to fall into their trap.
That's part of why I like pot…it's NOT so easy because the trap doesn't really exist, unless you count things like beaing lazy and eating too many doritos.
G.A. Rowe – "P.S. Anita . . . I know where that shed is"
BL – That's okay, I'll just invite her to my place for a smoke. You don't know where my shed is. 🙂
BL,
"And I'm well aware that my attitude sometimes has that effect on people. I'm usually pretty perceptive when it comes to people, and part of that is knowing what buttons to push and how to push them."
Are you my long lost brother? 😉
Allow me to jump in before GA gets hold of you. 🙂
Re: Me & Aflac duck. Funny but that IS drug abuse. I've seen people getting their pets hyped up and am totally against it. Same as sharing a beer with your dog — alcohol abuse 😦
Somehow I think GA does know where your shed is also. Furthermore, I'm almost convinced that our own police dept knows exactly who smokes and who doesn't. Word of mouth goes a long way. Especially in a small city. But since the've never come for any other reason they choose to ignore it. No harm – no foul. They may be on to something.
Anita – "I've seen people getting their pets hyped up and am totally against it. Same as sharing a beer with your dog — alcohol abuse"
I agree that an involuntary high is wrong. Pets OR people. But what happens if your pet WANTS to get a buzz?
I say this because my grandfather once had a cat that would sneak and drink his mixed drink when he wasn't looking. It would only do that to his mixed drinks. If there wasn't alcohol in it, it didn't want it.
I also had a friend with a cat that whenever it would smell pot, it would come in from the other room, climb on him and bug him until he gave it a shotgun. The cat was a stoner. It would even try to sing along to music.
Anita – "Somehow I think GA does know where your shed is also."
While I suppose that it's possible, It's highly doubtful considering the following…
(without going into too much detail, and no, I'm not wanted for anything)
I've been stalked by some talented folks. Subsequently, I pulled a disappearing act. I went WAY out of my way in order to be un-findable/untrackable. While I have recently relaxed my posture a bit, It's still rather difficult to find me. There is little means of pin-pointing my actual location, and they can be eliminated rather quickly with minimal effort.
I can't be found if I don't wanna be found.
Besides, he was joking…And if he wasn't, I seriously doubt he would go through all that trouble just to bust me/us with a joint or small bag. (right now – Nothing, I'm out)
And BTW – I don't have a shed. hehe.
Anita – "Furthermore, I'm almost convinced that our own police dept knows exactly who smokes and who doesn't. Word of mouth goes a long way. Especially in a small city. But since the've never come for any other reason they choose to ignore it. No harm – no foul. They may be on to something."
It's been my experience that a lot of cops could care less about pot…depends on the cop and where you are of course. I've smoked in front of cops, and even with them. 🙂
BL-It's been my experience that a lot of cops could care less about pot…depends on the cop and where you are of course. I've smoked in front of cops, and even with them.
Anita- Me too
Looks to me like more groundwork being laid….
http://biggovernment.com/sright/2010/05/06/rep-andre-carson-tea-party-protesters-are-one-of-the-largest-threats-to-our-internal-security/
I am completely ashamed to say that Andre Carson "represents" my congressional district.
Yet more proof of taxation without representation.
The only reason this guy got elected was because his grandmother was Julia Carson…. She wasn't particularly good either (actually she was horrible, but I was trying to sugar-coat it since she is dead….)
OK that is ond kind of "inheritance" that should be abolished.
Hi Ya'll 🙂
Finally have some time to post and say HI! I've read along throughout the last few days and would like to say that I'm very proud to know all of you, even if I may not agree sometimes. I can't post from work, and by the time I get home, what I want to say has been said, so I choose not to repeat.
I will say that I'm happy that Chris Devine is becoming a regular poster, his input, whether I agree or not, is always valuable. I have a long memory, and I have seen a change in CD. Your new found patience Chris is a welcome change, and I thank you for your input. I like the folks who can share a difference of opinion and ideaologies, and hold their ground! 🙂
I've been really busy, between work, contract negotiations, another damn grievence, and building in PA, where I will be residing by July. Glad to see that Bottom Line and Birdman chimes in when they can!
I've been studying a group called the "Oathkeepers" as of late, and would be willing to present their philosophy if anyone would like to here of them. I know that my guest articles have been a bit "off the wall" for many here. But will offer this subject if ya'll want to understand and learn about it. Many of you have my e-mail address, and USW can pass on any input to me from those that don't. As a note, I have been studying this group for well over a year, and would present it as a non=member, as all of your input makes a difference in our country, and your choices are equally important.
A special thanks to D13 on the immigrant issues. Wish I could help in some way, fight the good fight, sir!
Peace to all!
I would also like give a big shout out to all the Lady SUFA supporters. Without all of you, This site would not be complete! 🙂
I'm very interested in the Oathkeepers G. Just keep forgetting about them when I'm online.
I've noticed your absence around here too. That time of the year though. I'll be coming up missing alot soon too. No internet at the lake. I fear SUFA withdrawal.
Now I want to know where Judy has been hiding so much lately?
Here is an interesting conspiracy theory:
Another on EMP:
Hey Birdman!
Kinda makes ya go HMMMM!
Another:
This has been the subject of many discussions here at SUFA. Most know where I stand, and what I'm working to achieve, hopefully, I'm not the only one!
I'm doing what I can to prepare but no where near your level.
My pole barn in Pa. will be done by Memorial day, and I will have relocated completely by July 4th. The garden is tilled and the potatoes, beets, onions and radishes are planted. Above ground plants must wait till after June 1st.
I have all the materials for my hunting blinds and will do that this summer.
I've began my involment in to certain like minded associations, the local American Legion in Pa, the Oathkeepers of Pa, and getting to know the Amish clans much better.
My first batch of homemade tomatoe brandy will be bottled next weekend 🙂
I also have a network to allow me to sell or barter some other things I can grow, if you get my drift.
It's not just about gathering, but organizing with others, establishing networks, and in some cases, unlikely aquaintences, that may prove valuable in a real pinch.
My financial investments have been very minimal, the pole barn for example, would have cost over 3500.00 if I went to Home Depot, I'll have spent less than 1100.00 when completed, thanks to the Amish. I'm using a wood called Hemlock, which will never rot in my lifetime. I could write a book on this stuff. Hope you take good notes my friend!
G-Man:
I'm kind of in between two worlds right now. I'm working in IL and family is in MI. My daughter will finish her senior year in MI so it may be another year until we get resettled.
Sounds like you have a good network established. You have some roots in that neck of the woods so you will do well. I've heard of hemlock but not familiar with it. I'm guessing you have some friends help you with this pole barn.
ARGHH,
I have so many e-mail addresses I get confused on who is who. I'm thinking something Christmasy? If so, I'll send pics and more details.