Imagine This . . .

Imagine that you get hired to do a job. Any job. Might be as low as being a garbage collector, oops, excuse me, a sanitation worker. I understand that expectations in such a job may not be very high by the worker. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it and it doesn't pay very much. Do I really need to tell you all the things that suck about being someone who collects garbage? Sucky job. Bet you want to work your way up into a better job. But at the same time you are glad as can be that there are people who need a job and need to start out by being garbage collectors until they work their way up the system. I want you to think about how many jobs you have ever had where you could miss four out of ten days of work over a one year period and still expect to get paid for your so-called job. Anybody? Yeah. I didn't think so. Now, that's just talking about any old body who misses work. Imagine yourself a "rich" person who owns a McDonald's franchise and you employ 30 or 40 people. You work on a budget that allows for about a 6% profit. How many people can you afford to hire who just show up to clock in and then spend 60% of their time doing nothing but personal stuff. Golfing, laundry, emailing friends, whatever. You wouldn't tolerate it for several reasons. First, you can't afford to. One employee goofing off half the time would eat up most of your slim profit margin. If you tolerate it with one employee, pretty soon other employees will be doing it as well, and then you would be going bankrupt. It wouldn't be fair to the employees who do their jobs and they would get frustrated and quit to work someplace else. Now imagine that it wasn't just an employee, but the manager you hired to run the place. How do you think that would work out? What if your manager never showed up for half of the planning meetings that were scheduled as a necessary part of running the business? So, we have this story: http://www.infowars.com/report-obama-has-missed-over-half-his-second-term-daily-intel-briefings/

A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI)report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014. The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second. The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” said Obama.

Who is really running the show? Who is making decisions about the stuff in those intelligence briefings? Just thought I'd ask.

Progress in Venezuela

Back in the late 1990s when I was still living in Florida, I went to church with a family that had fled from Venezuela after Hugo Chavez had come to power.  They left a lot of extended family and friends behind and did their best to keep in touch. 

They were quite willing to talk about the horrific conditions of life down there. Terrible inflation, rampant and very blatant crime, thugs doing strong arm robberies in broad daylight, murder and mayhem.  A common denominator of the criminal thugs was that they not only supported Hugo Chavez, but they were his enforcers at the polling places. 

The immigrants were willing to admit that the things they saw in the SEIU here in America looked frighteningly close to what they left in Venezuela.  I say all that to introduce this from Joe Huffman's blog:

                               Quote of the Day
"We are building peace from within, and for that, you need disarmament.
Let us chase after the dream, after the utopia, the utopia of a Venezuela in peace." Nicolas Maduro      [the new dictator who replaced Hugo Chavez]
September 23, 2014

Venezuela’s Maduro launches $47M plan to disarm civilians
[How’s that dream chasing working out for the Marxists?]  -- Joe Huffman
Private gun ownership in Venezuela was banned in 2012. Yet the country has the second highest murder rate in the world.
Venezuela is also nearing default on its debt, the economy is a disaster, people can’t get toilet paper and many other basic goods, and now they want to spend tens of millions of dollars to “build dozens of new disarmament centers for civilians to surrender their weapons”.

So what happens when the powers that be decide to try that here in the U.S.?

The Bigger Problem

"Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance." 
             -- Francis W. Porretto

Once again I run across a tidbit from Liberty's Torch that becomes the seed for a post here. Francis managed to encapsulate an idea in just seven words.  Sometimes, really great quotes don't get the appreciation they deserve. Maybe this one little sentence struck me so significantly because I have enough worldly experience.

Maybe it set off bells and whistles in my head because I've had to deal with the truth of that statement so much lately.

At the risk of boring my more intelligent readers, I feel like expounding on the quote above. I guess another reason for this is that I've got several decades of experience that growing older does not guarantee growing wiser; at least not in a society that coddles ignorance and stupidity.  Recently I've had to encounter the most egregious sin of stupidity.  Willful ignorance.  While lately I have seen this attitude most irritatingly in people quite older than myself, I try to mitigate my angst by seeing an underlying attitude of: "I'm old, I've paid my dues, and I'm not long for this world anyway."

Believe it or not, I've spent enough time thinking about this that I now have two categories of willful ignorance. In the first kind, the subject is confronted with facts that are so upsetting to his worldview, that he dismisses the new information and quickly moves on to something else that distracts him from having to really ruminate on it.  It may be in the back of his mind, able to resurface later if brought about by another event.  But the subject sort of subconsciously suppresses it because the cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to deal with presently.  In this primary level, at least there is hope that the subject will accept the truth in the future.  When I encounter this in an individual, I can easily smile and drop the subject, thinking to myself, "It's okay, he/she's just not ready yet."

But the second level of willful ignorance is where I have to fight the demons that set my blood to boiling. It's when the subject makes clear and very declarative statements to the effect of: "I don't WANT to know." And more importantly, the statements are made with a smile and a smugness as if delivering divine wisdom from on high.  This is where I DO need grace from the Almighty, because I feel like slapping the ever-loving shit out of the jerk.

Getting back to the main idea; both of the levels of ignorance above are most often born out of miseducation.  Ignorance in its pure form simply means that you don't know, but you have not been indoctrinated in any particular direction, like a juror in a fresh venue with no prior knowledge of the case.  The problem comes from being purposely "educated" to believe things that seem very plausible, have been seemingly accepted by the vast majority, and are typically very difficult and time consuming to falsify or prove on one's own. Amusement of all kinds is the modern American sport. Ignorance is bliss. "I'll take the blue pill."

Why?  Well, as much as I don't like leftist/progressives, I'll quote one here.  Gloria Steinem said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."  Of course, truth won't piss you off until you are forced to come to grips with it.  It's like the child of any age who's parents finally throw him out of the house to go fend for his self. The Eastern Airlines employee or air traffic controller who finds out that the union doesn't really have his best interests at heart. The college graduate who finds out that there is no one looking to hire someone with a masters degree in "Graffiti's Social Importance."
So many more examples I would like to give here, but I'll move on.

People don't cling to false things they believe to be true because of evidence or logic.  They cling to those things because of their emotions.  Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority has many uberposts on his blog, along with some long-running exchanges with hoplophobes that help prove this point.  I remember sifting through long threads on his site as well as others, and being dumbfounded at the extremes to which anti-gunners will go to defend their position against all evidence and logic which demonstrates their position to be blatantly stupid.

One reason emotion is such a big issue is because nobody likes to find out they've fallen for a lie.  Short-term lies on the personal level are one thing. Someone in your personal world lies to you, but you eventually find out. Most of your anger can be righteously directed at them, and once you've calmed down you can at least feel good about yourself for discovering the truth.  But the big lies that will really rock your world are just too painful to deal with for a lot of people. Big lies that you find out you actually talked yourself into because they sounded so good.  But it was wrong.  And in the realization it was wrong you become angry. You are angry because it made you feel stupid.

The bigger the lie, the more stupid you feel, and thus the angrier you get.  The force multiplier to the tune of 10X is the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself.  There's not one individual you can blame for knowingly defrauding you.  If you got taken in by Bernie Madoff, you've got someone you can focus your anger on.  But who are you going to take to court or see in shackles over the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

Nothing perpetuates and protects ignorance as much as believing that you already know the truth. Oh, I believe that there are indeed absolute truths. But they are the things which I am always willing to put to the test.  Any test. Over and over.  But when you've come to the conclusion that "the argument/debate is over," then the only thing you have proven is your ignorance. 



Minor Rabbit Trail:  It's so easy to be like one of the sheep in this parade.  It's cool to feel like you are connected with a popular movie star.  It's so easy to let people like Leo and Algore and Bernie the Commie Sanders do your thinking for you, instead of asking the epistemological question: Are they right? How do they know?  What are the arguments on the other side?  If the argument is over, why the need for the march?  Back to my screed.

The things I am willing to argue passionately for are the things I am sure are true, with the caveat that I know I am human and that there may be information yet that I do not have.  But show me someone who is unwilling to entertain a reasonable and intelligent argument, and I'll show you a willfully ignorant and downright stupid fool.

Exponentially Wrong

The piece I'm about to fisk can be found here.  I'm only going to deal with the first two paragraphs, because that's all I need.  When you start with an incredibly flawed premise, your conclusions can only be madness.

Read the piece below and see if you recognize the error before I deal with it.

When we practice the privileges granted to us by our governing documents, in this case, the Bill of Rights and bearing arms, we enter into an implicit agreement with the Union to recognize and act according to the State's rules and regulations for the use and ownership of arms. And as we agree to those rules, so does the government agree to act responsibly on behalf of our collective well-being.
In this manner, our relationship with our nation mirrors our relationship with our parents; both our parents and our nation raise us; both provide for our welfare; both teach us values and ethics; both act on our behalf for our well-being. And thus should we regard our nation; as a parental figure to be a moral example, an ideal to respect and to obey. For, if the dynamics of our relationship with our parents are mirrored functionally by the dynamics of our relationship with our country, so too should the convictions and loyalties that characterize the former persist in the latter.

Let me just start with the words before the first comma.  Privileges?   Where did you get such an idea Mr. Lelonek?  Our founding documents don't even mention privileges.  It speaks of inalienable rights that come from God.  It speaks of the purpose of a righteous government being to secure and protect those rights and never abrogate them.  Therefore, we don't enter into any agreement whatsoever to agree to any rules the State might make in direct violation of our God-given rights.

Has the government violated the Constitution by passing laws that infringe on our rights?  Oh yes.  We have an outlaw government.  This is pretty much beyond any question for those of us who have read history and understand it.

It is bad enough that this condition exists today, but for someone to come along and try to interpret it 180 degrees out of phase is infuriating.

To read the records of the founding fathers as they argued and hammered out the Constitution, as well as from reading both the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers, an intelligent human being understands that the founders understood government in all forms to be a necessary evil that must be chained down and guarded to keep it from doing the very things that you advocate in that tripe you call an opinion.  The Constitution was written to be the very set of chains that restrained government from being anything other than a servant to the people as sovereign individuals and the sovereign States who agreed to create the Federal government.

It was never intended for the government to see to any collective well being.  Any idea of a collective was diametrically opposite the goals of the founders.  Government was meant to stay the hell out of the way of individuals pursuing their own well being and happiness so long as they respected everyone else's rights to do the same.

To  draw an analogy to parenting in regard to government is outrageous.  I don't have enough words of contempt for such an idea.  Such is the language of totalitarian communist states such as North Korea, or Cuba.  Free people understand that human beings are flawed.  We understand that getting elected to office or being appointed to positions or getting hired as a bureaucrat does not bestow some super human understanding or intelligence for making better decisions in directing other people's lives.

In a more sensible time, it was understood that when a person reached the age to vote and be a responsible citizen, they would be capable of being a parent, not needing one.  It is not the job of government to provide me with welfare or anything else.  Even more important, it is not the job of government to take part of my life and liberty in the form of the fruit of my labor and my time in order to provide things for other people.

If you are genuinely ignorant of the true meaning of the founding documents, Mr. Lelonek, I suggest you get schooled on the matter.  If you can't comprehend the writings of the men who composed those documents over 200 years ago, then I suggest some courses at Hillsdale College in Michigan.  They specialize in teaching exactly what the founders were trying to and did accomplish and exactly why.

If you really do know the history and the meaning of the founding documents, then you are a most egregious liar and you would make the most perfect example of someone who deserves to be stripped naked, slathered with tar and dusted with feathers.  Then you need to be dropped off in one of the countries that attempts to govern according to the concepts that you espouse.
There are plenty of such places.  Please take as many other child-like folks with you who don't have the grown-up thinking and maturity to handle freedom and live in any of the countries with nanny-state government.

Let them tell you what is safe to drive, eat, and talk about.  Let them dictate to you what lightbulbs to use, whether or not you can pack your child's lunch for school, who you can associate with, how much money you should be allowed to make.  Go ahead, there's nothing stopping you.

We grown-ups who have worked hard and made good choices would like to be left alone.  We know how to handle sharp objects and things that go bang.  We've even been known to create fire on a regular basis and cook our own food.  Lot's of us actually can do math at levels high enough to balance multiple checking accounts.

Take you and your immature friends and find yourself a parent style government someplace else.  Leave us alone.

Hat tip to Joe Huffman.

What Part Of BROKE Don't You Understand?

You could go look at this site.

Or you can watch this video:



If you need more of a graphic representation, I borrowed the following images from here.

Here is what $10,000 looks like; a stack of one hundred $100 bills.

Next, you can see what a million dollars looks like.

To keep that in perspective, if you could spend a thousand dollars a day, it would take you about two years and nine months to spend it.  If your household budget is $3,000 per month, it would take you about 28 years to spend it.

Next graphic shows what 100 million dollars looks like.  Now you need a forklift.

Now, a Billion dollars is 1000 times one million:  $1,000,000,000  and the graphic below lets you see what it looks like.

I don't know what you could think to spend it on, but you could spend $1,000,000 a day and it would take you 2 years and nine months to work your way through this amount.

So what does $1 TRILLION look like?  $1,000,000,000,000 is one million times one million.

Take out just 190 of those double stacked pallets.  Thats not quite two rows. That represents the 38 billion that Congress compromised on cutting from the budget.  That means we will continue to go into staggering debt.  So here's a graphic that might help you wrap your brain around the problem.

This is what we get for believing that it's okay for government to take from the productive people of society and give it to the non-productive.

If you haven't started making plans for what you are going to do when this house of cards comes tumbling down, then you are way, WAY behind.

Best Statement #3 for 2011

From our man at OneCosmos

"The genuine problems that confront man are by no means "solved" by the left, just systematically ignored and obliterated, to man's eternal detriment. In the ideal world of the left, it would be against the law to even talk about the real problem(s); hence, political correctness, which is simply totalitarianism by other means. "

And none of that political correctness is going to go away until the whole mess of a system collapses.  Of course,  for those of us paying attention, we see it coming soon.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is another of those words that I have almost put into the list of "abused into meaninglessness."  At least three quarters of the time when someone uses it, it does not apply.

Modern liberals and leftists of course, have done this, since they are all about abusing the language for the purposes of controlling the narrative.  Racism and all of it's word forms is the epitome of such abused words in the English language.  For a leftist to call me a racist is now a badge of honor; similar to being called the "Worst Person in the World" by Keith Olberman.

If your mind lives in the world of newspeak and you believe in the propaganda of the left, you can call someone a hypocrite simply because it is the most convenient term you can think of to use as an ad hominem attack for the purpose of discrediting them. You don't want to argue the issues or principles, or more to the point, when you can't argue based on the facts, you try to destroy their character.

If you have ever in your life taken a draw off of a joint of marijuana, you can never, ever tell your child or anyone else about the dangers of taking drugs, or you will be a hypocrite in the eyes of the left.  If you've had an abortion and now suffer the emotional and mental anguish that such a decision cost you, you would be a hypocrite if you told other women to reconsider making the same mistake that you made.  If you cheated on your wife and experienced the heartbreak and damage that it caused and would like to warn others that it is not worth the temporary gratification, you would be a hypocrite to do so according to those who don't like to be told that there are standards that should be upheld.

Never mind that you've repented, made amends, and are now a paragon of virtue in the area in question.  If a modern liberal doesn't like your message and you have any history upon which to base your message.  You are a hypocrite.

President Obama has done me a big favor for the purpose of writing this particular post.

Let's say we have a dictator in the Middle East.  This guy is ruthless and bloodthirsty.  When a large province of his subjects weren't going along with his programs, he sent rockets with VX nerve gas into their territories and gassed tens of thousands of men, women, and children to death.  He did the same with his enemies in the next country to the East, thus proving that he had weapons of mass destruction and was willing to use them. The intelligence agencies of several countries were, and are still convinced that he was actively pursuing nuclear weapons.  This guy thought of himself as a modern reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzer.  He was known to maintain rape rooms and fed people into plastic shredders.  For years he ruled in a reign of terror that made the Shah of Iran look like the Pope.  We ignored him until he decided to annex a tiny sovereign country by force.  He routinely flouted the no-fly zone and other sanctions put in place by the UN.  He funded terrorist activities in other countries.  He hosted terrorist training in his own country, providing camps complete with airliner fuselages with which to run hijacking drills.

According to Barry, we never should have invaded his country or taken him out.  Once we were there and still needed to clean out the rats nest, we shouldn't have done "the surge."  According to the junior senator from Illinois, a president does not have the authority to take military action when there is no obvious direct threat to the U.S.  Apparently "kinetic militiary actions" are something entirely different.  Oh, but there is no hypocrisy here.  None.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  Move along, now.

Hypocrisy is when you are actively engaged in doing the very thing you are preaching against.  Let's get this right.  If you did something in the past and have since proven yourself to no longer do such things and you have seen the error of your ways, and now you are warning others against such action; that is not hypocrisy.  If you are Elliot Spitzer and got elected Governor of New York by touting the fact that you've been busting prostitution rings, and then it turns out that you are their biggest customer, that's the pinnacle of hypocrisy.

When you claim to be a Democrat because you care about the working man and the poor and then you vote for the party that destroys free enterprise and the mechanisms that create wealth and prosperity, that's hypocrisy.

I could give example after example of genuine hypocrisy, but I think you get my drift.  And if you don't, you probably are a loyal member of the Democrat party.

Nip It In The Bud

Ever use that phrase?  Know where it comes from?  So many of our cliches in life come from agrarian sources.

This phrase speaks to stopping the growth of something you don't find desirable.  I used to grow a lot of roses in Florida, and I took great care doing it.  It involves an almost constant pruning to produce nice long stems and big showy blossoms.  You nip a lot of small buds in order to get nice ones where you want them.

When it comes to weeds, anybody trying to grow nice stuff knows the difficulty of controlling weeds if you don't take precautions early on.  The trick to keeping yourself from being frustrated to death by out-of-control weeds is to not let them get started in the first place.

This post was prompted by a post written by Oleg Volk.  It's very short and worth the read, but it made me realize that we need to deal with how the problem arises in the first place.

Losing your personal and individual liberties is very much like the weed problem.  With the exception of the military, collective punishment has no place in a free society.  In the military, the teamwork necessary to survival in battle is ingrained by both collective reward and punishment.  But in the civilian population of a country based on freedom and rule of law that protects individual rights, collective anything is a very bad idea.

As a society, we've allowed the weeds of collective punishment to permeate our lives.  It mostly starts in the government schools (nothing public about them).  Children are taught to conform early on to all kinds of standardization and individuality and talent is not only not nurtured, it can be downright squashed.

It starts there and then it migrates in society to all levels and age groups.  I would never live in a neighborhood that has "Deed Restrictions"  or "Covenants."  You can do it if you want to, but you better pay close attention to all the fine print in that 200 page contract that will attract the nosiest busybody who really will pay attention to what kind of patio furniture you have, what color you paint the house, and what brand of trash receptacle you use.

We teach our children that if you excel, you are hurting the self-esteem of someone else, so don't excel.  We let the world, media, television, the indoctrination centers (school) tell our kids that we should all have the same stuff, and that if someone else has more, he must have gotten it because he's greedy and evil, not because he worked hard and provided other people with things that they needed or wanted and was thus rewarded for his effort.  Children are treated like idiots when they are allowed to play soccer, so long as they don't keep score.  Little boys can't possibly be allowed to be little boys and trained to control their energy and enthusiasm without the use of drugs.  No.  They must have some mythical condition called ADD or ADHD, which never existed until the late 20th century and doesn't exist anyplace but the U.S.

Not everyone who reads this will feel the same way I do.  I know that there are plenty of people out there that will go along with the collective ideas like sheep or lemmings, simply because it makes them feel safe.  Not one shred of real thought goes into it.  It's all based on feelings.  They can see a guy with a gun on his hip out in public and just start freaking out.  But if they see a uniform, a radio, a handcuff holster and twin magazine holsters holding an additional thirty rounds of ammunition, that's okay.  Never mind that the person with the gun is still a human being,  or that cops have gone to prison before for murder.  But I digress.

We need to fight this collective indoctrination at every turn.  This is why I hate unions so much.  Unions are for losers who don't want to excel.  They want to hide in the anonymity of a large group and just get by with doing enough to be passable or less.  It is absolutely criminal that anyone working for taxpayer money has anything remotely like collective bargaining.  Of course the only thing that is going to bring that to an end now will be the financial collapse of all the government entities that allowed it to go on.

It's one thing for the teacher to not allow gum chewing in class because it interferes with the child's ability to speak clearly.  It is quite another to not allow it because a few children were irresponsible and stuck their wad under the desk.  That teaches the child that a few bad people can just mess it up for the majority.

We live in such an upside-down world.  We subsidize those who choose to do nothing to improve their own situation.  We punish those who seek to be the best that they can be.  Then the media laud and celebrate those who denigrate the values of those who made the right choices and champion the so-called "rights" of the dregs of society to demand the fruits of the labor of the productive.

Whenever individual problems are dealt with by collective means, the result is loss of freedom.  From chewing gum to alcohol or drugs and even guns.  The founding fathers were right.  The government that governs best, governs least.

Representative Government

It still makes me cringe like fingernails on a chalkboard when I hear anyone refer to the U.S. as a democracy, but this latest post by a contributor to The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler reminded me of a couple of things about our republic, and I thought of something he didn't even mention which I think is more important than all of his points put together.

What if every bill proposed in the House or the Senate had to pass a test to see whether or not the Constitution authorized it?

The 112th Congress is about to convene and the collective mouthpiece for the socialist administration and supporters is just going nuts over the fact that they plan on reading the Constitution.  I tend to think it it is only going to be something to laugh at in sad derision since the GOP leadership makes me think it is nothing more than window dressing.

I could be wasting my time writing about this because I don't know how many people come here and read this stuff, but venting about it makes me feel better.  I wonder how much Eric Hoffer thought about the impact his writing might have. Since the inevitable crash is upon us, why not try to educate as many people as possible in case we can try to rebuild something out of the ashes and rubble while we are waiting for Messiah to return?  Some of my fellow believer's may think I should focus only on winning souls for God, but I think all of this stuff, every aspect of life and living, are interwoven.  How you think about certain political issues will quickly tell me whether you are a believer or not.  That's just the fact.

I remember when the democrats howled (Hillary Clinton) over the false accusations that Republicans were questioning the patriotism of the left, or according to her own labeling, progressives, even when it wasn't happening.  Much to my chagrin.  I certainly wish that the GOP leadership did have the gonads to publicly question the left's patriotism.  For decades those on the left with the "D" behind their name have been relentlessly and systematically working to destroy the Constitution, and since the Clinton's occupied the White House, we have enough quotes from their own mouths to prove it.  I don't have to try to convince you based on a nuanced action here, or some vague reference over there.  The cat's been out of the bag in plain view for quite a while.

The reason I think that the reading of the Constitution on the House floor is mostly window dressing is because the only bills that should be coming to the floor for a vote are bills that defund and abolish every federal agency that cannot be justified by a plain reading of the Constitution.  In other words, there would be no time on the agenda to take up any new bills regarding non-existing laws for the next five years or more.

Even before a bill is passed that simply states that the previous "Health Care Reform" act is immediately rendered null and void, The House should pass a resolution that freezes all funding to the following agencies, pending further legislation that abolishes the agencies themselves and directs what is to be done with the property and assets of those agencies.  I'll spell them out for a reason.  This is just the short list.

Environmental Protection Agency.  (EPA)  They don't exist to protect any environment.  They exist to make it prohibitively expensive to manufacture or process any goods, because the main enemy of "progress" for the left is free-market capitalism.

Food & Drug Administration. (FDA)  Exists to siphon off billions of dollars from the drug companies in the form of campaign contributions, and at the same time guarantee that drug companies have a virtual monopoly on medicine that can be patented, while at the same time scaring the public into thinking that natural herbs and foods are dangerous.  Nanny government must protect you.

National Endowment for the Arts  (NEA)  When's the last time you dressed up and went to a symphony?  When's the last time you went to an art museum or gallery?  I'm sure you have been throwing lots of disposable income around on various art projects.  That's why the federal government sees no problem in taking away your money to fund buying millions of dollars worth of incomprehensible statuary to stand outside of government buildings, to fund performance artists who do things that you not only wouldn't watch, but if your child did them you would beat or disown them.

Department of Education.  Created by Jimmy Carter in 1979.  Prior to that, there was very little education going on in the United States.  Engineering, math and science were struggling along without direction or purpose because there was no centralized government agency to look to.  There are rumors that we landed men on the moon using slide rules, because the digital calculator hadn't been invented yet. Can you see how much this country failed to accomplish because we had to wait for a visionary like Jimmy Carter to show up?
Now you can go into many fast food restaurants witness the mathematical prowess of high school graduates making change.  You can go on Facebook and read the most stunning literary prose of the average American teenager and marvel.

Department of Energy.  While France, a country which has led the way in showing Muslims that their country need not be conquered using conventional arms and warfare, has built enough high technology nuclear reactors that their country safely gets 90% of it's energy that way, our DOE has been regulating what little nuclear capability we have nearly out of existence.  At the same time, the DOE has been making any building or modernization of Petroleum processing prohibitively expensive or impossible due to unnecessary regulation.  How much energy does the DOE produce?  None.

This is how modern government works.  It would almost be funny if I could say that you can take the name of a government agency, and whatever that name is, that's what they don't do, or don't produce.  But, alas, it is worse than that.  Whatever the name of the agency is, that's what they are out to destroy.

Don't believe me?  Just look at the list.

Internal Revenue Service.  Granted they don't actually write the tax law that taxes income, but they administer the Income Tax.  Does the IRS promote income?  No.  They destroy it.

Department of Agriculture (USDA)  How many times have you heard of family farms going under; if not for the cost of regulation of farming, then because of the death tax.  How many of you know that Corporations like Monsanto and other huge agribusinesses use their lobbying power to put small competitors out of business?  The USDA is all about making life hard for small farms and the people who want their products.

Department of Transportation.  Just go talk to any truck driver, especially if he's an owner.  The next time you are stuck on a very large expanse of concrete and/or asphalt, knowing that you will never get that time back, or contemplating how much it will cost you to repair the damage that was caused by road conditions that should have been repaired months ago, remember that it's called an expressway because it gives you lots of time and reasons to express yourself.

I could go on, but you get the point.  The fact of the matter is that since about 1913, about 90% of all the legislation passed and signed into law has been unconstitutional.  Let me restate that.  Most of that law has been downright illegal.  Congresses have just taken the attitude: "We don't care if the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do this, we want it, and some of our constituents want it, so, there!"

When the people who themselves are supposed to be the guardians of the law become completely lawless themselves, thinking themselves above and outside the law, why should they expect any respect, let alone obedience to their own dictates?

Is there a single person reading this who voted for somebody with the idea in mind that you know that you are just too stupid to decide how best to live your own life; that the supreme law of the land is just too archaic today?  Are you the voter who was thinking:  "Please, Congressperson, pass whatever law you think best as long as it makes me believe that you will provide housing and jobs and medical care and won't let anybody besides athletes and movie stars make too much money."

You Can't Eat That!

Ve vill tell you vaht you can eat, and ven you can eat it.  (German accents don't translate well in typing)

The Federal government can't just be satisfied to be able to dictate what lightbulbs you use, what kind of toilet you can have, what kind of car you can drive, what kind of job you can have. Oh no.  Now they are going to dictate what food is available to you, and how much, which in turn will naturally cause the cost to go up dramatically.

As if the so-called "Health Care" bill wasn't scary enough, which already passed by a purely Democrat vote - a first in history - and the threat of "Cap and Trade" waiting in the wings isn't enough to make you want to flee to some South American banana republic in order get more freedom, now the U.S. Senate is debating passage of a bill that will empower a bureaucracy of unelected, faceless thugs to decide what food you can grow yourself or trade with other Americans.  This is Senate Bill 510, and it is another breathtaking assault on freedom.

And while there are 14 Republicans who voted to allow debate on this bill, most of whom did so for the appearance of "bipartisanship," they probably haven't got a clue what's really in the bill.  I've been sending back letters and mailings from the RNC for over 15 years with replies telling them that they are nothing more than lack-luster, phony opposition to the Socialist Democrat party.  I've often said that the only difference between the Democrats and Republicans is that the Republicans want to drive us over the cliff at a mere 20 miles an hour, while the Democrats want to get us there at 90.

This S 510 bill is outrageous in it's hubris and arrogance.  Par for the course for Democrats.  They insist on controlling every aspect of your life, "for your own good," whether you like it or not.  Grow your own food?  We can't have that!  Buy organic, locally grown food that might not be licensed by Monsanto?  Are you insane?


"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
- William Pitt

"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
- Daniel Webster

 "We are the Federal Government, and we're here to help you. . . . Well, unless of course, there's a minnow or a rat or a worm or something endangered, then you are on your own.  Or unless of course, it interferes with our desire to control the population and enrich ourselves and those we deem worthy.  You see, you are too stupid to know what's good for you.  We created the FDA in order to test the safety and efficacy of drugs that you should be taking, and you people who think that you should be free to use foods and herbs to treat or cure your own conditions, well, that's just crazy, and you need to be stopped."

Yeah, Republicans have their faults.  Some of them have been just as corrupt as anybody else.  But in the last thirty years, as I have observed with my own eyes, it has consistently been the Democrats who lead the way in imposing the most blatantly un-constitutional, dictatorial, totalitarian, statist legislation.  Always in the name of "the greater good."  It's like we are living the novels "Animal Farm" and "Atlas Shrugs" all rolled into one.

Look into this bill, S510.  Ask your Democrat friends what they think about it.  Ask them how they can defend such stuff.  Imagine your home being raided by USDA agents with guns because you didn't first get a license and get inspected before you canned your own vegetables that you grew in your own yard.

It used to be we were in the process of this great republic dying the death of a thousand little cuts with razor blades.  Now the long knives have come out.  What are you prepared to do?