If the American people had to actually pay for the wars, would we still have the wars?

Carl Levin calls for a war tax.

The new Republican purity test

Republicans considering ideological purity test for candidates:

Ten members of the Republican National Committee are proposing a resolution demanding candidates embrace at least eight of 10 conservative principles if they hope to receive financial support and an official endorsement from the RNC. The "Proposed RNC Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates," is designed to force candidates to prove that they support "conservative principles" while opposing "Obama's socialist agenda," according to The New York Times' Caucus blog. The proposal highlights the ongoing tug-of-war for the ideological soul of the Republican party, and has been met with skepticism both inside and outside of the party.

Here's the purity test:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama's "stimulus" bill;

We support shrinking the debt by cutting taxes, spending more than the entire world on war armaments and by extirpating some nebulous "wasteful spending" and earmarks.

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;

We support a completely dysfunctional health care system where the number one cause of middle-class bankruptcy is medical debt. We'll continue this whole charade about magical "free-market solutions" brought to you by the free-market fairy.

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

I'll give the Republicans this one. They do seem to oppose cap-and-trade.

(4) We support workers' right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

When did the Republican Party become the party of workers' rights?

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

We support taking in millions and millions of immigrants. They just have to be legal. Then, they can assimilate into America and vote for the Democrats as our party continues a futile pandering effort to attract minority voters.

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

We don't know what victory means and cannot define it, but we should never withdraw from pointless military adventures because it is a "sign of weakness." We should have listened to MacArthur in Korean and nuked the Chinese because it was "military recommended." By staying in Iraq and Afghanistan for 100 years, we will eliminate the national debt.

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

We continue to search out new markets to spread the gospel of freedom and democracy.

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

We will continue to mobilize our base by pretending we care about their issues and do absolutely nothing to stop gay marriage, abortion, or anything else. Once we reclaim power, we will continue to pursue tax-cuts for the rich, raid the treasury, invade nations under false pretenses and push the agenda of our neoconservative and corporate backers.
(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

We continue to support insurance bureaucrats rationing health-care. We will continue to pretend to fight against abortion while our own insurance policy for the RNC covers elective abortion.
(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership;

We believe in slowly eroding liberties, unlike the Democrats, who prefer quickly destroying liberties.

God bless the RNC. They sure do try.

P.S: Am I the only one whose stomach churns at the constant invocations of Ronald Reagan?

Americans that Lew Rockwell Hates

"Companies That Unions Hate" from LewRockwell.com

How dare these firms provide jobs for hardworking poor people in the Third World, and good prices for their customers here, promoting the international division of labor and international peace, rather than go out of business with lazy, protectionist, nationalist unionoids in Uncle Samland? I pledge in the coming year to patronize all members of the “2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame”: Abercrombie and Fitch, Gymboree, Hanes, Ikea, Kohl’s, LL Bean, Pier 1 Imports, Propper International, and Walmart.

I, for one, will cheer when the vaunted "international division of labor" prices Lew Rockwell out of the market for libertarian hallucinations. A man, who openly gloats, in prideful vanity, about the economic annihilation of his own nation deserves a fate befitting of the middle-class Americans he derides as "unionids."

Here's Lew Rockwell on free trade:

But, generally speaking, the Protective system in these days is conservative, while the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favor of Free Trade.

Oops! That was Karl Marx.

Has the whole world lost its mind?

‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work’

Joseph Holandes Ubalde is my new favorite journalist. He cuts straight to the propaganda.

The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

It's the perfect liberal calamity! Not only does"climate change" strike non-Western peoples with greater havoc, it's such a a perfect dream that it strikes women even worse. Here's U.N Bureacrat Suneeta Mukerjee's masterful logic:

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection," Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.

It gets even better:

Based on the UNFPA report, there are 92 million Filipinos in the country as of 2009 and that number is expected to balloon to more than 146 million in the next 40 years.

Of the 92 million Filipinos, about 60 percent are living in coastal areas and depend on the seas for livelihood, said former Environment secretary Dr. Angel Alcala.

Alcala said that “we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our marine environment."

Wait a second. If the carrying capacity has already been reached, then why all the fuss about rising HIV rates? Isn't the entire goal population control?

But as the sea’s resources are depleted due to overpopulation and overfishing, fishermen start losing their livelihood and women are forced to share the traditional role of the man in providing for the family.

Wait, I thought global warming and resource depletion was bad for women? Isn't the goal to empower women by destroying the traditional culture? Isn't empowering women a good thing? Now I'm confused.

Alacala, who also heads the Angelo King Center for Research and Environmental Management in Siliman University, said some women often pick out shellfish by the coastlines, which exposed to storm surges.

Women who can no longer endure this work often go out to find other jobs, while some are tempted to go into prostitution, Alcala added.

Who hasn't lost a job and been tempted to go in to prostitution Mr. Alcala?

In an interview with the Inter Press News Agency, Marita Rodriguez of the Centre for Empowerment and Resource Development, Inc. said women are taking the brunt of climate change.

"Aside from their household chores and participation in fishing activity, they have to find additional sources of income like working as domestic helpers in affluent families," she said.

Of course, there's always prostitution.

A Window into a Nightmare:

Where a twenty-five dollar contribution to an intellectually bankrupt magazine staffed by incurable halfwits, is all that it takes to defend Christendom and the West.

Where electoral politics are nothing more then a farce designed to give the impression that we still have a republic. Where petty non-issues function as tools to motivate hordes of impassioned activists into electoral warfare.

Where keeping your society safe requires massive injections of fear and paranoia cloaked in a nightmarish garment of deception. Where your liberties are routinely thrashed in support of “keeping you safe” from nightmares concocted by fear mongers masquerading as the guardians of your freedoms.

Where your politicians and media go scouring the globe in search of freshly manufactured monsters to destroy.

Where authentic issues are ignored and never actually dealt with.

Where events on the other side of the world are turned into propaganda that is imbibed daily. Where ubiquitous fear and delusion powers the mania for perpetual war.

Where your neighbors line up at soup kitchens in order to eat, while your government loots the treasury to prop up behemoth financial institutions who are accountable to no one.

Where the government steadfastly denies their wicked agenda until it’s conspicuous. Then they switch gears and tell you its all been done for your own well being.

Where words no longer have meaning, where mass culture is constantly upgrading to newer forms of deviancy. Where what was widely considered bizarre and boorish is now praised as innovation.

Where the heroes of times past are hurled into the dustbin of history in favor of contemporary fabrications that accord obeisance to the propaganda interests of the usurpers.

Where pretentious men in custom tailored suits can lend credibility to noxious nonsense without rebuke, regardless of how much carnage, destruction, and death their brainless dribble has caused. Where these men are lauded as luminaries, experts, and scholars.

Where truth is regarded as toxic. Where a cavalcade of artifice is required to maintain the counterfeit reality presented to us.

Where a fantasy economic system is peddled without interruption to have the serfs believing their declining standard of living and the continuously rising income inequality is a wonderful thing. Where losing your livelihood becomes an “incredible opportunity” and the population waits patiently for bread crumbs to trickle down.

Where one is conditioned to place a premium on the health of the global economy and neglect the well-being of their own.

Where complete and utter deracination is normalized and then promulgated as the path to a brave new world.

Indeed, a window into a nightmare.

Re: Cinematic Thoughts

After reading Gordon's excellent piece, I stumbled across this news.

On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard.

Throughout the years, I've come to the realization that the most energy efficient and worthwhile way to use a television is to simply turn it off.

Then there's this little factoid:

More time spend watching TV means less time for other opportunities. According to Nielsen Media Research, the average American watches about 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the TV.

Cinematic Thoughts

A few evenings ago, I happened to be sitting beside the fireplace enjoying a glass of fine bourbon and a wonderful movie with the missus. That film was Ronald F. Maxwell's 1993 Civil War film, Gettysburg. Perhaps it is because to some extent I consider myself to be a neo-copperhead, that I found the following scene containing a speech given by Confederate General Lewis Armistead (played by actor Richard Jordan) in the moments prior to Pickett's Charge, to be most inspiring.



While I consider this to be an emotionally uplifting scene, at the same time I felt quite disheartened. The sense of pride in local culture displayed here has all but vanished in a contemporary America where most of the general public goes no further than cheering for their local university or professional sports teams. Is the ever continuing erosion of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty the culprit? Or is the open borders policy enacted by the United States government to blame? I am sure they both play a part, as does the epidemic of mass media addiction this country is currently suffering from. Would things be any different today if our government operated solely within constitutional limits? I would like to hope so, but honestly, I have no way of knowing. What I do know is this: we can all learn something from General Armistead and his band of rebel soldiers, that wherever you may be from, please turn off the television set once and a while, get to know your neighbors, cherish the time spent with friends and family, take pride in your local culture and heritage, and let all of the world know that you are here this day.

A short history of the Federal Reserve and the Progressive Era.

Editors Note: This was adapted from Prescott Davies' longer piece on the Progressive Movement. It remains an ongoing rough draft.

Many have been taught that the Progressive Era in American history was the time that the laborers fought, and won, against the evils of the Robber Barons. James Livingston argues in his monograph entitled “Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913,” that the labor movement lost the war against the capitalists, because many of the so called triumphs of labor during the progressive era only made big business stronger.

Livingston is able to successfully accomplish this task because he focuses on the struggles of the elite, when many modern historians focus on the struggles of the poor. The end result is a history of 1890-1913 that utilizes objective economic figures to explain the sociological norms, values, and mores of the elite during their struggle to transform the competitive entrepreneur capitalistic economic system to the current corporate capitalistic system that exists today.

Livingston’s thesis is that the rich were forced to modify the competitive economic system that the capitalist elite were forced to endure during the 1870-1880 period.

In order to verify this thesis, Livingston first examines the 1870’s from the perspective of the capitalists, with the help of many primary, and secondary documents including Senate testimonies, economic journals, and banker's magazines. The sources help to illuminate the progression towards the Federal Reserve. He states that the capitalist was not receiving the required profits that were needed to invest in new endeavors. This was due because of the extremely competitive atmosphere that resulted in falling prices and overproduction of commodities. To solve this problem, the elite businessmen of that time started to group together to form pools and trusts that would not only decrease competition, but would also enable them to share the secrets of the trade. The labor movement was appalled at these combinations, so they tried to eliminate them politically; and they were successful in bringing about the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. However, the legislation backfired on the laborers, because it largely eliminated competition; so many large individual companies that were involved in trusts became even larger corporations. With the rise of the corporations, the elite knew that they needed to change the current banking system, because there was not enough liquidity in the pre-Federal Reserve system to allow large corporations to fund projects during panics.

This proved to be a rather difficult task for the elite businessmen to accomplish because the politicians were largely against a private bank controlling the money supply of the United States. The bankers were forced to manipulate the politicians into believing that a new banking system was needed to ensure a healthy capitalistic society. After this vital task was complete, the Federal Reserve Act was enacted.

The amalgam of feminism, neoconservatism, and plebeian exegetics that calls itself the conservative movement.

First, the Ranee of the Republican Party, the "rogue" Sarah Palin and her imbecilic apologists are screaming "sexism" about a Newsweek cover of Mrs. Palin in her running outfit. Sarah Palin's response is just as dimwitted as she is, "The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this 'news' magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant," Palin wrote. "The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist, and oh-so-expected by now."

Yes, those liberals at Newsweek and in the mainstream media are just a bunch of raging misogynists.

I remember when conservatives didn't scream sexist, racist, or fascist at the slightest provocation and instead left such sophomoric mudslinging to their the liberal opponents.

Next, we have Republican Congressman John Shadegg giving Rudy Guiliani a run for his money at baseless fear mongering and irrational paranoia.

"I saw the Mayor of New York said today, 'We're tough. We can do it,'" Shadegg said. "Well, Mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter that's kidnapped at school by a terrorist? How are you going to feel when it's some clerk - some innocent clerk of the court - whose daughter or son is kidnapped? Or the jailer's little brother or little sister? This is political correctness run amok."

A DCCC spokesman then responds:

"In case there's any doubt of the Republican Party being taken over by the likes of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann and other Right Wing extremists, last night Republican Rep. John Shadegg actually suggested that Mayor Bloomberg's daughter will be kidnapped by a terrorist," DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer said in a statement.

The jingoism and paranoia of the Republican Party is truly the only thing they are "extremist" about. Well, maybe not, they seem quite extremist about erecting a police state and passing tax cuts for the rich while waging their Jihad for perpetual peace and attempting to turn the entire world into a giant consumerist utopia. There's really not much else they're off-the-walls bonkers about.

Finally, we have the insipid Carrie Prejean:

The former Miss California told Christianity Today that the Bible makes no judgment about boob jobs.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian," she told the magazine. "I think it's a personal decision. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn't get breast implants."

According to RadarOnline.com, Prejean has no less than eight sex tapes and 30 nude photos to her name, each showing the model performing solo sex acts.

The conservative movement now has among their most prominent social conservatives a breast-implanted, amateur pornographer who stars in her own movies and yet has continued to enjoy the support of the "conservative movement."

I wonder, besides threatening people with terrorist kidnappings, calling the mainstream media sexist, and of course producing sex-tapes, what has the conservative movement accomplished anyway?

Idiocracy

Ninety percent of CUNY freshman cannot solve a simple algebra problem.

"These results are shocking," said City College Prof. Stanley Ocken, who co-wrote the report on CUNY kids' skills. "They show that a disturbing proportion of New York City high school graduates lack basic skills."

John Jay College sophomore Ahmed Elshafaie, 19, who graduated from Long Island City High School, said he avoids math classes.

"I don't want to ruin my GPA," he said. "High school standards were really low."

Notice how the article refers to college students as "CUNY kids." And congress is now working on a proposal to keep adults on their parents health care until they are 27 years old!
Hopefully by this point they will have conquered the intricacies 8th grade algebra.

Bleeding Heart Liberal Bias 101

Roger Alford's failed hit piece on Rand Paul confirms nearly every stereotype about the liberal media. In the end, Dr. Paul ends up looking pretty good. The Republican establishment ends up looking like the asinine, corrupt, jingoistic and petty party of synthetic opposition that it really is.

Republican leaders, including McConnell, have been largely mum about the race. McConnell did host a GOP fundraiser in Washington for Grayson in September. More than 20 Republican senators attended, but the campaign hasn't released the fundraising total.

This should tell you everything you need to know about the Repugnant Party. Twenty senators and the living abomination to conservatism Mitch McConnell (the Senate leader of the dimwitted Repugnant party) are openly rejecting and holding fundraisers for the moderate candidate.

Since Bunning bowed out, Paul's detractors have tried to paint him as an oddball and an extremist, but growing crowds are flocking to town hall meetings across Kentucky to hear his spiel about reining in government spending, stopping taxpayer bailouts of private companies and balancing the federal budget.

Dr. Paul doesn't favor the perpetual war for perpetual peace and a massive police state; thus according to his detractors he's an "oddball and an extremist." Notice Mr. Alford's choice of words here.

Paul says he opposes abortion without exception, not even in cases of rape, incest or the health of the expectant mother. He also opposes marriages between gay and lesbian couples. At the same time, he voices staunch opposition to government intruding in the private lives of citizens.

Mr. Alford, if someone is seeking an abortion they are not an "expectant mother." And after losing thirty-one straight referendums regarding homosexual marriage Mr. Alford has taken to the task of propagandizing the rest of us by terming homosexual marriage as "marriages between gay and lesbian couples." Then he throws out all the standards of objective journalism and throws in the completely unnecessary "At the same time, he voices staunch opposition to government intruding in the private lives of citizens."

Apparently, one cannot be opposed to an unconstitutional police state and also oppose such iniquity as abortion and homosexual marriage in the eyes of the unbiased Roger Alford. It's a miracle that our founders could craft a constitution recognizing the value of privacy without simultaneously recognizing homosexual marriage and the right to abortion.