Tag Archives: government

War, War, Forever More

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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Were my debt-trimental plan from the previous post enacted and followed, there would theoretically be money for everything under the sun: Universal Healthcare; universal income; welfare unending; chickens on pot; a starship to get me to a saner planet, and; funding for wars the world over.

As is the wars (and all that other spending) are bankrupting the country. There are also funny, lingering Constitutional issues, holdovers from when the Old Parchment meant something.

Rand Paul is about the only man left in D.C. who still throws around the “C” word, the dirtiest 12 letters in the English language. Today he again pushed the antiquated idea of Congress, not the White House, declaring war:

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan push for a new war authorization against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, electing to let the White House rely on a 16-year-old law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks as the legal basis to send U.S. troops into combat.

Senators voted 61-36 scuttle an amendment to the annual defense policy bill by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have allowed war authorizations, created in the wake of al-Qaida’s 9/11 strikes, to lapse after six months. Paul, a leader of the GOP’s noninterventionist wing, said Congress would use the time to debate an updated war authority for operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere before the old ones expired.

Paul criticized his colleagues ahead of the vote, urging them to embrace their war-making responsibility instead of surrendering their power to the White House. He and senators who backed his amendment said former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump have used the war authorizations from 2001 and 2002 for military operations in countries that Congress never voted to support.

“We are supposed to be a voice that debates and says, ‘Should we go to war?’ It’s part of doing our job,” Paul said. “It’s about grabbing power back and saying this is a Senate prerogative.”

Debates? Doing their job? The Constitution? Such craziness.

All know that the purpose of the Senate is to collude with assist the House with cobbling together “budgets” for the spending of money we don’t have. The wise executive apparatchiks handle the details – “healthcare” for the kiddies, billion$ for banks, and wars without end.

And the wars are really going so well. Rand is in an irrational dizzy about Afghanistan. Why? We’re having so much fun there, we’ve made it a multi-decade party.

Then, there’s the … whatever kind of meddling it is … in Syria. A Christian Bishop from Syria (yes Alabama, there are and have been Christians in the Middle East) explains the sheer brilliance of U.S. policy in his country:

acma2000/YouTube.

The man seems a little distressed about something. Calm down, Padre. They’re raising the debt ceiling!

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And, you. You keep a votin’ for all this. Doing such a swell job.

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Just Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment

13 Wednesday Sep 2017

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Barring a return to the majority of our history, income tax-free, a tax cut (any tax cut) still sounds good.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday the Trump administration is considering backdating tax reform to the start of this year to boost the economy.

Backdating “is still something we are considering and it would be a big boon for the economy,” he said at the Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor.

Republicans aim to overhaul the American tax code but have faced various hurdles in their goal of passing a tax reform bill this year. Congress and the White House have not yet released a plan but are working this month to prepare legislation. Mnuchin heads to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss tax policy with GOP congressional leaders, the latest in a series of meetings.

Earlier Tuesday, Mnuchin insisted that a tax overhaul would happen this year.

“We’re going to get this done by the end of the year,” Mnuchin told CNBC, adding that the administration is “super focused” on the goal following the three-month debt limit and government funding extension passed last week.

The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday on individual tax reform. Sen. Orrin Hatch, the committee’s chairman and one of the six primary tax negotiators, said he expects to share the plan with other lawmakers after that and other hearings.

President Donald Trump urged lawmakers last week to push forward with tax legislation “ASAP,” telling them not to wait until the end of September. Tax reform is one of the key planks of the agenda he pitched as a candidate, and he has made two recent speeches touting the benefits of changes to the tax system without offering new details.

Great. I think the biggest of those various GOP hurdles this year has been the hurdle of the GOP itself. Maybe Trump should enlist the Dems’ help. Whatever works.

I like my idea the best – big government proponents should too. By killing the 16A, the entire tax code, and the IRS, no money will be lost at all. In fact, we may be approaching the magical point of unlimited (free) government budgets! This is because Congress will soon remove any pretense of a debt “ceiling.” The whole bunch (D’s and R’s and the President) call for essentially endless and limitless debt.

And why not? Why not fund the government completely with IOUs? They’re never going to be repaid anyway. It makes perverse sense. Everyone, every single big government lover of any stripe, could get his pet project funded to the moon. And everyone else would keep their cash!

No … that game would not last forever. None does.

Okay, okay. Cut this year. Repeal next year. Forever never comes.

Money, Debt, and … Questions

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

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First, median incomes in 2016 set an all time record. Rather, they beat out (or caught up to) those from 1999. Hooray! We’ve only lost two decades of growth. And incomes, recall, are usually the last thing to catch up – before a new correction.

One of the first things to go up and one which goes up fastest … is new government debt. See: the Instantaneous manufacture of $317,645,000,000 worth of new debt in one day! It’s a miracle! Thanks to Congress and the Prez. for the temporary spending boost on the way to infinite and perpetual indebtedness.

For the latter story you can thank the government and their pet, the Federal Reserve. The Fed was one of three marvels foisted on the formerly free people in 1913.

Speaking of foisting – yesterday was the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I was a little busy and, therefore, this will likely be my only remembrance note this year. (Unlike last year – see Sept. 2016 archives).

Just in time for the anniversary, engineering expert Dr. Leroy Hulsey and his research team released a study of the collapse of WTC Tower 7.  It’s kind of part one of the study anyway. He (they) have some questions about the official narrative.

You may recall that the ninth plane (from Toronto) hit WTC 7. The impact and resulting conflagration caused substantial weakening of the steel frame inside the tower (much like WTC 1 and 2), which caused a complete (and VERY neat and self-contained) collapse.

I completely made that last paragraph up. No plane hit No. 7. There was only a small, office-material-fueled fire (with temperatures insufficient to melt or weaken steel). And the fire almost burned out long before the collapse – maybe around the time the media was parroting that the tower had collapsed, even as it stood in the background of their live broadcasts.

Not many believe the “official” story about No. 7 or anything else that day, not even members of the Commission impaneled to investigate it. This study sheds a little light with more to come. See if you will.

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Ken Doc.

Pick Your Governor Wisely: The Guns of Crisis

07 Thursday Sep 2017

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This is a speculative post, really beyond the control of anyone one person. Yet, it is still interesting.

I read the other day, and saw some social media hysteria about, the emergency order out of the U.S. VI that the National Guard seize private guns and ammo. A small-scale but a serious issue. All of this a reaction to Hurricane Irma.

U.S. Virgin Islands Gov. Kenneth Mapp signed an emergency order allowing the seizure of private guns, ammunition, explosives and property the National Guard may need to respond to Hurricane Irma.

Mapp signed the order Monday in preparation for Hurricane Irma. The order allows the Adjutant General of the Virgin Islands to seize private property they believe necessary to protect the islands, subject to approval by the territory’s Justice Department.

Just because they can (or could) doesn’t mean they will (or did). I’ve yet to hear or read of any actual confiscations. And confiscation is nothing new. Hitler did it. Mao did it. The New Orleans police did it. It happens. Hide some of your armory. Or, just don’t open the door. That should stop 99% of the thefts – people, cops and soldiers included, are lazy.

Anyway, I also read about Gov. Greg Abbott’s reaction to Hurricane Harvey. (No link, sorry). Abbott called up his entire NG contingent. Additionally, he also called out the Texas State Guard, this being the official state militia (of Second Amendment fame).

Both outfits are professional military units. The difference is that the NG is at the dual disposal of the state – or the federal empire. The State militia is solely at the beck and call of Austin.

Texas has a proud militia history, owing its existence to the same. When the current Guard of reconstituted in the 1950’s (?) it rapidly outnumbered the federally obligated NG by over 50%. Texans want their own protection, without D.C. strings.

I do not know the current enrollment of the TX Guard but they are very well-regulated and organized. These are the real citizen soldiers or America – actually protecting their own. Every American state has a branch, though many are not as defined as that of TX.

Just remember, in times of crisis, your state will either generally fall into one of two camps: seize your guns when they might be needed, or: call on you and your guns when needed. Which would you prefer?

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Texas DOD.

More on the Former Fourth Amendment in America

06 Wednesday Sep 2017

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The esteemed John Whitehead correctly comments on the demise of law and order in Neo-America:

“The Fourth Amendment was designed to stand between us and arbitrary governmental authority. For all practical purposes, that shield has been shattered, leaving our liberty and personal integrity subject to the whim of every cop on the beat, trooper on the highway and jail official.”—Herman Schwartz, The Nation

Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—are being choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, shoot, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans are being forced to accept that we have no control over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Worse, on a daily basis, Americans are being made to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States: we are now guilty until proven innocent.

The new police state, your Constitution be damned (or responsible).

Read John’s examples – from across America. These are things that anyone could expect to encounter in everyday life.

The kids, almost all of them – some 900, at Worth County (government) High School in Sylvester, Worth County, Georgia found out about the tyranny the hard way. One bright day they were ALL summoned into the hallways and strip-searched, many sexually assaulted. This warrantless and baseless intrusion was the work of Sheriff Jeff Hobby whose hobby seems to be violating civil rights.

The illegal search, unannounced to school officials, was loosely based on the unsubstantiated suspicion that three (3) of the 900 students MAY have been involved with narcotics. So, rather than investigate those three, Hobby and his gang of statist enforcers attacked all the children. No drugs or other problems were found.

You see, dear low-IQ, overweight morons of America, these young people did nothing wrong, yet they definitely had something to worry about. Something akin to rape in some cases.

The busybody idiots still fighting the “Civil” War could take up this incident as a cause. Statistically, some third of the students, maybe more, had to be black. However, it must be more important to yank down 140-year-old statutes and assorted road signs. Progress.

Some are fighting back. In a more genteel age, Hobby may have had a date with a local tree and/or some gasoline. Today, he finds himself the first defendant in a 1983 action in federal court, courtesy of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Read the Complaint.

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Serving and protecting the children by molesting them…

Read it and weep. I look for an insurance or bond settlement in that case. But there will be no end, no reversal, in the trend against personal liberty. The state is just getting started. Most seem a-okay with it.

You?

Why I Don’t Do Internet Dating

05 Tuesday Sep 2017

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I was all set to run with a friendly evening warning from Ron Paul about the dangers of government during and after the dangers of a storm or disaster. See: Paul says Gubmint Bad!

True. But not as interesting as the following:

When it comes to internet or app dating I usually think about dullness, crazies, tubbies, has beens, and maybe the occasional serial killer. From now on I’ll think about this: Man’s Tinder date gets stuck upside-down in window trying to grab her own poo. Hmmmm…

Who says romance is dead? A Tinder date ended with the unforgettable spectacle of a young woman stuck upside-down in a window, trying to grab her own poo.

The unnamed – but athletic – girl ended up upside down inside the window after making a valiant effort to get rid of a massive poo she’d done which had blocked the bog.

Why not just break it up with the toilet brush, like any sane person?

The unnamed girl had been for a romantic meal at Nando’s with student Liam Smyth, 24, before they went back to his place for a nightcap.

But a bizarre chain of events unfolded after she went to the toilet and blocked the pan.

In panic, she picked up the stool and threw it out the window – but it fell down into a narrow gap.

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I’m Perrin Lovett and I say romance is dead. Dead or going down the toilet. I really can’t tell. Is it swipe right or wipe right?

Epic poo problem

Not the gymnastics I like out of a girl… A sad corner of the interwebs.

The poor poo-chaser accomplished the dirty job but got stuck in the window. She was retrieved by firemen. The window was smashed. The date went on – I suppose.

So, is this sort of thing that one places on a dating “profile?” “Acrobatic dung disposal maven….” “My heart and toilet overflow….” “Looking for Mr. Plumber…” “Don’t call me. I’ll call… Call the fire brigade!” “Let’s poo this again…”

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Plenty of Crap

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I have never been on or used any electronic dating service. And, with this story, that isn’t likely to change.

I kind of understand the allure of these sites. After my divorce I waited a while then ventured into the “real” dating world. Or, should I say, ventured into some strange alien planet. What the hell happened to you people while I was out?!

Nine tattoos, three psychotropic drugs, three convictions, and two kids/live-in exes/cats/whatever (all by 23!) isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in a woman. The good news (ha!) is that I seem to be a crazy magnet and the pool has gone utterly insane. The bad news (yeah) is that I seem to be a crazy magnet and the pool has gone utterly insane. I see a quality, not quantity, problem.

Things like Tinder seem to me just a virtual reality version of the nut house/bar scene – but maybe worse.

That’s my first defense against on-line “love”: I don’t need it. I have no shortage of available options (usually hot, almost always loony); it’s just a matter of my … tolerance.

Second, I’m a Sigma (just found out about that designation!). We cause problems but we never have problems. Okay, we have them – we just don’t care.

Lastly … did you read the freak show story above!?

“How’d the date go? Get to second base? Third? All the way?!!!”

“Naaah. We got stuck in the toilet under the stands. Fire department came. No biggie. Got her number.”

You can keep this big steaming pile of dung. A literal, actual pile of …

Now, please tell me YOUR success story with (fill in the blank) service! How the picture was only 15 years and 40 pounds out of date. How she only turned out to be a he once. How you only got stabbed that one time. Stuff like that. Go on…

More Obama/TrumpCare Goodie$ Coming in 2018!

04 Monday Sep 2017

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Another year, another round of massive price increases.

Millions of people who buy individual health insurance policies and get no financial help from the Affordable Care Act are bracing for another year of double-digit premium increases, and their frustration is boiling over.

Some are expecting premiums for 2018 to rival a mortgage payment.

What they pay is tied to the price of coverage on the health insurance markets created by the Obama-era law, but these consumers get no protection from the law’s tax credits, which cushion against rising premiums. Instead they pay full freight and bear the brunt of market problems such as high costs and diminished competition.

On Capitol Hill, there’s a chance that upcoming bipartisan hearings by Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., can produce legislation offering some relief. But it depends on Republicans and Democrats working together despite a seven-year health care battle that has left raw feelings on both sides.

The most exposed consumers tend to be middle-class people who don’t qualify for the law’s income-based subsidies. They include early retirees, skilled tradespeople, musicians, self-employed professionals, business owners, and people such as Sharon Thornton, whose small employer doesn’t provide health insurance.

Insurance premiums to rival mortgages. Thank God we have dedicated servants like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan fighting hard for the banks and insurers us. They will surely fix this. And soon. Hold your breath.

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Margulies.

Through the Ceiling: Where the GOP will Succeed

30 Sunday Jul 2017

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They can’t or won’t repeal, replace, tune-up, or modify ObamaCare. They won’t cut taxes. They won’t maintain even the semblance of a coherent legislature.

But rest assured they will raise the debt ceiling. No idea what the guy in the story from Goldman (the one still working there and not in the administration) is fretting about. It’s a done deal.

In a letter to lawmakers Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the federal borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, needed to be raised by Sept. 29 or the government risked running out of money to pay its bills.

The Treasury Department has been employing cash-conservation measures since March, when borrowing hit the formal ceiling of nearly $20 trillion. Those measures are expected to run out in early to mid-October. When they do, the government won’t have money to pay interest on debt, write Social Security checks or make millions of other routine payments, unless it can tap credit markets for borrowing to raise additional cash. Missing payments could send financial markets in a tailspin.

It’s canon now; raise it and then raise it again. There’s no pretense anymore about fiscal responsibility. No more “this is the last time,” or “this one and then never again,” or “doing it now and then we’ll pare down the spending…” Blah, blah, blah. Up, up, up it goes.

The question is “how high?” And I have no idea. If they only through in another $Trillion or two, then they’ll be back again with this next year. Why not double it? Triple? Why not just leave it open-ended or infinite?

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Four Winds / Newsday.

Two Takes on the D.C. Madhouse

29 Saturday Jul 2017

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I watch the practical politics a lot less, here, than I do for FP (the people gotta know, so I have to know). One thing I’ve noticed this year is that President Trump has probably the worst relationship I’ve ever seen – not with the Democrats – but with his own party and his own administration. It’s possible no one has seen anything like it before…

The Dems would love to sideline, impeach, or pretend Trump out of existence because Russia. (Seriously, someone please thump the record player.) But they’re out of power, out of ideas, and seemingly out of touch. And it doesn’t matter.The GOP is doing all the lifting for the uni-party this time around.

Take, for instance, the new Russia sanctions: Paul Craig Roberts did:

What is the Congress up to with their stupid bill that imposes more sanctions and removes the power of President Trump to rescind the sanctions that President Obama imposed?

Congress is doing two things. One is that Congress is serving their campaign contributors in the military/security complex by being tougher with Russia, thus keeping the orchestrated threat alive so that Americans denied health care don’t start looking at the massive military/security budget as a place to find money for health care.

The other is to put President Trump in a box. If Trump vetos this encroachment on presidential power, Congress and the presstitute media will present the veto as absolute proof that Trump is a Russian agent and is protecting Russia with his veto. If Trump does not veto the bill, Trump will have thrown in his hand and accepted that he cannot reduce the dangerous tensions with Russia.

In other words, the bill is lose-lose for Trump. Yet Republicans are supporting the bill, thus undermining their president.

He updated his position, the veto option becoming ultimately impossible:

The fig leaf Congress chose for its violation of diplomatic protocols and international law is the disproven allegation of Russian interference in behalf of Trump in the US presidential election. An organization of former US intelligence officers recently announced that forensic investigation has been made of the alleged Russian computer hacking, and the conclusion is that there was no hack; there was an internal leak, and the leak was copied onto a device and Russian “fingerprints” were added. There is no forensic evidence whatsoever that shows any indication of Russian hacking.

It is all made up, and everyone alleging Russian hacking knows it. There is no difference between the allegation of Russian hacking and Hitler’s allegation in 1939 that “last night Polish forces crossed our frontier,” Hitler’s fig leaf for his invasion of Poland.

That Congress uses a blatantly transparent lie to justify its violation of international law and intentionally worsens US relations with both Russia and the EU proves how determined Washington is to intensify conflict with Russia. Expect more false allegations, more demonization, more threats.

Pat Buchanan explains, through shades of Nixon, the in-house attempts to further sideline or eliminate Trump via Director Mueller’s witch-hunt:

Hence, where are we? Despite zero evidence of Trump or his aides colluding in the hacking, a counterintelligence investigation is evolving into a criminal investigation. Mueller is now hiring veteran investigators and prosecutors specializing in white-collar crime.

This is not a witch hunt. It is an Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn, where the most colorful eggs are likely to be the tax returns and the financial records of Trump, who built a real estate empire in a town where winners brag about how they gutted the losers.

Every enemy of Trump is going to be dropping the dime on him to Mueller. Moreover, there is no history of special counsels being appointed and applauded by the press, who went home without taking scalps.

Trump understands this. Reports of his frustration and rage suggest that he knows he has been maneuvered, partly by his own mistakes, into a kill box from which there may be no bloodless exit.

What Trump needs is a leader at Justice who will confine the Mueller investigation to the Russian hacking, and keep Mueller’s men from roaming until they hit prosecutorial pay dirt.

Consider now Trump’s narrowing options.

…

Others, Vox Day included, are confident Trump will manage his way out, steaming ahead with his America First agenda. I hope they’re right. The internal shake-up is already in motion.

 

American Disturbia, Even in the Hills

24 Monday Jul 2017

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So I just returned from an all-too-short vaca in the mountains – far and away my favorite place. The experience, as always, was near picture perfect.

Part of the reason I seek out the remoteness is to get away from the utter madness and bother of the reality of falling America. Bluntly, I like to leave the post-modern people behind.

Yet, even in the hills, I found it hard to escape the new realities, this time around.

Two things before I go any further:

One, I in no way, here, disparage the people of Appalachia, nor Bryson City, nor that town’s fine newspaper. This is more of a warning to them or, better, a warning to us, through them.

Two, the following reminded me of an older movie about the region in which an elderly woman stubbornly refuses to give her land to some government agent. I cannot recall the name at this time…

Anyway, somehow amidst all my hiking, riding, musing, etc., I found a copy of the Smokey Mountain Times. THIS ONE, for Thursday, July 20, 2017.

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Those children look happy and probably are. Maybe we shouldn’t be. SM Times.

It’s a paper, like that of many smaller towns, of feel-good news. I, for instance, did not know about the coming eclipse until late last week. Snorkeling is fun. Planning the week can be beneficial.

But two headlines grabbed my attention, my jaded attention.

The Military is bringing free healthcare?

Last week I had a big rant about how bad the American “healthcare” system really is. And it is bad. But is this the solution?

Undoubtedly many will reap the rewards of the care. That is a good thing in itself. But the issue isn’t wholly self-contained. My main point is that this isn’t how it’s supposed to work in a free and prosperous country – accepting government handouts for basic care.

For charity’s sake, are there no local doctors or nurses available?

And accepting the freebies from the imperial military at that?! Since when was the role of the military to bring free medical services to mountain people? Posse Comitatus? Well, probably not, not here. I can’t see this as the enforcement of any civil law. And I doubt anyone would complain anyway, because free.

But this is an intrusion, in a most unobtrusive manner, of the standing army into daily lives. It’s big government, at its best, doing its worst. It’s a demeaning admission that something is terribly wrong. It’s just as bad as this:

We need “Feeding Programs” in America? And they’re growing?

How the hell is any of this good? Well, outside of some hungry people getting meals, how is it good culturally, systemically? It isn’t.

This is further admission of gross failure. Your government and its owners have so wrecked the economy (and you’ve helped them right along – vote, vote, vote) to the point that the only solution is to accept more government handouts for basic needs.

It’s bad enough that we collectively turn our children over to the Great Father in Washington or Raleigh during the school year. Raising and feeding your kids is your responsibility. It’s not the government’s. Now, it seems, the children need Uncle Sucker’s help to eat during the summer months.

We shouldn’t even have a U.S. Department of Agriculture, let alone have it run a “feeding program” for our children (maybe some adults).

Are there no families or independent churches to do this for the parents?

Again, bluntly put, these two stories sound like something of an aid program designed for some third world country. “Feeding programs” and free medicine seem more suited for Rwanda than North Carolina.

Maybe the 21st century is seeing the blurring of the two worlds.

In that old movie, the older woman was as proud as any in the region ever was. She embodied the spirit of Appalachia, of America – defiant even in seeming poverty – independent. The land agent tried to swindle her into signing away her land, her freedom, for some fake welfare BS. She wasn’t having it and blatantly stated why. What was her’s was her’s and she did not need any “help.” I really wish I could remember the name of the film.

There’s a concept the people of Swain County and the rest of what’s left of this country need to remember. Independence and self-reliance are freedom. Handouts and graft, no matter how well-intentioned or how well received, represent slavery.

Sallust, saw his name yesterday on the back cover of a Loeb Classic, warned us that this is all most people hope for. I hope the great people of Appalachia, like their elevation, are just a notch above.

There is no free lunch, nor free doctor.