Isilion

15 billion here, 15 billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money…

Hyperinflation here we come…

It a shame there is no one running for president who actually understands economics and monetary policy.

More here.

“The sovereign, after taking individuals one by one in his powerful hands and kneading them to his liking, reaches out to embrace society as a whole. Over it he spreads a fine mesh of uniform, minute, and complex rules, through which not even the most original minds and most vigorous souls can poke their heads above the crowd. He does not break men’s wills but softens, bends, and guides them. He seldom forces anyone to act but consistently opposes action. He does not destroy things but prevents them from coming into being. Rather than tyrannize, he inhibits, represses, saps, stifles, and stultifies, and in the end he reduces each nation to nothing but a flock of timid and industrious animals, with the government as its shepherd.”

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -– and the liberty –- of the American people. ~ Barack Obama
More…

…willing to say stuff like this. Then they might be onto something.

The American people are largely unaware that they are now living in a universal surveillance society. Virtually every major financial transaction–as well as much of their travel–is reported and monitored by the federal government. This total surveillance system, that began in earnest under Bill Clinton’s administration, has mushroomed into a ubiquitous and finely tuned science under George W. Bush. Dare I say that Dubya’s neurotic fixation with spying on ordinary citizens rivals Comrade Stalin’s paranoiac obsession with a total surveillance society?

You and I are constantly being watched, listened to, monitored, taped, and stalked by our own government. So, do any of us really believe that we still live in a free country? All this talk about a war on terrorism is a bunch of hooey. What is really happening is a war on freedom. The so-called “War on Terror” is only a smokescreen to hide the real agenda, which is to develop a federal police state where individual liberty is completely vanquished. And the really sad part of all of this is the manner in which the American people–especially our pastors and churches–seem to be willing to embrace and accept this burgeoning police state.

But since when did patriotism come to mean the acceptance of a total surveillance society? When did patriotism come to mean the love of Big Government or infatuation with Big Brother? When did patriotism come to mean the sacrifice of liberty in the name of security? When did patriotism come to mean the surrender of constitutional government and personal freedoms? When did patriotism come to mean submission to tyrannical bureaucracies.

A Chuck Baldwin Administration will bring an immediate end to the surveillance state and dismantle its network including the aforementioned National Security Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the proposed Domestic Securities Enhancement Act, and the Military Commissions Act.

Our agenda is simple and clear–we will re-ignite the torch of liberty in our nation so that, once again, we can proudly and truthfully say that America is the land of the free.

More…

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act is anything but fair, transparent, or even-handed. It does not simply require the permits, set the level, and establish the exchange mechanism, oh no; though that’s what they tell you about. Instead, the bill is loaded with exceptions, grants, set-asides, and other tweaks that make the system highly unfair and require a large bureaucracy to administer the permits. Industries and states who have lobbied most effectively are exempted, have their permits provided free, or get their permits a reduced price. Those who have not made the investment in wining and dining K Street are left out in the cold. They may be better businesses - in fact, they probably are, since they’re spending their resources on the actual business instead of on schmoozing in Washington - but they will fail in the marketplace because of the artificially higher costs laid on them by the government. Instead of emphasizing business acumen, this arrangement places a premium on political pull just like a banana republic. The laws even make it possible to make a fortune without doing anything useful at all, by cornering a permit set-aside and then selling permits off to someone who actually needs them. What’s capitalistic about that? Nothing.

What’s the bottom line? The Climate Security Act would create a fascist state by placing the government in complete control over who is allowed to do anything using their “private” property. Didn’t bid high enough for your carbon emissions permit? Then your factory must shut down. Didn’t lobby effectively? Then you’ll have to pay more than your competitor whose congressman, while enjoying his new yacht, took care to slide a little gift for his patron into a bill rider.

It’s easy to say that this is targeted only at big business. It’s even true - it was done that way on purpose. Do you think that Congress would dare take $6.7 Trillion by increasing taxes on, say, gasoline? They’d be howled out of office. Yet this will have exactly the same effect. Businesses don’t pay taxes; people do. Sure, the corporation writes the check, but they aren’t allowed to print money, they have to get the money from somewhere. They either pass the bill along to you the consumer or they go out of business.

The Definition of Fascism

Something probably everybody should watch.

Don’t Talk to the Police

“Don’t Talk to the Police” by Professor James Duane 27 min
“Don’t Talk to the Police” by Officer George Bruch 21 min

The day Ron Paul announced his candidacy I submitted my request to change my affiliation from independent to Republican. I also proclaimed to all who would listen that I intended to vote for him in my primary and in the general election even if I had to write him in. With the possible exception of Pat Buchanan, who communicated to me personally that his “riding days are over,” there is no one else remotely worthy of my vote for President of the United States, no one else who I feel can be trusted to resist and repudiate the unlawful power currently invested in that office.

I like Chuck Baldwin, but the Constitution Party scares the bejesus out of me. I like the basic principles of the Libertarian Party, but until Bob Bar makes an unequivocal renunciation of the thinking that led to his support and justification for the Patriot Act, vows to do everything in his power to pardon and make amends to the non-violent men and women whose lives he destroyed in his support for the war on drug users, renounces the notion that the United States has any moral or legal authority to interfere in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations or maintain any military presence outside the territorial limits of the United States other than embassy guards or the naval forces required to protect shipping in international waters my conscience will not permit me to support him.

I understand the arguments people are making that we should unite to show our strength, particularly to the Republican Party, but if we are going to unite behind theocrats or a Libertarian Party that has sold it’s principles for a mess of pottage what do we gain? Do we just become another faction in a coalition to be manipulated with promises that are never fulfilled? Ask the Republican Pro-Lifers and sincere anti-war Democrats how that’s working out for them.

For the first time in my life–I’m 53 years old–I have someone I want to vote for, I doubt I will ever have the chance again. I have done lots of things in my life that I am ashamed of. I believe I am accountable for them, even if only to my own conscience. I will go to my grave knowing that regardless of every mistake I have ever made that in my duty as a citizen I did at least one thing for no other reason than it was the right thing to do.

Politics be damned, vote for Ron Paul!

“What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?” Judge William B. Traxler asked.

“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.

Read More

In our time, when people are saying we must sacrifice liberty for security, that scrapping the Constitution is necessary to win the “war” against terrorism, I would suggest that you take your choice of genocides in the past 100 years and remind yourself what happens when people buy into the false proposition that the end justifies the means. People who preach that are always more interested in the means than in any end.

The only safe environment for a human being is under a weak government with very restricted powers. Normal people don’t need much to be happy – food, shelter, dignity and freedom from marauders. They need a rule of law that applies to everyone equally and at all times and in all circumstances. In established societies, legislators should meet rarely – perhaps once every two or three years – because a continuing cascade of new laws will eventually drown freedom.

The Founding Fathers, whether through luck, wisdom or divine guidance, gave us an almost perfect form of government, and we’ve been busy ever since trying to take it apart. Human beings are dangerous predators and cannot be trusted with power over their fellows. Many Americans have forgotten that the power of government comes out of the barrel of a gun. Governments coerce; they don’t persuade.

There are people living among us at this very moment capable of the cruelty so evident in the Holocaust. All they are waiting for is the opportunity. No greater opportunity exists than when a government enlists such people and says whatever you do is now justified for the sake of the “greater good.”

Read it all…

This is wrong. Period.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7387629.stm

Regardless of whatever these people were suspected of doing they did not deserve this treatment. Anyone not protected by a badge who did this would not get any benefit of doubt. But the law only applies to people, not to state enforcers.

As usual, William N. Grigg, has cut right to the heart of the matter.

What we see in the video clip above is a phenomenon I’ve named a “Thugswarm.” This isn’t an example of peace officers protecting the public from lawless violence. This is an assault carried out by an armed gang, just as surely as if the assailants had been wearing the colors of the Hell’s Angels. (Come to think of it, didn’t that biker gang insist that the bloodshed at Altamont was no big deal because they were feeling a bit “on edge” owing to the size of the crowd?)
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2008/05/one-of-these-things-is-just-like-other.html

…or Hillary or even John McCain, all any of them have to do is ask a couple of questions like this:

[I]t would be a great step forward if we could even debate the foreign policy we have now, a policy that (with a few minor differences) is shared by the establishment of both major parties. One writer correctly labels it “the debate we never have.” Although many American oppose the continued expansion of of Big Government abroad, noninterventionism is never presented to them as an option, The so-called debates between pundits they see on television or read in the newspapers carefully limit the range of debate to points of insignificance. The debate is always framed in terms of which kind of interventionist strategy our government should pursue. The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven’s sake, what kind of debate it in which all sides agree that the America needs troops in 130 countries?

That may be the kind of debate the old Pravda once allowed, but where is the robust exchange of ideas we should expect in a free society?*

But they won’t, so they can all kiss my bitter backside.

*Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto, pp. 37-38

Will no one rid us of this pestilence?

With Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea threatened by American hegemonic belligerence, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario that would terminate all pretense of American power: For example, instead of waiting to be attacked, Iran uses its Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles, against which the US reportedly has poor means of defense, and sinks every ship in the American carrier strike forces that have been foolishly massed in the Persian Gulf, simultaneously taking out the Saudi oil fields and the Green Zone in Baghdad, the headquarters of the US occupation. Shi’ite militias break the US supply lines from Kuwait, and Iranian troops destroy the dispersed US forces in Iraq before they can be concentrated to battle strength.

Simultaneously, North Korea crosses the demilitarized zone and takes South Korea, China seizes Taiwan and dumps a trillion dollars of US Treasury bonds on the market. Russia goes on full nuclear alert and cuts off all natural gas to Europe.

What would the Bush regime do? Wet its pants? Push the button and end the world?

If America really had dangerous enemies, surely the enemies would collude to take advantage of a dramatically over-extended delusional regime that, blinded by its own arrogance and hubris, issues gratuitous threats and lives by Mao’s doctrine that power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

There are other less dramatic scenarios. Why does the US assume that only it can initiate aggression, boycotts, freezes on financial assets of other countries and bans on foreign banks from participation in the international banking system? If the rest of the world were to tire of American aggression or to develop a moral conscience, it would be easy to organize a boycott of America and to ban US banks from participating in the international banking system. Such a boycott would be especially effective at the present time with the balance sheets of US banks impaired by subprime derivatives and the US government dependent on foreign loans in order to finance its day-to-day activities.

Sooner or later it will occur to other countries that putting up with America is a habit that they don’t need to continue.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts244.html

To: Alberto Gonzales
From: John Yoo
Oct. 23, 2001
	
Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment
had no application to domestic military operations...

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080402/D8VQ1NG80.html

Eyes wide open!

Is there a way out of all this? Yes, but it involves a return to the founding principles of our nation, not just in domestic affairs but in foreign affairs as well. Private property. Individual liberty. A limited-government republic. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. Due process of law. Habeas corpus. Trial by jury. Such principles constitute our heritage. Herein lies the key to extricating ourselves from the morass into which we have been plunged.

Out of chaos comes opportunity. We have the opportunity to lead the world out of the chaos and toward the highest reaches of freedom ever witnessed by man. What greater gift could we bequeath to ourselves, our children, and those coming after us?

read more | digg story

Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and preemption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?

Those on the right should recall that the traditional conservative position of non-intervention was their position for most of the 20th Century – and they benefited politically from the wars carelessly entered into by the left. Seven years ago the right benefited politically by condemning the illegal intervention in Kosovo and Somalia. At the time conservatives were outraged over the failed policy of nation building.

It’s important to recall that the left, in 2003, offered little opposition to the preemptive war in Iraq, and many are now not willing to stop it by defunding it or work to prevent an attack on Iran.

The catch-all phrase, “War on Terrorism,” in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. Terrorism is a tactic. You can’t have a war against a tactic. It’s deliberately vague and nondefinable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances. Don’t forget: the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist attack against us including that on 9/11.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout all of history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neoconservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.

For all the misinformation given the American people to justify our invasion, such as our need for national security, enforcing UN resolutions, removing a dictator, establishing a democracy, protecting our oil, the argument has been reduced to this: If we leave now Iraq will be left in a mess – implying the implausible that if we stay it won’t be a mess.

Since it could go badly when we leave, that blame must be placed on those who took us there, not on those of us who now insist that Americans no longer need be killed or maimed and that Americans no longer need to kill any more Iraqis. We’ve had enough of both!

More…

I understand, however, that many antiwar conservatives and libertarians – myself among them – could never bring themselves to actually vote for Obama, never mind recommend that others do so. Yet that doesn’t mean I can’t root for him, which is quite a different matter. In rooting for Obama, I’m rooting for the growth and development of a political insurgency against the Powers That Be, a phenomenon that goes beyond Obama and signifies a new era of political tumult centered around foreign policy issues.

More…

Yeah, but I’m still going to write in Ron Paul.

And patriots know their own…
Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) discusses the REAL ID on NPR

I’ll expand this real soon now…

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/11/wsj/

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002511—-000-.html