The Representation Amendment

The second American Revolution is imminent, and the computer is the only weapon that can give us the power we need over those who would thwart the public interest, just as the power of an armed citizenry did in 1776. No longer can our guns stop a government that would oppress us, but we the people could directly govern America through a national computer network. The impending revolution is bloodless. The battlefield is virtual, and we have the advantage.

The Problem

Our government is surely not legitimate, and so it seems a paradox that we may vote for anyone we choose to represent us; but consider how our confidence in government has fallen ever since assassinations of the 60's. Had we power to elect a representative of choice, well then, why have we not exercised it yet?

Our Constitution needs amendment because it cannot prevent the government we have today. The founders did not realize that it would encourage a government powerful enough to violate their own creation. The Supreme Court has upheld laws that violate our “inalienable” rights “guaranteed” by the 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th, 10^th, and 14^th amendments - not to mention our many rights not mentioned in the Constitution. The Supreme Court has also supported laws that ignore the limitations on the power of Congress specified throughout the Constitution.

Our system of government is obsolete because the framers could not foresee the power created by modern wealth and technology. Our species has always abused power, and now there is far more power to abuse. The result is the rise of the political class, and the fall of the productive class - that’s us.

The time for change is overdue. It was 1995 (when I first wrote this article) when government was more manageable and we had no threat beyond our borders, but the only change generated by the political class are more taxes, spending, mandates, and regulations. These only entrench our current system.

The solution is direct democracy. We must place the legislative branch directly in the hands of the people, and computer technology has made this possible for the first time in history. The technological challenge is trivial compared to the imminent political battle to enact the one essential Constitutional amendment.

Rise Of the Political Class

Aristocrats "fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes". Democrats "identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public interest." -- Thomas Jefferson

Let's define the political class to be those who wish to draw all power from the people into their own hands. In other words, those who compete to influence the government while avoiding any option that limits their own power or that of the government. It sounds like we’re talking about the media, the lobbyists, the government, and the political parties. Let’s refer to them as the four branches of the political class.

The political class maintains power because neither the Democratic nor Republican candidate is ever the representative we want. The majority is voting against one candidate instead of for the other one in spite of massive campaign expenditures to make us like them. We thus have what is arguably a two party monopoly. In a later chapter I will elaborate on the two party monopoly and how it is the inevitable though unintentional result of the Constitution.

The political class is gaining power because the government collects and redistributes an increasing percentage of our wealth. The incentive for spending is obvious. Congress can decide to whom it will give one fourth of our GNP, and the Representative who is willing to spend the most receives the most campaign contributions and the greatest benefits after leaving office. To add insult to injury, Congressmen actually believe they can spend our money more wisely than we can.

The political class will continue to rise as technology advances. Each advance in computer technology makes it possible to manage more expensive and complex government programs. It also enables the government to monitor and control the behavior of each citizen with increasing efficiency. Advances in biology also make it easier to control people. (Imagine how many Soviets would have been forced to take Prozac if it were available.) There is potentially no end to their rise.

The political class fails to represent the public interest, and we have forgotten that the sole purpose of government is representation – government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Unrepresentative Democracy

Representation is the end – democracy is the means. Democracy does not guarantee representation.

In the United States we can vote for anyone we choose, but so could citizens of the Soviet Union.

In the USSR they elected a candidate approved by the Communist party. We elect a candidate approved by the Republican or Democratic Party. They had millions of citizens and only one choice. We have millions of citizens and only two choices. They had democracy and no representation. We have democracy and some representation.

The public is almost powerless to secure better representation. Although our confidence in the government has plummeted in recent decades, we have not forced a significant number of incumbents into retirement because of their performance. Even if we had, the two party monopoly ensures that we would only get more of the same.

The two party monopoly is a result of the Constitution because it establishes winner take all elections in geographical districts. Another catastrophic result of the winner take all districts is that over 250,000,000 unique individuals are subject to whatever enhances the political careers of 435 rich old white guys from law school. I’ll explain this in more detail after I introduce the Freedom Amendments.

Our government is far less accountable than business, which must please customers or die. 94% of businesses fail within the first seven years, but for over 200 years Congress has been dominated by the same kind of representatives - those who favor bigger government and are willing to use excessive force to achieve it regardless of what the people want. When the Southern states seceded from the United States and formed their own nation, the US government would not withdraw its troops from Southern soil and forced Americans to fight a war that would cost over 600,000 lives so that it could maintain control over the former states, and that was the ONLY reason it fought the war in spite of what you “learned” in government schools.

The “Republican revolution” in 1994 was revolutionary simply because the Republicans had a majority for the first time in 40 years. The biggest change they would make would be to spend more money on their constituencies than on the Democrats’ constituencies. Oh yes, … they also wanted the government to grow a little slower than the Democrats wanted.

The solution is a greater distribution of power. One could argue that the successes of our Constitution thus far are based entirely on the distribution of power. Some people refer to this distribution of power as “checks and balances.”

To achieve a greater distribution of power, we the people must be able to vote directly on everything that Congress votes on (direct democracy). We must also be able to initiate legislation more easily, and we must have the representative of our choice. In addition, we must have a convenient forum to communicate with other citizens across the nation.

Computer technology can deliver these goals through a nationwide network of voting terminals. We would soon recover 1000 times the cost through cuts in the federal budget that we the people would make. The voter network would have many other valuable uses too, such as education, which further justifies the expense.

Let us now define what is arguably the ultimate form of democracy.

The New Democracy

The cornerstone of the New Democracy is direct democracy. A Representative’s vote would represent the total number of citizens in that district minus those who voted directly using a computer terminal. House votes will no longer be 235 to 200. A tally might be 50 million to 170 million.

Congress would operate the same as always, but it would lose much of its power to the people. Its primary role would still be to draft legislation, but it would have much less control over what bills became laws.

Congress would be our proxy. When we abstain, our vote would automatically be cast to match the vote of our Representative, but this still isn’t good enough. Were it not for the computer, we might forfeit many votes to Congress because we wouldn’t each have a staff to keep us abreast of the issues. The computer empowers us to forfeit nothing because it will let us each designate any person we choose to carry our vote if we abstain.

The personal representative you choose could also have a proxy who would get both of your votes if you both abstain, or you could specify that your second choice proxy always carry your vote instead of your proxy’s proxy. If you feel that your Congressman does not represent your best interests, you would still have the representative of your choice. Your Congressman would simply be the last choice in a hierarchy of personal representatives.

Even personal representation may not prevent Congress from thwarting the public interest. What if congress won't present us with the kind of bills we want to pass? We must therefore be able to place a bill on the floor directly by using the network. Perhaps a petition by ten percent of the voters would be a good approach.

The New Democracy would distribute power so widely that there would be no one in particular to influence. Although this would severely strain the resources of professional lobbyists, they could still try to influence the people directly, and what would stop the media from continuing to place profits and their personal biases above the public interest? I predicted in 1995 that a computer network based on the Representation Amendment (where voters can directly communicate with all other voters) would tend to neutralize lobbyists and other special interests. We have in fact seen some of this effect since then with the Internet, but of course, lobbyists can still influence votes on bills almost as easily as before because power is still concentrated in Congress.

The Representation network should not be limited to e-mail or else those who could afford television commercials would still retain enormous influence. In 1995 I explained that were are fortunate because we already had the technology to create an information superhighway that could host millions of multimedia terminals. Anyone could produce and distribute commercials and documentaries on the network for the cost of a camcorder.

We could implement the New Democracy with a single Constitutional amendment.

The Representation Amendment

The political elites deride and censor their critics. They say in effect that if we don’t have the solution then we should be silent, but this argument has three major fallacies. First, the Constitution says we have a right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." It doesn't even imply that we should also have a solution. Second, exposing and eliminating corruption is a major solution. Third, we elected THEM to come up with the solutions. Because they have not, I present the following Constitutional amendment. It is one of the Freedom Amendments. I call it the “Representation Amendment.”

The right of citizens of the United States to vote directly on each referendum of any kind before the Congress shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state for any reason.

Each citizen may choose any citizens of the United States as proxies. A proxy may not be assigned to a citizen by anyone else for any reason. If a citizen abstains, that citizen's vote and any abstentions for which that citizen is a proxy shall be cast by that citizen's proxy. A citizen may choose to use an alternate proxy in those instances where the primary proxy abstains.

Each vote by the Representative for each Congressional district adds to the tally a number equal to the number of citizens in that district less those votes cast by the citizens of that district both directly and by proxy. The tally must include those votes cast by citizens directly and by proxy. The tally is not legitimate until it equals the total number of citizens of the United States who are eligible to vote.

The polls for each vote shall remain open at least 48 hours, except when the Congress exercises its sole authority to set a shorter time by a two thirds majority.

The Congress shall act in good faith to implement this amendment using the fastest technology commonly available.

A voter shall be able to verify his or her vote, and any implementation of this amendment shall employ maximum transparency – without violating the tradition of a secret ballot.

The United States Congress, in accordance with this amendment, shall vote on any bill supported by ten percent of the voters.

This amendment could have worked in 1776, though not nearly as well as now. That must be why they didn’t adopt it …

Many concerned Americans are struggling to enact other specific legislative reforms, but I believe that any solution of merit would be easy to adopt once we enact the Representation Amendment. I believe we should thus drop our smaller initiatives and unite to enact this watershed legislation. Our message to each candidate should be, “No Representation Amendment, no victory.”

Implementation

The Representation Amendment would be the foundation. We must then craft the laws necessary to make it work. Let’s consider accessibility, crises, elections, representation, security, lobbying, special interests, and tyranny of the majority.

Accessibility demands that the network contain public access points, but this would require surprisingly few tax dollars, and not just because so many Americans could use their computers at home or office. Many businesses will install computers to attract customers just like they have done with ATM’s, pay phones, lottery machines, credit card scanners, rest rooms, water fountains, etc.

Accessibility does not require literacy, let alone computer literacy, because a voter could sit at a computer and choose yes or no for a graphical image that represents a bill or a candidate. TV stations could explain each bill while displaying its corresponding image. Candidates for election would simply use their photographs and maybe a logo for their party.

Accessibility also demands that we have enough time to vote. The polls could be open for about one week whether we are voting on a bill or electing a candidate. Voters could have plenty of time to think about their vote and even go back and change it if they choose.

Crises, such as war, will require Congress to make some decisions very quickly. We must therefore allow it to set the length of time that the polls remain open for each vote, but this action also requires a vote. It would be the only kind of vote that Congress can make unilaterally. We would be wise to require at least a two thirds majority to set the time to less than one week.

Elections would be much more efficient. We could have unlimited candidates and runoff elections – neither of which is viable today. We could even have preference voting, which enables us to list our order of preference for everyone on the ballot.

Representation is guaranteed because we are represented either by ourselves or anyone we choose from among the entire citizenry.

Computer technology lets us be more creative. We could choose representatives for different categories such as domestic and foreign, and we could have a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice. For example, we could specify that we be represented by our 2nd choice rather than the representative of our 1st choice, or vice versa.

Many would choose a favorite journalist or TV personality, which is a healthy decision as long as we pick someone whose votes are published and audited just like most representatives in Congress. Without an audit we should assume we would be picking someone whose public image is a pretense – although that's unlikely in most cases because such a conspiracy would be too risky. Detection could damage the conspirators' cause for decades after the fact.

I cannot stress the importance of this point enough. Imagine that a popular conservative like Rush Limbaugh were the proxy for ten percent of all conservatives, and then he confesses on his deathbed that he was always a liberal and that ten percent of all conservative votes had always been cast for the liberal cause! Then again, exit polls would catch this pretty quickly in such a large case.

Security is simple at the individual level. Everyone has a password. No one could possibly steal or buy (and then use) enough passwords to influence an election. Even if someone applied this strategy, voters could examine their voting history and see that their votes had been changed.

The only real danger is someone altering the results after they have been stored. The solution is many checks and balances such as independent polls, inspectors, redundant storage facilities, and giving voters access to their stored voting history.

Voters could see if their past votes had been altered. First they could check one vote storage facility, and then just for fun they could check another one to see if they matched.

No one could alter the software that ran the network because everything would be completely open. Anyone could examine the source code at any time. Anyone could compile the source code and compare it to the software running on the network at any time.

When a violation of security occurs, we could easily take action to prevent the same kind of breach from recurring – because we will have superior representation. Also, a violation would almost certainly be uncovered eventually, and the conspirators' cause would be devastated. Why would they risk it?

Digitization gives the network a natural immunity. Evidence constituting illegal tampering would be clearly defined, and would thus be risky; whereas, tampering with a Congressman is ambiguous because we cannot be sure what is in his head. He can plausibly deny just about anything. Also, he can initiate and actively maintain deception; whereas, computers cannot do any of these things. They will not cooperate with conspirators. They cannot be bribed.

Lobbying and campaigning would be the only recourse for anyone who would influence the people or the government. It would be directed at the public as well as Congress, and thus the main issue is whether we, or Congress, are more easily persuaded to do ourselves harm. Clearly, we are far more conscious of our own needs, and we are much more concerned about them.

Bribes would be harmless because we wouldn't accept one unless it was worth more to us than the consequences. Either way, we win. The real danger is that we may bribe ourselves by trading our future for short term gains. Then again, this is far better than Congress trading our future for their short term gains.

Lobbyists and campaigns would have far more competition than they do now. If they try to compensate by spending money, we will know they are representing special interests. If we are deceived, we will have the power to pass laws to eliminate that kind of deception in the future. Eventually we will legislate many kinds of corruption out of existence.

We should not fear expensive campaigns because we aren’t as easily influenced as the statistics imply. What actually happens is the candidate most likely to win naturally receives the most contributions.

It seems that only the most apathetic and weakest of character among us could make worse decisions than Congress, and those of us who fit this description rarely vote. So, don’t fear your neighbor’s vote, or for that matter, your neighbor’s right to keep and bear arms. That is exactly how the political elite want you to feel.

Special interests could no longer control the government because common citizens do not worry about getting reelected, so they don’t need to make deals like politicians do. The result is less government, and a government with less money will attract less pressure from special interests, which will itself tend to make government smaller. This is self reinforcing.

Another influence that would make our government smaller is that we'll want to be able to understand it. We would therefore tend to simplify our laws and government programs. This would eliminate most claims that government is unfair because Representatives would no longer decide to whom to give one fourth of our GNP.

Special interests demand more than entitlements, which tend to be bad. They also demand rights, which tend to be good, but what if the majority could deny rights as well as entitlements?

The tyranny of the majority is potentially the biggest problem in the New Democracy because the majority could impose its will more easily. Some would proclaim the tyranny of the majority a myth because different persons comprise the majority for each issue or because we all have essentially the same needs, but the fact remains that a sufficient majority could use its power to oppress a specific minority. It could even elect legislatures to repeal their Constitutional rights -- but it always could.

The reality is that the majority has elected and reelected politicians who have taken the unprecedented measure of implementing welfare and affirmative action programs, which by definition are biased against the majority. If minorities are treated so graciously by the politicians elected by normal Americans, then they should have nothing to fear from normal Americans themselves. Again, I cannot overemphasize how important it is to not fear your fellow citizens, because that is exactly how the political elites want you to feel.

One of the many ways the people may deal with this potential tyranny is by enacting a Constitutional amendment that requires a two thirds majority to pass a law, and a one third minority to repeal it. If all else fails, and the government of the majority becomes too oppressive, well . . . , that’s why responsible citizens own guns.

One thing is certain. The Freedom Amendment would radically alter our nation. I believe an era of renaissance would follow the fall of the political class.

Fall Of The Political Class

The Representation Amendment would be the end of the two party monopoly. Anyone could instantly become a candidate for public office and post campaign material on the network at no cost.

Organizations would offer their opinions on candidates, but our choice would no longer be limited to the candidates endorsed by just two of these private organizations. In fact, we could elect an enemy of the political elite – a practical impossibility today. Parties as we know them would be obsolete.

Back room meetings to create a voting block would be futile. They would keep splintering because they would have so many potential candidates, and 100 million voters can’t fit in a back room anyway. In other words, efforts to influence enough voters cannot be discrete. Any such effort would prompt us to enact legislation, for example, to expose who contributes what to a campaign. We would be free to shun any candidate that receives large sums of money from any one block because we have so many other candidates to choose from. Although no system can be completely immune to corruption, our remedy could be swift and effective – because we would have superior representation.

Three obvious steps we could take to go further in this direction would be to enact a similar system for state legislatures, elect members of the supreme court, and eliminate the office of the President.

We would witness the end of the one necessary ingredient for political corruption -- the concentration of power.

Renaissance

We could have balanced budgets and many reforms. We could also do more interesting things like:

· enforce term limits

· create more districts

· create a third house in Congress selected by lottery

· elect the Supreme Court

· make voters responsible for the federal debt in proportion to the deficits created during their tenure as a voter

My point is not that these are great ideas. My point is that change would finally be possible. Effective change is not possible today, but with pure democracy, it is, and that works both ways. Not only can we try the greatest ideas, but if we try something and it doesn't work, we can change course immediately.

An empowered citizenry would shed its apathy. Americans would be in heated competition to deepen our understanding and broaden our horizons because on the network, we will always encounter those who doubt us, those who embarrass us, and those who deceive us. Confronted with doubt, one strives for clarity. Losing an argument, one longs to be more persuasive. Once lead astray, one hungers for truth.

Even if such enlightenment describes only 10% of future citizens, that would be a huge improvement.

There is nothing to fear. The people would still have less power than Congress does today because not everyone would participate, and even 100% participation would merely equal the power of the politicians in Congress today. Although change would be more likely initially, war and taxes would be less likely – permanently. Remember, it is the people who like freedom. It is the politicians who don’t like freedom. It is the people who don’t like war and taxes. It is politicians who do like war and taxes.

The second American Revolution would be the second Renaissance.

How to Know When Obama is Lying

Unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is rather methodical when he lies, and thus patterns have begun to emerge.

Whenever Obama says something like “failed policies of the past”, “discredited debates of the past”, or “we tried it their way” – he is selling us another whopper.

In fact, most of the time when Obama says that something is "failed" or "discredited" - it is not.

Likewise, when Obama says that his opponents are "on the wrong side of history", we know he is selling snake oil.

Whenever Obama says that something is “legitimate” or “Constitutional” – it is definitely not.

Whenever, Obama quotes anyone like Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln – he is lying about something.

Whenever, Obama says that he has been “consistent”, or that his critics “haven’t been paying attention” – he is lying about getting caught lying. The DC gun ban was perhaps the earliest and most obvious example. Obama said that he supported the DC gun ban. Then when the Supreme Court overturned it a few months later, he said that he agreed, but instead of explaining his contradiction, Obama said that his position has always been "consistent" and that his critics "haven't been paying attention." Obama did not lie about changing his position. He lied about agreeing with the Supreme Court.

Some new patterns I anticipate in the near future are the use of “fair” and “illegal”. I expect to hear Obama refer to actions and words as illegal when they are in fact legal and Constitutional. Consider that Obama claims that his critics are dishonest and harmful, that he is not a fan of freedom of speech or of the press, that he advocates some rather vague laws to make speech more fair, and that he stretches the Constitution (and English) far beyond its actual meaning. It is then easy to imagine Obama claiming that under the new fairness laws, some particularly effective criticism of him was illegal.

In the future you could look for these key words and phrases, or you could just note when Obama is not giving you any details. For example, what are the failed policies of the past, did they actually happen under Bush, were they actually crafted by Republicans, why does Obama say they failed, aren't they more or less the same policies that we had under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton? Wasn't the mess with subprime loans, Fannie Mae, and credit default swaps created under Clinton and promoted primarily by Democrats? While it is true that almost everyone thinks of Bush and Republicans as failures, the new policies that are responsible were: staying in Iraq, high deficits, and the bailouts, and of course, media bias was also responsible. Now consider that Obama is not only staying in Iraq, but that he is also tripling the Bush deficits and bailouts. I guess we see why Obama is avoiding the details, and he can get away with this only because a biased media is giving him a free pass.

Healthcare

The government should do whatever it has to do to persuade doctors to give me free healthcare because I shouldn’t have to pay for healthcare. I have a right to healthcare. I have a right to top quality healthcare. Then I can tell those greedy exploitative capitalists to take their job and shove it – while I live out my years on the beach with freedom and dignity. It’s the right thing to do.

OK. That is what we are supposed to believe, and it is exactly what one of my liberal friends believes, but now let’s do what we do best around here and think for ourselves.

One problem that government may be able to fix is the fact that malpractice suits have a surprisingly low correlation with malpractice and a surprisingly high correlation with bedside manner. For example, a patient who suffered a mistake by her general practitioner decided to sue the specialist instead. She explained that she could never sue her general practitioner because she liked her too much.

Note that the rules of lawsuits are defined and enforced by government, so fixing any problem with lawsuits is government fixing government.

Cost

It seems like the only real complaint against American healthcare is cost, but if we think for ourselves, we can easily deduce that those who claim they will help us are disingenuous at best. Watching the mainstream media and the current political leaders, one gets the impression that the cost of healthcare in America is the corruption, waste, and greed of doctors and health insurance companies.

For some reason, hardly anyone in the media or government is talking about the corruption, waste, and greed of politicians. Nor is anyone talking about the government protected AMA monopoly, or about the hidden costs of government regulations and the corruption and waste in existing government healthcare. We hear almost nothing about American epidemic of frivolous lawsuits with outrageous awards against doctors and pharmaceutical companies (compared to other countries).

I've heard no one in the mainstream media (except John Stossel) talking about how the costs of regulations and lawsuits not only directly raise prices, but have also forced many mergers within the healthcare industry, which has reduced competition. When we consider that less competition naturally reduces innovation while increasing prices, and that regulations and lawsuits are defined and enforced by government, we can easily deduce that this is another example of how government is a problem masquerading as its own cure.

Why is hardly anyone in the media and government talking about how we pay more, we also get more? Why isn’t anyone talking about how the best doctors come here because they can make more money.

Why are so few in the media and government telling us how we pay more for healthcare because the government forces doctors to provide healthcare to Medicare and Medicaid patients, and then pays them 25% less than their usual fee, so they make up the difference by charging the rest of us more. We also pay more for healthcare because the government forces doctors and hospitals to treat millions of illegal aliens for free. For example, I paid several thousand dollars for an emergency room visit when one of my children injured himself, but if the son of an illegal immigrant injures himself – I pay for that too – and the illegal immigrant pays nothing.

Freedom

We can easily deduce logical concerns about greater government involvement in healthcare that are widely underreported. I am not just concerned about truly socialized medicine, I have the same concern about any system where the government takes the fruits of labor from some people to pay for the healthcare of others.

My concern is this: If others are paying for my healthcare, then my life choices can cost them more of the fruits of their labor, which gives them the right to regulate my life choices. For example, we might have laws that force us to wear seat belts or motorcycle helmets. We might have laws or taxes that punish us if we smoke, drink alcohol, eat too much meat and fat or too little carbs.

Sometimes the government will be wrong or politically motivated. For example, my blood tests prove that alcohol and fat increase my HDL, which is good, and that carbs increase my triglycerides, which is bad, but the US government disagrees with me.

Politicians criticize some HMOs because they will not pay for a customer to see a specialist or go to the hospital unless they have first received approval from a general practitioner, but what would stop the government from forcing us all to see a general practitioner first – like in Great Britain? What would stop the government from paying a bonus to doctors who send fewer patients to specialists – like in Great Britain?

A local endontist office told me that they get a lot of Canadians who come in for a root canal because the Canadian government has told them that root canals are too expensive, and that it is cheaper to just pull the tooth. Now you should be wondering why Canadians don’t just go to a Canadian endontist and pay for a root canal. The reason is that Canadians lack the basic freedom to pay someone to provide them with healthcare. Private healthcare is illegal in Canada.

Boycott GM

General Motors has for all practical purposes become “Government Motors”, and like with Amtrak, government ownership will never end. Perhaps more importantly, GM will no longer be competing fairly against other US car companies. One result is that Ford will either be absorbed by GM, taken over by the government, or cease to exist.

Consider that Obama has already decided to change the rules and cheat General Motors bond holders (people who loaned money to GM). Instead of upholding the law that has been in existence for the last one or two hundred years, Obama has decided that the unions will get money legally owed to the bond holders. Apparently Obama doesn’t know that this hurts pension plans that owned GM bonds. Even worse is the effect on all businesses in America in the future. Suppose a company wants to sell bonds to raise money to build a new factory. Apparently Obama doesn’t understand that this company will now have to pay a higher interest rate to entice buyers who will be afraid that the government might cheat them too in the future. Now suppose this company is Ford, which is another car company and another company with unions. Apparently Obama doesn’t know that he just destroyed Ford’s ability to compete.

The government bailout and takeover of GM is, of course, un-American, but there is something we can do about it.

Boycott GM.

I have an allergic reaction to cheaters. I would thus pay $1000 more for a car from Ford than the exact same car from GM. I would keep using my old car as long as possible before I would by from GM.

In addition to boycotting GM, why not also boycott AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and any other cheaters who received a bailout or who seek special favors from the government - like General Electric.

I was Healed

I have always been allergic to hypocrisy, pretentiousness, and any kind of disingenuousness. Therefore, shortly after college, I became a member of a very serious church for nearly two years.

I say “serious”, because this church was a beacon of humility, sincerity, and devotion to the Bible – and only to the Bible. The people had no higher priority, and they invited everyone to hold them accountable.

I was able to catch a glimpse of a possible future utopia where everyone feels an intense level of trust, hope, fulfillment, and joy and a total absence of fear.

It changed my life.

To this day, all other churches seem like hypocrites by comparison.

However, I only caught a glimpse of utopia because this beacon of devotion and humility was at the same time a beacon of legalism – they really sweated the small stuff.

They were thus at a dead end. There was a cap on their potential. In this respect they were like the mainstream Church of Christ from whom they had evolved.

Their primary innovation was that accountability was enforced through a military style chain of command (hierarchy). Did I mention that I also have always been allergic to hierarchy?

I once asked one of the leaders: “In a single word, what is it all about?” His answer was “Obedience.”

I said, “Love – It is all about Love.”

Needless to say, I was soon thereafter swept away in a purge of the less obedient.

I had nightmares for a couple of years after that. Then today, 20 years later, I had a lucid dream where I revisited my old church for a dinner party. I was feeling unusually confident, and I was anticipating a joyous experience.

When legalism inevitably appeared, I defended the victim ,and I saw that my boldness gave the people hope. When the rebuke came, I was suddenly … inspired …

People

I was really hoping this place had grown.

It has not. It may be even more legalistic than before.

(I was getting up to leave. The people looked at me eagerly.)

I

have grown.

I

can help you.

I

will help you.

Find me.

(As I began to wake, I was saying:)

Your potential is greater than this.

You can love more than this.

The truth is more than this.

The truth will set you free.

Truth is reality.

The promise of reality is freedom.

Fear of reality is the root of all evil.

Fear tempts us to proclaim, “There ought to be a law.”

Fear tempts us to betray.

Fear tempts us to condemn nature.

I am healed.

Sotomayor: Racist? Sexist? Fascist?

Today Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and the hypocrisy of the announcement ceremony was breathtaking. Almost every relevant statement made by Obama and Sotomayor was what mature and honest people wanted to hear – and yet was obviously false.

Looking at her record, she is at least somewhat racist and sexist with inadequate respect for the rule of law, but I don’t think she is aware of her racism, sexism, or fascist leanings. Listening to her today, she did not seem angry, bitter, or mean spirited. She seemed like a happy, intelligent, and thoughtful person who lives in a sheltered world where she gets much love and support from the political class.

Like Obama, she is their “precious”.

In spite of Sotomayor’s difficult childhood, her sheltered adult life is apparently the reason that she has little awareness, and thus little empathy, for those with a different point of view, such as those who support the values on which America was founded: values such as individual freedom, equality under the law, limited government, and the rule of law. This is what the Tea Parties were all about, but I’m guessing that like Obama and others on the Left, she just doesn’t get the Tea Parties either. At this point in her life, she is probably incapable of getting it. She lacks the experience that would give her the necessary empathy to get it.

Ironically, Obama said that it was Sotomayor’s experience and the empathy resulting from that experience that set her apart from other well qualified candidates.

Breathtaking!

Consider that Sotomayor once told an audience, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She also told the audience that the first female Supreme court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, was wrong when she said that a wise old man and a wise old woman would come to the same conclusion.

Sotomayor in a videotaped interview said that she probably shouldn’t admit it, but that the appeals courts are where the law is made.

Sotomayor ruled against the white firemen who were passed over for promotion. The firemen were told that promotions would be based on the results of a test, and then every white fireman outscored every Hispanic and Black fireman, so the city decided to not promote anyone. Clearly, white firemen would not be allowed to succeed because of the color of their skin. One of those white firemen was dyslexic and thus had to spend many hours studying and many dollars paying for materials and tutors. He scored very well on the test, but he was denied promotion because of the color of his skin. Sotomayor – the putative champion of the weak; Sotomayor – Obama’s goddess of empathy … threw out his case without a minute of consideration.

Can you imagine if a white male judge threw out the case of a black handicapped man who made a heroic effort and outperformed his white counterparts and who was then denied promotion because he was black?

Can you imagine if a conservative judge implied that he intended to use his position to make the law?

Can you imagine if a white man said that a white male judge would make better decisions than a Hispanic female judge?

Also, didn't Obama promise a post-racial and post-partisan administration?

Like I said, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.

If we expose the reality of narrow minded Supreme Court nominees like Sotomayor, then maybe the Supreme Court will consist of more freedom friendly justices.

The Promise of Reality is Freedom.

Republicans as Conservative Democrats

Within days of changing the name from “Republicans” to “Conservative Democrats”, conversations across America would have trouble distinguishing “Conservative Democrats” from “Democrats”. Then, Americans would instinctively distinguish Democrats by calling them Liberal Democrats or Socialist Democrats.

However, instead of making this brilliant and bold strategic decision to change the one thing they have the power to change, the otherwise powerless and much ignored RNC is still planning to accomplish the same thing by passing a resolution to rename the Democratic Party as the Democratic Socialist Party, which will have no effect and will thus make Republicans look weak and short on ideas – as if they still have their head up their ass like for the last few years.

Tea Parties Explained

Throughout the Spring of 2009, and especially on April 15^th, hundreds of thousands of Americans in thousands of towns and cities gathered in a grassroots effort to protest a wide variety of general grievances about the current and anticipated actions of US government and the political parties. However, those who get their news from their friends or from the mainstream media have probably been seriously misinformed about the Tea Party phenomenon. I can help clear things up because I attended two of them, talked with dozens of participants, watched hours of coverage about them, and I was already well informed about most of the grievances expressed at the Tea Parties.

I can assure you from my first hand experience that pretty much everything said about the Tea Parties by CNN, MSNBC, the New York times, Hollywood, and the Obama administration – is wrong. For example, I did not see or hear a single racist thought. I did not meet a single person who was pleased with the Republican party, and I only met one person who came because he was a Glenn Beck fan. I met no one calling for any violence. I met no one praising the war in Iraq, the war on terror, or the Patriot Act, and I met no one who liked George Bush.

The Tea Parties I attended were as informal, as local, and as grassroots as any event can possibly be. There was certainly no money or vast right wing conspiracy behind them.

I have a strong understanding of the Constitution, and I did not see or hear a single unconstitutional agenda; whereas, the critics of the Tea Parties including Congress and the Obama administration have a poor understanding of the Constitution and support a plethora of Constitutional violations.

The primary grievance was not about Obama, and although Obama’s divisive agenda has surely strengthened support for these Tea Parties, Obama himself was a minor subject. I saw about 100 signs, and maybe three of them mentioned Obama.

The primary grievance was not about taxes either.

The primary grievance was about government spending and the related topics of government bailouts, government debt, and government pork. Spending, bailouts, debt, and pork comprised the main grievance because our children will inherit massive debt, owe money to China, and have more inflation and a lower quality of life than they could have had. A few people also recognized that deficit spending is taxation without representation for today’s kids because they will have to pay back the debt when they grow up even though they could not vote when the debt was created.

Taxes were actually the second biggest grievance. Some opposed the current level of taxes. Some opposed any increases in taxes, and some wanted a simpler or more fair tax system.

After taxes, the third most common grievance was the demand for closer adherence to the Constitution, less corruption, more accountability, and more transparency in Washington. The most common concerns about current and anticipated violations of the Constitution were about religious freedom and the right to keep and bear arms.

Perhaps tied for third place were signs that summed up all grievances by opposing socialism, communism, or fascism because these tend to expand government, reduce freedom, reward failure, and punish success.

Why did putatively objective journalists and the putatively post partisan Obama administration so viscously belittle and slander such a noble grassroots effort by the American people? If I had voted for Obama or were a regular patron of CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, their disgusting betrayal of these noble Americans and these noble American values would be sufficient justification for me to renounce them permanently.

To be fair, there was one guy I met at a Tea Party who had some pretty harsh words for Obama and the government, but consider that the government had tried to extort him into spying on his neighbors, and then when he would not cooperate, they spent millions of dollars spying on him and attacking his family with lethal force. For example, his son and a friend were hunting on their property when two agents dressed like ninjas jumped out from behind a rock and shot their hunting dog. The friend instantly fired his rifle from the hip and killed one of them. The 15 year old son fled to the house, but was shot in the back by a third agent. Several weeks and several millions of dollars later, an agent shot his wife in the head while she was holding his 10 month old baby. Then that agent was promoted and was present at a similar government atrocity two years later in Waco Texas. The mainstream media covered this whole event at Ruby Ridge Idaho about as dishonestly as they have covered the Tea Parties. Therefore, I am surprised that this man (his name is Randy Weaver) was not more angry. Perhaps the reason for his calm was that these events happened back in 1992 under the first Bush administration. Reason Magazine published the best account of the whole story that I have seen to date.

I told a liberal coworker the story of Randy Weaver, and he said that he didn’t care because it sounds like Randy Weaver was a racist. I told a coworker from Finland the story of Randy Weaver, and he said that it was OK because it sounded like Randy Weaver was right wing.

So these compassionate leftists say we must punish those who waterboarded 3 terrorists and saved thousands of lives, but they say it is OK kill anyone who is a right winger, and these oh so noble leftists say it is torture to play loud music to deprive terrorists of sleep, but it was OK when the Clinton Administration did the same thing to the innocent right wing Americans at Waco Texas who had been framed by the BATF. Also, these same leftists who view the Constitution as nothing more than an obstacle to their big government fantasies, say that waterboarding terrorists is wrong – because it is unconstitutional!

I suppose it is true that the Tea Party goers were not as wealthy, as educated, as famous, or as powerful as their critics, and yet the Tea Party goers were more civilized, more mature, more honest, more peaceful, and better informed than their critics. In a nutshell, the Tea Party goers are just much better human beings than their critics.

My Record of Predictions

You should be asking me and everyone else, “If you’re so smart then why didn’t you see this coming?”

First note that predicting really big general events requires consideration of millions of data points in a subconscious process that cannot really be explained. The best we can do is note who tends to be right.

So how has Leeroy F. Dermit done?

It occurred to me that I have done pretty well, and so I should write an analysis of my predictions from the last few years.

Personal Predictions

Starting around 2003, I was saying that housing prices were going up much faster than income, which meant that fewer and fewer families would be able to afford them. Therefore, I said that prices would soon top out, and that if interest rates ever went up, then the monthly payments would be so much higher that sellers would have to lower the price of their house to make monthly payments affordable to potential buyers.

Then in August 2005 I said that the housing market has peaked for the same reasons, so I sold my house for 266% of my purchase price. Before you get too jealous, note that I had to fix up the house, pay closing costs, and pay moving expenses, which totaled more than $50,000.

I then bought a better yet less expensive house in an area where I felt that prices would still go up because:

• Broadband Internet would increase the value in more remote areas.
• One can see snow capped peaks from one’s home and office.
• Access via airlines is good.
• The natural processes that have been causing a small degree of global warming since about 1850 may continue to make the weather more temperate.
• There was a large pool of potential buyers who could move here from the most inflated housing markets and afford a better house for less money, and there would probably not be enough houses available for them here.

I reasoned that if the local opportunity that brought me here dried up, then I could simply fly to whichever site paid me the most, which I predicted would be about $100/hour; whereas, an ordinary income for my skills would be $60/hour. Eventually the local opportunities dried up, and I started flying year round to sites that paid about $100/hour.

My bills were much lower and my income was much higher, so I didn’t need to work more than 4 months a year, but I reasoned that the economy could change and companies might stop hiring out-of-town contractors or might start paying significantly less. Therefore, I worked as much as I could while rates were high, which lasted two years. Rates are now lower and jobs are fewer, so I will have to work most of the year to pay the bills.

Also, my original house is worth $200,000 less than when I sold it, and my new house is worth $50,000 more than I paid for it.

So, my personal life predictions were correct across the board, but my correct predictions do not end there.

My Business Predictions

In my local opportunity, I predicted 3 years ago that although my employer was already supposed to be done with their project, they would still not be finished with their project three years later if they continued down the same path. I explained why, and I proposed an alternative approach. I almost got fired. It is now 3 years later and they are not finished with even the first part of their project. Of course, the VP cannot admit that I was right, or he would lose his job. I explain some of this in one of my earliest articles entitled The Incompetence of American Managers Drives Outsourcing.

My Government Predictions

I have predicted for years that in spite of some recent setbacks for the proponents of big government, such as the Internet, the future would probably continue the more than 100 year trend towards higher taxes and more government spending.

I also predicted in December 2006, that Hillary Clinton or someone like her might be the next President, which prompted me to start my web site. I predicted that McCain would win unless 2 out of these 3 things happened. 1) an unprecedented media campaign to get Hillary/Obama elected, 2) an economic crash, or 3) a huge setback in the War on Terror. 1 and 2 happened and McCain lost.

I predicted that if the next President were Hillary or Obama, then they would try to ban guns. Therefore, I ordered my assault rifle back in early 2008. Of course, Obama did win, and he is already trying to ban guns like he did in Illinois in spite of his pre-election claim that he has always agreed with the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision, which declared that that all guns bans are unconstitutional. I explain Obama’s record in my article, The Universal Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Obama has also raised taxes, and in his own words, he has tripled the deficit with his spending. A majority seem to believe his uniformed rhetoric that low taxes, low spending, and deregulation have been proven wrong.

Not only did these predictions come true, but my most recent predictions for government are already coming true, which I have documented in my article Obama’s Third Inaugural Address.

My Stock Market Predictions

I have been trading stocks since early 2007, and I would estimate that out of about 100 stock trades, about 75% of them have been correct or neutral in spite of the crash in March 2007, the crash in August 2007, the decline since October 2007, the really big crash in September and October of 2008, the small crash that started the morning after the election, and the crash that started about a week after Obama took office.

However, by random coincidence, the points in time at which I had new money to invest was right before the first three crashes. Also, the crashes starting in September 2008, were easily preventable by rolling back a handful of government taxes and regulations, so even if I knew then what I know now, I would not have predicted the main crash, which started in September 2008, because my faith in government was too high. This is why, in spite of my high percentage of correct decisions, I was losing 3% of my savings at the beginning of September 2008, and I was losing 53% by the end of October 2008.

This may sound like a failure, but to be fair, one must compare me to my peers.

Consider that I manage three stock portfolios, which includes my IRA, another IRA, and a regular brokerage account. I have four top rated mutual funds in the regular account, which is a high risk account, and yet that account is outperforming three out of those four top rated mutual funds. Consider that my IRA, which is equally high risk, is out performing all four top rated mutual funds, and consider that the other IRA, which is where I manage "other people’s money" like a mutual fund manager, is doing way, way better than top rated mutual funds. Also, consider that these top rated fund managers have way more time, experience, information, and education than I do, and that they probably did not receive large increases in new cash just before each crash – and I still significantly outperformed them.

In spite of my powers of prediction, I cannot predict the market at this point. It is almost as if elements in government and business have conspired to drive the market as low as possible. Consider that if you know the market will go down ahead of time, you can make a fortune by selling short and buying credit default swaps. If this is true, then my prediction would be that once they have made the market go as low as they can and everyone else is too afraid to invest in the market, then they will try to make it go as high as they can.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

This is a disturbing movie. More specifically, it promotes disturbing values.

The theme of the movie is that the earth is one of only a few planets hospitable to life, and that humans are “at the tipping point” of destroying it. An emissary from the civilizations on other planets has decided that humans are unable to change; and therefore, given that the earth does not belong to one species, it is necessary to exterminate one species (humans) to save the earth for other species.

Apparently the creators of this movie – like most of Hollywood – have been conned and are out of touch with reality.

Let’s start with the least of the flaws, which is the dubious claim that the earth is one of a few planets hospitable for life. The reality is that there is probably an abundance of earth-like planets. Also, there is an abundance of raw materials, including an abundance of planets, that could be used by advanced civilizations to build an earth-like planet or to terraform an existing planet into an earth-like planet.

A more important flaw is the use of global warming as the justification for exterminating humans. Although “global warming” was not mentioned directly, it was obviously implied by the use of the term “tipping point”. The reality is that there is little reason to fear anthropogenic climate change.

A similar flaw is the dubious claim that humans are destroying the earth. Clearly the earth is not being destroyed. For example, the putative cause of global warming is CO², which is non-toxic. Also, anything humans are doing to the earth can be undone, or we can adapt.

A more disturbing claim is that the earth does not belong to humans. Obviously the earth does belong to humans because we are the only sentient species here. Also, we evolved here, and thus no other sentient species can ever have a stronger claim. If we were exterminated, then sentience would probably not evolve here again – at least not for hundreds of millions of years.

A related and very flawed value promoted by the movie is that sentient beings are worth no more than any other species. The reality is that sentience is the only thing that gives any meaning to the rest of the universe. If there were no sentience in the universe, then the universe would be irrelevant.

The most disturbing value in the movie is the total irrelevance of how humans interact with each other. The galactic community does not care if humans kill or enslave each other as long as we don’t hurt the earth. This is the opposite of the original movie in which the galactic ambassador came to stop us from killing each other and especially to stop us from exterminating ourselves with weapons of mass destruction because sentient life (e.g. the human race) is the ultimate value.

The movie tries to persuade you to accept its values by simultaneously destroying your self esteem and making you fear the imminent destruction of the earth by lowly people like yourself. It also makes you fear that you are on the wrong side of a fight you cannot win. People like you should just shut up and obey the omnipotent government-like force that is trying to save the environment, and then the government will have mercy on you and let you live.

In a nutshell, the movie not only promotes the idea that protecting the environment is more important than the extinction of humans, but that it is far, far more important than the freedom and dignity of humans. Therefore, any form of oppression is trivial because what we should all be worried about is global warming, and any form of oppression that promises to combat global warming is actually good.

The reality is that human freedom and dignity are what make life worth living, and those who seek power and wealth are forever trying to con us into giving up our freedom and dignity. One of their newer cons is global warming, but if we know the reality, then we are immune to their con.

The Promise of Reality is Freedom.

Fascism in the US Senate

A majority in the US Senate has voted to violate the Constitution to aid the Democratic Party in future elections. On Feb. 26, 61 US Senators voted for a bill to grant the District of Columbia a voting member in the House of Representatives. One could argue that the bill is, or is not, a good idea, but it is nevertheless unconstitutional, and thus the Senate vote was an act of fascism rather than the rule of law.

The District of Columbia is not a state and thus has never had voting members in the US Congress. If the Congress wanted to give the District voting members in Congress, then the current Congress would have to pass a Constitutional amendment.

Consider that when Congress wanted to let DC choose electors for the office of President, it ratified the 23^rd Amendment in 1961, which states:

“The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.”

This amendment explicitly states that DC is not a state, and proves that to give DC any powers reserved for the states requires a Constitutional amendment.

Fascism

Fascism is any system of government where the people have what they consider a mainstream state-of-the-art government compatible with their culture – and then make one additional modification. They install a leader who gives them such hope and unity that they entrust him to make occasional exceptions to the law for important and pragmatic reasons.

Fascist regimes can vary widely because the whims of the leader tend to result in a changing and somewhat incoherent mishmash of rules – like a new parent with a 2 year old. Also, fascism can develop in diverse cultures with unique problems. Another difference in fascist regimes is that early stage fascism, where the leader has made only a few popular exceptions to the law, looks significantly different than late stage fascism, where the leader’s will has entirely supplanted the law.

Although fascist regimes have several common characteristics, the only principle common to all fascist regimes is unity, everything else can vary depending on the will of the leader, which is a triumph of pragmatism over principles.

Some characteristics of each fascist regime are more common than others. For example, the probable path to fascism is likely to begin when the people feel convinced that they are all in agreement on the direction their government should take, and when they also feel that they are currently faced with an overwhelming crisis for which their system of government lacks the authority or the will to manage effectively.

Several side effects of fascism are probable.

For the good of everyone, the leader must have the power necessary to fix any problem as well as the power to unite everyone. Therefore, any threat to the leader’s will is thus a threat to the people themselves. Therefore, any form of repression is reluctantly accepted as justified.

Fascism tries to respect state-of-the-art government such as the right to private property, private business, and self defense, but these increasingly become illusions because all wealth and all activity by any individual or any organization becomes increasingly regulated and controlled for the good of everyone as the leader sees new ways to optimize the use of money and labor and to eliminate opposition.

The obsession of the people with unity tends to result in peer pressure to conform and thus anyone who engages in political dissent will be bullied. As the fascist regime matures, such bullying is likely to become extreme.

Faith in the government and especially in the leader increasingly becomes cult-like as competing sources of faith, hope , and unity, such as religion, are supplanted by government. This reminds me of the Cult of the Left in the America.

Fascism tries to respect the rule of law and due process, but the rule of law and due process increasingly become illusions as the law increasingly gives way to the will of the leader. However, the will of the leader might increasingly be interpreted as the law, and the leader tends to overturn existing law only for very important and pragmatic reasons, which thus maintains the illusion of the rule of law when in fact it is the opposite of the rule of law.

Although the leader seeks to unite the people, inevitably the leader is not up to his superhuman task and will begin to scapegoat one individual or group and then another. Whereas, the right scapegoats external threats, and the left scapegoats its own people, fascism is less principled and may scapegoat either.

American Fascism

America’s move towards fascism has been slow because the genius of the Constitution has maintained a division of power that is still understood to this day. Unfortunately, the courts no longer seem to understand the Bill of Rights and the limits on the powers of government. The courts now let government do pretty much whatever its wants to solve problems and unite the people. It is thus almost as if America has a fascist dictator who is the entire US government.

America has been slowly moving towards fascism starting with Lincoln’s great leap forward. Historians give Lincoln a free pass to this day – ostensibly because several years into Lincoln’s war to end secession, one of his many whims for which he had no authority, was to free the slaves. Of course, it would be very easy for us to observe that Lincoln was basically a fascist dictator and yet still credit Lincoln for finally deciding to free the slaves and for then deciding near the end of his life that blacks just might deserve equality as well as freedom. It is almost as if fascists are writing the history books.

Several other President’s, such as FDR, have also facilitated significant leaps towards fascism.

It is possible as of this writing that Barack Obama will become the first true fascist leader in America. An Obama regime looks like it would differ from most historical forms in that it would be internationalist fascism rather than nationalist fascism. Also, Obama is a leftist, but he is not a very principled or consistent leftist. It would be more accurate to say that he is a fascist with a leftist bent.

Of course, Obama’s approval rating is 56% and falling, and is actually lower than at this same point in Bush’s first term. In fact, Clinton’s approval rating never fell below 60% for a single day during his second administration. Therefore, the fascist ambitions of the Obama administration seem unlikely to be realized anytime soon.

Obama would need the economic crisis to be even worse, or he would need some kind of other crisis to complete the leap to fascism under a single leader. This reminds me that his chief of staff, Rohm Emmanuel, said on Nov. 17^th, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.

On the other hand, we are so close to complete fascism now that 8 years of gradual movement in that direction may be sufficient to set the stage for a final crisis that would give Obama a third term, which would never end. I have already foreseen this possibility when I wrote Obama’s Third Inaugural Address several weeks ago.

American Fascism

America’s move towards fascism has been slow because the genius of the Constitution has maintained a division of power that is still understood to this day. Unfortunately, the courts no longer seem to understand the Bill of Rights and the limits on the powers of government. The courts now let government do pretty much whatever its wants to solve problems and unite the people. It is thus almost as if America has a fascist dictator who is the entire US government.

America has been slowly moving towards fascism starting with Lincoln’s great leap forward. Historians give Lincoln a free pass to this day – ostensibly because several years into Lincoln’s war to end secession, one of his many whims for which he had no authority, was to free the slaves. Of course, it would be very easy for us to observe that Lincoln was basically a fascist dictator and yet still credit Lincoln for finally deciding to free the slaves and for then deciding near the end of his life that blacks just might deserve equality as well as freedom. It is almost as if fascists are writing the history books.

Several other President’s, such as FDR, have also facilitated significant leaps towards fascism.

It is possible as of this writing that Barack Obama will become the first true fascist leader in America. An Obama regime looks like it would differ from most historical forms in that it would be internationalist fascism rather than nationalist fascism. Also, Obama is a leftist, but he is not a very principled or consistent leftist. It would be more accurate to say that he is a fascist with a leftist bent.

Of course, Obama’s approval rating is 56% and falling, and is actually lower than at this same point in Bush’s first term. In fact, Clinton’s approval rating never fell below 60% for a single day during his second administration. Therefore, the fascist ambitions of the Obama administration seem unlikely to be realized anytime soon.

Obama would need the economic crisis to be even worse, or he would need some kind of other crisis to complete the leap to fascism under a single leader. This reminds me that his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, said on Nov. 17, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”.

On the other hand, we are so close to complete fascism now that 8 years of gradual movement in that direction may be sufficient to set the stage for a final crisis that would give Obama a third term, which would never end. I have already foreseen this possibility when I wrote Obama’s Third Inaugural Address several weeks ago.

Fascism in Their Own Words

Fascism was summarized by Mario Palmieri in “The Philosophy of Fascism”, 1936:

“Economic initiative cannot be left to the arbitrary decisions of private individual interest. Open competition, if not wisely directed and restricted, actually destroys wealth instead of creating it. … The proper function of the State in the Fascist system is that of supervising, regulating, and arbitrating the relationships of capital and labor, employers and employees, individuals and associations, private interests and national interests … More important than the production of wealth is its right distribution. Distribution which must benefit in the best possible way all the classes of the nation, hence, the nation itself. Private wealth belongs not only to the individual, but, in a symbolic sense, to the State as well.”

I used to think that regulation was the new form of socialism, but then I read this quote, and now I see that the Democrats are not really socialists – but are fascists. Then again, Nazi is short for National Socialists. Perhaps the Nazi’s saw fascism as a new kind of socialism, and I guess their race issues stemmed from nationalism – not from fascism. Therefore, we could accurately refer to the Democrats as socialists or as fascists.

It seems that Republicans are actually a little less fascist than Democrats, but moving towards fascism more slowly than the Democrats is certainly no reason to vote for Republicans.

Fascism in Connecticut

The First Amendment begins “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …”

Now consider that the Connecticut government recently drafted a bill (with public hearings today) specific to the Roman Catholic Church, thus violating the “establishment” clause. This bill would mandate elections, empower the winners to spend the church’s money, and prohibit the bishops, priests, or any other church members from spending the church’s money, thus violating the “free exercise” clause.

It scares the crap out of me that any government would attempt such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.

I understand this bill may seem anti-religious, but it is not anti-religious – it is anti-American.

I am an atheist, and I can assure you this bill is neither atheist nor humanist. It is in fact – anti-human.

End Game

Most Americans instinctively know that a relative few are manipulating their government, culture, and economy, but what is their end game?

Let’s not speculate too much. Let’s just look at what we know.

Red State

Imagine a group of financially stable American families who own their own homes, and each home is on several acres of fertile land. They each have a garden, which could be even bigger if they wanted. They get their water from their own well. They get auxiliary power from their own windmill or solar panels. Each family also owns several firearms, and hunting bows, and they are all proficient with them. They can see their natural environment for miles in every direction.

How can we be so certain they live in a red county?

How can we be so certain that they live in a relatively low crime environment?

How can we be so certain that whether these Americans are white or black, religious or atheist, straight or gay, native or immigrant – they will oppose the policies of the Democratic party, they will tolerate the policies of the Republican party, and they will prefer the policies of the Libertarian party – even though they may not realize their political alignment because they are relatively independently minded and non-partisan?

Blue State

Now imagine a group of financially stressed Americans who live in small apartments in a large city. They have no means to generate power, grow food, or dig a well. They cannot see their natural environment. They can only see directly overhead. They are not allowed to possess any firearms, and have never shot a gun.

How can we be so certain they live in a blue county?

How can we be so certain that they live in a high crime environment?

How can we be so certain that whether these Americans are white or black, religious or atheist, straight or gay, native or immigrant – that they will oppose the policies of the Republican and Libertarian parties, and they will support the policies of the Democratic Party, and that they are aware of their political leanings because they are relatively partisan and conformist?

End Game

How can we be so certain that one group feels significantly more helpless and dependent than the other, and how can we be so certain which group feels that way?

Imagine if everyone in America developed a greater general feeling of helplessness and dependency. Americans would be more likely to vote for Democrats, but more importantly they would feel far more dependent on government. Government would be their main source of hope.

All government has to do is: tax success, reduce home ownership, and reduce gun ownership.

OK, now let’s speculate and draw some plausible parallels with Obama’s Third Inaugural Address.

Now that I think about it, every article on my site points to this end game.

Busted! - Obama Sabotages Economy!

When evaluating Obama on economics, we don’t need to get into his more debatable decisions or construct complex counter arguments because we have enough issues where anyone can see that Obama is creating incentives that are the opposite of those he should be creating.

If housing prices were to stop falling and start rising, and if everyone were confident that this would happen, then that would pretty much fix the economy overnight. Therefore, I have previously explained How to Fix the Economy – Fast by the President or Congress announcing that homeowners will be able to deduct their entire mortgage payment and not just the interest. Of course, this would not be a remedy for all crashes, but it happens to be a remedy for this particular crash.

If one were inclined to further damage the economy, then one could reduce the mortgage deduction rather than increasing it.

So which did Obama do?

President has Obama announced plans to reduce the amount of mortgage interest that wealthy people (over $200,000) can deduct.

Busted!

Herbert Hoover raised taxes during a recession, thus helping to turn a recession into The Great Depression. Barack Obama is the first President since Hoover to schedule a tax increase during a recession. Just knowing the tax increase is coming will cause people and businesses to feel like they will have less money in the future, which will cause them to save more and spend less, thus prolonging the recession.

Busted!

On October 15^th, 2008, after the market had crashed and after Obama had already spent a year prophesying doom and saying that we were in a depression, he bashed Bush for having a deficit of a little over a half trillion dollars. Obama was thus saying that in a bad economy, it was especially harmful to have deficits of a little over a half trillion dollars. Then after only five weeks in office, and given a slightly worsened economy, Obama tripled the deficit to 1.7 trillion dollars. By his own logic, he was causing immense harm to the economy – much more than Bush.

Busted!

If Obama wanted to restore some of the lost value in our retirement accounts, he could increase the incentive for people to buy stocks by announcing plans to decrease the capital gains tax. Instead, Obama has announced plans to increase the capital gains tax.

Busted!

Global profits, growth, supply, demand, need, confidence, and production were all fine until September 2008. As of March 2009, supply, production, and need still exist, but in September 2008, confidence, which had been gradually declining, fell off a cliff, and thereby turned what could have been a minor recession into a major and deepening recession.

If Obama wanted to improve the economy, he would do everything he can to increase confidence; however, starting in the primaries in 2007, Obama has done everything he can to destroy confidence in the current and future economy with his words and his actions.

Busted!

To be fair, these examples may not have a huge impact individually, but together they can prolong the recovery. Also, why are there so many of these bad economic ideas from Obama, and why are they so obviously bad, and why does he have so few good ideas (like an $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers), and why are the good ideas so weak (why only $8,000, and why only first time buyers)?

Then again, a wise friend of mine always says, “Never blame on malice, what can be explained by stupidity.”

Hmm … Although he quit smoking several times in the last year, Obama has been a smoker for about 30 years after all, which sounds pretty stupid to me. Then, he recently referred to the ubiquitous economics term "price to earnings ratio" as the "profit and earnings ratio", which sounds like a Bushism. Also, while in Europe in early April, he told the Europeans that Austrians speak “Austrian”, when in fact they speak German – sounds like another Bushism. On 4/13, I watched him declare in very careful and measured speech that he wants to halt the “rise in privacy” on the high seas – another Bushism. You may recall that he walked into a window at the White House because he thought it was a door – didn’t Bush do the same thing? In fact, Obama uses a teleprompter more than any previous president including Bush. Of course, you will never see any of Obama’s failings lampooned on Saturday Night Live, but let’s not get sidetracked.

Given that Obama seems to have the self discipline of Bill Clinton and the intelligence of George Bush, and given that he has no training or self study in economics, maybe we shouldn’t find it so hard to believe that Obama could just be really incompetent on economics.

On February 9^th I witnessed Obama create high expectations by saying that Tim Geithner would present an impressive and detailed plan the next day. Then on the following day, I watched as Geithner basically said that he had no details and didn’t know exactly what to do. The stock market plummeted in response to their incompetence.

Obama frequently makes the weasely statement that he will create or save 3.5 million jobs. However, we cannot hold him accountable for this claim because the economy could lose 20 million more jobs, and Obama could claim that it would have lost 23.5 million jobs if he had not saved 3.5 million. If Obama knew what he was doing, then he would make statements for which we can hold him accountable.

Obama frequently says he wants to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, but he will raise the cost of energy. Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that 100% of Americans use energy. He also raised the tax on tobacco 156%. Perhaps he thinks that only the wealthiest 5% of Americans use tobacco.

On February 5^th, Obama complained that his critics argue, “This is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.” To which Obama replied, “Well what do you think a stimulus bill is? That’s the whole point!” Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that tax cuts and deregulation can also stimulate the economy. Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that some spending stimulates more than other spending.

Obama assumes his hyper-spending will help the economy, but apparently he doesn’t understand that he will have to offer higher interest rates to tempt China and others to loan him that much money, and that higher interest rates will do significant damage to the economy.

Obama has decided to change the rules and cheat General Motors bond holders (people who loaned money to GM). Instead of upholding the law that has been in existence for the last one or two hundred years, Obama has decided that the unions will get money legally owed to the bond holders. Apparently Obama doesn’t know that this hurts pension plans that owned GM bonds. Even worse is the effect on all businesses in America in the future. Suppose a company wants to sell bonds to raise money to build a new factory. Apparently Obama doesn’t understand that this company will now have to pay a higher interest rate to entice buyers who will be afraid that the government might cheat them too in the future. Now suppose this company is Ford, which is another car company and another company with unions. Apparently Obama doesn’t know that he just destroyed Ford’s ability to compete.

Obama argues that if you pay for other peoples’ health care, then your sacrifice pays for itself because they miss fewer work days. If Obama would think for himself, he might understand that:

• An entire 40 year minimum wage career would not generate enough wealth to equal the cost of a lifetime of top quality health care.
• You personally would get less than 1% of the benefit for your sacrifice because the benefit would be received almost entirely by the individual you were forced to help, by the health care industry, and by China.
• A minimum wage worker uses about as much energy and produces about as much waste as a successful person.
• A minimum wage worker is less likely to exercise and eat right, and more likely to smoke and drink.
• Free health care reduces the incentive for a minimum wage worker to become more successful.
• Giving citizenship and thus free health care to millions of illegal immigrants would magnify his mistake.

Obama has increased the mileage requirements for American car manufacturers, which he claims will save money on fuel and materials, but apparently Obama does not understand that these smaller cars may actually cost more because of less safety, which causes more frequent injuries and more severe injuries. On a related note, Obama says that the smaller cars will be safe because they will use better safety features. Perhaps Obama does not understand that these same safety features could be used in larger cars, which would make them even safer than the new small cars. Obama also points out that some small cars have the highest safety ratings, and are thus even safer than some large cars with lower safety ratings. Perhaps Obama does not understand that government crash tests only rate cars against other cars that are the same size.

Obama wants to raise taxes on businesses. Apparently Obama doesn't understand that he would be creating an disincentive for anyone to start a new business and that existing businesses would have a powerful new incentive to raise prices, lay off employees to cut costs, or move overseas. Maybe Obama does understand these things. Maybe what Obama doesn’t understand is that 100% of Americans buy stuff from businesses and almost as many are employed by businesses.

Obama has said that he will cut 100 million dollars from White House budget. He claims that 100 million is a significant amount; whereas, earlier he claimed that 8 billion dollars of pork was miniscule. Perhaps Obama doesn't understand that 8 billion is way bigger than 100 million.

I’ll bet that millions of Americans could figure out how to generate more jobs than Obama while spending less money.

Argument from Authority

When evaluating Obama on economics, we have seen that we don’t need to get into his more debatable decisions or construct complex counter arguments because we have enough issues that are self evident and where the facts speak for themselves. However, it seems like many Obama fans don’t think the facts speak for themselves, and they don’t trust their own ability to think. I say this because they seem to only believe the experts, authorities, the New York Times, etc. For these folks, let’s also look at some expert conclusions.

I know that relying solely on the experts is an argument from authority, which is a classic logical fallacy, but the left seems to place all their faith in authority. For example, consider that you must be a climatologist for the left to agree that you might have anything worth saying about global warming. Ironically, such elitist and conformist groupthink is anti-liberal, but let’s not get sidetracked.

Consider that Obama is raising taxes, but a 2007 paper by economist Christina Romer, who is now chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, analyzed tax changes since World War II and concluded that a "tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by about three percent" and by at least 2.2 percent. Now that Romer is part of the Obama administration, she says that a tax increase of one percent of GDP would only lower real GDP by one percent instead of three percent. Why would any competent economist have been off by a factor of three, and why would any President want to lower the GDP at all?

On 3/9 Obama supporter and former GE chairman Jack Welch said that Obama is focusing primarily on political initiatives like health care and energy when he should be focusing on the economy but that if you say anything about it, you instantly become a pariah in New York Society. In his own words, “This guy is locked in another world. And he’s throwing all these initiatives into this game in the middle of a crisis. Focus on the crisis! Focus on the economy!” Asked whether Obama’s initiatives like health care and energy are inter-related with the economy, Welch said, “Get out of here! They’re not related at all! … I mean it’s, it’s crazy!”

Welch then elaborated on pressure to conform whenever he discusses Obama, “I had cocktail parties this weekend; I stayed in New York. If you even bring up the name Barack Obama and start to go down this [road to criticism] — I love the guy. I think he’s great. I think he has a beautiful family. I think he’s a good man. But these – you bring up a comment about him, and all of a sudden you’re a pariah! You’re not American! You’re a bad guy. If you even bring his name up. My two trust-fund daughters – if I bring his name up in anything other than a glorifying way – they don’t have any critical thinking about it – at all!”

On 3/9, long time Obama supporter Warren Buffet made statements on CNBC that were widely underreported:

• “Joe, it--if you're in a war, and we really are on an economic war, there's a obligation to the majority to behave in ways that don't go around inflaming the minority. If on December 8th when--maybe it's December 7th, when Roosevelt convened Congress to have a vote on the war, he didn't say, `I'm throwing in about 10 of my pet projects.”
• “I think--I think a lot of things should be--job one is to win the war, job--the economic war, job two is to win the economic war, and job three. And you can't expect people to unite behind you if you're trying to jam a whole bunch of things down their throat. So I would--I would absolutely say for the--for the interim, till we get this one solved, I would not be pushing a lot of things that are--you know are contentious, and I also--I also would do no finger-pointing whatsoever.”
• “It's just a mistake, I think, when you've got one overriding objective, to try and muddle it up with a bunch of other things.”

On 3/11 The Wall Street Journal reported that a survey of 49 economists gave Obama a grade of “F” on the economy. They gave Obama a score of 59%. They gave Geithner a score of 51%, and they gave Bernanke a score of 71%.

On 3/13 The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has warned that he has been closely watching the policies of Barack Obama and he is concerned about the safety of money China has loaned to the US.

Obama supporter, entertainer, and financial expert Jim Cramer has identified several flaws with the policies of Obama and Geithner, and offered many good alternative ideas on his CNBC show Mad Money. On 3/3 Cramer summarized his criticism on the Today show by saying that Obama’s budget was a “radical agenda,” and that, “This is the greatest wealth destruction I’ve seen by a President.” Rick Santelli of CNBC also has become famous for bashing Obama about forcing us to pay for our neighbors’ mortgages. Others on CNBC frequently disagree with Obama, but in less spectacular ways. Also, CNBC is where Obama supporter Warren Buffet criticized Obama on 3/9.

Media Bias Sidetrack: The White House and the Daily Show have thus begun an unprecedented smear campaign against Jim Cramer, Rick Santelli, and CNBC. The Daily show tries to claim a plausible justification (without mentioning Obama) for their sudden, nasty, and unprecedented smear campaign, but as a viewer of both shows, I see through their BS. Jon Stewart even admitted that he was going after CNBC, and not just Cramer. The only reason the Obama network (a.k.a. MSNBC) has held back is because CNBC is also part of NBC; therefore, Jeffrey Zucker, head of NBC, and Jeff Immelt, CEO of its parent company (GE), worked behind the scenes and held a meeting with the people at CNBC in which they ordered CNBC to stop criticizing Obama. As of 3/13, Cramer is responding by backing down and contriving praise for Obama. I guess he wants to retain his ability to be a star when he visits college campuses, and he wants to remain welcome at cocktail parties in NYC. Given the purge of CNBC, I guess independent thinkers will have to start watching Fox Business News.

Give to Obama's Charities - Or Else

President Obama’s budget overtly increases taxes on people earning more than $250,000 (taxes for the rest of us are hidden), and President Obama’s stimulus package reduces the amount of charitable contributions that this targeted minority can deduct. Therefore, many have pointed out that this will reduce charitable giving by this targeted minority.

Now, we could examine multiple flaws in Obama’s logic, but I want to focus on one in particular.

When asked about a probable reduction in charitable giving, Peter Orszag, the White House Budget Director, said "Contained in the recovery act, there's $100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period of economic difficulty." He should have also mentioned that some of the hundreds of billions that the stimulus bill funnels to state governments will find its way to non-profits - chosen by politicians.

It seems pretty clear. Obama wants to take money from the non-profits supported by this Republican leaning minority and give it to his own favorite non-profit groups. So, instead of this money going to the arts, churches, universities, and medical research – it will go to ACORN.

It has to go Somewhere?! That's the Whole Point?!

Bill O’Reilly and Barack Obama are on the same page concerning the stimulus bill.

On February 5^th, Obama complained that his critics argue, “This is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.” To which Obama replied, “Well what do you think a stimulus bill is? That’s the whole point!”

Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that tax cuts and deregulation can also stimulate the economy. Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that some spending stimulates more than other spending.

Then on 2/25 Bill O’Reilly said that he might have a problem with the size of the stimulus bill, but that he did not have any problem with how it was being spent because “It has to go somewhere.”

What if it just paid people to dig ditches and fill them in again?

Considering that Obama’s spending today is taking the fruits of our labor from the mouths of our children, and considering that in the future the government will have to then take the fruits of our children’s labor from the mouths of our grandchildren, can’t we get a better deal – like twice the jobs for half the price?

How about some roads, bridges, and dams?

How about free day care or college?

How about inventing fusion power or a cure for cancer?

Heck! Even a cure for baldness would be better than taking the fruits of our labor and giving it to a bunch of environmentalists, bureaucrats, and community organizers so they can write more studies, distribute more condoms, and buy more junk from China.

Obama's Third Inaugural Address

I think America can find a way to give President Obama a third term. Maybe then Mr. Obama will feel confident that America is ready to support his best ideas.

By piecing together President Obama’s goals from his words and his actions to date, and with a little help from mainstream liberal thought from his friends, appointees, heroes, mentors, peers, etc., I think his third inaugural address (in January 2017) may go something like this:

People, look. I’m through trying to appease the Conservatives and Libertarians. We tried it their way, and it didn’t work.

We must eliminate the loopholes that allow a business to relocate to another country and escape higher taxes.

We must eliminate the disparity that allows the people of one nation to drive cars while those of another ride bicycles, to eat meat while others eat rice, and to change the environment while others suffer the consequences. We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times. That's not going to happen. When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

We must eliminate the disparity that allows men to become a majority of our engineers, scientists, and elected leaders.

We must eliminate the greed that robs good people of their inalienable right to a home, a job, and health care.

We must eliminate the illegal lies of reactionaries on the radio, TV, and Internet.

We must deliver the justice due to Africans and African Americans in reparation for centuries of oppression, exploitation, and discrimination by Europe and the United States.

The solution is, and always has been, sensible sovereignty – an entity with the power to enforce its legitimate authority upon all the nations of the earth – a United States of Earth.

The United states of Earth won’t happen overnight because we have had eight years of the Bush administration, whose activist Supreme Court declared, by a 5-4 vote in the Heller decision, that the Second Amendment is an individual right.

My Supreme Court appointees are mere days away from overturning the Heller decision, and they have in fact already instituted most of my other Fairness Amendments, the greatest of which, reduced the number of senators in low population states from 2 to 1, and added a corresponding number of senators to the more populous states of California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York – thus maintaining the Constitutionally mandated average of 2 senators per state.

Lower population states can therefore no longer block the election of the most progressive and empathetic leaders of our time.

Although the reactionary state of Montana has claimed a breach of contract and declared independence, they have not really seceded … They just think they have.

Montana just hasn’t been paying attention. The issue of secession was settled long ago, and besides … their grievances … losing a senator … paying for the bailouts of California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York … These are entirely Constitutional and legitimate.

It’s like this, in Montana, they still cling to their guns and religion, and they have antipathy towards change and towards those who are different – but I am out of patience.

In spite of the good sense of some other state legislatures to take a voluntary 2 year recess to prevent the possibility of an illegal vote for secession … My fear is this:

Although the people of other nations have had the good sense to disarm, some misguided American reactionaries, who are on the wrong side of history, will initiate lethal force in a doomed attempt to prevent the era of global governance.

While it is true that my Supreme Court appointees of the last eight years are mere days away from overturning the Heller decision,

And while it is true that we have already banned all handguns, shotguns, and assault rifles,

It is also true that 30 million Americans still legally possess bolt action hunting rifles, muskets, and hunting bows, and perhaps more importantly, Americans still illegally possess an alarming 9% of their pre-ban weapons.

We can expect to peacefully purchase and destroy 90% of these hunting weapons.

However, eight years of the nationalist rhetoric of the Bush administration, and the continuing illegal conservative and libertarian propaganda, may motivate anywhere from 5 to 10 million Americans to join the ranks of the ongoing domestic insurgency and take up arms against their legitimate new world government.

In this event, any attempt to imprison the rebels, or freeze their assets and credit, would also be likely to result in mass violence.

In keeping with both of my Nobel Peace prizes, my goal is to avoid such violence because The United States of Earth is all about peace. Any rebels who embrace the angels of their better nature and turn in their guns will receive full amnesty with malice toward none and charity towards all.

We will use overwhelming non-lethal force to search out and destroy rebels' weapons, house by house, and if they fire upon us, let history show that it is they who initiated lethal force.

Should it become necessary, I am prepared to ask for the cooperation of our friends in China, Russia, and the rest of the world to impoverish Americans until the starving rebels gladly give us their guns in exchange for bread.

I have a dream … It is the Dream of my Father.

My dream is that the United States of Earth will usher in the end of an era … the era where the white man’s greed runs a world in need.

I have a dream … No, I am absolutely certain, that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

In closing, I, Barrack Hussein Obama, would like to thank the American people for their support of the Emergency Executive Order to maintain Executive Consistency in a time of crisis. We are in deep crisis as a result of eight years of mismanagement under the Bush administration, but if we stay the course, victory is inevitable in our War on Domestic Terror, our War on Climate Change, and our War on Greed. I would like to praise the wisdom of the American people for not succumbing to the propaganda of conservative, Sean Hannity, or libertarian, Leeroy F. Dermit. They will not be bothering us anymore.

Recent Developments

This section is a small sampling of the sources that gave me the inspiration to write Obama’s third Inaugural Address. For example, Obama really said , “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times. That's not going to happen.” And yes, I am aware that Obama keeps the temperature in the Oval Office above 72, which prompted one visitor to remark that “you could grow orchids in there”, to which David Axelrod responded “the guy is from Hawaii”.

Obama also said, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Obama even said, “The white man’s greed runs a world in need.” To be fair, Obama was quoting one of his spiritual mentors, Jeremiah Wright, when he wrote this in his book, Dreams from My Father.

On 5/1/2009 I watched Obama say, “I can’t define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change.” He has also said this many times before.

When Obama won the Democratic Party nomination in 2008, he said, “I am certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

One of Obama’s most revealing statements was made in a closed meeting with a handful of elitists in San Francisco, and was recorded by an unusually brave and honest act of journalism. Obama was trying to build a bridge in the minds of these elitists, who see small town Americans as poor, stupid, racist, cultist militia members – and white. Obama’s empathy is evident in every word: “Here is how it is: … You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Obama decided that America needed a global Warming Czar, and he appointed Carol Browner to the newly created position. The New York Times reports that Browner said Global Warming is “the greatest challenge ever faced”, and that her views are directly in line with Obama’s.

Carol Browner was also one of the 15 members of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is part of Socialist International. The nature of this Socialist international commission is socialist of course. They want Americans to be subject to a world government that takes precedence over the US government, and like pretty much every other socialist, they think that it is unfair that Americans eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and give away huge sums of money – thus resulting in global fairness.

I have already thoroughly documented Obama’s historical opposition to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

How to Know When Obama is Lying

I have subsequently realized that I instinctively used certain authentic (Obamaesque) sounding words and phrases because unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama is rather methodical when he lies, and thus patterns have begun to emerge.

Whenever Obama says something like “failed policies of the past”, “discredited debates of the past”, or “we tried it their way” – he is selling us another whopper.

In fact, most of the time when Obama says that something is "failed" or "discredited" - it is not.

Likewise, when Obama says that his opponents are "on the wrong side of history", we know he is selling snake oil.

Whenever Obama says that something is “legitimate” or “Constitutional” – it is definitely not.

Whenever, Obama quotes anyone like Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln – he is lying about something.

Whenever, Obama says that he has been “consistent”, or that his critics “haven’t been paying attention” – he is lying about getting caught lying. The DC gun ban was perhaps the earliest and most obvious example. Obama said that he supported the DC gun ban. Then when the Supreme Court overturned it a few months later, he said that he agreed, but instead of explaining his contradiction, Obama said that his position has always been "consistent" and that his critics "haven't been paying attention." Obama did not lie about changing his position. He lied about agreeing with the Supreme Court.

Some new patterns I anticipate in the near future are the use of “fair” and “illegal”. I expect to hear Obama refer to actions and words as illegal when they are in fact legal and Constitutional. Consider that Obama claims that his critics are dishonest and harmful, that he is not a fan of freedom of speech or of the press, that he advocates some rather vague laws to make speech more fair, and that he stretches the Constitution (and English) far beyond its actual meaning. It is then easy to imagine Obama claiming that under the new fairness laws, some particularly effective criticism of him was illegal.

In the future you could look for these key words and phrases, or you could just note when Obama is not giving you any details. For example, what are the failed policies of the past, did they actually happen under Bush, were they actually crafted by Republicans, why does Obama say they failed, aren't they more or less the same policies that we had under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton? Wasn't the mess with subprime loans, Fannie Mae, and credit default swaps created under Clinton and promoted primarily by Democrats? While it is true that almost everyone thinks of Bush and Republicans as failures, the new policies that contributed most to this impression were: staying in Iraq, high deficits, and the bailouts, and of course, media bias was also responsible. Now consider that Obama is not only staying in Iraq, but that he is also tripling the Bush deficits and bailouts. I guess we see why Obama is avoiding the details, and he can get away with this only because a biased media is giving him a free pass.

New Developments

Since I wrote Obama’s Third Inaugural Address, my predictions have already become closer to reality.

Months later I have discovered that at about that same time, Congressman Jose Serrano of New York coincidentally introduced House Joint Resolution 5 entitled “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.”

Obama has appointed Harold Koh to be the top legal advisor in the State Department, and Harold Koh has said, “What role can transnational legal process play in affecting the behavior of several nations whose disobedience with international law has attracted global attention after September 11th -- most prominently, North Korea, Iraq and our own country, the United States of America? For shorthand purposes, I will call these countries the axis of disobedience.” Harold Koh also said that it is "appropriate for the Supreme Court to construe our Constitution in the light of foreign and international law".

Investor’s Business Daily has reported that Koh says the Supreme Court is now divided between "nationalist" judges who believe our Constitution is the only one that counts and "transnationalists" who believe "we the people" should be changed to "we are the world."

Koh is on the Board of trustees at the Brookings Institute, which recently published “A Plan of Action”, in which the term “responsible sovereignty” is used in place of “transnationalism”.

As for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Obama administration is using the violence on the Mexican border as a pretense to promote an unconstitutional gun ban. Not only would such a ban be unconstitutional, but the Obama administration’s underlying premise that 90% of the guns used by Mexican drug gangs came from US gun stores is false. The reality is that most of the guns captured from Mexican drug cartels are obviously not from US gun stores, so they are never submitted for tracing. The reality is that only 17% of the guns used by Mexican drug cartels came from US gun stores.

Perhaps one of my most controversial predictions was Obama’s coming “War on Domestic Terror”, but consider that a mere two weeks later, the news media were breaking the story of a recent report by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), which is a government entity created by the Department of Homeland security that identifies the warning signs of potential domestic terrorists for law enforcement communities. Not only did the MIAC identify militias (a Constitutional right) as a domestic terror threat, but they identified potentially dangerous individuals as those who display literature (i.e. bumpers stickers) for Ron Paul, Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party, Pro-life, etc.

Consider that a member of the Libertarian Party has pledged to never initiate force or fraud, so anyone who fears the Libertarian Party must be planning to initiate force or fraud or must be a really mean person suffering from a debilitating ignorance.

Apparently 70 so called fusion centers like the MIAC have already been created to combat domestic terrorism by gathering and sharing information. They seem to each be different, but have several common attributes such as excessive secrecy, ambiguous lines of authority, and the use of data mining and military participation.

A few days after the MIAC report, the news media broke the story that the Department of Homeland Security was distributing a report to local law enforcement agencies on the threat of domestic terrorism from right wing extremists. It claimed that potentially dangerous individuals might belong to one or more of the following groups: pro-lifers, supporters of the right to Keep and Bear Arms, federalists, and opponents of illegal immigration. The report even warned that veterans returning from Iraq may be recruited by right-wing extremist groups and commit acts of domestic terrorism. The report frequently used the term “terrorism”.

The DHS report on right wing domestic terrorism therefore stigmatizes about half of all Americans, so basically anyone who didn’t vote for Obama is a potential domestic terrorist.

The DHS issued an earlier report about left wing extremists that was more specific and included only a small percentage of Americans rather than everyone who voted for Obama.

Recent daily tracking polls imply that I may have been wrong about Obama getting a second or third term because people are beginning to realize that they have been conned. Obama has taken more action is his first weeks than some presidents take in their entire first term, and yet his approval rating has dropped steadily since he took office. In fact, the stock market has been rising since early March, and yet his approval rating began falling again about that time and has continued falling in spite of a rising stock market.

How to Fix the Economy - Fast!

Neither Republicans nor Democrats seem to understand the current economic problem, and the Democrats seem to only be interested in blaming Republicans and rewarding their constituencies, which will only have a small short-term impact on some of the symptoms of the current economic problem; whereas, fixing the root of the problem will also fix the symptoms, and fixing the root of the problem will also be much faster and cheaper.

Root Cause

The root of the problem is that home values are declining, which has lead to reduced consumer spending, increased foreclosures, and bank losses on credit default swaps. Reduced spending, increased foreclosures, and bank losses have led to a loss of confidence.

A loss of confidence has led to politicians trying to further reduce confidence for political gain, and it has led to artificially low values on Mortgage Backed Securities. Financial institutions that owned artificially devalued Mortgage Backed Securities experienced unexpected margin calls as a result of the mark-to-market regulation, and those margin calls caused sudden insolvency.

The sudden insolvency of big financial institutions caused a small market crash each time, but most businesses were still growing, which led some politicians to try to increase confidence by claiming, “ the fundamentals are sound”. Then, the sudden insolvency of Lehman Brothers was the catalyst that caused a huge and sudden loss in confidence, which caused the huge stock market crash in September 2008.

Loss of confidence and wealth sharply reduced home purchases.

All of this further reduces home values, and because reduced home values are the root of the problem, we are now in a self reinforcing downward spiral.

The Fix

The government could have altered the mark-to-market regulation at any time before that, and we would already be out of this economic mess, but now most of the damage has been done, and such a move would have relatively little impact.

Today, the most honest and effective way to quickly fix the current economic problem is still relatively simple – make everyone believe that home values will increase for the next two or three years. Of course, to sustain the recovery, home values must actually bottom and increase for 2 or three years, and then they can level off.

As housing values declined, there was probably a point at which the most honest and effective way to quickly cause home values to bottom and start rising again was this one simple rollback of government – allow homeowners to deduct their entire mortgage payment.

This one simple deduction is probably no longer sufficient, but the only additional policy needed would be to allow home owners to deduct a percentage of the value of their home.

Sure, a few people and a few banks would still go bankrupt because of their bad decisions, but at least the affected people could get a jobs and loans and start over again – instead of sucking up handouts.

If Congress announced that it was dropping the “stimulus” bill and replacing it with these two deductions, everyone would believe that home values will increase for the next two or three years. The immediate effect would be a stock market recovery, rising home equity, bank solvency, and restored confidence.

To some, I suspect this is obvious, but others may be asking, “How will all of this happen, and how will it happen immediately?”

If home owners can deduct more from their income, then they will have substantially less taxes withheld from their paycheck, and thus home owners can afford more expensive homes, higher interest rates, more consumer goods and services, and more investment in stocks. Also, everyone will know this; therefore:

• Homes values will instantly stop falling and starts rising.
• People who were waiting for home prices to stop falling will buy a home.
• Everyone will expect home owners to have steadily increasing equity in their homes for the next few years.
• Home owners with bad mortgages can refinance more easily.
• Home owners will feel more confident about buying consumer goods.
• Businesses will feel confident about future sales, and thus feel confident about buying assets and hiring employees.
• Less unemployment means more consumers.
• Banks could charge higher interest rates, give loans to less risky people, and have fewer defaults.
• The confidence in Mortgage Backed Securities will increase, and thus their daily market value will increase, which means the mark-to-market rule from the post-Enron regulation will no longer cause banks financial institutions to suddenly become insolvent.
• Increased confidence in profits and bank solvency will increase confidence in the stock market, which will increase the value of personal savings invested in stock s and in retirements accounts invested in stocks.

Note some of the mutually reinforcing cause and effect relationships:

• More consumer wealth and confidence leads to more buying, which leads to more business wealth and confidence, which leads to more hiring and higher salaries, which leads to more consumer wealth and confidence.
• Higher consumer and business wealth and confidence and higher business sales and profits all lead to more investment in stocks, which leads to a higher stock values, which leads to more consumer and business wealth and confidence.

Government is the Problem

Why don’t politicians want to try a simple solution to increase home values? The reasons are:

• It creates no opportunity for politicians to give money to their special interests.
• This tax cut reduces government, and Democrats sincerely believe that government is the solution to every problem.
• The Democrats are in power, and although this tax cut is fair and balanced, and although it would help everyone, by coincidence it would help Republicans more than Democrats because people who made better personal decisions tended to vote for Republicans.

Obama said on January 9, 2008, “There is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jumpstart the economy.”

As I explained in The Great Depression of 2008, the current economic crisis was caused by a housing bubble and then a crash, which were both caused primarily by government action, so how can the solution be more government action? The SEC, Fannie Mae, the Community Reinvestment Act, planned growth by cities and counties, the Federal Reserve, post-Enron regulations, the War in Iraq, and politicians reducing confidence for political gain – are all government action. Obama himself is part of the problem with Fannie Mae, the CRA, and his efforts to reduce confidence to win the election.

What about more recent government action? Obama continues to reduce confidence to magnify any future improvement, to blame his failure on Bush, and to blame a previous lack of government action. His efforts to reduce confidence are especially corrupt and damaging given his vast following of true believers and his unprecedented support from the mainstream media.

Do those who support more government action know where the TARP money went? Has the government actually improved the economy thus far? Are the Democrats proposing anything new or anything that has ever worked before?

Obama’s recent campaign style tour to sell us his “stimulus” bill not only fails to address the root causes of the economic problem, but he mostly just blames the problem on a lack of government action by Bush and Republicans. He did this three times in his press conference, but the only related specific Obama gave was that Bush’s tax cuts helped cause the current economic problem. He also never acknowledged that some spending creates more or better jobs than other spending. He even said that he knows everything in the bill, which is 1588 pages. He then assured us that it contained no pork or earmarks.

How stupid does Obama think we are!? Then again, Obama doesn’t necessarily think we are stupid. Maybe Obama is just really incompetent.

The stimulus bill will basically borrow money from us and our children, and that money will go to unions, Democrats, rich people, European Banks, and the Chinese. Most Americans hate the idea of politicians borrowing trillions from the Chinese and more trillions from other countries, so that these politicians can reward special interests and people who make bad decisions. This is not restoring confidence, nor is it increasing consumer wealth.

Conclusion

Again we see that the reality is that government is the problem, and less government is the solution.

The Promise of Reality is Freedom.

Obama’s Birth? – None of Your Business!

Wow!

Bringing up the topic of whether Obama is a “natural born” citizen (and thus legally able to be President according to the Constitution) is like some kind of magic button that has been installed on Obama supporters. If you push it, they instantly turn into angry, shouting, closed minded, ... well, you get the idea.

As usual, I have a unique point to make that you will not hear anywhere else, but first, I will give you an overview.

This claim was first raised by Hillary Clinton. Subsequently, several citizens have filed a claim with the courts that Obama is not a natural born United States citizen, and thus he would not be eligible to be President under the Constitution.

Although media bias has made it unusually difficult to learn Obama’s true history, there is some evidence that he was born in Kenya, and that his mother may not have spent enough time in the US, which combined may mean that Obama did not meet the legal definition of “natural born” at that time. There are other claims too, but someone who cares more than me will have to investigate them.

What I find more interesting is the reason some of the court cases were thrown out. The courts said that a mere US Citizen does not have “standing” to file such a claim against Obama.

How is that possible in “a country of the people, by the people, and for people”?

Obviously, a citizen does have standing. Not only does the President have a big impact on the life of each citizen, but the First Amendment specifically protects the right of the people to “petition the government for a redress of grievances”.

Homosexuality

I have no problem with people being gay. I’m not saying that I am unbiased. I admit that I find two men (not two women) icky, just like having sex with mean people, whiny people, slovenly people, or animals is icky, but I understand that this is just personal preference – and that objectively – there is absolutely nothing wrong with being gay; whereas, there is something objectively wrong with having sex with mean people, whiny people, slovenly people, or animals.

Homosexuality seems like it must be biological because it seems so widespread and almost impossible to change; however, it seems unlikely that it could be genetic because such a genetic mutation would die out as soon as it appeared. Therefore, I don’t know if homosexuality is a choice or biological programming. Both sides have claimed both when its suited their political goals, but homosexuality is objectively harmless, and thus it is irrelevant whether it is biological or a choice.

Gay Marriage

Neither side of the gay marriage issue has a compelling argument.

Tradition and religion are poor excuses to treat any people as second class citizens when they are causing no objective harm, and that is all that really needs to be said about the traditional marriage side.

On the other hand, proponents of gay marriage are getting a free pass on their many specious arguments. I observed its proponents (gay and straight) making the following claims over the years since the debate first appeared:

• Although homosexuality is not genetic, and gay marriage doesn't produce kids, gay marriage is natural because someone saw a gay dolphin.
• The Constitutional Amendment passed by a direct vote of the people of California – is not Constitutional.
• 10% of people are gay.
  
• There is no difference between gay marriage and hetero marriage.
• All gays want gay marriage.
• Most gay men want children.
• Gay marriage would produce children through advanced genetic engineering.
• Gay marriage is more natural than polygamy.
• Gay marriage has more historical precedent than polygamy.
• Gay marriage is better for children than polygamy.
• Marriage is between any two adults. Polygamy is not marriage.
• Gays cannot visit their partners in the hospital.
• Gay marriage is all about freedom and equality.

I have never seen a single article in the mainstream media contradicting, any of these claims, and I have seen most of these defended in the mainstream media.

Of course, there are many more specious arguments supported by the mainstream media over the years to support other parts of the gay community agenda. My favorite example is when Oprah warned us in the 1980's that unless we cured AIDS soon, then it would decimate the heterosexual population in just a few years. Of course, we now know that Oprah was astoundingly wrong, but AIDS research thus received the highest financial support of any disease - mission accomplished.

As an exercise to discover the true motives and character of gay marriage activists, I propose to each one I meet (in person or online) that I would support the right of gays to marry if they would support my right to marry more than one woman. Thus far, every gay marriage activist has not only denied my right to marry more than one woman, but they have expressed anger and intolerance. They make the arbitrary assertion that marriage is between two adults, and then they make really biased and unsubstantiated accusations about me and about polygamy, which reveals they are as hypocritical as anyone can be, and that they are even more intolerant than religious people.

Although I have a problem with the hypocrisy and intolerance of many (perhaps most) gay marriage activists, I don’t really have a problem with gay marriage itself.

Then again, gays can already have any kind of relationship they want. What is the benefit of officially redefining marriage to include gay marriage? Why do gays need the government? To force hospitals to give visitation rights to gay partners? I’ll bet that every hospital in San Francisco gives visitation rights to gay partners. I’ll bet that every city has multiple hospitals that give visitation rights to gay partners.

If gay activists want to endorse government regulation of relationships, then they should consider that they are a minority and thus at a disadvantage, that governments historically have tended to ban gay sex, and that marriage between one man and one woman further the goals of the government; whereas, other relationships such as polygamy and gay marriage do not further the goals of the government. For example, marriage between one man and one woman increases societal stability and produces more tax payers and soldiers; whereas, gay marriage does none of these things and polygamy produces as many tax payers and soldiers but may decrease societal stability.

However, gay activists are not only endorsing government regulation of personal relationships, they seek to grant new powers to government. The US government would gain more control over the American people by responding to the request from a gay activist minority to force everyone in America to treat gay relationships exactly the same as hetero relationships.

When Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” in 1513, he explained that when any government wants to gain more control over a people, it should first find a disgruntled minority among that people, claim to want to protect this minority, and then wait until this minority asks it to intervene on their behalf.

Many ordinary gays do not want to invite the government into their relationships. I think they are smart. Gay activists would take America in an unhealthy direction for political glory.

Rather than embracing government and asking for more government, there is another way to achieve equality that is far more freedom oriented.

The Freedom of Marriage Amendment

I think that more freedom may satisfy all parties in the gay marriage debate except for those who seek personal power and glory, and their opposition to more freedom will reveal their selfish motives.

I propose a Constitutional Amendment based directly on the language of the First Amendment because it would then be interpreted with the force and breadth of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Freedom of Marriage Amendment would be:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of marriage, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of parents, or of procreation; or the right of the people to peaceably engage in sexual activity.

Interestingly, the only people who have expressed opposition to this amendment thus far are activists and leaders who seek personal power and glory. Ordinary gays and straights both seem to appreciate the Freedom of Marriage Amendment.

Obama had no Contact with Blagojevich?!

When Democratic Party governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was arrested for multiple corrupt actions perpetrated over several years, which included selling Obama’s vacated senate seat, Obama publicly stated (on 12/9) that he had had no contact with Blagojevich.

REALLY … ???

One would expect Obama to recommend some candidates to fill his seat.

Some news outlets reported that same day that Obama advisor David Axelrod had told a local news station a month earlier that Obama had recently been talking to Blagojevich about the appointment process. Now that Obama had been caught in a lie, Axelrod promptly said "I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy. They did not then or at any time discuss the subject." So Obama’s lie made Axelrod look foolish, and then Axelrod falls on his sword to protect Obama. This is Clintonesque. We saw this all the time in the Clinton administration.

Why did Axelrod have to take the fall? Why didn’t Obama simply say that he mispoke like he did when he said that smalltown Americans are bitter and cling to their guns and religion. Also, given Obama was caught off guard by the Blagojevich arrest and thus had little time to prepare, why was his first instinct to lie about having any contact with Blagojevich?

Then it was revealed that a few days before Blagojevich was arrested, Obama had written a list of proposed candidates that he would like Blagojevich to place in Obama’s vacated senate seat, and he gave this list to Blagojevich through his chief of staff (Rahm Emanuel). Therefore, Obama clearly lied on 12/9. Obama began backpedaling the next day while many in the media made excuses for him (again!).

No one has claimed that Obama should not be talking to Blagojevich, but Obama’s media supporters repeatedly try to steer all discussion to how it was OK if Obama talked to Blagojevich. They claim that attacks on Obama are thus guilt by association. Of course, Obama’s media supporters are simply setting up straw men and knocking them down while simultaneously sowing distraction, obfuscation, and doubt.

When cornered and forced to respond to the actual accusation, which is that Obama lied about having any contact with Blagojevich, Obama’s media supporters explain that it was Obama’s chief of staff who actually had contact with Blagojevich – not Obama himself, and thus Obama was being honest when he said that he had had no contact with Blagojevich. This is like saying that Obama wrote a letter to Blagojevich, but that he had no contact with Blagojevich because it was only the Post Office that had contact with Blagojevich.

I guess it depends on what your definition of “contact” is.

This is more pure Clintonesque from Obama and his supporters in the media.

Obama’s chief of staff didn’t just deliver Obama’s list to Blagojevich – he had 21 hours of contact with him.

To understand the full measure of double standards, bias, and hypocrisy from Obama and his supporters in the media on this single issue, recall that Obama said during the primary that as President of the US he would meet one-on-one with the President of Iran without any preconditions. Bush said that he himself would not have meet directly with the President of Iran without preconditions. Bush never did meet with the President of Iran, but a couple of months later Bush did send an emissary to Iran. Obama’s supporters in the media promptly claimed that this was equivalent to Bush meeting with the President of Iran, and that Bush should credit Obama for the idea. Then when Obama said he had no contact with Blagojevich and his supporters in the media learned that he had sent an emissary to Blagojevich, they claimed that Obama would have to talk one-on-one with Blagojevich to have had contact with him, and they claim therefore that Obama did not lie. So in one case the media say that sending an emissary is the same as meeting one-on-one, and in the other case the media say that sending an emissary is not even equivalent to mere contact. The media and Obama supporters in general clearly have double standards, bias, and hypocrisy.

Another related bias I noticed first hand in breaking news on the morning when Blagojevich was arrested was that the media were not telling me whether Blagojevich was a Democrat or Republican. The reluctance of the media to tarnish his party told me that Blagojevich must be a Democrat.

Jesus was a Democrat?!

A theme circulated by Obama supporters just before the election was that Jesus would be a Democrat, which makes about as much sense as another recent claim that America’s Founding Fathers would be Democrats!

I think Jesus would be a libertarian because he would let people make their own choices. Like any libertarian, he would be willing to die for freedom. Jesus would be a libertarian because he would adhere to the Non-Agression Principle, which means that he would not initiate force or fraud against others.

On the other hand, Jesus would not use force to resist authority (to respond to an initiation of force), for example, he would not personally fight to free slaves; whereas, any libertarian would be willing to fight.

Like any libertarian, Jesus would not be a hypocrite. He would give what he had to poor people instead of forcibly taking from other people and giving that to his supporters. For example, I probably have less money than Obama, and yet I have given more to my impoverished relatives in the last year than Obama has given to his impoverished relatives in his entire life, and I believe that Obama (like other politicians) will take the fruits of our labor by force and give it to his supporters.

On the other hand, Jesus could perform miracles, and libertarians cannot perform miracles, although libertarians are the true defenders of the free-market, which has given us … well … miracles. The free-market has given us music, art, literature, love, philosophy, science, religion, freedom, longer life, better health, lights, cars, airplanes, phones, television, Charmin Ultra, air conditioning, computers, the Internet, jobs, and peace; whereas, politicians take credit for some of the benefits of the free-market, but all politicians have really given us is taxes, inflation, monuments, recessions, depressions, war, millions of laws and regulations, frivolous lawsuits, and weapons of mass destruction.

Could Obama be different?

On June 3rd 2008 (the final night of primaries) it was clear that Barack Obama had miraculously beaten Hillary to be the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, so Mr. Obama made the following statement: "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."

Therefore, the only politician in the history of the human race who can perform miracles is Barack Obama. I guess that if only Obama and Jesus can perform miracles, then that means Jesus was a Democrat like Obama … No … Wait … That means that Jesus and Obama are the same person!

I guess Farrakhan was right – Obama really is the Messiah – either that or else a whole lot of people have been conned.

Obama Should Follow Bush's Lead

If I were the President of the United States, I would meet with those dissidents from around the world who champion individual liberty, and I would do so with even greater zeal than George Bush.

Does that sound odd?

Former USSR dissident Natan Sharansky recently wrote an article entitled The Dissident Choice for the Los Angeles Times in which he explained that George Bush is unusual in that he has been far more willing than past Presidents to meet with dissidents from around the world.

Unlike previous presidents, such as Bill Clinton, Bush has been unafraid to meet with dissidents from powerful countries like Russia and China, dissidents from countries friendly to the US like Egypt, or dissidents from countries hostile to the US like North Korea. To be fair, Clinton did have several meetings with the celebrity dissident the Dalai Lama, but Clinton would not meet with him in the Oval Office. Clinton had only “spontaneous” informal meetings with the Dalai Lama to avoid upsetting China.

In 2007 Bush ignored the advice of everyone in the West Wing and the State Department, and he spoke at a conference in Prague that hosted dozens of dissidents from around the world. He even granted each dissident a one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States.

Barack Obama has a lot more in common with the Clintons than with George Bush, but I hope Mr. Obama will buck the norm and follow Bush’s lead instead of the Clintons on this issue. Unfortunately, meeting with foreign dissidents is the jurisdiction of the State Department, and everyone is assuming that Obama will nominate Hillary Clinton to head the State Department.

Expectations for Obama, Dems, Big Government

In a nutshell, Obama and his supporters claim that he will make huge improvements in our quality of life, which is plausible because Obama has everything going for him. He has unprecedented support unlike anything we have seen since George Washington, and he himself has plenty of education and intelligence and the most famous advisors. Therefore, if Obama does not directly make huge improvements in our quality of life (foreign relations, education, the environment, healthcare, jobs, innovation, the economy, and individual liberty) then the only possible conclusion is that Obama, Democrats, and Government itself is simply not capable of making huge improvements in our quality of life.

All of these improvements must be on top of a complete economic recovery because regardless of who became President, the economy would have inevitably recovered soon from the housing bubble and the loss of confidence of September 2008.

Regardless of what happens during an Obama administration, the mainstream media will tell us that Obama did in fact significantly increase our quality of life, and that somehow one TV channel (Fox News) and the Republican minority was responsible for any limitations on the increase in our quality of life. Expect to hear that Obama actually exceeded expectations because his supporters never claimed he could actually make huge improvements in our quality of life. Expect to hear that Obama actually exceeded expectations because he inherited an impossible situation from the damage caused entirely by the previous Bush administration. Of course, no one is backpedaling yet because there has been no opportunity for disappointment yet.

At the moment, the expectations that Obama will make huge improvements in our quality of life are still the conventional wisdom and were best summarized by Obama himself on June 3rd 2008 (the final night of primaries). It was clear that Barack Obama would definitely be the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, so Mr. Obama made the following statement:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Do I predict disappointment? Yes. Such, expectations are unrealistic, and to date, Obama has been rather vague, and when he gets specific, he doesn’t sound like he understands much yet.

When Obama addressed the nation three days after the election, he reminded me of the SNL parodies of Arnold Swartzenegger. It was almost as if Obama were saying, “The problem is a lack of jobs, and I will solve this problem by creating more jobs. … I will create high quality jobs, and I will do this by creating jobs that are good. … I will do these things by creating a blue ribbon panel of rich and famous people to study the problem.” Of course, I would be a little surprised if SNL did a similar parody of Obama given that Chevy Chase admitted the day before that SNL has a political agenda.

Note the lack of specific analysis and the one specific solution, which is that Obama said his top priority is to give out another stimulus check to consumers. Not only has this already been done, but it has already been done by Bush – earlier this year. Is Obama adopting Bush’s economic strategy?

The only other widely publicized specific I have heard since the election is that Obama plans to close Guantanamo, but Bush had already said that he plans to do that soon. Is Obama adopting Bush’s foreign policy strategy too?

Are you already disappointed?

Look at some of Obama’s other specifics: He wants to raise taxes on corporations, which would drive businesses and jobs overseas and raise the prices of goods and services produced in the US. Late in the primaries, when he still had no specifics on energy and someone asked for specifics, he had only one: “overinflate your tires!”. Not only would this produce way less savings than he claimed, but more importantly, it would cause more deaths by impairing emergency handling and increasing blowouts! He also endorses ethanol and “clean coal”, which are two of the least practical energy solutions.

Clearly, Obama has a lot to learn.

Is Obama the New Bill Clinton

Perhaps the two biggest differences between Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are that Obama doesn’t get off on lying like Bill Clinton (which is refreshing), and Bill Clinton is not an elitist like Barack Obama. Perhaps this is because Bill Clinton is a performer; whereas, Barack Obama is an architect.

Unlike Bill Clinton, many white people who voted for Obama (and many who didn’t) see him as a kind of national mascot (although they would vehemently deny it) – in spite of Obama’s many talents.This is because 90% of Americans had been hoping a black candidate would come along who shared their beliefs and did not play the race card, and Obama filled that role for a majority, in fact, some on the left desperately wanted to vote for a black man – even more than they desperately wanted to vote for a woman, which is why Hillary lost media support and barely lost the primary. Of course, those who see Obama as our shiny new black presidential mascot will stop looking at him that way a few months after he takes office .

Unlike Obama, Bill Clinton is a master of planting ideas in people’s minds without them knowing it. For example, when Bill Clinton spoke in Florida at an Obama rally immediately after Obama’s 30 minute infomercial, he made several comments and then he said that he was going to say something that he had not cleared with Obama yet. He then explained that Obama was so teachable that he approached his economic experts and said “Tell me what is the right thing to do.” Obama fans see this as a simple proof that Obama is strong and Bill Clinton is weak. What actually happened is that Bill Clinton was planting the thought that Obama will be the kind of President who has the audacity to tell you what to do, and that Obama himself doesn’t know what to do. Also, Bill Clinton is aware that everyone knows he is lying when he starts wagging his finger at the audience, and thus he purposely does it continuously when he is saying good things about Obama.

Both men are weak. Whereas Bill Clinton is weak and cannot resist secretly having sex with people he believes he shouldn’t be having it with; Obama is weak and cannot resist secretly having a smoke, which he believes he shouldn’t be doing. He admits that he has been smoking for 30 years, that he tried to quit several times and failed, and that he smokes in secret so no one can get a picture of him smoking. Also, for both politicians the media made excuses and underreported the important facts. One member of the media admitted she hid photos in a safe deposit box until after the election because they showed Obama smoking.

Both men have many associates who committed crimes of corruption, greed, violence, betrayal, etc. and both routinely deny involvement and refuse to cooperate with investigators. Also, for both politicians the media make excuses and underreport important facts.

Whereas Bill Clinton cared a lot whether people liked him, Barack Obama does not seem to care much if people like him.

Bill Clinton seems relatively emotional and passionate; whereas, Obama seems relatively cold and aloof.

Overall it sounds like Barack Obama is much more like Hillary Clinton than Bill Clinton.

Nevertheless, in many ways, Obama is the new Bill Clinton. Both are smart and teachable, both are democrats, and both entered office at a relatively young age. Both have a huge base of loyal supporters willing to do anything and make any personal sacrifice to protect their candidate.

Also, both won largely because they said the right things to the right people at the right time. More specifically, they both were skilled at making statements that could be interpreted differently by different audiences. For example, Obama said that special interests have too much influence in Washington, and this statement appeals to every political faction in America – HOWEVER – each faction is imagining DIFFERENT special interests. Another example, is that Obama says he has a message of unification, which sounds good to every political faction, but of course the reality is that Obama thinks America will be unified once everyone agrees with HIM!

Like Bill and Hillary, Barack Obama is getting a free pass from the media, values his image and winning over everything else, and like both, Barack Obama has no experience in business and sees big government as the solution to every problem.

Why I Can't Vote for Obama

Back in January, I liked Obama because we really need change, he said he opposed the war in Iraq, and he said things like how special interests are a problem in Washington that he wants to eliminate. He also did not seem angry or divisive, which would be difficult for any of us if we were in his shoes. Nor was I concerned about his thin resume, but then again, I think that I am qualified to be President too. He also deserved sympathy for the way he was being victimized by the dirty politics of the Clintons. However, my enlightened and well informed co-workers (all from India) said that America is not ready to vote for a black man, and I said they were wrong and that America is eager to vote for a black man. Of course, I have now been proven right. I qualified my comment by pointing out that we still knew little about Obama except for some rather vague statements and superficial characteristics, so I could not even begin to endorse him over all the other Republicans and Democrats. Not long after that (whenever it was that he was captured on tape making the bitter comment), I began to be continually disappointed by Obama. I used to like Obama way more than the Clintons, and I still like him more than the Clintons, but the difference is small now.

The media is overflowing with the many true claims against McCain in addition to many false claims against him, so you already know why you can’t vote for McCain, but the media is seriously underreporting the reasons why I can’t vote for Obama. We have heard more in the media about Cindy McCain’s use of drugs than Obama’s. In fact, I know people who say they are “life long Republicans” or “staunch conservatives” who are planning to vote for Obama because he seems moderate. THAT is how effective media bias has been. Therefore, this article is only about why I can’t vote for Obama.

The best thing I can say about Obama at this point is that I think Obama believes he is a moderate because he is comparing himself to some of his mentors and peers in Hawaii and Chicago who are pretty radical. Some of his supporters vehemently deny this, but based on documented facts including Obama’s own statements (later denied by Obama), his mentors include Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Father Pfleger, and Frank Marshall Davis, and his peers include William Ayers and ACORN activists). Obama knows that he has matured beyond them. He thinks that now he is the teacher and they are the student. He is teaching them that they don’t have to hate white people or America – of course the rest of us already knew that.

Although this one conclusion of Obama’s “message of unification” sounds as if he has matured at least to the point of the average person, we will see that his reasoning is delusional and elitist. Therefore, reality will often threaten his world view, and like any person of less than average maturity, he will not take it well whenever reality threatens his world view, and thus he is not the kind of person you want to have the power of the President of the United States.

The delusional aspect of his thinking about “small town America” was nicely summarized by Obama himself for a small group of elitists in San Francisco. He was trying to explain why these smart wealthy people who ordinarily hate “small town America” (whom they see as poor, stupid, racist white people) should actually have sympathy for those poor white people in small town America just like they do for poor inner city blacks because both groups have been betrayed by government and businesses, and thus both groups have a reason to be angry, and both groups need the help of the smart, wealthy, and enlightened people of San Francisco.

Where Obama sees small town America “clinging to their guns and religion”, I see small town America clinging to the Bill of Rights. I go into more detail in my article America Clings to the Bill of Rights.

Like the vast majority of politicians, the primary goal of Obama is to win (OBAMA FIRST!), and thus what he says is what he wants you to believe. Therefore, we must try to do independent analysis to figure out his true values. This alone is sufficient reason for me to not vote for him, but if you are only willing to consider the two major parties, then you are likely choosing the lesser of two evils. You are likely voting against one candidate instead of for the other one. Therefore, you would need to know more about Obama to vote against him.

Even if Obama were the lesser of two evils, you probably don’t want the media, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and the President to all be on the same side, and this is sufficient reason for the average independent voter to vote against him.

Still not convinced? Like I say in my article How to Rank Candidates, “It’s about values.” More specifically it is about what he would do, but that is determined by his values.

Obama used technicalities to remove his three African American opponents from the ballot in Chicago. He clearly values winning more than he values the will of the people.

By now you should have seen Obama on video saying “Look, when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everyone”. Clearly it would be a huge net loss for the person Obama takes it from. Obama wants to take money from my kids and give it to people who voted for him, and yet he does not help his own impoverished relatives. I have way less money than Obama, and I have given more money to my own impoverished relatives in the last year, than Obama has in his entire life. What a disgusting hypocrite he is. He clearly does not value the quality of life of other people.

Obama falsely claims that he is trying to re-impose the Clinton economic policies, which are themselves a myth. There was a huge crash like the current one at the end of the Clinton administration, and the policies of Bush and Greenspan brought us out of that crash (temporarily).
The Myth of the Clinton Economy

Some of Obama’s “new” ideas for “change” are just a bunch of obsolete Canadian policies. Canada began moving away from these Obama policies starting around 1996 because they just don’t work. Clearly Obama does not value new ideas or change – or honesty.
The Canadianization of America

Obama said that small town Americans are bitter and cling to their guns and religion and they have lost faith in government because they have lost jobs. Clearly Obama is a racist and an elitist who wants to help these small town Americans by replacing their self-reliance with dependency on government – if only that darned Bill-of-Rights didn’t keep getting in the way.
America Clings to the Bill of Rights

Obama blames Republicans, deregulation, and free-markets for the economic problems of America when the primary cause is Democrats, regulation, and government. Even worse, throughout 2008 he has tried to worsen the economic crisis for political gain by trying to reduce confidence and trust.
The Great Depression of 2008

Obama used dishonest tactics to train and finance a dishonest and racist ACORN agenda to create a proliferation of subprime loans.
O’s Dangerous Pals

Obama went to an angry racist anti-American church for 20 years until the racist anti-American preacher got mad at him. He clearly does not value balance, tolerance, or equality.

Obama does not want to empower the little guy – he wants to disarm the little guy. Clearly Obama does not value our freedom and dignity, or our safety – or the Bill of Rights.
The Universal Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Obama is married to a woman who recently said that this was the first time she has been proud America. We know more about Joe the Plumber than Michelle Obama.

Obama’s supporters are quick to label his critics as racists. Sure, this is irrational, a bully tactic, and proves nothing, but what is not so obvious is that for Obama’s supporters to cast the accusation of racism so frivolously reveals a that they do not take racism as seriously as they should, and thus Obama’s supporters are only proving that they themselves are rather racist.

Healthcare

It seems like the only real complaint against American healthcare is cost, but no one is talking about how high cost is caused by the AMA monopoly, government regulations, or how it is caused by frivolous lawsuits with outrageous awards against doctors and pharmaceutical companies. I have heard no plans to fix the legal system, regulations, or monopolies.

I have a concern about government involvement in healthcare that does not seem to be covered anywhere. I am not just concerned about truly socialized medicine, I have the same concern about any system where the government takes the fruits of labor from some people to pay for the healthcare of others.

My concern is this: If others are paying for my healthcare, then my life choices can cost them more or less of the fruits of their labor, which gives them the right to regulate my life choices. For example, we might have laws that force us to wear seat belts or motorcycle helmets. We might have laws or taxes that punish us if we smoke, drink alcohol, eat too much meat and fat or too little carbs.

Sometimes the government will be wrong or politically motivated. For example, alcohol and fat increase my HDL, which is good, and carbs increase my triglycerides, which is bad, but the US government disagrees with me.

Some HMOs are cheaper because they make a person see a general practitioner first. A customer of such an HMO cannot voluntarily see a specialist or go to the hospital unless the general practitioner agrees. At least we have the freedom to choose to purchase healthcare from a less restrictive provider, but what would stop the government from forcing us all to see a general practitioner first? What would stop the government from paying a bonus to doctors who send fewer patients to specialists?

Regulating Speech

"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to Broadcasting & Cable. Obama Does Not endorse the Fairness Doctrine

Suppose Obama does not support the unconstitutional Fairness Doctrine – unlike most of his fellow Democrats, and suppose he successfully stands up to other Democrats for the first time ever. What would he himself support?

"He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added. "That is why Sen. Obama supports media-ownership caps, network neutrality, public broadcasting, as well as increasing minority ownership of broadcasting and print outlets."

I guess Ortiz doesn’t realize that what Obama supports actually sounds more oppressive than the Fairness Doctrine.

In what may be the first of a recent spate of events designed to intimidate the media, Obama stated:

“If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak. I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that? I guess the point I’m making, is that there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it’s powerful.” Obama also said, referring to newsmen at Fox News and MSNBC: “If voters are … polarized and if they’re seeing two different realities, a Sean Hannity reality and a Keith Olbermann reality, then we’re not going to be able to get done the work we need to get done.”

I think Obama is correct about his 2-3% loss caused by the existence of Fox News, but to complain about the mere existence of a media outlet – the ONLY media outlet opposed to him – is chilling. Clearly, Obama thinks the Fox reality has to go, but what he did not mention is that he is getting a 12% boost from the bias of the rest of the media which more than offsets his 2-3% loss because of the bias of Fox. So if he were honest in his attempt to fix media bias, then he would be the biggest loser, so whatever he has planned must be the opposite of fair and balanced.

Obama publicly blacklisted a TV station who asked Biden an embarrassing question that was not even as bad as what Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber have endured. I’m sure that campaigns frequently decide to reject an interview they expect to go badly, but the only point of publicly blacklisting a TV station would be to intimidate the rest of the media. Just in case the media was not sufficiently intimidated, Obama publicly kicked three newspaper reporters off of his plane to make room for monthly periodicals who couldn’t possibly publish anything before the election. By all accounts they were the three reporters who had published material that was less than 100% pro-Obama.

The Future

On June 3^rd 2008 (the final night of primaries) it was clear that Barack Obama would definitely be the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, so Mr. Obama made the following statement:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Clearly, if Obama believes that things are so bad and that he can make such miraculous improvements – greater than perhaps any leader in the history of the human race, then anyone who tried to stand in his way would have to be the devil himself. Obama and his followers would thus feel morally justified in doing ANYTHING to ANYONE who stands in his way.

McCain

I am not voting for McCain. I have more than two choices. YOU have more than two choices. You already know why you shouldn't vote for McCain, but if you dare, you can follow my links and learn why you shouldn't vote for Obama either. I’m genuinely impressed if any Obama supporter has read this far.

If my only choices were Obama or McCain then I would reluctantly vote for McCain as the lesser of two evils and to prevent the media, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, and the President from all being on the same side.

The Universal Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Like any right, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a right for any people of any nation at any time – past, present, or future – whether their government acknowledges it or not. A people have a right to defend their freedom, family, and property from anyone who would initiate force against them.

Throughout history, the three most common entities who initiate aggression against a people are foreign armies, common criminals, and their own government. Clearly, any honest person would have to admit that to provide an effective deterrent to these forces, the people must be armed as well as the aggressors.

Have I mentioned hunting or sportsmanship yet? No? That is because the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has nothing to do with hunting.

The Constitution and the RKBA

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is codified in the Bill of Rights (in the Second Amendment):

A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights were considered self-evident by the Founders because everyone understood that a right is a protection from the power of government and that the people and the states had unlimited rights and held all of the power except for those few powers specifically granted to the US government by the Constitution.

The Founders thus felt it was unnecessary to enumerate any rights in the original version of the Constitution, but the people were wise enough back then to fear any Constitution without including an explicit enumeration of rights, so the Founders had to add the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) before ratification could succeed.

Some of the Founders warned that future generations might have forgotten the lessons of history and human nature so commonly understood at the time, and thus they warned that by enumerating any rights at all, future generations might interpret such an enumeration of rights as the only rights retained by the people. Therefore, the Founders wisely added the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which should have permanently secured the correct interpretation.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Given that you could watch CNN every waking hour of your life and not acquire this common wisdom, there can be little doubt that the people have forgotten the lessons of history and human nature so commonly understood in 1792.

Knowing that the Constitution lists powers of the government and lists some rights of individuals, you should have already been wondering whether it grants the government the power to make any law that does not violate one of those individual rights it lists, or whether it reserves all rights and powers to the people except for those powers it explicitly grants to the government.

Which interpretation sounds like that of the courts and the media today?

Which interpretation sounds like the kind of country you would prefer to live in?

The Second Amendment is clear enough to the independent thinker – regardless of intelligence, but its language is vulnerable to the kind of spin, distraction, and obfuscation that originates from those intelligent people who have “Smart Persons Disease” and who thus have a total lack of respect for the individual. Therefore, many concepts that were commonly understood by the simplest of people in colonial times are no longer clear to even the most intelligent among us who have neither the time nor interest for independent thought. Intelligence now seems to be measured by who has memorized the most content from the mainstream media, which is pretty pathetic given that you could watch CNN every waking hour of your life and not acquire the common wisdom of the founding generation of Americans.

Of course, the founding generation was not perfect. Not only were they too unaware of the equality of Africans to generate the motivation to end the long entrenched institution of slavery, they were also too proud of what they had accomplished.

Of course, the limitations of the Founders have no logical connection to the interpretation of the Second Amendment, but slavery is a favorite source of spin, distraction, and obfuscation by Constitution bashers who ridicule any attempt to determine original intent, so rather than let that happen right now. Lets quickly put this subject to rest. Sure, the founders suffered from huge ignorance about the qualities of other ethnic groups, but in spite of this ignorance, and in spite of the fact that they lived in a world where Africans and others had been slaves for centuries – in spite of these incentives to condone slavery and in spite of the lack of any kind of abolitionist movement to guide them – If the Founders had been forming a country in a land where slavery did not already exist, THE FOUNDERS WOULD HAVE FORBIDDEN SLAVERY – not maybe – DEFINITELY. This kind of independent thinking and respect for the individual makes the Founders superior to the conformists of the authoritarian left who bash the Founders while sipping their lattes and reading the New York Times. The conformist authoritarian left would have totally caved in to the peer pressure to own slaves – because they are conformists, elitists, and authoritarians. They are elitists who mock the little guy. They are authoritarians who want to disarm the little guy. Jeese! What a bunch of Jerks!

The problem with the language of Second Amendment occurred because the founding generation was too proud. They were proud of being a part of the first nation founded on ideas instead of geography or ethnicity. They were proud that an almost unanimous majority of such ordinary folk could understand such enlightened concepts as tolerance, freedom, and equality. They were proud that an almost unanimous majority would be willing to die for tolerance, freedom, and equality.

Would the elitist conformist authoritarian left in America today be willing to die for tolerance, freedom, and equality? Of course not, but the little guy – the small town Americans they mock – would die for tolerance, freedom, and equality, and that is why they want to disarm him.

The Founders’ pride blinded them. They did not foresee that there would someday be a powerful elitist media allied with one of two major parties who preached empowerment of the little guy, while simultaneously trying to disarm the little guy.

The Second Amendment

A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

In addition to the US government, State and local governments are also restrained by the Second Amendment and have been ever since the passing of the 14^th Amendment, which includes this statement: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”. Clearly, any right guaranteed to US citizens by the Constitution shall not be infringed by state or local governments. This is not just my interpretation and the objective interpretation, but this is also the interpretation of the Supreme Court.

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms

The second clause, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” is both clear and powerful, and we know that the first and second clause cannot contradict each other. We know that regardless of what the first clause means, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Therefore, the US government must recognize the human right of individuals to own and carry any weapon carried by any soldier in the world without any restrictions – period.

If the Supreme Court disagrees, then the Supreme Court is simply wrong. In fact, the Supreme Court can be more than wrong. If their interpretation of the Constitution were to become sufficiently inconsistent with the original intent, then at some point we would no longer be living under the Rule of Law and the Constitution would no longer be considered the law of the land by any well informed independent thinker – but let’s not get sidetracked.

What about big conventional weapons – like a cannon or a battleship? Such weapons were clearly imaginable in 1792 because they not only had cannons, they had sailing ships armed with dozens of cannons. We also know that the general purpose of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is that a civilian population should be a credible counter balance to the force of their own government and to the force of foreign governments, and we know this was well understood by the Founders. More than this, we know that private citizens around the world owned ships armed with cannons. However, we don’t need to know any of this. We only need to know that their governments would sometimes grant the private owners of warships “Letters of Marque and Reprisal” authorizing them to attack the ships of foreign countries, and that the US Constitution says that the Congress may “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal”, which thus means the Constitution assumes that private citizens will own warships.

Perhaps more important than the fact that US citizens have the right to own warships is that at the time of the Constitution, a warship was the most powerful weapons system on earth and the most powerful weapons system imaginable. Therefore, the Constitution implies that a US citizen may own any kind of weapon regardless of how powerful that weapon may be.

What about nuclear weapons? Clearly such a weapon was unimaginable in 1792, but the general purpose of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which was well understood by the Founders is that a civilian population should be a credible counter balance to the force of their own government and to the force of foreign governments. Also, the Constitution implies that a US citizen may own any kind of weapon regardless of how powerful that weapon may be. However, I would say that although private nukes are consistent with the human Right to Keep and Bear Arms, it is not clear that the Constitution recognizes this right – that would depend on the Supreme Court.

The Right to form Militias

What about the confusing first clause of the Second Amendment, which says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, …” ?

The Founders merged about 100 rights into the ten Constitutional amendments that would become the Bill of Rights, which helps to explain why the first clause is recognizing yet another right. The Second Amendment recognizes two rights: the right to keep and bear arms and the right to form militias – much as the First Amendment recognizes five rights: speech, religion, assembly, the press, and petition of government. In addition to the right to keep and bear arms, the right of the people to voluntarily form militias and train together is necessary if the people are to remain free.

The position of the media elite and of every person I have consulted who prefers the Democratic Party is that this first clause limits the right to keep and bear arms to members of the National Guard, who they claim are the “militia”, and who they claim can only keep and bear arms when they are performing duties as part of the National Guard. This spin has been slowly growing in popularity for decades, but I am certain that the Founders would think: “The National Guard in not the militia, and it is not the people. It is just another part of the government. The militia consists of any citizens who show up when the militia is “called forth”. What kind of elitist authoritarian asshole would want to disarm the people?” Of course, certainty is just an emotion, so let’s continue our objective analysis.

Whereas, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”, the right to form militias and perform collective actions as a militia can be infringed – or “regulated”. For example, Congress might pass a law saying that militias cannot march 24/7 up and down your street. Also, “well regulated” in this context implies well staffed, well prepared, well practiced, and well equipped. For example, although the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a necessary prerequisite to having an effective militia (one that is well staffed, well prepared, well practiced, and well equipped), additionally the states could offer voluntary training and free or subsidized equipment to everyone who is interested. Elsewhere in the Constitution, the states are granted the power to commission officers in the militia, which means that although militias can train on their own, when voluntarily responding to a state’s request to train or fight, the officers will have been determined by the state.

Rewriting the Second Amendment

In summary, we know that:

• The original intent of the first clause and the second clause would not contradict each other.
• The first clause does not restrict the second clause because the second clause includes the words “shall not be infringed”.
• “The people” refers to the people – all of the people, just like it does in all of the Constitution and all of the Bill of Rights.
• A “free state” is a state whose people are free.
• The Constitution grants the US government the power to “call forth the militia”, and it also grants to the power to form an “army” for up to two years.
• The militia consists of any citizens who show up when the militia is “called forth”.
• “Well regulated” is not clear, but from the context, it must mean well prepared, well equipped, well trained, and not???. The new claim that it means well controlled and well restricted is inconsistent with the rest of the Second Amendment, the rest of the Constitution, and the rest of US history.
• The Constitution assumes that some US citizens will own warships.
• Each amendment that forms the bill of Rights tends to recognize multiple rights.

Therefore, a more clear way to write the second amendment would be:

The right of the people to keep and bear all types of arms shall not be infringed. The people also have the right to assemble and participate in well prepared, well practiced, and well equipped militias, which are necessary if the people of a state are to remain free.

Infringements

Governments in the US have infringed the Second Amendment hundreds if not thousands of times. However, at this time I will only mention the one that just occurred to me.

The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to form militias, but the FBI has infiltrated the militias in America. Let’s assume that the FBI only monitors militia activity and tries to rise up the chain of command in each militia. Let’s assume that the FBI dos not spy on militia members, incite illegal behavior, demoralize the militias, or otherwise try to influence militias.

Let’s consider a parallel example. Suppose the FBI were to send atheistic agents to infiltrate the churches and monitor their internal activities as well as trying to rise up the clerical hierarchy.

Obama

We have chosen Obama to represent the conventional wisdom about the Second Amendment because he is the most popular presidential candidate in the US in my lifetime. Another reason to choose Obama as an example is that he was a Constitutional scholar. Of course, that doesn’t mean he was an honest or independent thinker. So we may be able to arrive at a significantly different and more accurate understanding of the Constitution than Obama.

We could be like every Obama supporter I have spoken with and decide that we know for a fact that Obama supports the Second Amendment because he now says he does – or we can look at the facts and think for ourselves.

The NRA has given Obama a grade of F, and the NRA cares about only one issue; therefore, the NRA has no incentive to lie when grading candidates; therefore, we know the NRA would be honest about which candidate they think would be best for the right to keep and bear arms. The only criticism they ever make against any candidate is that the candidate does not support the right to keep and bear arms. You do not hear the NRA talking about any other issues.

The putatively objective FactCheck.org makes the plausible but highly biased, subjective, and speculative claim that the NRA lies to scare gun owners in order to generate donations. If FactCheck.org were unbiased, they would also have claimed that Obama would lie about his positions to get elected. Of course, they would still be highly subjective and speculative – but at least they would be unbiased. FactCheck.org doesn’t just fail to make the equally plausible claim that Obama would lie to get elected, but instead they demonstrate additional bias by interpreting any statement made by Obama during the campaign as proof of his true positions. Whereas, Obama does not have a wide range of votes (he is consistently in the elitist authoritarian minority as we shall see), we can easily see for ourselves that the NRA gives out a wide range of grades including A+ to some candidates. Also, their grades are pretty consistent with my own assessment of the candidates.

I have reviewed the NRA website, several articles that refute the NRA website (including FactCheck.org), an article by a University of Maryland professor that responds to those articles, and YouTube video of Obama himself. These sources make summarizations and assumptions, which make it more difficult for us to know the facts and think for ourselves; therefore, I have pieced together the following timeline so that you can more easily decide for yourself.

September 9,1996 – Obama or one of his staffers filled out a questionnaire from the liberal Chicago group Independent Voters of Illinois – Independent Precinct Organization, on which Obama advocated mandatory waiting periods and a complete ban on handgun ownership. Obama’s answers got him the endorsement of the group. Obama now says that he never saw the questionnaire and that it was filled out by a staffer; however, the group subsequently interviewed Obama about the questions and Obama submitted a second copy of the questionnaire with the same answers and with his hand written notes on it. We know this because after it was reported, the group actually released a copy of the questionnaire with Obama’s notes on it. Obama now says that just because his handwritten notes were on the second questionnaire doesn’t prove that he filled out or even saw the answers. Even Dan Abrams of the authoritarian left's ultra-biased MSNBC showed an image of the questionnaire with Obama’s handwriting and asked why Obama will not clearly confirm or deny any positions on the questionnaire. The biased Abrams was later replaced with the ultra-biased Rachel Maddow because Abrams was not biased enough, which Abrams basically accepts as a personal flaw – but let’s not get sidetracked.
Reported by Politico, March 31, 2008
MSNBC’s Dan Abrams – Obama Denies 1996 Questionnaire with his Handwriting

FactCheck.org says that using this questionnaire to demonstrate that Obama favors a ban on hand guns is false because he “has said that a ban is not politically practicable." Of course, if the Factcheck.org were unbiased, they would make the objective observation that Obama must still favor a hand gun ban because instead of contradicting his previous position, he merely said that he could not get enough votes, but of course we know that he will have a majority in the House, a super majority in the Senate, and a if Congress does not support him, his Supreme Court appointments can simply reinterpret the Constitution.

1998 – Barack Obama was a member of the Board of Directors of the Joyce Foundation, the leading source of funds for anti-gun organizations and “research.” This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
1998 Joyce Foundation Annual Report, p. 7

December 13, 1999 – A Chicago Defender article reported several statements made by Obama at an anti-gun rally, where Obama "outlined his anti-gun plan" according to the article. The statements by Obama would have been a smart political move in Chicago at that time, and Obama’s supporters are not disputing the article. A FactCheck.org article that is sympathetic to Obama quotes the Defender article too. The only justification offered by FactCheck.org for their criticism against the NRA quotes from the article is that we can’t assume these are still Obama’s positions because he did not respond to requests from FactCheck.org for an updated position, which again demonstrates the bias at FactCheck.org. The objective assumption would have been that these are still Obama’s positions in the absence of any contradictory claim. If Obama ever refutes these positions and if he wants any mature and intelligent person to believe him, then at a minimum he should explain why he thought his original positions were right, why he now thinks he was wrong, and why he thinks his new positions are correct.

At this 1999 rally, Obama advocated the following infringements on the individual right to keep and bear arms:

• A 500% increase in the federal tax on firearms and ammunition.
• A ban on gun stores within 5 miles of a school or park, which would obviously have closed down every gun store in every city and town.
• A ban on the sale of “junk” handguns. (Apparently poor people do not have the same rights as the middle class.)
• A ban on the resale of police surplus firearms to the people.
• Mandatory firearm training for all gun owners.
• A ban on gun ownership for persons under the age of 21. (Unless of course they are working for the government, have been drafted into the military, etc.)
• Increased penalties for the interstate transportation of firearms, which was already 10 years in prison.
• Requiring gun manufacturers to invent technology that would permit a gun to be used only by its original owner.
• Charging a gun owner with a felony if anyone stole his gun and it was ever used in a future crime unless that gun was securely stored in the owner’s home. (So if a citizen exercises his Second Amendment right to own a gun and is then victimized by a criminal, he could subsequently be victimized again and more severely by the government. This position would only make sense if Obama interpreted the Second Amendment to not be an individual right like the rest of the Bill of Rights. Also, apparently people too poor to buy whatever kind of safe the government mandates do not have the same rights as the middle class.)
• Restricting gun purchases to one weapon a month.
• A ban on the sale of firearms at gun shows except for "antique" weapons.
• An increase in the licensing fee to obtain a federal firearms license.

May 5, 2002 – Barack Obama voted not to notify gun owners when the state of Illinois did records searches on them. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
Illinois Senate, May 5, 2002, SB 1936 Con., vote 26

March 13, 2003 – In the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee, Obama voted for bill intended to ban and confiscate assault rifles, which are like the full-auto rifles carried by ordinary US soldiers except that the rifles to be banned are less powerful because they are semi-auto, which means they can only shoot one bullet at a time. However, the bill failed because it was so poorly written that it could have been interpreted to ban most shotguns. See the vote here. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.

March 25, 2003 – Barack Obama voted against a measure to lower the Firearms Owners Identification card age minimum from 21 to 18, which was a measure designed to assist young people in the military. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
Illinois Senate, March 25, 2003, SB 2163, vote 18.

March 25, 2004 – According to the Associated Press, Barack Obama voted against a bill that would have let the people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation. FactCheck.org claims Obama was merely voting against a loophole, but they did not explain that it would have been a loophole in a ban on gun ownership, and thus Obama was supporting the existing ban on gun ownership and advocating punishment for those who violated it by defending their lives, their homes, and their children.
Illinois Senate, SB 2165, March 25, 2004, vote 20

May 16, 2003 – Barack Obama supports one-gun-a-month handgun purchase restrictions. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
Illinois Senate, May 16, 2003, HB 2579, vote 34

September 13, 2004 – Barack Obama told NPR that he supports a federal ban on assault rifles and on concealed carry permits. This fact was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
“Candidates' gun control positions may figure in Pa. vote,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Wednesday, April 2, 2008, and “Keyes, Obama Are Far Apart On Guns”, Chicago Tribune, 9/15/04.
NPR 9/13/04 – Obama Supports Federal Ban on Concealed Carry

July 29, 2005 – Obama voted for the Kennedy Amendment to United States Senate, S. 397, number 217. In spite of a Democratic Party majority, Kennedy’s amendment failed by 64 – 31, so Obama was in the most elitist and authoritarian minority again.

The NRA says this amendment could ban almost all common rifle ammunition; whereas, FactCheck.org says this amendment only banned armor piercing ammunition. First note that armor piercing ammunition, which is made of a harder material to penetrate steel, was banned decades ago. The term “armor piercing” is now used by Democrats to refer to much weaker ammunition that can penetrate the much weaker fabric used in “body armor”.

What the amendment actually said was that it would ban all handgun ammunition capable of penetrating body armor and all rifle ammunition designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability. FactCheck.org knew the language of the amendment, but a critical fact they did not know was that hand guns exist that shoot every common kind of rifle ammunition (some can even use 100 round detachable magazines). Another fact unknown to FactCheck.org was that there are multiple levels of body armor, and many kinds of handgun ammunition (even 9mm) can penetrate Level I body armor.

FactCheck.org later revised their article to admit that they did not know handguns exist that can shoot rifle ammunition, but they still claim that the NRA lied because future politicians would never use the language of the law as an excuse to ban most common ammunition. FactCheck.org’s putative objectivity claim is clearly nothing more than a very subjective and biased opinion – an opinion so naïve that it borders on the ludicrous.

Clearly the NRA claim is accurate, but it requires elaboration, and the NRA knows that in politics, whichever side has to elaborate is the side that loses in the short term. Nevertheless, the NRA should have elaborated because they have no other choice when the media are so biased against them. I think the NRA may have actually underestimated the intelligence of the American people.

July 29, 2005 – In United States Senate vote, S. 397, number 219, Obama voted to enable lawsuits intended to bankrupt the firearms industry. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek. See the vote here.

September 29, 2005 – In United States Senate vote 245, Obama voted against the confirmation of Supreme Court justice Alito.

January 31, 2006 – In United States Senate vote 2, Obama voted against the confirmation of Supreme Court justice Roberts.

April 22, 2007 – Barack Obama favors a ban on standard capacity magazines. This NRA statement was not contested by FactCheck.org or Newsweek.
“Clinton, Edwards, Obama on gun control,” Radio Iowa, Sunday, April 22, 2007.

February 2, 2008 – Barack Obama supports local gun bans in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities. “Asked today about the DC handgun ban currently being reviewed by the US Supreme Court, Obama declined to take a position for or against its Constitutionality but did express broad support for the rights of local jurisdictions to make such decisions for themselves.”
David Wright, Ursula Fahy and Sunlen Miller, "Obama: 'Common Sense Regulation' On Gun Owners' Rights," ABC News' "Political Radar" Blog, 2/15/08. Video Here

February 11, 2008 – In an interview with ABC’s Leon Harris, Obama said that he supported the DC gun ban and that it is Constitutional. Obama then applied his Clintonesque spin and went on to explain that all he wants to do is make common sense guns laws, ban illegal guns, and prevent loopholes; however, the DC gun ban banned ownership of all handguns – not just illegal ones. We know what Obama really meant because he and FactCheck.org used a similar spin to defend his March 25, 2004 vote (see above). Obama is saying that “Illegal” guns are guns that have been banned, so he supports all gun bans because they are banning illegal guns. By “loophole” Obama means any law that weakens a ban. Of course, when the Supreme Court later decided that the DC gun ban and several other DC gun laws were unconstitutional, then on June 26, Obama said that his position had always been consistent with the Supreme Court decision, and yet he never explicitly admitted that the DC gun ban was unconstitutional.
Leon Harris and Sen. Barack Obama, Forum Sponsored By ABC And Politico.Com, Washington, DC, 2/12/08
Video – ABC Interview 2/11/08 – Obama Says DC Gun Ban is Constitutional
Video – Interviews on 6/26/08 and 2/11/08 – Obama Spins and Flip Flops on the DC Gun Ban

February 15, 2008 – Barack Obama supports mandatory micro-stamping of bullets like in California so that each bullet can be traced back to its manufacturer, retailer, and original owner, but of course if criminals know this, then the two main results of such a law would be to implicate many innocent people because criminals would not buy their bullets from a store or with their own ID, and even worse, criminals would begin to steal bullets from stores and private homes. If just one truckload of bullets were stolen, it would supply thousands of criminals for years.
Chicago Tribune blogs, “Barack Obama: NIU Shootings call for action,” February 15, 2008.
ABC News Video, February 15, 2008.

March 18, 2008 – Barack Obama refused to sign a friend-of-the-court Brief in support of individual Second Amendment rights in the Heller case. 55 Senators and 250 members of the House signed it, which is more than any other Congressional amicus brief in US History. Again we see that Obama is in the most elitist and authoritarian minority.

June 16, 2008 – “District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___ (2008) is a legal case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for private use. It was the first Supreme Court case in United States history to directly address whether the right to keep and bear arms is a right of individuals or a collective right that applies only to state-regulated militias.

The Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007). The Court of Appeals had struck down provisions of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 as unconstitutional, and determined that handguns are ‘Arms’ that may not be banned by the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), also striking down the portion of the law that requires all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept ‘unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.’”
Quote from Wikipedia

June 16, 2008 – Obama makes the vague claim that he has always believed that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but I have heard other elitists make this same claim and then proceed to explain why we all therefore have a right to own a musket like the colonists – but not any modern firearms because they did not exist at the time the Constitution was written and they are too powerful anyway for the average citizen to own, so there is no way the founders would have agreed to let us have any modern firearms.

August 16, 2008 – In the Saddleback Forum, Obama stated that he would have opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court justices Thomas and Scalia.

September 5, 2008 – Obama told a crowd of his supporters at SCHOTT North America Inc., a glass factory in Duryea, Pa., that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress. This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

Obama has made these Clintonesque statements dozens of times and so have other more credible politicians on his behalf, such as Democrats from Western states. The reason Obama’s statements are nothing more than Clintonesque spin, is that in the future, Obama could say that he is keeping his promise because he is not banning ownership of guns, and yet he could still ban the manufacture and sale of all guns. He could still ban the ownership of ammunition. He could still increase taxes 500% on all guns and ammunition. He could still require all guns and bullets to be registered and traceable. He could still require gun owners to allow federal inspectors in their house 24/7. He could still require all guns to be locked up, unloaded, and disassembled at all times. He could still ban ownership of guns in certain locations, such as within five miles of a school. He could still ban the ownership all guns that are not necessary for hunting in his opinion, and like some other Democrats he could claim that muskets (like the colonists used) are really all you need for hunting.

If Obama needed the votes of people who think for themselves and respect the rights of others, then he would have to be a lot more clear, but of course, he does not need the votes of the minority who think for themselves and respect the rights of others. So why am I daring to upset the majority? I am saying this because I know that the majority want to think for themselves and respect the rights of others, but they are busy and if they compare themselves to their neighbors and the mainstream media, then they will get the false impression that they have already arrived.

September 24, 2008 – Brooks Jackson, who authored the FactCheck.org piece told FOX News: “They are lying. This is what they do. This is how they make their money. Do these people have no shame? They are just making this up. I just wish that they would tell the truth.” He said that their ads were “one of the worst examples of lying” that he had “ever seen.” Does Mr. Jackson sound like an objective reporter to you?
Fact-Checkers Fall Short in Criticizing NRA’s Anti-Obama Ads, September 24, 2008, John R. Lott, Jr.

November 12, 2008 – Obama’s web site says, “As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information.“ This amendment is intended to protect the privacy of the people and prevent frivolous lawsuits. Note that even Joe Biden does not agree with Obama.

November 12, 2008 – Obama’s web site says about Obama and Biden, “They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent”. This statement alone makes Obama worse than Bill Clinton, who was the most anti Second Amendment President in US history. It also is a concrete example of just how vague and meaningless Obama’s statement was when he said that the 2^nd Amendment is an individual right.

The recent 5-4 Heller decision by the Supreme Court confirmed the rather obvious and traditional understanding that the Second Amendment confers and individual right to keep and bear arms. However, if just one judge had changed his vote, then the whole decision would have been reversed, and the rather obvious intent of the founders would have been subverted, and the government would have the green light to pass a law that would ban the sale, manufacture, and ownership of all firearms by all Americans. ONE VOTE!

Now consider that not only did Obama say he supported the DC gun ban (he was for it before he was against it), but more importantly Obama opposed the confirmation of four of the five judges who understand that the Second Amendment is an individual right. Not only was Obama displaying unprecedented partisanship in relation to judicial appointments, but more importantly if those four judges were replaced by any four justices nominated by Bush and acceptable to Obama, then at least one of them would probably reverse the Heller decision. Now that Obama will be the President, we must also consider that if the four justices Obama opposed were replaced by any four justices nominated by Obama, then it is probable that all four would reverse the Heller decision, and the new vote would thus be 8-1 against the Second Amendment.

In fact, the Supreme Court itself might unilaterally decide to issue a Court Order to confiscate all private firearms – just like it unilaterally issued many other unconstitutional court orders, such as bussing white kids to black schools and black kids to white schools.

In a nutshell, I would say that Obama’s position on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is conformist, dishonest, and about 180 degrees off from the Constitution. Overall, I have seen no serious presidential candidate who has ever concerned me more on the RKBA.

Obama’s position seems to be a carbon copy of what I already would have described as the position of the elitist conformist authoritarian left in America.

I would also say that his position is dishonest because:

• It is about 180 degrees off from the Constitution in spite of his focus on Constitutional Law.
• He has changed his positions during the primaries.
• He changed his positions again during the general election.
• His most recent statements are his most pro RKBA, and yet they are vague enough that he could still be to the left of Stalin on the RKBA. How stupid does he think we are?
• He has not once explained why he now believes that his previous positions were wrong and why his new positions are correct.
• His recent statements imply that he thinks the sole purpose of the Second Amendment is hunting and target shooting.
• Multiple times he has recently said that he would not try to enact some new restriction because he couldn’t get the votes anyway! How stupid does he think we are? Not only is this an admission that he does want to enact the new restriction, but he will have a majority in both houses in Congress and is likely to have enough votes in the Senate to block a filibuster. Clinton had less votes than that.
• The entire media is making a rather dishonest defense on his behalf, and he is not calling them on it.

I know two intelligent gun owning self-described “conservatives” who believe that Obama is a moderate who is no threat to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; whereas, the reality is that Obama is the biggest threat to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in US History because he has a semi-extreme elitist position, he has huge support and credibility, and few know the reality of his record on the RKBA. Of course, like every Obama supporter I have talked with, these two dismiss any verbal claims against Obama as propaganda before they’ve heard the first sentence, but the reality is more difficult to deny when the whole pattern is laid out in text because of the thoroughness and because the reader can’t interrupt or threaten an article, so I hope they and others who have been deceived by Obama discover the reality.

If some of those who have been fooled by Obama discover the reality, then maybe they will vote for freedom next time.

Freedom is the Promise of Reality.

The Great Depression of 2008

On issue after issue, every time I dig deeper and think for myself, I discover that government is the cause – not the cure, but if free markets are so great, then how have we come within days of another Great Depression? Is it really about free markets vs. regulation? Is it naked short sellers? How big a factor is consumer and business confidence? Do the media and politicians really understand economics? Could there be economic terrorism afoot?

I couldn’t stand it any longer. After a lengthy summer vacation, I had to resume my role as anonymous hero of the people. I had to separate the myth from the reality. I had to find out WTF is going on.

By the end of this article, you will know more than Obama and McCain, and the answers are not what you might think.

Conventional Wisdom

The conventional wisdom just doesn’t add up.

The conventional wisdom is that America has been in recession since late 2007, and that the cause is 20 years of Republican deregulation. Deregulation supposedly caused a recession by causing the prices for oil, steel, copper, etc. to soar, by allowing some greedy people to sell loans to some people who couldn’t afford them, and by allowing some people to more easily bet that stocks will go down (naked short sellers). We are to believe that the Republicans are either lying or incompetent when they said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” as recently as September.

The conventional wisdom is identical to the claims by the Democrats and the mainstream media. Even the Republican Presidential candidates seem unable to offer an alternative explanation.

We can immediately see that some aspects of the conventional wisdom are wrong; whereas, other aspects will require detailed analysis. The wrong aspects of conventional wisdom that are immediately obvious are that there was no recesson. Instead of a long recession, there was a sudden crash. Also, the price of oil, steel, copper, etc. had already fallen substantially by the time the crash began.

As of October 2008, which is about a year after the recession supposedly began, there has been no recession. The overall economy as well as most businesses were doing just fine until a sudden global crash in September. In fact, in mid October, two recession sensitive companies: Intel and Google reported substantial growth that was better than expected. Whereas, a recession is negative growth, Intel reported 12% growth in profits, and Google reported 26% growth in profits after hiring 500 people!

The bigger picture is that there has been a housing bubble, which brought us out of the crash at the end of the Clinton administration. The housing bubble was followed by an economic decline limited to housing, banks, and a few consumers. There was no recession. Then we had a sudden crash in everything. Business sales and employment were strong until the crash and were moderately strong during the crash. The prices of oil, steel, etc. had already come down substantially and continued to fall during the crash and were thus not contributing to the crash.

Sure, about 20% of the poorest homeowners were screwed, and I will explain the real cause, but the bigger question – what is NOT obvious – is how such limited economic problems could suddenly place the entire world in a global depression?

By August 28^th, I had lost 3% of my savings, so how had I lost 53% of my savings by October 10^th?

The conventional wisdom is obviously a myth, so we are going to have to look at a lot of facts and think for ourselves.

Free Markets

The argument for deregulation, free markets, competition, etc. is that although problems (both internal and external) can occur at all levels and at all times, for each kind of problem, some competitors will have made the right decisions to survive while those who made the wrong decisions will fail. Failure makes room for new competitors. Also, competitors can learn from past mistakes. Therefore, while every kind of problem big and small can happen once, free markets continually adapt and improve, and thus a future recurrence of that problem is unlikely. Free markets are thus more likely to serve customers best.

Unlike businesses and private organizations, government is a monopoly that forbids competition and forces us to buy its services, and thus government is less accountable and less adaptable than businesses. Therefore, government can afford to be inefficient and can make the same mistakes over and over again. Government is thus more likely to cause a problem than to solve one.

This is a pretty good summary of the argument for free markets.

Liberal Fascists

The argument for regulation may have been best summarized by Mario Palmieri (“The Philosophy of Fascism”, 1936):

Economic initiative cannot be left to the arbitrary decisions of private individual interest. Open competition, if not wisely directed and restricted, actually destroys wealth instead of creating it. … The proper function of the State in the Fascist system is that of supervising, regulating, and arbitrating the relationships of capital and labor, employers and employees, individuals and associations, private interests and national interests … More important than the production of wealth is its right distribution. Distribution which must benefit in the best possible way all the classes of the nation, hence, the nation itself. Private wealth belongs not only to the individual, but, in a symbolic sense, to the State as well.

I used to think that regulation was the new form of socialism, but then I read this quote, and now I see that the Democrats are not really socialists – but are fascists. Then again, Nazi is short for National Socialists. Perhaps the Nazi’s saw fascism as a new kind of socialism, and I guess their race issues stemmed from nationalism – not from fascism. Therefore, we could accurately refer to the Democrats as socialists or as fascists – but let’s not get sidetracked.

American Capitalism

America does not really have free markets (a.k.a. capitalism). We have the second highest business taxes in the world, a ton of regulations, a load of frivolous lawsuits, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Securities Exchange Commission, etc.

The trend is not purely deregulation either. We now have Sarbanes Oxley, a resurgence of The Community Reinvestment Act, etc.

Of course, we do have some scary deregulation too. For example, we now have naked short sellers.

The Community Reinvestment Act

Everybody knows that banks gave loans to people who could not pay them back, and that this supposedly wouldn’t happen in a free market – which is true. However, we don’t have a free market.

The government instituted the community Reinvestment Act which ordered Fannie Mae to encourage banks to give loans to poor people and minorities regardless of credit worthiness – because that is fair, and socialism is fair if it is anything.

Freddie Mac was charged with converting these subprime loans into Mortgage Backed Securities.

Don’t take my word for it. Wikipedia says:

In early 1993 President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities.^[6] The new rules went into effect January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to target to groups to collect a fee from the banks.

The new rules, during a time when many banks were merging and needed to pass the CRA review process to do so, substantially increased the number and aggregate amount of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers for home loans, some of which were "risky mortgages."

Economist Stan Liebowitz has claimed that banks were forced to loan to consumers who were not credit worthy with "no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; no down payment." The chief executive of Countrywide Financial, the nation's largest mortgage lender, is said to have "bragged" that in order to approve minority applications, "lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit."

What did the Bush Administration do?

In 2003, the Bush Administration recommended that a new Department of the Treasury agency should supervise the primary agents guaranteeing subprime loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congressional support was approximately split along Party lines and the proposal eventually failed.

What did Obama do? Obama worked with ACORN to train activists to pressure banks to make bad loans. Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has complied with CRA – and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups like ACORN. I got this fact from a very revealing article about Obama/ACORN at: Obama helps ACORN set up Homeowners for Failure.

Clearly, the CRA is an example of increasing regulation (and Democrats) contributing to the current financial crisis.

Fannie Mae

To better understand how the government (not Wall Street) is a major cause at the center of the subprime mess, it is helpful to first understand that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are basically and arm of the Democratic party.

Decide for yourself:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have strategically given contributions to lawmakers currently sitting on committees that primarily regulate their industry: The House Financial Services Committee; the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee; or the Senate Finance Committee. The others have seats on the powerful Appropriations or Ways & Means committees, are members of the congressional leadership or have run for president. The top four campaign contribution recipients from 1989-2008 were Christopher Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton – all Democrats.

Fannie Mae also donates millions of dollars every year to partisan organizations like Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, etc.

Apparently, Fannie Mae agrees with me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usvG-s_Ssb0.

More specific to the subprime mess: Former Clinton administration official Franklin Raines (White House budget director) was placed in charge of Fannie Mae from 1999-2004. During which time he changed the rules so that he would collect bonuses based on the total amount of loans given out by Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae therefore gave out record numbers of subprime loans, and Franklin Raines collected 90 million dollars in bonuses.

Fannie Mae has been under investigation for accounting irregularities for years, but the Democrats keep protecting it. In January of 2007, veteran senator Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee (and has been a committee member since 1981). Rather than fixing these problems, he has only defended Fannie Mae. He said on July 14^th, 2008 that although Fannie Mae had been a poor investment up until that time, their future prospects looked very good. All of this is relevant because he has been the most visible and vocal official on all the news channels, and yet he is blaming everyone else – not himself, not Democrats, and not government interference in the market.

Wikipedia says about Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac: “… the government provides considerable unpriced benefits to the enterprises... Government-sponsored enterprises are costly to the government and taxpayers... the benefit is currently worth $6.5 billion annually.” Thus we see that the Democrats have created their own cash cow at the expense of everyone else – Country Last.

Again we see that the problem is government, typical Democrats in Congress, and especially greedy Democrats; whereas, the mainstream media insists that the problem is entirely greedy businessmen, free markets, and Republican deregulation (which has made the markets maybe .1% more free). In the Vice Presidential debate, even Sarah Palin repeated the leftist fallacies!

Sarbanes-Oxley

Part of the Sarbanes-Oxley regulation (instituted to prevent another Enron) requires the use of Mark-to-Market accounting – even in cases such as those instruments created by government institution Freddie Mac known as Mortgage Backed Securities (perhaps an unintended consequence?). Therefore, MBSs are treated just like stock even though there are real houses with their own market values as collateral for them, and thus at the end of a day, if the market value of those MBSs (not the houses) is too low, then a bank may not have enough money to pay the margin call unless they sell enough assets at a huge loss. In July This happened to Merrill Lynch who had to sell 30.6 billion dollars worth of MBSs for 6 billion. The houses alone were worth 25 billion.

Again, we see that government intervention itself has contributed to the current economic crisis.

The Fed did It

As we all know, Alan Greenspan artificially lowered interest rates in a largely successful (although now temporary) attempt to bring us out of the great Clinton.com crash at the end of the Clinton administration, which of course continued into the Bush administration.

Low rates obviously contributed greatly to the housing bubble. Low rates also increased the supply of dollars through increased borrowing, which thus weakened the dollar.

Again, we see that government intervention itself has contributed to the current economic crisis, and guess what – they’re doing it again!

The Cities did it

Perhaps the other main contributor to the housing bubble (in addition to the Fed) is the rapidly growing trend of local government intervention known as Managed Growth. It takes many forms, but Managed Growth typically is where a city restricts permits for new houses and buys up land along its outskirts to prevent development there too.

Note that cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas did not employ managed growth and thus continued to have steady housing appreciation consistent with previous decades. Consequently, housing prices in these cities did not fall (except for a little bit very recently).

Again, we see that government intervention itself has contributed to the current economic crisis, and guess what – they’re still doing it!

It’s Confidence Stupid

By all accounts, the overall problem in the market that has suddenly turned the problems of a few banks and home owners into another Great Depression – is a loss of confidence.

Americans used to give goods and services to others in exchange for pieces of paper because they knew that the Constitution required the federal government to give them gold or silver in exchange for those same pieces of paper. If the government were still following the Constitutional mandate to back US currency with gold or silver, then the dollar could not weaken. It would be impossible. Again, we see that government interference (from way back) as contributed to the current economic crisis.

Now Americans give goods and services to others in exchange for pieces of paper only because they have 100% confidence that others will give them goods and services in exchange for those same pieces of paper.

Americans buy stocks because they have high confidence that others will eventually pay more for those same stocks as long as those companies perform at the expected level. It is only natural that overall those companies in the stock market will increase in value barring some external disaster such as a war, revolution, asteroid strike, terrorist act, etc.

Just a few months ago, most businesses were still having record profits, but if consumers and businesses lose confidence and fear a recession, then they will spend less and pay down debt – which will cause a recession!

Country Last

Maybe businesses need regulation to protect them from a drop in confidence. After all, hasn’t an asshole minority nearly caused another Great Depression by reducing American confidence, which thus allowed speculators, short sellers , etc. to further hurt the economy more than they ever could have alone, which then allowed the asshole minority to further reduce confidence – in a self reinforcing downward spiral?

The motivation of this asshole minority was political gain at the expense of the whole nation – Country Last.

Until recent edits, I had mentioned no names, and yet I would get excuses and defenses for Obama. Curious. I was not expecting that. Apparently, Obama’s fans knew or suspected his guilt before I did and promptly moved to defend him anyway! Of course, now we know that Obama is one of the most guilty among the Democrats and the leftist media who together comprise this asshole minority who would destroy their country to win an election.

Again we see that powerful external intervention (from outside the market) has contributed to the current economic crisis.

The War in Iraq

Holy Crap! I almost forgot the war in Iraq. Clearly, this war is hurting international and domestic confidence in America and the dollar.

Again, we see another example of how government has contributed to the current economic crisis.

Markets Succeed where Governments Fail

On June 3^rd 2008 (the final night of primaries) it was clear that Barack Obama would definitely be the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, so Mr. Obama made the following statement:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Obama may have infinite faith his powers and in the powers of government, but it is now October and of course none of the boasts in Obama’s hyperbole have happened yet – at all.

What did happen was that Russia invaded Georgia, and Obama was utterly powerless to do anything about it. The US government was utterly powerless, and the European Union was just as powerless.

However, another force more powerful than the US Government, the European Union, and even more powerful than Barack Obama … forced Russia to promptly withdraw from Georgia.

In a nutshell, Putin had been acting aggressively, such as flying nuclear bombers to the edge of Alaskan airspace, then he invaded Georgia, and his agression caused foreign investors and businesses to flee Russia. Whereas, the governments of America and Europe failed to influence Russia in the least, market forces brought the conflict to a prompt end.

The conventional wisdom is that government solves problems created by markets, but we now see that markets solve problems created government – such as war.

Conclusion

I know it is hard to stop thinking about those naked short sellers, but the reality is that politicians, government, laws, regulation, etc. are the cause of the current economic crisis. The media and the Democrats call for more government, and no strong voice has countered them, but we now know that government is a problem masquerading as its own cure.

Neither political party has shown the slightest understanding of economics. The Democrats, the media, and Obama blame deregulation, and all John McCain can do is look guilty. I thought he was going to cry at the beginning of the first Presidential debate. PULEEEASE!

I know of precisely ONE politician who understands – Ron Paul.

You won’t hear any of THIS on MSNBC. Does that make Keith Olberman the – WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD? J

Let’s summarize:

The conventional wisdom is that Republicans, free-markets, and deregulation caused the current economic crisis; whereas, the reality is that Democrats, government, and regulation caused the current economic crisis.

1. Alan Greenspan helped cause a housing bubble when he lowered interest rates in a largely successful attempt to bring us out of the crash at the end of the Clinton administration.

2. Managed growth laws by local governments also contributed greatly to the housing bubble.

3. The Community Reinvestment Act caused a proliferation of subprime loans, which implicates Clinton, Obama, ACORN, Fannie Mae, and the whole Democratic Party.

4. The Democratic Party and most of the mainstream media have been working diligently to spread fear and reduce confidence, and fear causes recessionary behavior.

5. The new Sarbanes-Oxley regulations caused the new government mandated Mortgage Backed Securities to be valued at the market price (Mark-to-Market) at the end of each day, which caused banks to go under with little forewarning.

6. The war in Iraq has played a small role, but has reduced confidence in America and the dollar.

7. Markets solve problems, like the Russian invasion of Georgia, where governments are powerless.

The Future

Maybe once the people learn the reality, they will have a greater desire for freedom.

The promise of reality is freedom.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush

Vincent Bugliosi has written a new book whose central argument is that George Bush should be impeached and tried for murder for his role in the war in Iraq. He makes an excellent summary of his argument here: The Prosecution of George Bush. My comments about this article on the leftist Arianna Huffington site are being censored, so I decided to write a more thorough review here.

The Betrayal of America

My first impression of Vincent Bugliosi was his highly dishonest book The Betrayal of America, which tried to build on the widely publicized Democratic argument that the Supreme Court stole the election from Gore and gave it to Bush. His book was riddled with logical fallacies, self contradictions, hypocrisy, rants, insults, and not much else.

The argument itself never had any merit, but it was widely repeated in the media and then later in a popular Michael Moore documentary. Perhaps this is why so many Democrats still believe it to this day. I even saw Obama a few weeks ago saying that he thinks Gore actually won.

My first hand observations after Bush won were that Democrats became really angry, mean, and hostile, which has dissipated only somewhat since then. Also, the effect of this book/argument has been a powerful drug-like feel-good effect for angry Democrats. They don’t see the fallacies, hypocrisy, etc. in Bugliosi’s earlier book, and yet these leap off the page at me.

Lest you think me naïve, I understand that telling people what they want to hear is the surest path to success.

Clearly Vincent Bugliosi had zero credibility with me.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

Now Vincent Bugliosi has written this new book, and it does make some valid points.

On a side note: Some argue that Bugliosi wrote this book because he is so brave and cares so much. However, Bugliosi’s arguments were just as valid 5 years ago when he had just as much popularity and ability to get published, and yet he did nothing. Why did he wait (again) until the vast majority agreed with him? Clearly, he is neither brave nor caring, he is just cashing in (again) on his ability to give the public what they want – and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. That’s just good old fashioned capitalism. He may be an asshole like Henry Ford and many other capitalists, but the lure of profit has motivated him to produce something that provides some value to his customers.

In this book Bugliosi is more honest and admits that he votes for Democrats; whereas, in his earlier book he went to great lengths to convince himself that he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He says he votes for Democrats because the Democratic party is for the little guy and he thus cannot understand how the Democrats in office and in the media are giving Bush a free pass on Iraq. He correctly points out that they are quick to say that Bush lied to get us into Iraq, but they have nothing else to say. If they believe their claim, then why, Bugliosoi asks, don’t they at least call for impeachment, and given the seriousness of their claim compared to the reason Clinton was impeached, why don’t they call for murder charges too? Also, Bugliosi says he doesn’t understand why people hate Clinton as much as Bush.

These are good questions, and he backs them up with some good anecdotes. Perhaps because I am a real non-partisan, I find it easy to answer his questions, and please, do not interpret my explanations as any kind of defense or justification. The actions of Bush and the Congress are profoundly illegal and unhealthy, and thus these perpetrators deserve whatever punishment they get, but they will not be punished.

Allow me to elaborate:

Bugliosi asks why doesn’t a majority want to prosecute Bush for murder:

• We can say that the war in Iraq is illegal, but the government has been violating the Constitution by a growing amount since it was created. The actions of Bush are just a predictable evolution in the government overstepping its authority. To charge Bush with a crime would thus be both unprecedented and hypocritical of other politicians. Perhaps more importantly it would limit the power of politicians in the future, so why would they do that?
• Americans in the military basically signed a statement that they were willing to obey all orders given to them by a politician – even if it cost them their life.
• Republicans and most humans believe that deaths during war somehow don't count as long as they are the result of any activity that can plausibly be called combat.
• Bush is a kind of front man who is not doing this for personal power and glory as much as just going along with his peers and mentors.
• From the perspective of the majority, which are proponents of big government, the war could potentially result in some significant long term benefit for both Iraqis, Americans, and the world in general.

Bugliosi asks why some people hate the Clintons as much as other people hate Bush:

• The Clintons – as far as we know – may not have actually done anything as bad (if you don't count the 800,000 they let die in Rwanda, or the deaths caused by taking sides in the Serbian/Albanian conflict). People who hate the Clintons are convinced they are the kind of people who would kill thousands or even millions (and laugh about it) for petty reasons, such as if it helped them acquire personal power, protect their power, cover up their actions, avoid personal embarrassment, etc.

Bugliosi asks why the Democrats do nothing:

• In spite of Jews for Jesus and Jews for the Preservation of Firerams Ownership, a significant majority of Israelis and Jewish Americans are aligned with the Democrats and are quick to admit (to me anyway) that “Jews are supposed to vote Democrat” and “Democrats are Israel’s best friend”. Naturally and obviously Jewish people (especially in Israel) really like the way America is at war with their enemies (I would too if I were Jewish), this is helping the Republicans steal Jewish support from the Democrats, so why would the Democrats risk losing more Jewish support by stopping the war?
• The Democrats could impeach Bush or force him to veto popular legislation, but they don't because Democrats don't really want to empower the little guy. For example, they are the party that wants to disarm the little guy. What a bunch of hypocrites.

The Future

Future Americans will not be so willing to sign away their life to the whims of politicians. The war in Iraq is giving many Americans an incentive to embrace reality, and embracing the reality of the war in Iraq will lead to a greater desire for freedom, and thus the future may be more free.

Freedom is the Promise of Reality.

Those Polygamists

A polygamist community in Texas has been living that part of the communist dream where the children are raised by the community and may not know who is their biological mother because it is irrelevant. Of course this is unnatural (goes against our genetic programming), but we have brains and can thus override our genetic programming if we choose. In any case, their culture is none of my business.

Then an unidentified woman called the police and said that 14 year old girls there were forced to marry middle aged men. The police responded to the phone call with a military style assault on their homes and took 416 children. The police used assault weapons, armored personnel carriers, body armor, etc.

This was the first time the children had seen a gun.

This incident proved that the government and media are prone to wild speculation and that they will react to their wild speculation by initiating aggression with lethal force in violation of the Constitution and the rule of law.

A huge speculation throughout the news media and law enforcement community is that a few beds on the top floor of the temple – like a dorm – are for “old men” to have sex with their underage brides as soon as they are married in the temple. And yet, the media didn’t have any new information about underage brides, and they had no information at all about whether the beds were used for anything more than the caretakers of the temple. No one familiar with the community had made any such accusation. In fact, the leader of a rival community that split from this one years ago explained that the speculation was absurd, and yet the speculation only intensified in the days following the assault.

The leader of the rival community said on TV that apparently the government finds polygamy less acceptable than adultery, and you know he made the same analogy about homosexuality, but the media must have cut that out to protect us from hearing politically incorrect ideas, which can lead to politically incorrect thoughts. In this case, one might ask whether polygamy is more natural than homosexuality. In fact, if you think for yourself, then you have probably already asked yourself that question – but let’s not get too far off topic.

The mothers have provided articulate answers to any questions that are relevant to the raid.

The news media uniformly say the mothers seem deceitful because they hesitate and choose their words carefully when asked a question, and then seem surprisingly articulate. (Sounds like Hillary Clinton to me.) Of course, they know their words may fuel wild speculation, which may then prompt the government to initiate aggression against them – again.

Bye-Bye Constitution

It is five weeks since the raid, and the government still has the kids locked up and separated from their parents.

The government has forcibly extracted DNA from every child in an attempt to find a justification for the raid, but after 5 weeks of government aggression, apparently the government has nothing yet or it would be making accusations because it certainly did not hesitate to make wild accusations in the media when the evidence consisted of a single phone call from a person the government could not positively identify and who the government knew was lying about some parts of her story.

The Fifth Amendment protects us from being forced to help the government when it attempts to prosecute us, so how can being forced to provide DNA be seen as anything other than the most blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment?

Why is this particular group guilty until proven innocent? That violates several parts of the constitution in letter and in spirit.

If you are one of the many people (Hillary, Obama, etc.) who believe that the Constitution should not get in the way of government goals, then you do not believe in the rule of law, or due process, or the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.

A government attempt to “taint” any American or group of Americans is called a Bill of Attainder, and the Constitution explicitly forbids Bills of Attainder – but this is far beyond a Bill of Attainder.

Culture Assassination

At a minimum, this is culture assassination.

The government is forcing the kids to watch TV, which violates their culture. Who knows what else the government is doing to those kids. After turning them into soda swilling, materialistic, couch potatoes, will they ever again be happy in their community?

Perhaps the government will make sure the children know who their biological parents are, and thus their community method of child rearing may fall apart.

Maybe some of the kids will join a growing part of dysfunctional American cultural tradition and sue their parents, their church, their community …

To defend themselves, every man woman and child will interact directly with a lawyer and indirectly with the lawyers defending their neighbors. We may be talking about hundreds of lawyers. Does anyone believe this will be a positive influence on their culture?

Suppose most of the accusations are true

Suppose that in this obviously very supportive community, some girls get married just 2 or 3 years after nature says they are ready to start having children – like in various other cultures both past and present.

Suppose marriages are arranged – like in various other cultures both past and present.

Suppose a female is not allowed to live in the community any longer if she refuses an arranged marriage. There are no apartments for rent. This community consists only of private homes. Would you force someone in the community let her live in their house? Wouldn’t this be a better way for her to leave than being kidnapped by the government when she wanted to stay in the community?

The examples in this section identified culture that we dislike, but they did not describe objective harm. An example of objective crime would be using physical force or physical punishment to get sex or to prevent a member from leaving the community.

Suppose the worst is discovered

Suppose that after the government spends millions of dollars spying, taking DNA, taking documents, taking computer disks, etc., that eventually the efforts of dozens of government agents determines that a specific person in the community almost certainly did something specific that is objectively bad and not just culture that we dislike.

Suppose the truth is even worse. Suppose two or three people in the community each committed two or three objective crimes.

If the government decided to forcibly learn every last bit of detail about any group of 1000 people, such as you and your neighbors, it is likely they would discover that SOMEONE was guilty of SOMETHING. It is likely that SEVERAL of the 1000 people around you have done SEVERAL very bad things. If you live in the ghetto, then it is likely that dozens of the 1000 people around you have done dozens of very bad things. Perhaps more importantly, it is likely that the bad people around you are a threat to others outside of their immediate community; whereas, this group is no threat to anyone outside their community.

We don’t know yet, but objectively, the polygamist community is likely no worse than any other community, and certainly Americans would not accept a government raid, intimidation, and prolonged detention of 416 children on an ordinary neighborhood. So how is the raid on the polygamist community different than a raid on your community?

The difference is this: Their effort to protect their culture from outside contamination means that we outsiders don’t know what happens there. We were afraid that they do things there that make us feel even more icky that what we already learned from defectors. We were afraid that they do things there that are not just objectively bad but that could be even worse and even more widespread than what we already heard from defectors. We were afraid that a culture we don’t like might actually be better than ours in some ways. We were afraid that their ideas could contaminate our culture. We were afraid that one of our kids might join them. We were afraid that their existence might raise questions like whether polygamy is more natural than homosexuality. We were afraid of the unknown. We were afraid of reality. We were afraid.

Fear of Reality is the Root of All Evil

Now remember – I am an atheist, and I am all about personal freedom; whereas, this polygamist community is all about religion and conformity, so I would pretty much rather die than live there.

However, pretty much every American cares more for religion than I do, cares less for freedom than I do, and is more eager to conform than I am. So other Americans have far more in common with this polygamist community than I do. Why then do I feel no desire to destroy their culture; whereas, so many Americans feel so compelled to destroy this culture? Even the left seems intent on destroying this pseudo-communist utopia.

Apparently religion and conformism come from a dark place – born of fear. And never forget that government is the religion of the left.

Fear of reality is the root of all evil.

Embracing reality is the root of all freedom.

Do I Encounter Censorship?

Absolutely!

The only thing I publish outside of my web site is comments on other web sites. These sites have policies that promise publication to any post that does not violate their guidelines. My comments consist of snippets of my articles or ideas that might appear in my future articles, which NEVER violate guidelines. In fact, the sites where I publish comments have very noble sounding guidelines claiming that they welcome all ideas without reservation because they believe so strongly in free speech. To those sites that censor me I say: HYPOCRITES!

Censorship obviously includes not publishing my comments when they comply with the guidelines, but it also includes very long delays in publishing my comments so that they are way down in the list of comments when they get published and so that the discussion is mostly over.

Two of the worst offenders are Huffpost and Political Hotwire.

Huffpost is the site of Arianna Huffington and is the fourth most visited blog in the world. It censors me about 50% of the time using both censorship techniques – but only when I express an idea that is critical of Democrats or the left. It seems to vary by article. Perhaps each article’s author has some influence over the censorship process. I wondered from the beginning why Huffpost seems so one-sided. Now I know.

Political Hotwire is the worst. After publishing just 4 insightful articles (according to readers) in 8 months, I was suddenly banned forever (for spamming!) by a moderator named “freckles” who makes about 20 worthless posts every day! I will now quote three typical posts in their entirety that were posted by freckles in the last 24 hours.

1. “Really? Seriously?”
2. “If you can't obey the rules of society, tough fucking shit.”
3. “Bigot only has one G”

Freckles even committed libel against me by editing one of my posts and replacing my comment with the text “i spammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm”.

HYPOCRITES!

America Clings to Bill of Rights

While speaking to a group of affluent residents of San Francisco, Barack Obama explained his understanding of small town America:

“Here is how it is: … You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

In spite of Obama’s character flaws exposed by this statement, I still like Obama much more than Bill and Hillary.

Obama’s view is shared by many on the authoritarian left, but it is far from reality. Obama has given us a gift by exposing how the left is so totally out of touch with reality.

Obama defended his statement as accurate in subsequent speeches. Apparently Obama is surrounded only by people who believe this.

I won’t bother explaining why he is so elitist, bigoted, insulting, etc. Many others have done a fine job of exposing his “antipathy” to “small town America”, but others have failed to grasp the true depth of the beliefs Obama, Clinton, and the rest of the authoritarian left.

Obama is way out of touch not just because he thinks Americans “cling” to guns and religion, and not just because he thinks that such values are bad, but because he thinks the reason they do so is that they no longer have faith that government will provide them with jobs. Obama intends to restore that faith. Apparently, Obama thinks that jobs, and pretty much all that is good in life, is provided by the government.

The reality is that small town Americans NEVER had faith in government. Americans have always valued honesty, fairness, freedom, cooperation, community, volunteerism, tolerance, equality, and personal responsibility (self reliance, hard work, paying debts, etc.). These values tend to be very compatible with religion and self defense, and result in little desire for government.

Clearly these are pretty good values to which small town America aspires, and people “who aren’t like them” are people with different values. I think that pretty much anyone in the world would be a little cautious of people who do not have these values. Also, the people of any community should be a little cautious of anyone from outside their community because outsiders have no stake in the future of their community.

Obama is simply mistaken to imply that white Americans dislike black Americans, and it is not even true that white Americans dislike black culture. The reality is simply that white Americans, as well as many black Americans, dislike certain values of black culture. I refer you to Bill Cosby who explains this last point better and with more first hand experience than me.

It used to be a given that people in big cities lacked the good values of people in small town America, but the left has worked diligently for decades to reverse that common wisdom in the mainstream media – not by actually improving the values of anyone in the big cities, but by waging a decades long PR campaign bashing small town America while praising urban America. It is thus possible for those on the left to be surrounded by only people who share this politically correct fairy tale in which the small town hetero white male is the monster.

Small town America gets hope from religion, jobs from businesses, and a sense of self reliance from guns. Obama wants to change all that and make small town Americans feel dependent on government like urban Americans. He honestly believes this will be a good thing for small town America – because it worked so well for inner city blacks.

Obama clearly does not understand or share the values of small town America, but he does accurately sense that their values (freedom, equality, guns, religion, etc.) are a roadblock to his vision of a government solution to every problem (every problem reported by the media) – both real and imagined.

Freedom and equality?

“Guns and Religion”?

That sounds a lot like the Bill of Rights.

Obama is saying that those people in small town America cling to the Bill of Rights instead of government, and that they have antipathy toward any people who cling to government instead of the Bill of Rights.

Hmm…

Perhaps Obama actually understands that this is a more accurate statement of his beliefs, and like any politician, he lacks the balls to directly say what he really thinks. What else can he do if he wants to get elected? Gosh darn it, even those oh-so-noble and enlightened people in San Francisco still kind of like the Bill of Rights.

Obama believes that Americans cling to the Bill of Rights because they no longer have faith that government will provide them with jobs, hope, and all that is good. Obama intends to restore that faith.

Obama has a Dream

Obama has a dream – that one day Americans of all colors can stand up together and say that the Bill of Rights was standing in the way of progress.

The Religion Gene

When we consider our mammalian propensity for hierarchy combined with our human capacity for abstract thought, it should be little surprise that humans are genetically programmed with a tendency to be religious.

Of course, we have brains and can override any genetic programming – but only with conscious effort. We can even override genetic programming when it seems like everyone else disagrees with us – if we think for ourselves – but doesn’t it seem like only a very small minority actually think for themselves, and that the rest would rather die than think for themselves?

Four thousand years of civilization witnessed the ascendancy of Religion. Ignorance enabled religion to seem omnipotent, omniscient, and capable of solving every problem. Millions who disagreed – millions suspected of thinking for themselves – were slaughtered.

And thus the human species made great progress in our effort to cleanse our gene pool of the tendency to question authority – or otherwise think for oneself.

Of course, I’m still here, and you’re still here.

Religions compete not only with non-believers and other religions. Religion also competes with men who rule – with government, and technology has increasingly pushed back ignorance and enabled governments to rule ever larger and more complex kingdoms.

Although the epic war between religion and government may never end – government has won.

The 20^th century witnessed the ascendancy of government. Technology enabled government to seem omnipotent, omniscient, and capable of solving every problem. Those who feel most compelled to be religious – now worship government.

Hundreds of millions who disagreed – hundreds of millions suspected of thinking for themselves – were slaughtered.

And thus the human species made a great leap forward in our effort to cleanse our gene pool of the tendency to question authority – or otherwise think for oneself.

Of course, I’m still here, and you’re still here.

In recent times, traditionally religious people are skeptical of big government and thus we atheistic liberals (libertarians – not leftists) ironically often find ourselves on the same side as traditional religious people against the posers on the left who worship government and fear our freedom.

How could Democrats ever lose?

(another effort to help the major parties improve)

It seems like Democrats should win every election, and Democrats did in fact control Congress for 40 years, and yet they are now frequently trying to explain why they lose.

It was the fault of the conservative media, then a vast right wing conspiracy, then the Supreme Court, and then the swiftboat veterans. It is because not enough poor people vote, and it is because too many poor people vote (you know – those rednecks in trailer parks).

These explanations are not based on facts, but they allow Democrats to avoid blaming their own policies. It seems almost as if the bigger the policy error – the more they ignore it.

Perhaps the single best example is “busing”. This is where the Supreme court in the “land of the free” forced black kids to go to schools in white neighborhoods, and forced white kids to go to schools in black neighborhoods.

But let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s start at the beginning.

It seems like Democrats should win every election.

Unions are blatantly pro-Democrat.

The teacher’s union – and of course government schools – are blatantly pro-Democrat

Hollywood is blatantly pro-Democrat.

Universities are blatantly pro-Democrat.

African Americans are blatantly pro-Democrat.

Jewish Americans are blatantly pro-Democrat.

The news media (NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, and NPR) are blatantly pro-Democrat. They are like a politically correct parody of objective news – not much more objective than the Daily Show or the Cobert Report.

In retrospect it is no surprise that Democrats controlled Congress for 40 years.

So …

How is it that Democrats lost power? How could they ever lose an election?

How can they lose against such poor candidates as George Bush? Twice!? How can they lose against the party responsible for the war in Iraq?

Democrats must have messed up BIG.

Democrats lose because they ignore the reality that many people have observed first hand.

Let’s take a brief look at what many people have observed first hand and thus are able to at least subconsciously know is somehow the fault of the Democrats – in spite of an almost total media black out about any links between policy cause and effect.

We look at the facts not just to bring the cause and effect to a conscious level for those with first hand exposure, but also to inform those too young, too insulated, or who otherwise escaped first hand experience – perhaps since the left has temporarily lost a little of its power beginning with Reagan.

Let’s begin.

When Democrats had more power, they forced housing projects into our neighborhoods, and once they had less power, they only forced developers to build townhouses in our neighborhoods. This is the kind of Authoritarian policy that can make the most liberal person into lifelong opponent of the Democratic Party.

When leftists had more power in America, their judges ordered white kids to be bussed to black schools and vice versa. I remember quite clearly how busing affected my white neighborhood in 1976, which is a story I have NEVER heard in the mainstream media. Within one month of attendance at the school in the black neighborhood (which was just as good as the white schools), the kids in my neighborhood were talking like the black kids, taking drugs, fighting, and stealing. This is the kind of Authoritarian policy (and coverup) that can make the most liberal person into lifelong opponent of the Democratic Party.

In the 1970’s Americans all knew that the leftists in communist countries had more power than the leftists in America, and they used that power to kill tens of millions – of their own people.

Americans had seen enough.

The result of leftist policies supported by the blatantly leftist media was the election of Ronald Reagan and the rise of Conservative talk radio.

In 1992, 12 years after Reagan first won. The Democrats were able to regain the Whitehouse only because they found a politician whose natural political skills were perhaps the greatest I have ever seen.

Clinton won in spite of the fact that leftists had begun to force politically incorrect students to leave universities. They forced employers to fire politically incorrect employees; whereas, employees are free to spew politically correct intolerance and misinformation. Politically incorrect people are guilty until proven innocent. This is the kind of Authoritarian policy that can make the most liberal person into lifelong opponent of the Democratic Party.

However, the average politician does not have Clinton’s political skills, and thus in 1994 Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.

By 1995, alternative sources of news like Fox News and the Internet were growing exponentially, and they became a constant reminder of all those facts we all knew but did not exactly experience first hand and which are purposely ignored to this day by the traditional mainstream media outlets. These facts in a nutshell are that the leftist agenda is to take away our earnings and our means of self defense and grant special priviledges to minorities. These are the kind of Authoritarian policies that can make the most liberal person into lifelong opponent of the Democratic Party.

Why do we care?

It is not the purpose of this article to persuade people to vote against the Democratic Party. It is the purpose of this article to expose the Democratic Party to reality.

The reality is that the authoritarian policies of the Democratic Party cause them to lose, and thus reality should persuade the Democrats to be less authoritarian.

The promise of reality is freedom.

The Truth about 9/11

Apparently there is a widespread conspiracy theory that 9/11 was perpetrated by a small group of powerful Americans. I am somewhat embarrassed to say that I was unaware that such a movement existed until I saw a South Park episode in 2007 that made fun of those who believe it was a conspiracy.

I have always had enormous respect for the creators of South Park, so I immediately concluded that these “9/11 Truthers” were nuts.

Then recently, I watched a documentary someone gave me called Loose Change 2^nd Ed. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about, but it was all about how 9/11 was a conspiracy. I couldn’t stop watching it. It was easily the scariest thing I have ever watched, and it was very convincing because of all the video evidence and first-hand testimony.

Of course, I immediately began doing some follow up research because this was so BIG, and I quickly discovered a review of Loose Change at http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/loose_change/wtc.html. I have concluded that about half of it is just flat out wrong, but I have not found any fault with the rest of it, and thus it is still the scariest thing I have ever seen. A close second for the scariest documentary award is Aaron Russo’s “America: Freedom to Fascism”. Third is “Waco: The Rules of Engagement”. Unlike Loose Change, these other two are almost impeccable.

I would still recommend watching Loose Change as an introduction to the whole subject, but the author himself is simply not credible. Fortunately, I have found two sources that seem pretty credible:

http://911research.wtc7.net

http://ae911truth.org

No other sites on either side of the issue seem as credible as these two. Of course, that is only obvious to me because I have a background in engineering and IT in addition to my skepticism and analytical skills. I realize that other sites on both sides of the issue will seem credible to many laymen.

Every source I have found that attempts to refute conspiracy claims resorts to logical fallacies and name calling. They tend to attack straw men rather than claims made by the two credible sites, deny the existence of testimony, claim that something is technically impossible when they know it is easily technically possible, etc.

The rather blatant deceit by conspiracy deniers is pretty suspicious all by itself, but it is complex enough and technical enough that only a small minority of people would find it as deceitful as I do.

My conclusion is that there is more than enough evidence to justify an independent investigation – which has not happened yet.

WTC 7

Perhaps the single most suspicious fact is that although only two towers were hit by planes, a third World Trade Center tower fell later that day on 9/11 in a manner entirely consistent with a controlled demolition. It was known as WTC 7. It was 47 stories tall, and it was not hit by a plane.

WTC 7 is the focus of the web site “Architects and Engineers for Truth” at http://ae911truth.org. They have produced a credible video presentation that is a must-see for anyone who is serious about understanding the facts.

WTC 7 had three minor fires and was struck by minor debris from the other two towers, which were 300 feet away. In spite of this minor damage, this huge building collapsed about one minute after the last person was evacuated. It began collapsing from the CORE because the penthouse in the top middle of the building sank a half-second before the building began collapsing EVENLY (starting at the BOTTOM floor) into a neat pile of rubble with the outer walls of the first few floors folded in on top of the pile – a perfect demolition.

What did the owner Larry Silverstein mean when he told a reporter on camera, “We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.” http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/pullit.html

The BBC reported that WTC 7 had “just now” collapsed 20 minutes BEFORE it collapsed. Their reporter in New York first cut in and said that it has “collapsed just now”. Then a few minutes later she was standing in front of a window that clearly showed WTC 7 still standing in the background behind her as she repeated that it had just collapsed a few minutes ago. Then just minutes before we would have seen the tower collapse behind her, the BBC lost their feed from New York due to “technical difficulties”.

Critics say that the background was a studio background, and that the time on the archive tapes is off. Fortunately, the entire day is archived here: http://www.archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive. So, I watched the tape in the morning when the first and second planes hit. Their time was not off, and their background was real that morning. Anyone could have invested the time to verify this.

When the NIST finally published its third and final official theory in 2005 on why towers one and two fell, it promised a theory on why tower 7 fell. To date the NIST report on WTC 7 is still unpublished.

Few people knew that tower 7 fell, and far fewer knew that it was rebuilt within one year after it fell.

Other Events of 9/11

The Pentagon was hit in the only section that was renovated to withstand a direct hit by an airplane, and Donald Rumsfeld was safe in his office on the opposite end of the building.

The 3 video sources of the plane hitting the pentagon were collected by the FBI and have never been seen by the public. Although for some reason a few frames that show the seconds after impact were leaked.

The tops of the twin towers fell symmetrically and almost as fast as if there were only air under them to slow their fall, and they fell into dust and little pieces rather than natural large uneven sections.

No debris from the planes that hit the towers was recovered except for a landing gear and an undamaged paper passport of one of the alleged hijackers (Satam Al Suqami), which was found lying on the street.

Events Leading up to 9/11

The World Trade Center Towers were built to withstand a direct collision by a Boeing 707-320B, which is a large 4 engine jet about the same size as and only 20% lighter than the 767s that hit the twin towers.

1999: NORAD began conducting simulations in which hijacked airliners are flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. After the attack on 9/11, it was universally acknowledged that no one ever thought of a terrorist flying a plane into a building.

September, 2000: the Project for a New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank whose members include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz, releases their report entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses." In it, they declare that

... While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein ...

... Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor. ...

June, 2001: The Department of Defense initiates new instructions (Directive CJCSI 3610.01A) for military intervention in the case of a hijacking. It states that for all “potentially lethal” responses, the Department of Defense must get permission directly from the Secretary of Defense. Even an emergency like 9/11 did not qualify for bypassing this new roadblock.

July 24th, 2001: Larry A. Silverstein, who already owned World Trade Center 7, signs a 3.2 billion dollar, 99-year lease on the entire World Trade Center complex, six weeks before 9/11. Included in the lease is a 4 billion dollar insurance policy specifically covering acts of terrorism.
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/background/owners.html

The week before 9/11, put options and call options were dozens and even hundreds of times higher than usual for the select handful of stocks that would suddenly rise or fall in reaction to 9/11. Almost all of this money was collected, and yet no one knows who received the money.

President Bush's brother, Marvin, was Board of Directors at Securacom from 1993 until fiscal year 2000. Securacom, now known as Stratesec, provided security from the early 1990s up to the day of 9-11 for the World Trade Center. Marvin is also the former director of HCC Insurance Holdings which insured parts of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

No steel frame towers had ever collapsed due to fire before 9/11 – or since 9/11 either – except for WTC towers 1, 2, and 7.

Events After 9/11

Osama Bin Laden claimed he was not responsible. Then several months later, a video tape was “found” in which “Bin Laden” confessed to the crimes of 9/11. However, it is obvious that the man in the video is not Bin Laden, and yet the US government used this tape to demand that the Taliban hand over Bin Laden, which the Taliban agreed to do if the US could provide any proof that Bin Laden was guilty.

9 of the 19 dead hijackers were found alive, and they are not charged as suspects because they were clearly not terrorists. At least 8 had been reported as found alive by various new papers within six weeks after the attack.

Shortly after 9/11 one expert said he was certain that the twin towers were demolitions. Then 10 days later, after receiving several government grants/contracts, he changed his story 180 degrees and said he was certain the collapse was caused by fire.

Underwriters Laboratories explained why it was impossible for the fire to have weakened the steel structure of the towers as much as the NIST report claimed, and thus why collapse was impossible. The UL employee who reported this was fired.

The official NIST report contains hundreds of pages of analysis claiming that a partial collapse was possible, but completely omits an analysis of why the towers would have collapsed so entirely, so quickly, and so methodically into such little pieces like a controlled demolition.

Larry Silverstein collected 8 billion from insurers. This was twice the value of destroyed property because he collected 4 billion for each act or terrorism. The city of New York also paid to clean up the debris.

Some Additional Facts of 9/11

There might be some laymen who dispute these facts based on bad journalism, but engineers and other well informed people do not:

• The temperature in towers one and two was never hot enough to melt steel.
• Molten metal was captured on video pouring from one tower just before it collapsed.
• Dark smoke means that the fire was oxygen starved, which also means that it was not as hot as it would have been if it were burning in an open environment.
• People were standing in the hole from which smoke was pouring out of the building.
• NIST decide that its theory of core collapse due to heat was not credible, and that the core did not collapse.
• The core is what provides most of the strength against gravity.
• Each core beam was one solid beam from top to bottom.
• NIST decided that its pancake theory was not credible either.
• There should have been no molten metal in the debris.
• Many eye witnesses saw molten metal at ground zero up to several weeks after the collapse. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/moltensteel.html
• Flight 93 (Pennsylvania) flew straight down into the ground.
• Pieces of flight 93 separated from the plane and fell to the ground miles before the crash.
• It would take two or three weeks to place the explosives necessary for a controlled demolition.

Claims I have not Confirmed

I plan to investigate these claims if I ever have the time, but it looks like most of these are mostly true because I have not found any counter claims for most of them:

• In addition to the BBC, CNN also reported the WTC 7 collapse early.
• About 1 billion dollars in gold and silver stored under WTC buildings was never recovered. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/gold.html
• A security guard in the twin towers said that the bomb sniffing dogs were removed two weeks before 9/11.
• George Soros held a party the morning of 9/11 for the really important people who would have been working in the towers on 9/11.
• The original official report on 9/11 was funded with only $600,000 – less than 1 million dollars.
• I have heard audio of Rudolph Giuliani telling his people to evacuate their command post in a building near the twin towers because they were about to collapse.
• Bin Laden was seen in a Mideast US military hospital by the regular staff as they were being ushered out and replaced with an unfamiliar staff.
• Investigators were not allowed access to the site. Only one company, Controlled Demolition Inc., was allowed access to the site until after Mayor Giuliani had shipped most of the debris overseas.
• Satellite imaging of the debris detected temperatures hotter than the fire could have been before the collapse.
• The NIST report also makes conspicuous and relevant mistakes in favor of its hypothesis. It incorrectly states which type of steel beams were used on the 80^th and 95^th floors, and incorrectly states the trajectory of the plane through the South Tower.
• Flight 93 was first reported to have crashed at 10:06, but the government changed the time to 10:03; however, seismic data, eye witnesses, and radar records confirm that it crashed at 10:06. http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/flight93/index.html
• Witnesses saw a small white plane following a few miles behind flight 93, which crashed over Pennsylvania.
• On December 24^th Donald Rumsfeld said that Flight 93 was shot down in an apparent slip.
• Flight 93 was shot down after the passengers had overpowered the terrorists and regained control of the plane.
• The call a man made to his mother from flight 93 sounded really fake.
• A professor found traces of thermite on a piece of debris donated for a memorial.
• Thermite residue would explain the corrosive effect of the dust from the twin towers’ collapse.
• Witnesses and photos observed beams cut at 45 degree angles with some melted steel around the cuts, which is exactly what would be observed given a controlled demolition employing thermite.
• Beams show deformation that could only be caused by the kind of heat generated by thermite.
• Hard drives salvaged from the twin towers revealed attempts to trade options consistent with a fore knowledge of the attacks. I find this hard to believe.

Understanding the US Constitution

The US Constitution defined a union of the states by creating a government of the whole union and by granting specific powers to that government. It also lists some rights of every individual. Of course, everyone knows this much.

Knowing that the Constitution lists powers of the government and lists some rights of individuals, one should wonder whether it grants the government the power to make any law that does not violate one of those individual rights it lists, or whether it reserves all rights and powers to the people except for those powers it explicitly grants to the government.

Which interpretation sounds like that of the courts and the media today?

Which interpretation sounds like the kind of country you would prefer to live in?

Fortunately, the Constitution directly resolves the issue by stating that any powers not explicitly granted to the government are reserved to the states or to the people. The 10^th Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The 9^th Amendment says:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Unfortunately, the courts do not use the 9^th Amendment and rarely use the 10^th Amendment. I am aware of a few instances where the Republicans have begun using the 10^th Amendment, but Democrats still seem to universally oppose it.

The 9^th and 10^th Amendments are part of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the Constitution three years after the Constitutional Convention so that the people would be willing to ratify it. The reason no individual rights were listed in the original version of the Constitution was because it was already universally accepted that the people had those rights and more, that future generations would also understand this, and that the Constitution simply did not grant sufficient power to the government to violate individual rights.

Background

The Constitution was created at a time when the United States was essentially an Anarchy – at the federal level anyway. The US government that preceded the one created by the Constitution had been created by the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which granted the power to print money, negotiate treaties, and, well, that’s about it. Then again, that was sufficient for the US to defeat the world’s super power – Great Britain.

To be fair, wars at that time were somewhat gentlemanly. This was before the concept of “total war” was introduced in the modern era by Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army. Great Britain could have probably won, but was not willing to kill civilians and destroy American cities, roads, homes, dams, factories, communications, etc. just to maintain control over the colonies. This is why Great Britain lost (when the states declared independence) and why Lincoln won (when the Southern states declared independence).

Therefore, the Articles of Confederation were not tested in the context of “total war” (or weapons of mass destruction either). However, they were tested in the context of maintaining the rule of law in America after the revolution, and the US government seemed too weak to many people. Therefore, each state sent representatives to draft a Constitution which would replace the Articles of Confederation and create a federal government with enough powers to maintain the rule of law.

So…

How did the US government become the omnipotent force that claims the right to do, … well …, just about anything to anyone?

The Preamble

The Constitution was presented with a one-sentence sales pitch called the preamble:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Whereas, the Constitution itself exists in 8 separate “Articles” (chapters), the preamble has no designated location within the Constitution. In other words, it is not article one. Nor does it explicitly claim to be part of the Constitution.

The entire preamble consists of one sentence, which says that the authors believed that their act of creating the Constitution (to Replace the Articles of Confederation) was an act that would “form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

The authors were not saying that the government would accomplish these very general goals. The authors were saying that they themselves were accomplishing these very general goals by limiting the power of government to only those specific powers granted in the Constitution. In other words, the way to accomplish these very general goals is through freedom, and thus one way to fail to achieve these goals would be to create a powerful government.

Whether or not anyone considers the preamble to be a part of US law (like the Constitution), is irrelevant because – unlike the Constitution – it does not actually grant any powers to the government. When the Constitution grants a power to the federal government, it quite clearly states “The Congress shall have the power to …”, and the powers themselves are usually very specific, e.g. “To provide and maintain a Navy”. (Note that the Congress has no power “to provide and maintain” an army. It only has the more limited power to “call forth the Militia”.

The preamble is important to mention because the founders apparently did not foresee that today some Americans (e.g. Democrats) would be such strong advocates of big government, so willing to ignore historical precedent, and so generally dishonest, that they would claim the preamble (all by itself) grants vague and sweeping powers to the government to achieve those goals listed in the preamble.

I think “promote the general welfare” is their favorite. Therefore, when the Democrats take money from some people and give it to others, they refer to this practice as “welfare” in an attempt to imply that it is somehow authorized by the Constitution. In fact, I have observed Democrat journalists and politicians argue that this practice is not merely authorized by the constitution, but that it is mandated by the Constitution.

Article 1, Section 8

I have include the entire text of Article 1, Section 8, which grants multiple powers to Congress:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings;--And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Using its Monopoly to Increase its Power

Like the preamble, Article 1 of the Constitution itself has a few sentences that are rather clear in intent, but whose wording is not sufficiently careful to prevent politicians from claiming that it means something else. For some reason, politicians always interpret the Constitution to grant more power rather than less power to the government. Did I mention that most politicians are lawyers?

The government uses its monopoly (on the power to interpret laws) to increase its power.

Article 1, section 8, grants multiple powers to Congress. One that is vulnerable to lawyers is the first one, which says that Congress has the power to raise taxes, but that this power is limited to the purposes of:

1. paying the debts of the United States
2. defending the United States
3. providing for the general welfare of the United States

The rest of section 8, goes on to list the specific powers granted to Congress that will enable it to "provide for the common defense and general welfare". In other words, those specific powers are the ways in which Congress can spend the tax money that it collects, and they are an additional refinement of the limitations on the reasons for which the Congress can collect taxes.

The term “United States” when used here and elsewhere in the Constitution obviously refers to the United States as the product of the Constitution. The United States is that thing which the Constitution created. The United States refers to the union of the states created by the Constitution and the government of that union created by the Constitution.

In modern conversation, the term United States refers to all that is within the United States such as all people and all organizations. In the Constitution, the term “United States” never refers to the parts of the United States, such as the “states” or the “people”. The people are referred to as “the people”, and the states are referred to as “the states”.

This first power is clearly trying to empower Congress to maintain the product of the Constitution, which is basically the federal government. This power only gives Congress the power to forcibly collect money – and only if necessary to maintain the federal government, the rule of law, etc. It does not give the Congress the power to in any way prohibit or mandate the behavior of the states or the people or to collect money for any other purpose.

In case I’m not being clear, note that the clause “to provide for the general welfare” is not itself granting a power. It is in fact a limitation on the preceding power, which is the power to collect taxes.

Today this power is interpreted as allowing Congress to pass any law that prohibits or mandates any behavior of the states, the people, the organizations of the people etc. for the putative purpose of providing for the welfare of the states, the people, the organizations of the people, etc.

Clearly any conceivable law could be justified by this interpretation. Which leaves only those few Amendments in the Bill of Rights to restrict the power of government. Even worse, the Bill of Rights means whatever the government says that it means.

This is 180 degrees backwards from what the Constitution says and from the intent of the founders.

The Best Place to Live

Everyone I have talked to has heard the latest “news” in the mainstream media about which countries are the best and worst places to live, and that Finland is ranked as the best place to live. Many also heard in the same “news” reports that Finland has a large welfare system.

My initial response was that every time I have looked at the criteria for such a study, it is rigged. For example, suppose a study awarded points for a large welfare state.

My listeners are typically skeptical of my claim because, well …, the “news” is objective by definition, and its members, such as Dan Rather, vehemently deny any bias. They are pretty sure that the “news” would investigate and report any such bias in the study.

Let’s look at the criteria for this most recent claim, which was curiously absent from the mainstream news. In this case, it only took me a minute to do the work that the “journalists” in the objective “news” media failed to do.

The source is an article in Reader’s Digest magazine entitled “Living Green”.

http://www.rd.com/content/greenest-locations-on-the-globe/

The title (even the link) pretty much says it all. The best place to live is the one that the authors think is the greenest.

Let’s confirm this by going well beyond the work of mainstream journalists and actually reading the article. Such diligence confirms that their evaluation is pretty much all about the environment.

Let’s go even further beyond mainstream journalists and think for ourselves. We can look up some stats on Finland itself, and perhaps America for comparison.

A few minutes of research reveals that neither these authors nor the news media consider that Finland has a homogeneous population with almost no diversity or immigration, that public drunkenness is rampant, or that the suicide rate in Finland is more than twice as high as in America (27.2 vs. 11.9).

According to the authors, when choosing a place to live, it seems almost as if a factor more important than all others combined is abundant cold water flowing from mountains (thus producing hydropower, drinking water, low intestinal problems, etc.)

According to the news media, when choosing a place to live, it seems almost as if a factor more important than all others combined is a large welfare system.

Without a doubt the mainstream news media is biased and lazy, but are they biased in a particular direction?

Suppose some guy wrote an article entitled “Living for God”, and it ranked America as the best place to live. Would you expect all the major news outlets to be reporting its conclusions as if they were unbiased and undisputed fact?

Suppose some guy wrote an article entitled “Living with Diversity”, and it ranked America as the best place to live. Would you expect all the major news outlets to be reporting its conclusions as if they were unbiased and undisputed fact?

Suppose some guy wrote an article entitled “Living with Capitalism”.

You get the idea.

You may recall that the members of a recent travel organization reported that in their travels, Americans were the most generous people in the world. This was somewhat widely reported, but within days, the mainstream news reported much more widely that Americans were one of the least generous people in the world based on an abstract study about ratios of income to certain kinds of giving.

Doesn’t the biased reporting we hear from the mainstream American news media sound awfully similar to what we hear from the Democratic Party? – but that is another article…

Sex causes pregnancy – Decision causes birth

Sex causes pregnancy; whereas, a decision causes birth – given that women can end a pregnancy at any time. More specifically, sex may cause pregnancy, pregnancy causes a decision each day for nine months, and birth is the result of the final decision nine months later.

This may seem rather obvious, but no one ever says it – do they?

The issue recently arose on TV for the first time in my recollection. I think it was 11/07/2007. I saw it on the left wing “news” show hosted by Dan Abrams on MSNBC. His guest was Matthew Dubay, whose girlfriend got pregnant after assuring him that it was impossible for her to get pregnant and after he had made it clear that he did not want her to get pregnant. She then got pregnant, decided to keep the baby, and sued him for child support. He lost in a lower court and an appeals court has refused to hear the case. These facts are not in dispute.

The dispute is whether the courts and the law are wrong.

Even the left-wing Dan Abrams said that he felt the court was right in this case and was only wrong when it forced a man to support a child who was the product of his spouse having an affair with another man, which is what Dan said the courts did to him once.

Unfortunately, no party made a compelling argument or even a clear argument. Lets do that right now.

Lets look at the underlying facts:

Only the woman can get pregnant, so only the woman can decide whether to continue to carry the child, and eventually, whether to give birth. As of Roe vs. Wade, the government has allowed women to make this decision.

Sex causes pregnancy; whereas, a decision causes birth – given that women can end a pregnancy at any time. More specifically, in the unlikely event that sex caused pregnancy, the woman decides every day for nine months whether to continue to carry the fetus. Birth is simply her final decision in her long series of decisions. As of today no court recognizes these facts. Courts rule as if sex causes birth.

In fact, courts rule that if a man’s wife has an affair with another man and gets pregnant, then her husband must raise the other man’s child.

Clearly, there is no reason why a man could not decide just as easily as a woman that he chooses to not be responsible for a fetus.

Why has there been no national debate on the whole issue of male choice?

You might be able to accurately call this status quo the opinion of the majority, but you cannot call it a well informed opinion, and you most definitely cannot call it freedom or equality.

Founding Fathers were Democrats!?

I wish Democrats were more liberal and less confused.

Democrats seem especially confused about the Founding Fathers. Recently I read an article by a Democrat trying to claim that the Founding fathers were liberals like Democrats.

The Founding fathers could be described as liberals, but they were nothing like Democrats. They wanted freedom, tolerance, small government, and individual responsibility. Democrats only recognize that they wanted freedom and tolerance, and then the same Democrats fail to recognize that Democrats themselves offer none of these four ideals.

I almost never vote Republican, but I observed first hand that Reagan style Republicans were far more consistent with the Founding Fathers than are Democrats (think of Hillary Clinton). It isn’t even close.

Can you imagine the Founding Fathers trying to disarm the American People!? JEEZ!

The American people are also more consistent with the Founding Fathers, which explains why the people are not as supportive of Democrat positions as the Democrats think they are.

Perhaps the root of the confusion is that Democrats confuse liberalism with the left, and authoritarianism with the right. Whereas, people generally like liberalism, they generally reject leftism. Maybe that is why the left started calling themselves liberals, which is OK with me (today real liberals simply call themselves libertarians). The leftists aren’t fooling anyone but themselves.

Many Democrat positions are leftist and anti-liberal. For example, global warming, government health care, and taxing the rich are leftist positions that are anti-liberal.

Given that Democrats control the vast majority of the media and education system, they would have to be really out of touch to ever lose an election, and yet they repeatedly lose to really poor candidates like Bush, and then they seem bitter and confused about why they lost.

Democrats seem oblivious to the fact that people are instinctively suspicious of the left, but how can Democrats not know that the left has killed way more people in the 20^th century than the right, and what is instinctively scary to voters is how left kills its own people; whereas, the right kills foreigners.

Leftism is scary because it is like a cult. Government is the religion of the left; whereas, religion is the religion of the right – to whom government is just a necessary evil.

I am politically incorrect and an atheist, so both the left and the right cause me to use a pseudonym, but it is the left that causes me to use proxy servers, encryption, and anonymous payments. For example, one of my Russian friends explained that people in the Soviet Union were killed for things they said 20 or 30 years earlier.

The Anthropogenic Global Warming Myth

(updated January 2009)

The global warming controversy is about whether global warming is going to be a serious problem and whether it is being caused primarily by human production of CO².

My natural skepticism on a scale from one to ten is an eleven, and thus I doubted both of these theories. However, my degree of open mindedness on a scale from one to ten is also an eleven, so given the recent widespread alarm, I spent several hundred hours researching this issue.

I am now more doubtful than before.

True believers include the vast majority of the media and scientists and a little over half of the public. Not all true believers are alarmists, but most of the true believers in the media and the public are also alarmists. Although most scientists who are true believers are not also alarmists, they lack the skepticism appropriate for a scientist. Like any true believers who have this level of power, this gang of true believers is guilty of excessive bias, deceit, and bully tactics.

Therefore, as usual, we will have to defy the bullies as well as our own bias, and think for ourselves to uncover the truth.

Temperature Trends

It seems hard to believe that anyone would find the temperature trends alarming, but most people never see this data.

Up until about 1000 years ago, Temperatures were frequently higher than now during this interglacial (period between ice ages) and yet CO² levels were always lower than now. Also note that temperatures frequently rose much faster than their current rate – sometimes as much as 200 times faster – and the cause was never CO². Perhaps this explains why global warming alarmists only talk about the last 1000 years of this interglacial.

(Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

30-50 previous interglacials have occurred since the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch 1.8 million years ago. Temperatures during the last three previous interglacials were even warmer than our interglacial, and CO² levels were always lower than now during those interglacials. The Pleistocene epoch ended with the Younger Dryas event . We are now in the Holocene epoch.

Global warming alarmists (and the media) get their modern temperature measurements from James Hansen, who is a NASA scientist by training, but who is also a very biased global warming alarmist, and yet he controls the temperature records published by NASA, which ironically are collected from ground stations – not satellites. James Hansen hand edits the temperatures he publishes, and he also frequently decides to omit readings from certain ground stations for certain months.

Note that satellite data is much more accurate than ground data. Not only can we get unedited satellite data, but data from ground stations is available from fewer locations, and ground data can be impacted by local human activity such as how cities can grow and envelop ground station locations, thus creating an artificial trend of increasing temperature readings. The only benefit of using ground data is that records go back to about 1860; whereas, satellite data only goes back to December 1978.

We will next look at the satellite data, which in spite of its short record should still be relevant and alarming given the claims by James Hansen, Al Gore, and the media. For example, recent data is relevant because every year since about 1997, alarmists and the media like to say that the last ten years are “the hottest decade in the hottest century”, and sometimes they remember to add “for the last 1000 years”, (but why only the last 1000 years, and why not mention that it was at least as hot about 1000 years ago when CO² levels were much lower?)

1998 was an especially hot year because of a super El Nino – not greenhouse gases. In that year and some subsequent years, the popular alarmist mantra included the additional claim that this is “the hottest year” in the hottest decade in the hottest century. Al Gore makes this claim with 2005 as “the hottest year” in his 2005 documentary, but he was wrong because he was using data from James Hansen, which leads us to another twist.

In 2008, James Hansen had to fix his data because it was so out of sync with the satellite data. Hansen’s original hand-edited ground data showed that recent years were much hotter than the satellite data, which made his original data seem much more alarming. After fixing his ground data to more closely match the satellite record, Hansen’s temperatures were still slightly hotter than the satellite data, which brings us to yet another twist.

If warming were caused by green house gases, then the warming would first appear in the lower troposphere (which is where satellites record temperatures), and the warmer air would eventually cause temperatures at ground stations to rise too – but that is not what is happening according to Hansen’s own data. Hansen’s data makes it look as if ground temperatures are rising first, which makes a more alarming trend when looking only at ground data, but which implies a geothermal cause instead of greenhouse gases. Ironically, if Hansen makes his ground temperatures even lower than satellite temperatures (from the lower troposphere) to support his greenhouse gas theory, then the warming trend would almost disappear and become smaller than rest of the warming trend that we have been experiencing since The Little Ice Age ended around 1850. (The Little Ice Age was a 500 period of low solar activity and superstorms.)

Now let’s look at the satellite data from December 1978 through December 2008 for the Northern Hemisphere, and note that this data is twice as alarming as it should be because it is not long enough to contain the warm period in the 30’s and the cold period from 1945 through 1975. If this graph also included those periods, we would see that temperatures are rising about half as fast as this graph would imply.

If anyone is interested, they can download this data directly from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and then they could import it into Excel and generate these graphs like I have done here.

Hmm …

In spite of omitting the warm period in the 1930’s and cold period from 1945 – 1975, this graph is not very alarming is it, and it is especially not alarming considering that this increase is consistent with the temperature increase since the end of the little ice age in 1850 (and yet most greenhouse gases have been generated since 1950). Also, note that temperatures have been falling in recent years.

Although, the Northern Hemisphere saw no alarming temperature increases, perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hmm…

The Southern Hemisphere is even less alarming than the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in the Tropic rather than the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.

Hmm…

The Tropic data is even less alarming than the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in a land known only to James Hansen and Al Gore.

Opinion Trends

Note that the media, government, and scientists have alternated every few decades between predictions of a coming ice age and predictions of global warming.

1895 – A New York Times headline read, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again”.

1896 Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, suggested that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal would enhance the earth's greenhouse effect and lead to global warming.

1923 – Time Magazine reported, “The discovery of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of the glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age.

1924 – The New York Times ran stories about “A New Ice Age”.

1931 E. O. Hulbert published a calculation showing that doubling or tripling the amount of CO² in the atmosphere should increase the surface temperature by 4 and 7 degrees respectively.

1933 – The New York times reported on “The Longest Warming Spell since 1776”.

1934 – The warmest year from 1900 – 2008.

1938 Guy Callendar argues that CO² greenhouse Global Warming is underway.

1939 – Time Magazine told its readers that, “Weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.

1945 – 1975 The earth was unusually cold.

1957 Time Magazine printed an article titled, "One Big Greenhouse." It claimed that if surface temperatures would increase 1 to 2 degrees, secondary effects may occur. Possibly the melting of the ice in Greenland which would flood the earth's costal lands. Also, that the sea temperatures would increase causing them not to hold the concentrations of CO² as they previously did and further the amounts of CO² in the atmosphere.

1974 Time Magazine reported the coming of Another Ice Age and the language was about as alarmist as the mainstream media reports of Global Warming today. Time reported a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit drop in temperatures since the mid 1940’s. Public service announcements were aired in between cartoons to repeatedly warned kids in America about The Coming Ice Age.

1975 – The New York Times declared, “A Major cooling Widely Considered to be Inevitable”

1981 NASA scientist James Hansen claimed that global warming was occurring faster than predicted.

1988 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was Established by the United Nations Environment Program and World Meteorological Organization. The IPCC's first report found that the planet had warmed by 0.5 degrees C. in the past century.

1998 – A super El Nino causes weather disasters and the second warmest year on record after 1934.

2001 – Time Magazine reported, “scientists no longer doubt global warming is happening.”

2005 Al Gore produced the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, which polarized the issue because it seemed so compelling but was mostly based on inaccuracies and exaggerations.

2007 “Six Greenpeace activists vandalized the chimney of the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, England, painting graffiti that cost £30,000 to remove. At their trial for causing criminal damage, the defense presented arguments that the six had a lawful excuse to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. … The jury accepted the lawful excuse argument and acquitted the activists of causing criminal damage.” James Hansen flew to England to testify in their defense.

2007 The fourth IPCC report said that the planet had warmed 0.74 degrees C. since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

2008 Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize because his documentary had created so many true believers in Global Warming.

2008 NASA scientist James Hansen told NPR’s Dianne Rehm that chief executives of fossil fuel companies should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. He also explained that the climate change occurring now is 1000 times faster than ever before. Apparently Hansen is unaware that the current warming trend is actually 50-200 times slower than the abrupt warming trends (Dansgaard-Oeschger events discovered in the 1980’s) that occurred about every 1470 years throughout the last ice age from 120,000 years ago until 12,000 years ago. Hansen is thus exaggerating by a factor of 200,000 or 20 million percent.

2008 Global warming alarmists retreated. Perhaps in response to the recent cooling trend, the theory of anthropogenic global warming with its specific prediction – warming – morphed into the unfalsifiable (and thus non-scientific) theory of anthropogenic climate change where every type of climate change is attributed to human activity. This is about as scientific as the theory that, “Everything that happens is God’s will.” Neither is falsifiable.

2008 Global warming alarmists retreated. Alarmists had already retreated from the bully claim that “everyone agrees” and adopted the elitist claim that “every scientist agrees”. Now they have retreated to the pathetic claim that “every climatologist agrees” – as if only climatologists can think. Of course, climatologists are the field of experts that warned us of the coming ice age in the 1970’s, so if I were an alarmist, I wouldn’t want to put all of my eggs in that basket.

2009 The vast majority of American scientists have a new boss, Mr. Obama, and he is a global warming alarmist, so scientists with a different opinion are now going to experience even more pressure to conform.

Current Opinion

About half of Americans believe that humans are causing the earth to warm about 1000 times faster than ever before. Nearly as many believe that in just a few decades – or at most 100 years, the result will be a global apocalypse.

The belief in Anthropogenic (human caused) Global Warming is not evenly distributed among Americans. For example, there is a large and growing Gap between Democrats and Republicans with Democrats becoming more convinced and Republicans becoming less convinced. I can also add from personal experience that libertarians have always been skeptical, that the mainstream media have always been true believers, and that anyone climbing the corporate ladder, social ladder, or political ladder is much more likely to believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming whether they are a Democrat or Republican because they are more vulnerable to peer pressure.

In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican nominee for President of the United States assured us that anthropogenic global warming was a very serious problem that they would address as President. Not all candidates were true believers, but the winner from each party was a true believer.

When Barack Obama won the 2008 primary, he said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." I wouldn’t bother repeating this if Obama had been appropriately ridiculed for this ludicrous and narcissistic statement, but in fact this statement seemed to improve his image and increase his support in America and around the world.

Clearly, to the majority who believe this, anyone who stands in the way, such as a global warming skeptic, must be a very bad person indeed, which helps explain why those who disagree are bullied, shunned, fired, and publicly ridiculed. However, the depth of knowledge of the vast majority of those who support this kind of persecution is quite shallow and hence they persecute because of their bias, and their bias is the result of their desire to conform to peer pressure.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of all people today assume that the obvious way to solve a big problem like Anthropogenic Global Warming is a massive increase in government control of human activity. However, the reality is that global warming is not a significant threat and is not primarily caused by humans. Therefore, the reality of global warming is the antidote to this Orwellian future.

Global Warming is one of the best examples of why I say: The Promise of Reality is Freedom.

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the reality of Global Warming was exposed as nothing more than a religion with its own apocalypse prophecy and with the vast majority of its followers having blind faith. This is the moment that began to restore the image of reality and freedom as the last, best hope on Earth. J

Although Global Warming has all the characteristics of a religion with its own apocalypse prophecy, the bigger picture is that authoritarian leftist ideology (also known as government) is the dominant religion today, and its prophets have foreseen the apocalypse – and it is Global Warming.

Leftist Agenda

The leftist agenda says that it is unfair for Americans to eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and give away huge sums of money – thus resulting in global fairness.

Global warming “science” says that we are destroying the earth to produce meat, drive cars, drive bigger, safer cars, etc. – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and spend huge sums of money to combat global warming – thus resulting in global fairness.

Even Obama said in May, 2008, “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times. … That's not going to happen.” He also said, “When you spread the wealth around, it is good for everybody.”

I remember in 1976 when my teacher at my government school explained how it is unfair for Americans to eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc. She explained that it was primarily American excess, waste, and greed that was causing The Coming Ice Age. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and spend huge sums of money to combat The Coming Ice Age – thus resulting in global fairness.

Time magazine, the New York Times, and other media warned of The Coming Ice Age around 1975, and commercials placed in between cartoons warned kids repeatedly about The Coming Ice Age. Why do you think the media today never mention how wrong they were in the 70’s? Why do you think the media today are so certain that Anthropogenic Global Warming is such a huge threat? Could the mainstream media have a leftist agenda?

I do not think it is a coincidence that global warming directly supports the leftist agenda. Nor is it a coincidence that the authoritarian left champions “science” that directly supports a massive increase in government control of human activity.

Given what the left does when it has more power, and given the many past lies, hypocrisy, and bully tactics used by the left (e.g. the media) to promote any science that supports a leftist agenda, we should always be suspicious of a leftist agenda and any science that supports a leftist agenda. Global warming is such an obvious example of a leftist agenda, that it is tempting to dismiss it summarily. However, in spite of the many lies and bully tactics of the authoritarian left to promote the idea of anthropogenic global warming, could their conclusion be right?

I would not be impressed if 100% of leftists and journalists believed something – because of their history (in my lifetime) of exaggeration, conformism, and authoritarianism. I would still be skeptical if 97% of scientists agree. However, given the high stakes, the complexity, the claim that 97% of scientists agree, and that I think we are still at the early stages of uncovering the truth, I decided it was time to do some independent thinking on this topic – just in case those exaggerating conformist authoritarian leftists were on to something.

Fluorocarbons

At about the same time scientists were warning us about The Coming Ice Age, there were also commercials between cartoons that repeatedly warned kids about how fluorocarbons were going to destroy the ozone layer.

Holy Crap! They were right! There were many skeptics at first, and those few industries that would suffer financially paid scientists to come up with alternative theories and generally cheated to generate public doubt – until the ozone hole surprised everyone (including alarmists) when it appeared over the Antarctic in 1985.

In spite of the superficial similarities between the fluorocarbon problem and the theory of CO² induced global warming, they are actually very different, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that because one theory was true that the new theory has any validity whatsoever. They are in no way connected, and new scientific theories are still frequently proven wrong, and they always will be. That is how science works – most theories are wrong, and we perform tests to find out which are right.

Whereas, the fluorocarbon theory was a chemical reaction; the theory of CO² induced global warming was a physical reaction (thermodynamics). Whereas, the predicted result of the fluorocarbon theory was dependent on few variables with limited possibility for inaccuracy and with low probability for the discovery of variables whose relevance was previously unknown; the predicted result for the theory of CO² induced global warming is dependent on many variables with significant possibility for inaccuracy and with huge probability for the discovery of variables whose relevance was previously unknown.

Al Gore Discredits Global Warming

In 2007, Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace prize for his role in increasing the number of true believers in Global Warming.

Ironically, the reality is that Al Gore has done more to discredit Global Warming among mature and thoughtful people than any one person.

Al Gore was a big joke even to fellow Democrats before his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, and now he is a rock star among the more conformist Democrats. It is almost as if that were his goal. Clearly, accuracy and integrity were not his goal.

Exaggerations and lack of critical review by the media, politicians, and some scientists already make any mature and thoughtful person assume at first that Global Warming is probably a non issue. However, by embracing Al Gore as their champion, global warming alarmists have only increased doubt among mature and thoughtful people. Nevertheless, to this day, Gore’s many specious claims are cited as scientific dogma by the mainstream media.

Gore’s past hypocrisy and exaggerations make any mature and thoughtful person assume he is lying. His hypocrisy and exaggerations about Global Warming in particular confirm that he is lying.

How betrayed did you feel when you found out that Al Gore has three houses, that one is over 10,000 square feet, that he doesn’t exercise the green energy option offered by his local power company, that he is addicted to private jets and limousines, and that even George Bush exercised the green energy option offered by his local power company. (BTW, I use hydro power and natural gas, so even a skeptic like me is more green than Al Gore.)

The US Media ignored that a court in the U.K. listened to expert testimony from both sides and ruled that school kids must be informed of the biggest inaccuracies identified by the court before they can watch “An Inconvenient Truth” in school, or else teachers would be guilty of political indoctrination. Why would the US Media bury this story?

Ice Core Data

The ice core data was the cornerstone of the argument for anthropogenic global warming, but has become the cornerstone of the argument against it.

Gore stood in front of a giant graph of ice core data proving that temperature correlated nicely with the CO² levels for the last 600,000 years. However, Gore offered no explanation for why CO² levels would have risen or fallen before humans, which should have prompted Gore to examine the data more closely. If Gore had actually looked at the data more closely, he would have noticed several inconvenient truths. First, temperatures were higher than now many times in the past, and yet CO² levels were lower than now. Second, many times in the past, the Earth warmed as much as 12-15 degrees Celsius in as little as 10 years, which is about 200 times faster than the current warming trend (which began around 1750). Third, and most important, the temperature increases actually preceded the increases in CO². What Gore failed to explain was that when temperature increases, the oceans release their gases (like a warm Coke), and the Oceans contain 50 times more CO² than the atmosphere.

If temperature was driving CO², then what was driving temperature?

Note that Gore omitted a third graph showing that insolation (the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth) also correlated nicely with temperature and CO² from the same ice core data. This diagram was created for the journal Nature in 1999 by scientists from France, Russia, and the US using the same ice core data that Gore used.

(Source: Climate Sanity)

Obviously, neither temperature nor CO² levels can drive sunlight, but sunlight can drive temperature, which can then drive CO².

Just because sunlight drove temperature, which drove CO², doesn’t disprove the fact that CO² absorbs infrared – in a lab, but what about in the real world where there are far more variables?

Consider that higher temperatures caused the oceans to release CO², but that if more CO² in the atmosphere raised temperatures further, then wouldn’t that have caused the oceans to release more CO². Wouldn’t there have been a runaway feedback effect until the oceans had released all of their CO²? So, why didn’t this feedback effect happen, or if it did, why was it so insignificant, and why did it stop as soon as it had begun? Clearly, for reasons we may not yet know, more CO² in the atmosphere has a negligible impact on global temperatures – far less than predicted solely by CO²’s ability to absorb infrared – in a lab.

Recent Temperatures

Gore said , “Flooding in Asia, Mumbai, India this past July (2005): 37 inches of rain in 24 hours, by far the largest downpour that any city in India has ever received.” How does he know that? Records probably go back maybe a few decades at most.

Gore said we have temperature records going back to the Civil War, “if you look at the 10 hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record, they have all occurred in the last 14 years. The hottest of all was 2005.”

Whereas, the ice core data goes back 600,000 years, we are now at CO² levels about 33% higher than any time in that data. As improbable as it seems, could different variables be more relevant now, and in a way that supports alarmist predictions? Such speculation is highly improbable, which is probably why no scientist has made such a claim. Therefore, we already have enough data to know that the warming trend of the last 160 years (since the little ice age) is both small and just an anomaly driven mostly by something other than CO², and that any extent to which it is driven by CO² will soon be cancelled out by whatever cancelled out all those previous rises in CO² in the ice core data.

Just in case anyone is still worried that the slight warming trend for the last 160 years might be alarming because of some as yet undiscovered factor, consider some additional facts:

• 160 years is not statistically significant compared to 600,000 years.
• The overall warming trend has been increasing at a slow and consistent rate since 1750, and yet 90% of anthropogenic CO² entered the atmosphere after 1970.
• Gore and other alarmists use NASA’s GISS temperature data from ground stations.
• GISS data has been manually adjusted by James Hansen.
• The ground stations allowed to be part of the data each year are hand-picked by James Hansen, and he often omits many stations.
• Ground stations are inherently less accurate than satellite data.
• The two sources of satellite data (from UAH and RSS) agree with each other, but disagree with Hansen’s GISS data.
• James Hansen is a scientist at NASA, but he is also a highly political global warming alarmist.
• Even James Hansen’s data shows that Temperatures increased from 1862 to 1877, decreased from 1877 to 1917, increased from 1917 to 1944, decreased from 1944 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998, and decreased from 1998 to 2008.

Kilimanjaro

Gore claimed the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are melting because of anthropogenic global warming. He showed a photo from 1970, 2000, and 2005. Each photo showed substantially less ice than before; however, the 2005 photo was from a different side of the mountain – very misleading.

Most scientists know that global warming is not the cause for the melting ice on Kilimanjaro. For example, one such team of scientists (Motes and Kaser) wrote an article in American Scientist in 2007 named The Shrinking Glaciers of Kilimanjaro: Can Global Warming be Blamed?. This article explains that the temperature is never above freezing and the glaciers of Kilimanjaro have been retreating for at least 100 years because of reduced snow fall and increased evaporation. Both are caused by lower humidity and the evaporation is also driven by an increase in solar radiation. A different article theorized that the cause of lower humidity is that the local population has been clearing the surrounding vegetation.

Hurricane Katrina

Gore explained that warmer waters increase storm frequency and intensity, and that 2005 saw record numbers of tornados, typhoons, and hurricanes. When talking about Katrina specifically, he claimed that we should have been prepared for Katrina because “there had been warnings that hurricanes would get stronger.” You can verify yourself that books were published in 2005 with titles like “The Coming Age of Superstorms” – after Katrina. He then explained how Winston Churchill warned about the rise of Nazi Germany, and how no one listened to him either. He then explained how he actually won the 2000 Presidential election.

Clearly, the point Gore wants the viewers to take with them is that Global Warming caused Katrina, that he ac