Monday, March 30, 2009

Hannan For President

If you've been paying attention, I hardly need to say more do I? As has been said, if it's OK to have a Brit as president (... sounds of founding fathers rolling in their graves ...) can't we at least have a good one???

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Are YOU a Rebel?

I found the message in this email that I received today (see below) particularly interesting. I am a member of the Revolutionary War Veterans Association. My wife and I will be attending an Appleseed rifle shoot in Douglas, WY in May. So I get these emails regularly. This one is for an online streaming radio show this week. Feel free to use the info below to join in.

But what I found particularly significant, is that we "rebels" - and yes, 9.12 Project members: By definition you are all rebels too - is that we, through our actions to call attention to what is going on around us, are carrying the load for a very significant part of society. Because WE are the ones who have the courage and are willing to do the work to stand up for our rights.

Fellow 9.12ers - I salute you all, because the message below is a testament to your own courage, and what all of you are doing to try to get our country back on track.


---------------------------------------
The Rifleman Radio Show

Please Join us for The Rifleman Radio Show, on Appleseed Radio Tuesday night at 7:00PM Central time.

You can listen in on your computer at,

blogtalkradio.com/AppleseedRadio

You can also call in to listen at, Call-in Number: (347) 308-8790


Are You a Rebel???

Are you? Are you doing anything to protect your rights and freedoms? Because if you are, you are quite probably a Rebel. A Rebel is someone who goes against the norm, who does things that no one else would consider doing. 99.9999% of Americans today are doing NOTHING to protect their rights and freedoms and are oblivious to any threats to their rights or themselves. So, if you are doing something to protect and defend your rights, liberties and freedoms, then you are definitely going against the norm and you must be a Rebel. Congratulations, you are carrying the load for millions of your fellow Americans who are floating about lazily in their pools that are filled with apathy and laziness. If you are not a Rebel, what are you waiting for?

-Scout

Rifleman Show Host



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Sunday, March 29, 2009

Today's Tea Party History Lesson

Here's something you may not know:

Disgruntled American colonialists, in response to Great Britain’s tax on tea, dumped about forty-five tons of tea into Boston Harbor during what’s called the Boston Tea Party, 1773; a pivotal event leading into the Revolutionary War that triggered birth of the United States of America.

Tensions had been brewing for ten years prior to the Tea Party, based on the theme of taxation without representation. Because colonialists refused to pay high taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts of 1767, the British rescinded all taxes except a tax on tea, then made certain the taxed tea sold for a lower price than imported tea colonists could buy on the black market from growers in Holland. The ploy was that colonialists would purchase that tea, and in so doing endorse Britain’s right to tax the colonies. But the colonialists didn’t bite.
So the founders were driven by principle rather than just immediate narrow economic self interest in case you needed concrete proof.

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Not Letting The Treasury Secretary Off the Hook

Now THIS is what I want to see more of. This Congresswoman (Michele Bachmann) wouldn't let the Treasury Secretary off the hook and kept asking about the Constitutionality of his decision.

What was even more interesting is the way Geithner tried to equivocate and sidestep the actual question. The video speaks for itself.



The reason I know this Congresswoman is on the absolutely right track is because of the simple fact that Keith Olberman picks on her every chance he gets. That in itself means that the hard-core liberals are worried about someone who uses principles and the Constitution to make their decisions.

And watch the final moment of the video: I'll bet you a million dollars Barny Frank would not cut off someone else who ran over their time if they weren't bringing out the truth that way Bachmann was.

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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Trust Me, It's Not A Good Thing

Here's what I got in my work email just a bit ago from a fellow employee:

Hello,

Not sure how many people will check their e-mail today.  But I just became aware of Earth hour tonight at 8:30 pm.  Across the world people will turn off all non-essential lights in a symbolic gesture for reducing our ecological impact on the earth.  (8:30 local time in each timezone.)  I thought this was really cool.

http://earthhourus.org/

This is the kind of silly, uneducated impulsiveness that we're up against changing.  Why am I so harsh on this?  Because this is where it leads to:
Welcome to North Korea at night.  Trust me, it's not a good thing.  And BTW, if there ever was a lab experiment that unequivocally proves the superiority of freedom and capitalism over tyranny ... well ... you're looking at the single picture summary.

Think I'm being overly concerned?  Perhaps you missed this story?  One of Gordon Brown's leading advisors says the U.K. population must fall to 30 million to be sustainable?  Well, North Korean style death camps would be about the only imaginable way to get there.  Or maybe he thinks he can click his heels and 50% of the British population will just teleport out?

And maybe you've not heard of VHEMT?

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Keynesianism Isn't Economics

Schiff has another great short tutorial on Austrian economics as well as some pithy investing advice.

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The Lost Keynes On "Bernanke Bucks"

If Obama (and Bush) and Bernanke insist that Keynes is the solution then perhaps they should read him more closely including this quote:

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
Right now, in lieu of dollars, our Federal Reserve is in the midst of printing trillions of “Bernanke Bucks”. I hesitate to call them dollars, even though they’re similar in their look and feel. But in essence they are worth little more than the paper they’re printed on.
Have you ever wondered why a dollar's worth of goods in the early 1800's only cost about sixty cents by the late 1800's but a nickel's worth of goods in the early 1900's now costs a dollar? I'll give you a clue: the Federal Reserve private banking oligopoly was created in 1913.

You have no idea how much you're really being taxed -- including via inflation -- and how much of your money is going to your various overlords. And note that Treasury won't detail where the AIG and other bailout moneys are going -- because AIG for instance is a cardboard cutout to send money to European and Wall Street banks.

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Friday, March 27, 2009

What we have been waiting for!

It was just two weeks ago that Glenn Beck started the 912 Project. Since then you may have heard many complain on his radio show and 912 Project web site that people were not focused or were looking for some direction. Well, there is a new National 9-12 project website. These individuals have volunteered to lead and donate their time and money. They have spelled out a clearly defined purpose which I for one would be proud to follow. Below, is a sample of what the National 9-12 Project is about and web link. Please take a look at what they have laid out. Lets all get behind this movement to take back our country.

Duplication Is The Key:
It is critical to the 9 12 project as a whole, as a nation wide effort to act, move and speak as one body and one voice. We all have our pet issues that range from gun control to abortion. We must put our singular purposes aside and address the source of all of our grievances.With a national effort with a national, state and local leadership all bound together with the same purpose the same goals, we can all duplicate our efforts down to the last detail. We will all be holding the same signs, chanting the same words and marching in the same direction.The danger we face if we fail to unite as a national effort is, that if the hundreds of small groups that are protesting continue to go off in every direction confused and not quite sure what to do and when to do it, before too long the passion will fade and discouragement creeps in. And that is what "they" want. It may feel good being out on the street waving flags and holding signs, but in reality is it going to accomplish as much as a nationally supported protest? No it won't. Imagine what we could do "if" we all supported each other! WE MUST JOIN FORCES AND DUPLICATE!
http://www.thenational912project.com/home.html

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Are You "Fed" up Yet?

I am talking about the Federal Government. Once again our supposed leaders are talking about saving our country, our way of life, by spending an unimaginable amount of money. The amount of zeros behind the figures that the White House and Congress toss around so glibly are enough to make you think you are hearing how many miles there are between our solar systems. The “Hope and Change” that many voted for—not me—has turned out be nothing but hypocrisy and duplicity. Our representatives, Republican and Democrat, rant about saving our economy is simply empty promises and lies. Like Diogenes holding the lantern in darkness searching for the last honest man. It is a struggle each day to find an honest politician who says what he means and means what he says.

I am not an economist, an accountant or a constitutional scholar but simple logic tells me that things are going wildly out of control. Every day our government seems to find new ways to waste money and deprive us of our freedoms. Yet today we talk of spending another 2 trillion dollars. Where is the money coming from? Our government has no money, they need to print, borrow or tax in order to subsidize all these bailouts, budgets and entitlement programs. People in private business are losing their jobs and businesses large and small are closing their doors or moving overseas due to taxation or overregulation. But, Government— they are hiring and growing exponentially. We are being forced to support more and more government when it makes nothing and produces nothing except more of itself.

Capitalism is what made our nation great, how is that we have a country rich in farm land and bursting with unlimited natural resources yet we cannot use it? Our schools, once considered the laboratory of individualism and inventiveness now teach our children nothing of significance.

So I say that I am “Fed” up. What needs to happen is a rebirth of what our founding fathers brilliantly crafted. It was based on principles and values not empty promises, lies, hypocrisy and duplicity. We need to seek out leaders who tell the truth and are truly interested in returning our government to the people. We need to return government to protecting our borders and our liberties. We need to speak out against all who seek to tear down and defile all that has made this country the greatest on earth. The future of our children and our liberty is at stake—We Will Not Fall.

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Since Now A British Citizen Can Be President...


... this is one I would give serious consideration to voting for ;)

(Cross posted)

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

What "Responsible" Financial Management Looks Like

BUSH DEFICIT VS. OBAMA DEFICIT IN PICTURES.



Lord help us all.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Deeper Hole: Inflationary Depression

If you're not getting it, Peter does an outstanding job in 7 minutes. I can't recommend it enough.

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The Braying Yahoos

George Will is simply too good to miss this morning. RTWT. Basically, he's calling the Congresscritters themselves "toxic assets". No kidding. Some choice bits after the "Read More" in case you need some enticement before hitting the link.

Tidbits:

With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."

Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts.

...

The Federal Reserve, by long practice rather than law, has been insulated from politics in performing its fundamental function of preserving the currency as a store of value -- preventing inflation. Now, however, by undertaking hitherto uncontemplated functions, it has become an appendage of the executive branch. The coming costs, in political manipulation of the money supply, of this forfeiture of independence could be steep.

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Monday, March 23, 2009

The (Challenge Of The) Cycles Of History: Consolidation And Corruption

Remember what you learned about democracy from this video? Here's some more relevant food for thought about the 9.12 challenge -- including more from the indispensable Jefferson if you follow through and RTWT (click on the "Read More..." link below that is). The trick is whether we can interrupt the cycles of history:

Writing in 1943, when the aggrandizement of power by even the relatively liberal American government was at its height--and when foreign governments like the USSR and the Axis powers were completely totalitarian--Nock saw no other prospect for the West except for a continuing collectivization as mass-men continued to use government to transfer the wealth of the most productive in society to themselves. Though he does not mention the quote, Nock would have very much agreed with Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813). the Scottish jurist and historian, who said that :
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.

Nock understood a truth that is nearly unspeakable now, in the wake of the disastrous era of Big Government, that although the West in general pays great obeisance to the idea of Freedom, and America in particular is, at least theoretically, founded upon the primacy of the idea, most people (the mass-men) do not give a fig about it. And since in a democracy the masses will wield power, the prospects for the West appeared pretty bleak :
Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told. He takes what is allotted to him, obeys orders, and beyond that he has no care. Perhaps, then, this is as much as the vast psychically-anthropoid majority are up to, and a status of permanent irresponsibility under collectivism would be most congenial and satisfactory to them.

Given a just and generous administration of collectivism this might very well be so; but even on that extremely large and dubious presumption the matter is academic, because of all political modes a just and generous collectivism is in its nature the most impermanent. each new activity or function that the State assumes means an enlargement of officialdom, an augmentation of bureaucracy. In other words, it opens one more path of least resistance to incompetent, unscrupulous and inferior persons whom Epstean's law has always at hand, intent only on satisfying their needs and desires with the least possible exertion. Obviously the collectivist State, with its assumption of universal control and regulation, opens more of these paths than any other political mode; there is virtually no end of them. Hence, however just and generous an administration of collectivism may be at the outset, and however fair its prospects may then be, it is immediately set upon and honeycombed by hordes of the most venal and untrustworthy persons that Epstean's law can rake together; and in virtually no time every one of the regime's innumerable bureaux and departments is rotted to the core. In 1821, with truly remarkable foresight, Mr. Jefferson wrote in a letter to Macon that 'our Government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first [i.e., centralisation] and then corruption, its necessary consequence.'
Have you figured out that you're living it yet?

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Sunday, March 22, 2009

"Meltdown" Book Offer

A deal you can't refuse: I have ten copies of Tom Woods' "Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse" that I'm giving away -- the offer's posted on my blog here. I strongly recommend we put it on the book study list.

To whet your appetite, here's a video on the Federal Reserve done a number of years ago by the von Mises Institute where Tom Woods is a scholar.

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Jefferson Would Not Be Surprised At This Crisis

In case you're wondering if you're smarter than Jefferson even with a 200 year advantage -- you're not:

It even appears that one of the most important and most respected figures in American history disagrees with the Federal Reserve saying, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Jefferson also said, “I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies

Did I forget to mention that the Fed is a private banking monopoly with a government patina?

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Saturday, March 21, 2009

Glenn And Thomas Paine

Here's some relevant commentary by a Tom that was his friend that's tailor made to our current calamity:
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” - Thomas Jefferson
And in case you're wondering what's driving those that drive for our calamity, maybe you haven't read this one?:
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation" - V.I. Lenin
Oh my. And I forgot to add this Lenin quote to the last post:
"Democracy is indispensable to socialism."
In fact, just go read Neo's entire post for a bit of an education -- while the Russian politicians have nothing to teach us except to understand their evil such as Lenin, we ignore Doestoevsky's "Grand Inquisitor" and Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" at our dire peril. In fact, Ogabe may have already signed Directive 10-289 for all I can tell...

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If You Can Keep It

Hi all. My name is Bob Gronlund and I'm going to help out Bill Flinn in trying to get this blog launched. I offered since I'm familiar with Blogger having run my own "personal notebook / work out my frustrations" spot over at "We The Free" since 2003 -- check it out for my bona fides.

Please contact me or Bill if you want to add your voice as a co-blogger. Or you can mail me ( bgronlund at gmail dot com ) with items that you think would be interesting to the group and I'll do my best to post them.

Due to other commitments, I was only able to stop in briefly at the Sportscaster on Friday -- but I look forward to meeting folks in person soon!

For starters, I have posted here the video Terry recommended on "The American Form Of Government". I hadn't seen this particular video -- I agree it's excellent -- but was very well aware of the differences between democracies and republics. In fact, if you can believe this, I have it on my list to go have a serious talk with my youngest son's Cub Scout den leader as he wouldn't accept Alex's answer that the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy for one of the den exercises (Alex having been coached by you know who ;)

How's that for a sad state of affairs? Never mind the average "citizen", even the Scouts have come un-moored! What do we say at every meeting? That's right:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
Here's a closing quote with high relevance to the country's situation and Glenn Beck's efforts that I recently ran across:
[Nobody] has ever successfully explained to me how people who are too stupid and helpless to take care of themselves are smart enough to elect individuals that will take care of them. Once you understand that contradiction, you understand how tyrannies come to [pass] around the world.

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