Lady Liberty Gets Gang Raped by RNC, Teleprompter Approves Nazi Rule Changes

Clearly, it's been a miserable summer for liberty activists and the Paulites. We've been disenfranchised, smacked, slapped and stomped on by the Republican enemies of liberty. However, this afternoon the RNC delivered its grand gang rape to Lady Liberty via a teleprompter vote that made permanent Nazi style RNC rule changes.

 The Ayes Have It: Boehner Ignores Voice Vote, Makes Decision Via Teleprompter

“The ayes have it.”

Tuesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner called for a vote on a Resolution to Adopt the Rules of the Convention, as written, at the Republican National Convention. When he asked if there were any objections, it was clear from the floor and from those watching at home that delegates were objecting, but Boehner continued on, as if he had not heard them at all.

Boehner proceeded with the vote. The results of the vote were once again very clear, with a huge uproar of folks shouting, “nay!” from the floor. Boehner said, “the ayes have it”, even though it was obvious that the “nays” were far more numerous. Why?

Witnesses on the floor say that the teleprompter scrolled the words, “the ayes have it” before the nay vote was even called."

All I can say is WOW.  These draconian rules changes effectively  concentrate all GOP power into the hands of a few ruling elites for the purpose of forever banning any challenges to their CFR and NWO candidates.  The RNC will now have the absolute power to veto any delegates it doesn't like or want.

All Republicans grassroots initiatives have been systematically squashed.

Gee, silly me thought the purpose of the primary was for We the People to select our candidates.  Well, We the People just got gang raped along with the Lady Liberty.

Any sane, decent, moral and honorable person must immediately sever all ties with the Republican Party.

The Republican Party has officially morphed into the Nazi Party.

The 2012 GOP Primary By the Numbers and the Future of Ballot Box Liberty

It's been a most disappointing 2012 Republican primary season for the dedicated liberty activists striving to restore the Constitution and liberty. Unfortunately, they hit a brick wall and that brick wall is the liberty hating Republican voting base.

2012 Republican Primary Votes:

Romney      9,809,662 or 53%
Santorum    3,909,460 or 21%
Gingrich      2,720,135 or 15%
Paul            2,063,043 or 11%

Total Votes 18,502,300

Source: Real Clear Politics

In 2008, Ron Paul got 1.1 million votes and 5.5% so his 2012 primary performance was a hugely significant improvement over 2008.  Still, establishment Republicans have declared WAR on the Republican liberty activists and claim that Ron Paul delegates deserve to be disenfranchised, which they were, because these delegates exceeded their actual representative on a proportional basis.

However, this assumption is totally flawed and contrary to how political parties operate. In fact, the social conservatives and religious right have been very successful, at least since the 1980's, in having representation in the Republican Party that exceeded their actual numbers. How did they do it? They simply became political grassroots activists, same as the Paulites, and showed up at precinct, county and state conventions to assert their power by playing by the RNC's own rules. It was a very effective strategy.

In analyzing the Republican Party, it's best to understand its ideological composition which contains 3 legs, 2 big legs and one small leg.

The 3 legs of the Republican Party:

1. The commie, neocon, fascist Rockefeller R's (Mittens, Bush) - they murder in the name of the state, empire, resources and fascism while ruthlessly imposing totalitarian tyranny everywhere, including America.

2. The commie, neocon, fascist theocratic Warvangelical R's (Sanitorium, Huckabee) - these pagan fake Christians murder in the name of a deity, while ruthlessly imposing totalitarian tyranny everywhere, including America.

3. The Constitutional liberty activists who want peace, liberty and prosperity - something you will never get from the Rockefeller and Warvangelical R's.

Furthermore, the 2 big legs of the Republican Party combined forces and declared war on the liberty activists.  It was a war that they won but what did they really win?  We'll know in November.

It's important to note that the Democratic Party is pretty much identical to the Rockefeller Republicans. However, the Warvangelicals are also quite similar to the Democratic Party with their overt and profound social intolerance being the only difference.  Still, it's a significant difference that fires up irrational passions on both sides.

So what chance does liberty stand in this cesspool of statist warmongering liberty slashing collectivists?

While Lady Liberty has definitely lost another battle, she hasn't lost the war because the liberty movement is growing and its growth is siphoning off voters from both the left and the right.

Do liberty activists have any ballot box power? It's a valid question and one that will undoubtedly be definitively answered in the November general election. In 2008, Obama defeated McCain 53% to 46% and by a staggering 9.5 million votes.

Unquestionably, the Republican Party does not have the advantage in 2012 as it lags in critical swing states according to all the polls. However, the greater question is can the Republican Party afford to lose the 2 million plus Ron Paul supporters, most of whom will not be voting Republican in November?

The Republican Party has calculated, perhaps erroneously, that it still has a solid and cohesive base that can and will deliver general election victories. Moreover, the Republican Party absolutely believes that the Paulites and liberty activist really aren't Republicans, never were Republicans and that these rogue rabble rousers attempted to illegally invade and and occupy the Republican Party.

As a liberty activist who has never voted for a Democrat, I can categorically state that I absolutely will not vote Republican in November because I'm morally compelled to reject statism, socialism, wars, empire, collectivism, corporate welfare and the wholesale destruction of civil liberties (NDAA, Patriot Act).

How alone am I? I really don't know but my guess is that I'll have 2 million or so voters standing right beside me in rejecting Republican tyranny.

Meanwhile, the Revolution for liberty continues!

The RNC has Plunged into Full Throttle Suicide Mode

A war is brewing within the GOP rank and file and all because insecure and paranoid Romney demanded RNC rules changes that would squash grassroots power in 2016 and concentrate all Republican decision making authority, including rule making and delegate selections, into the hands of about 10 all powerful GOP elites. Forget that Romney hasn't even been elected; he's already crowned himself emperor with absolute authority.

This issue is smoking hot and not because Republicans even care about liberty. Everybody in the GOP was silent (or cheering) when Ron Paul and the Paulites were being squashed, disenfranchised of their delegate status and churned into Satan for the crime of advocating for the restoration of the Constitution.

The religious right that loves the wars and socialism also HATE Mormonism with a passion and consider the religion a cult. Of course, the religious right Warvangelicals also hate Ron Paul, the Constitution and liberty.

But now that RNC/GOP top down command and control tyranny has turned on them, they've got their bowels in an uproar. The advocates for statist tyranny are most deserving of having tyranny imposed upon them.

This RNC rules change story has been breaking for 2 days and the mutiny is coming from some hardcore statist neocon Republican sites like Pajamas Media, no friend of Ron Paul, liberty or the Constitution.

RNC to Cull Grassroots by Changing the Rules

Social media is atwitter with protest from Republican delegates and grassroots activists as the Republican National Convention stands poised to vote on proposed rule changes which will fundamentally transform the process for nominating future presidential candidates. In an open letter to delegates in Tampa, Republican Liberty Caucus national chairman Dave Nalle summarizes what is at stake and urges opposition from the floor of the convention next week.

"One of the cornerstones of the Grand Old Party is a belief in republicanism and the idea that power is distributed and limited by checks and balances. Those values are embodied in our Constitution and they were the basis of the Republican Party when it was founded and for most of its history. Historically this has meant that most of the power in the Republican Party has rested with the party members in the states, working as delegates through their local and state caucuses and conventions to generate policy for the party in a unique collaborative process where the voice of the people could be heard strongly.

… Now there are those in Tampa who seek to overturn this traditional structure of the party, set restrictions on the free choice of party members and introduce a new and alien process which would minimize the input of the party’s rank and file and put power in the hands of party leaders and wealthy special interests who can buy the loyalty of the mob. They have borrowed the organizing structure of the Democrats and authored rules which would cause our delegates to be bound by the votes of primary voters who may not be Republicans or share our values. They have also proposed that the presumed presidential nominee could remove our elected delegates at whim. Finally they want to remove control over the rule making process from the state parties to a small elite within the national committee of the party who can change the rules under which the party operates at any time. Without fixed rules arrived at by the consent of the rank and file of the party we [state and national delegates elected at local conventions] become pawns rather than participants in the political process.

I hope that all delegates in Tampa will join me in opposing this coup within the party. If you are a [delegate], please join with others in supporting the minority report and opposing these changes which will be voted on from the floor on Monday. If you are watching from home, please realize that the media is not covering this issue and reach out to any delegates you know and encourage them to stand up for the rights of the state parties and the many dedicated Republicans who took part in the grassroots process which makes our party unique and protects the interests of all of its members."

The text of the proposed rule changes is attached to Nalle’s letter. The RNC rules committee approved the changes last week. But the rules will not go into affect unless approved by the convention this week. If passed, these rules will make it significantly more difficult for minority delegations to effectively participate in the convention process.

Basically, Nalle is saying that the rules change will effectively shutout grassroots activists and prevent the Republican Party from growing with the recruitment of new and energized conservative political activists.

Texans join uprising against RNC rules change

Republicans from Texas are leading a mutiny at their national nominating convention in Tampa and fighting proposed rule changes that they say amount to a power grab by entrenched GOP operatives at the expense of grassroots activism.

Rule changes forced through by Romney campaign at RNC provoke grassroots backlash

Rule changes pushed through by the Romney campaign that appear designed to prevent an insurgent candidacy like that of Ron Paul from mounting any meaningful challenge to the party establishment in the future are provoking a strong grassroots reaction.

This mutiny isn't going away and it's highly doubtful that RNC and GOP officials will be able to squash it as easily as they squashed Ron Paul and the Ron Paul delegates.  The Republican Party consists of 3 legs that all pretty much hate each other - the Rino New England Rockefeller Republicans, the religious right Warvangelicals and the minority Ron Paul Republicans.  The religious right Warvangelicals are a much more powerful and numerous force within the GOP than the Ron Paul Republicans and these folks can't be squashed like a bug.

I can already hear the Rockefeller Rino bait: "Don't worry, we've got to guarantee that no liberty candidate like Ron Paul ever again rises within the GOP and we love you, we support life and we love the wars too".

There's one problem.  The religious right Warvangelicals don't believe anything flowing from the lips of Mitt Romney.

America: A Militarized Police State that Sexualizes Tyranny

‎"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."  General Omar Bradley

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."  Albert Einstein

"In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again." Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Never in a million years could I ever have imagined that I would bear witness to the end of America and watch it churn into a Nazified Police State.  The compliant sheeple have shocked me into a new reality.

Every day, millions of Americans voluntarily consent and allow TSA sexual predators to grope and probe their breasts, vaginas, anuses, penises and testicles, all without a whimper of protest.

America has more folks locked up in prison than any nation on earth, including some of the most ruthlessly oppressive regimes ever to exist.

US Prison Population: The Largest in the World

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—more even than China or Russia. In fact, more people are in prisons in the United States than in all other developed countries combined. Professor Daniel J. D’Amico explains that as of 2010 over 1.6 million people were serving jail sentences in America.

The 4th amendment has been effectively nullified and law enforcement searches of citizens without probable cause or a warrant are now routine. The Supreme Court has upheld the right of law enforcement to perform cavity searches on anybody in police custody, even if picked up on a routine traffic violation.

Bend Over and Spread Em says the Supreme Court

Regarding the recent 5-4 SCOTUS decision to uphold strip searches, Supreme Court Justice Breyer describes a strip search in his dissent (joined by Kagan, Gingsberg and Sotomayor) as follows:

“‘..a visual inspection of the inmate’s naked body. This should include the inmate opening his mouth and moving his tongue up and down and from side to side, removing any dentures, running his hands through his hair, allowing his ears to be visually examined, lifting his arms to expose his arm pits, lifting his feet to examine the sole, spreading and/or lifting his testicles to expose the area behind them and bending over and/or spreading the cheeks of his buttocks to expose his anus. For females, the procedures are similar except females must in addition, squat to expose the vagina.’”

The Supreme Court has upheld the right of the police to do this to anybody for any reason who has the misfortune of ending up in police custody for any reason, including minor traffic violations.

As America morphs into a full fledged militarized police state, few are even noticing this horror, except for the civil liberties activists who are trying to fight these draconian assaults on liberty, and all without the support of even the people.  Moreover, the presence of the militarized police state doesn't even seem to bother anybody as Americans just accept it, along with many other assaults on their liberty, privacy and dignity.

How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police

Over the past 10 years, law enforcement officials have begun to look and act more and more like soldiers. Here's why we should be alarmed...

In an effort to remedy their relative inadequacy in dealing with terrorism on U.S. soil, police forces throughout the country have purchased military equipment, adopted military training, and sought to inculcate a "soldier's mentality" among their ranks.

Benjamin Franklin warned “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Franklin was right and he absolutely validates how sacrificing liberty for security ends just like Gibbons' described the end of the Roman Empire.  "In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.".

I shudder with horror at the thought that this is the future that Americans wants.  But based on the voting habits of the American people, it appears that they do not value liberty as they flee to the bosom of tyranny.  Such a choice will carry a horrific price from which there will be no escape.

Election 2012: The Big Yawn Blame Game

Election 2012 has kicked off. It's Obamney and Paultard vs Obushma and Train Wreck Biden. Yawn! Such a potent sleeping pill should keep sane folks everywhere away from the dangers of Republican and Democrat ballot box gulags.

The Republican primary voting base has spoken: We want more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance.

The Democrat primary voting base has spoken: We want more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance.

What does this say about the American people? It just might prove that the American people may in fact be the only folks in human history to have had liberty and consciously and willfully decided to vote away their liberty.

What does it say about America's 2 party system? It unequivocally confirms that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are one and the same - The Uniparty of Collectivist Statist Oppression.

Why even vote Republican or Democrat when we know we will only get more wars, more socialism, more entitlements, more fiat money, more bankster bailouts, more spending, more deficits, more debt, more assaults on civil liberties, more prisons and more oppressive totalitarian governance?

Change? The only change Americans will ever get will be the change that comes with permanently rejecting and disemboweling the Republican and Democratic Parties. The RNC and DNC machines are nothing but money laundering operations as well as wholly owned subsidiaries of the banksters, military industrial complex, prison industrial complex and fascist corporatist special interests.

A vote for permanent residence on the Republican or Democrat Plantation is hardly a vote for liberty.  It's more of a vote to permanently enslave yourself.

I'm voting for real change and will be voting for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson because he truly represents real change and at least a chance to demolish the corrupt to the core 2 party system that delivers nothing except more of the same.

America desperately needs a return to peace, liberty and prosperity. That's the hope I'll be voting for in November. Meanwhile the R's and D's can do what they always do - blame the other guy and the other party.

Why Republicans Should Support Legalizing Marijuana

Trying to talk establishment Republicans into legalizing marijuana has always been an uphill battle. They don't care about the medical benefits of marijuana nor do they support the right of an individual to use and grow marijuana. In fact, Republicans generally prefer that marijuana users and growers be imprisoned for the crime of indulging in something that the social conservatives hold in the highest disdain, namely the natural right of every human being to control their own bodies and life.

The closest I ever came to not being laughed out of a Republican gathering on the marijuana legalization issue was when I told them "you absolutely should support legalizing marijuana because the liberals would be too damn stoned to find their way to the polls on election day and you would start winning elections by default".

Pot prisoners cost taxpayers billions, and the primary beneficiary of imprisoning non violent drug offenders and casual users is America's growing Prison Industrial Complex.  The lost War on Drugs has cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion and we have more drug users than ever.

But there is good news on the drug legalization front as the American people are slowly waking up to the utter nonsense of the War on Drugs.  In red state conservative Bible belt Kansas, a Kansas jury discovered jury nullification.

Prosecutor Defeated by Glaring Stupidity of Pot Laws

A Kansas defense attorney reports:

"I had a jury trial this morning on level 3 possession with intent MJ, level 4 possession drug paraphernalia and level 10 no drug tax stamp. During voir dire, my almost all white, middle-class, middle-aged jury went into full rebellion against the prosecutor stating that they wouldn't convict even if the client's guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt -- almost all of them! They felt marijuana should be legalized, what he does with it is his own business and that the jails are already full of people for this silly charge. Then, when the potential jurors found out that the State wanted him to pay taxes on illegal drugs, they went nuts. One woman from the back said how stupid this was and why are we even here wasting our time. A "suit" from the front said this was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. The prosecutor ended up dismissing the case. Judge gave me a dismissal with prejudice. I'm still laughing my ass off over this one. I have NEVER seen a full on mutiny by an entire jury pool before. Easiest win ever!"

Not quite jury nullification, but close. Something similar happened in Montana a couple of years ago.

If folks in Kansas are ready to acknowledge how silly and damaging our idiotic drug laws really are then that should be taken as a sign by the Republican Party that marijuana legalization is an issue  whose time has definitely arrived.

For more on the War on Drugs, see:

The Top Five Special Interest Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal (police unions, private prison corporations, alcohol and beer companies, pharmaceutical corporations and prison guard unions).

America's Prison Industrial Complex: Locking Up Folks For Corporate Prison Profits is the American Way

Police Unions, Rehab Owners Tainted With Sex Abuse Scandal Mount Effort To Stop Colorado From Legalizing Marijuana

The War on Drugs is Racist and Expensive

Legalizing drugs, especially marijuana, holds the potential to breath new life into the ailing GOP. The logical place to start is to abolish the federal law criminalizing marijuana and kick the issue back to the states where the folks in those states can decide how they want to handle marijuana.  

Is the GOP Old, White, Gray and Dying?

Republicans are a most peculiar species. They tend to be old, white, gray and dying. They also tend to be in photos carrying anti-Obama signs sporting slogans that scream 'NO Socialism' while they simultaneously scream for more socialism for themselves, notably Social Security and Medicare. It's all about socialism for me but not for thee.

Obama hatred is what drives the Republican base into an intense frenzy of raw and absolute hatred. Those damn liberals are spending our tax dollars, those damn liberals are killing the babies, those damn liberals are God hating atheists, those damn liberals hate the military and on and on. The Republican indictment against Obama and the Democrats makes the indictment against King George contained in the Declaration of Independence appear downright wimpy and empty.

As one who embraces classical liberalism, before liberals became murderous warmongers, progressives, statists, totalitarian thugs, Stalinists, Marxists and various shades of anti-liberty militaristic tyranny, I tried real hard to believe that the Republican Party was indeed the party of Jefferson, the Constitution, liberty and limited government. WOW! Was I ever wrong.

For a while it was very frustrating being an American without a political party and not fitting into the social clubs knows as the Republican and Democrat parties. But after a while, the liberation of not being affiliated with any political party became quite exhilarating. Political parties don't represent the people or liberty, they just represent hatred of the other party.

Meanwhile, the RNC and DNC machines are nothing more than money laundering operations as well as wholly owned subsidiaries of the banksters, the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex and corporatist fascist special interests.

Except for the never ending social issues, there are no differences between the Republicans and the Democrats as both parties, when distilled to their raw and absolute essence, are nothing more than the theocrats vs. humanists who both embrace big bad government..

Natural rights or the right to be who you want to be so long as you don't trample the rights of another sovereign individual are conspicuously absent from most debates on human liberty. They don't exist according to the theocrats (Biblical theocrats) and humanists (statist theocrats). According to the theocrats and Biblical literalists, you don't have a right to be gay because it's considered a crime against God that must be severely punished. By contrast, the humanists have deified themselves and operate under the presumption that all rights are held collectively by the state and doled out according to bureaucratic whim. What kind of liberty is a choice between theocratic tyranny and collectivist tyranny?

In recent years, there's been an explosion in challenges to the left and right paradigms and those challenges are coming from both sides. The Ron Paul liberty movement that kicked off in 2008 is largely responsible for educating folks on issues of liberty that challenge both the state and the theocrats. Classical liberty and natural rights are back in vogue after a long hiatus and are being eagerly embraced and debated.

Back to the Republican Party. The Republican Party definitely exhibits a disconnect from the views of the majority of the American people but it also has a severe demographic problem. As old establishment Republicans die off, they are not being replaced in significant numbers with the young. The future of the Republican Party is indeed in jeopardy and that's larges because the GOP has failed to distinguish itself from the Democratic Party on core issues affecting peace, liberty and prosperity. The statist stripes of the Republican Party have been accelerating for decades as big spending Republicans played a crucial rule in America's fiscal nightmare and deficits.

Bush and the Republicans increased the national debt by $5 trillion,  Republican voters cheered when Bush and the Republican congress critters passed Medicare Part D, a monster multi-trillion dollar entitlement (if the Dems had passed it they would have been labeled socialists).  Under the Republicans, government just grew and grew like a runaway virus. Yet, there are no mea culpas flowing from the socialist and militarist Republicans who are fully committed to abandoning even the pretense of fiscal conservatism and constitutional governance.

To further rub salt into the GOP's open and oozing wounds, the crop of Republican Tea Party Congress Critters that got elected in 2010 turned out to be bigger spenders than the Democrats they replaced.

The Tea Party Republicans Spent More Than the Dems They Replaced.

Meanwhile, Republicans at the leadership and grassroots levels continue to march to the beat of their statist, socialist and militaristic drums, except for the occasional burst of bouncing from the sublime to the ridiculous with the raising of truly offensive issues like legitimate rape or forcible rape. Of course, all rape is violent and forcible and certainly not legitimate. It's why it's called rape and not sex.

Yet, the Republican Party continues to harbor the delusion that it will win the hearts and minds of the people with such insane rants. Such hallucinatory discourse, along with the notable absence of offering any solutions to our immense economic and fiscal problems, spell one thing - the pending death and demise of the Republican Party.

Maybe that's not such a bad thing. After all, the Republican Party that descended from Thomas Jefferson back when we had the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Hamiltonian Federalists is a very long way from its historical roots.

Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Personhood Amendments and Me

Comedian George Carlin famously quipped:

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. 

Of all the issues that are emotionally charged on the political war front, there is no issue that is more emotionally charged than the issue of abortion as the pro-life and pro-choice camps lock horns in seemingly mortal combat. The abortion issue and debate is nothing new and has been intense for as long as I can remember. Decades ago, I had to write a term paper on "Is a Fetus Human" for a philosophy course.

That's the core of the debate.  Is unborn life in the mothers womb a human being?

From a zygote to a blastocyst to an embryo to a fetus, the current debate evolves around two central theories 1. a human being is created at the precise moment of conception and 2. the unborn are not human beings until they are expelled from the womb.  There are other theories as well, including the theory that once a fetus can survive outside the womb, it's a human being.  Human science is incapable of defining what an in utero form of life is and it's not likely that the issue will ever be resolved.

Still, the abortion issues remains a supercharged political issue.  The politics of abortion generally evolve around radicals at both ends of the spectrum and involve religion and ideology.  The radical pro-choice camp endorses abortion up to the moment of birth.  In other words, a full term and fully evolved fetus should be expendable at the will of the mother.  While partial birth abortion has been outlawed and upheld by the Supreme Court, late term abortion is perfectly legal.  Late term abortions methods are known to be gruesome and have included driving a spike into the skull of a full term fetus and spilling its brains.  The same radical liberal camp that asserts that capital punishment by lethal injection is cruel and inhumane punishment have no moral qualms whatsoever when it comes to inflicting cruel and painful punishment on an unborn fetus.

On the religious right side, the prevalent belief is that a human being is created at the precise moment of conception and, therefore, is a human being who is endowed with fully vested constitutional rights.  The 'human life begins at conception' folks are also heavily involved in the Personhood movement that is lobbying for state and federal constitutional amendments to define human life as beginning at the precise moment of conception.  Personhood constitutional amendments have actually made it on the ballot on several states, including Colorado where twice it was defeated by a huge margin and in Mississippi, a strong religious right state where it also went down at the ballot box.  A Personhood Amendment, if passed, would immediately classify anyone who had an abortion as a murderer.  In fact, a Personhood Amendment could even result in outlawing birth control because some birth control methods allegedly but spontaneously can abort a freshly fertilized egg.

What the 'human life begins as conception' folks really want is a federal constitutional amendment defining life as beginning at conception.  Such a federal constitutional amendment stands no chance of passing in Congress or even being ratified by 75% of the states.  Blue states wouldn't ratify such an amendment and it's quite possible that many red states wouldn't ratify it either.  But that won't stop Republicans from putting it in the Republican Platform.

First on CNN: GOP prepares tough anti-abortion platform

The Republican Party is once again set to enshrine into its official platform support for "a human life amendment" to the Constitution that would outlaw abortion without making explicit exemptions for rape or incest, according to draft language of the platform obtained exclusively by CNN late Monday. 

"Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," the draft platform declares. "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

I personally do not believe that a freshly fertilized egg is a human being.  It's a zygote and a form of life that holds the potential to develop into a human being as it grows into a blastocyst, an embryo and ultimately a fetus.  However, neither do I subscribe to the position that a fetus isn't a human being until it's expelled by the birth mother.  At some point after the embryo stage, we've got an unborn human being.  Of course, it doesn't matter what I think because it's an issue for the voters.

Where are the majority of Americans on the abortion issue?  By an overwhelmingly majority, the American people support the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy at the early stages (zygote, blastocyst and possibly embryo) or in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother comes into play .  The situation gets who whole lot fuzzier on the issue of late term abortion and many Americans do in fact oppose late term abortion without a very valid reason.

At the ballot box, the majority will prevail on the abortion issue, which is precisely why the social conservatives who are obsessed with Personhood Amendments will not only lose but will also drag down the Republican Party on the issue.

The Republican religious right is a total fraud that doesn't actually support human life.  In fact, Republican Warvangelicals are the strongest advocates for wars, murders, genocides and all the evil associated with the American Empire and it's endless campaign to murder folks all over the planet.  For the Republican Warvangelicals, the abortion issue isn't about protecting innocent human life.  Indeed, these psychopaths get off slaughtering innocent human life on a massive scale. For them, the abortion issue is all about control and forcing every pregnant woman to give birth at the point of a gun.

But these radical but murderous fake pro-lifers go even further.  Many have stated in no uncertain terms that women who have had abortions should be criminally prosecuted for premeditated murder, a capital crime that carries the death penalty in many states.    The American religious right strongly supports the death penalty and these folks cheered TX Gov. Rick Perry when he boasted of his execution record.  I totally 100% oppose the death penalty because I so loath the right of the state to kill anybody.  

It should also be noted that murder does not have a statute of limitations as do many other crimes.  It's entirely possible, even probable, that if the Personhood Amendment folks were to succeed, not likely or even close to probable, that they would indeed embark on a witch hunt to bring to justice as a murderer every woman who ever had an abortion.  This is not beyond the realm of possibility for these folks and I've personally heard them say it.

There are also profound legal problems with granting the unborn full constitutional rights.  Suppose you are driving down the road and accidentally rear end a vehicle with a pregnant driver/occupant?  Well, just just killed somebody and minimally, you can be imprisoned for the crime of vehicular homicide.  Heck, the same thing could happen pushing your grocery cart in the supermarket.  You could accidentally bump your cart into a pregnant woman, knock her down and if she loses the unborn life, you just killed somebody and will be legally subjected to the multitude of laws involving murder,  homicide, manslaughter etc.

Personhood Amendments are indeed legal nightmares with dire and horrifying consequences but that's precisely what the Republican religious right demands.

The outlawing of abortion will definitely not reduce the abortion rate.  It will merely drive the practice of abortion underground.  Rich women will be able to afford safe if illegal abortions but poor women will be driven back into the filthy backrooms of the dangerous abortions of yesteryear and coat  hangers.

I don't like abortion and never will but I would NEVER vote to take that right away from another woman.  I haven't walked in her shoes or lived her life.  I will not judge her decision because that's an issue that is between her and God and God is always the ultimate judge, not man and his laws.

If America truly wants lower abortion rates, we need to start by building a culture of life and that includes ending the worship of the state, the military industrial complex and its murderous wars.  Precisely because America no longer has the high moral ground on anything, Americans can hardly invoke moral superiority when it comes to abortion.

The GOP's Civil War - Big Government Statists vs. Liberty Activists

If you checkout out photos and film clips of Republican public gathering, you will always see tons of signs that scream "Obama is a Socialist". Well, he is. However, the glaring truth that Republicans ignore is the fact that Republicans are socialists too!

REALLY, REPUBLICANS REALLY ARE SOCIALISTS

As the Republican Party remains a fractured mess that is fiercely divided to the point where the GOP is suffering profound electability problems, establishment Republicans just do not understand why the constitutionalist, Libertarians and Ron Paul supporters no longer vote Republican. The fissures are now so pronounced that Republicans are now screaming "to hell with those Ron Paul supporters, Libertarians and constitutionalists, we don't need them, we are the Republican Party and there are enough of us to win elections". Well, that's a highly debatable assumption, especially in tight swing states that will absolutely be critical in November.

As a Libertarian and Ron Paul supporter, I understand that Republicans are very frustrated with us.  Primarily, they are frustrated because they believe the GOP lies that it's the party of liberty, free markets and minimal government.  Anybody who disagrees with their flawed logic is automatically labeled a liberal, a socialist, a Marxist and, well, a whole lot worse.

In the interest of bridging our vastly different visions of what the Republican Party should be, could be and ought to be, I'm offering Ron Paul's own explanation that verifies a truth that cannot be denied.

The Truth About Neoconservatism

It's a fascinating and instructive read.  In fact, had this article not been written by Ron Paul, Republicans and so-called conservatives would generally agree with it, especially on economic issues and America's transition to socialism.  Ron Paul explains:

Someone is responsible, and it's important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they're wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it's the government's responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.

One thing is certain: conservatives who worked and voted for less government in the Reagan years and welcomed the takeover of the U.S. Congress and the presidency in the 1990s and early 2000s were deceived.

Soon they will realize that the goal of limited government has been dashed and that their views no longer matter.

Ron Paul goes into extraordinary detail in documenting how the socialists, statists, big government neocons and empire builders took over and destroyed the Republican Party.

More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.

2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.

3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.

4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means – that hard-ball politics is a moral necessity.

5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.

6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.

7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.

8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.

9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.

10.They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill-advised.

11.They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.

12.They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.

13.Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.  

14. 9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.

15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists).

16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.

17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

If America's founding fathers were around today, they'd be Libertarians.  In fact, America's founding fathers were the original Libertarians because they advocated for decentralized government powers and a federal government with very minimal powers.

Furthermore, it is my sincere hope that Republicans will study America's history, the philosophies of our founders and our founding documents.  They would learn that the Republican Party as it is presently constituted has indeed lost its way and has drifted far from the message of 1776.

Ron Paul's article is more than a concise history lesson as well as practical knowledge, it's very much a story that is eerily reminiscent of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.

The American Empire is an epic failure that has bankrupted us as a nation.  We as Republicans have destroyed our economy and sacrificed our liberty in pursuit of collectivism, statism, socialism and empire.  For what?  

Government Agencies Stockpiling Enough Ammo to Put 5 Bullets in Every American

Americans should be very concerned that government agencies are loading up on ammo. In fact, it's being reported that government agencies are loading up on enough ammo to pump 5 rounds into every American.  Actually, the government is loading up on far more ammo and the Department of Homeland Security alone is buying enough ammo for 5 shots per citizen.

Major General: Why Are Domestic Government Agencies Purchashing Enough Lethal Ammunition to Put 5 Rounds In Every American?

In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen.

Many other federal agencies are also loading up on ammo.

USDA Orders 326,000 Rounds of Ammunition As Homeland Security Stays Quiet Over 450 Million Round Order

Social Security Administration on Ammo Buy: 589 Bullets Per Agent Is Normal

National Weather Service Orders Forty-Six Thousand Rounds Of Ammo

This whole government agency ammo buying binge is very disturbing and it's getting a lot of attention, not by MSM but by honest websites and bloggers who know how to track government ammo purchases.  In fact, the government is freaking out that the public actually knows about its massive ammo purchases and DHS is now classifying such disclosures by invoking national security.

DHS Classifies New Ammo Purchases Following Controversy

The Department of Homeland Security has redacted information relating to the quantity of bullets it is buying following a controversy concerning the agency’s purchase of over a billion rounds of ammo, which many fear is a sign the federal government is preparing for civil unrest in the United States.

Despite the fact that documents are only supposed to be redacted if authorized by Congress or for national security reasons, a solicitation posted on the FedBizOpps website yesterday concerning ammunition purchases made by the DHS on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) contains numerous blacked out sections...

The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to black out sections of the document, including the number of bullets being purchased, is likely to be related to a massive controversy which has snowballed over the last few weeks pertaining to concerns as to why the federal agency has purchased well over a billion rounds of bullets over the last 6 months alone.

Can anyone say Police State USA? The American Gestapo? The Militarized Police State?

Still think America is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?  If this were true, the brave certainly wouldn't allow such an evil, secretive and sinister government to even exist.  

"Legitimate" Rape and the GOP Take Another Hit in Gender Politics, Courtesy of Rep. Todd Akin

The Republican Party has always suffered a deficit with the female vote but the situation just got a whole lot worse when Republic Representative Todd Akin, who is running against incumbent Democrat Senator Clare McCaskill, let loose with a wildly absurd comment about 'legitimate rape'. There is no such thing as legitimate rape. Rape is a violent crime. Period.

Whatever message Rep. Akin intended to communicate, it was badly botched and set off a political fire storm. Akin is a typical establishment Republican who dwells in the social conservative camp that advocates for endless wars while claiming to be pro-life. His voting record would definitely not be pleasing to any fiscal conservative or liberty activist, here.  Moreover, Akin not only voted for NDAA and the indefinite detention of American citizens, he also voted NO on a measure to repeal the indefinite detention provision of NDAA.  Big spending militarist that he is, he also voted to increase the debt limit.  Pure and simple, Akins is the enemy of liberty and the Constitution.

Akin is not only pro-life and generally opposed to any abortion under any circumstances, his website states "I believe that life begins at conception...".  The folks who believe that human life begins at the precise moment of conception are largely committed to the 'personhood movement' that generally promotes state wide ballot initiatives to grant full constitutional rights to an unborn life.

What exactly did Akin say that got him in so much hot water that it could sink his prospects for the senate? Akins attempted to make the point that 'legitimate rape' rarely results in pregnancy and even if pregnancy did result from a rape, the life of the unborn must be protected..

Furor over Todd Akin's 'legitimate rape' comment

"First of all, from what I understand from doctors, (pregnancy from rape) is really rare," Akin told KTVI television in an interview widely distributed by Democrats. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Akin then said that if a woman got pregnant after being raped, there should be consequences for the rapist, but not the unborn fetus.

Huh?

America is a nation where the overwhelming majority of the people support some level of legalized abortion.  That's not about to change anytime soon and campaigning on a message that abortion should be outlawed under just about every circumstance, including rape, is not only a ballot box poison but contrary to American views on abortion rights.

The fact that Akin attempted to distinguish legitimate rape from non-legitimate rape obviously resulted in severe blow back because he effectively marginalized rape, at least in the eyes of those who were grievously offended by his remarks.

How severe is the blow back? Election pundit Nate Silver, who is very good at what he does, actually had given the general election advantage to Akin, until his comment went viral.

Akin Comments Could Swing Missouri Senate Race

In my review of Senate races last week, I classified Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, who won the Republican primary earlier this month, as a very slight favorite over the Democratic incumbent in the state, Claire McCaskill.

Although some Democrats were pleased that Mr. Akin was the nominee, he nevertheless held a small lead over Ms. McCaskill in the polls, which averaged five percentage points across four surveys conducted in July and August.

But that was before Mr. Akin’s controversial remarks about rape in an interview with a St. Louis television station that was broadcast on Sunday morning. The comments, and Mr. Akin’s subsequent explanation of them, drew overwhelmingly negative sentiment at social networking platforms, including on Mr. Akin’s Facebook page.

Here we go again!  America can't have elections based on real issues like the wars, the economy, fiscal and monetary policy because the social issues dominate the election landscape.   However, when it comes to abortion rights, the Republicans always lose.  If Democrat McCaskill keeps her senate seat, the liberty movement will have lost nothing because Akin was just another warmongering, socially conservative big government statist.  

With Love, Gratitude and Hugs: Happy Birthday Dr. Ron Paul!

Ron Paul turns 77! What a life. What an extraordinary man. America hasn't had such a patriot since 1776.

How Statism and the NWO Will Crash and Burn

If anything, government is an optimistic entity that automatically assumes that the economy will always do well, and perpetually and generously fill government coffers with an abundance of tax revenues. However, the decline and fall of the global economy has badly dinged tax collections. If folks aren't prosperous and making money, the plundering government's cut shrinks and shrinks substantially.

Government survives by either brute force or with the voluntary consent of the people because they perceive a value. But what happens when folks no longer perceive a value in government? Well, folks just opt out of the system, go underground and/or overtly or covertly indulge in non-compliance. When this happens, we see headlines and stories like this:

Island authorities denounce attack on tax police

ATHENS, Greece -- Local authorities on the Greek island of Hydra have denounced an attack by a local crowd on tax police after they detained a restaurant owner who did not provide receipts to clients.

The Friday incident happened after the inspectors wanted to transport the restaurant owner to Athens, an hour's ride away by fast boat. They were set upon by a local crowd, which also attacked the boat's crew.

The police, along with the restaurant owner, had to retreat to the island's police station, which was besieged until riot police arrived Saturday morning. Locals cut off the station's electricity and water supplies.

The Greeks have a long history of refusing to pay taxes to its corrupt and thieving government. However, the Greeks are far from the only folks indulging in a tax revolt. In Germany, statist socialists are alleging that Germans who put their money in Swiss banks are tax cheats who should be imprisoned.

German opposition leader attacks Swiss banks

Gabriel, whose Social Democrats (SPD) have blocked a deal between the German and Swiss governments to levy taxes on German assets in Swiss bank accounts, told Deutschlandfunk that Swiss banking practices in Germany were comparable with organised crime.

"It's a serious crime," said Gabriel, the chairman of the SPD who may run against Chancellor Angela Merkel in the 2013 election. "We're talking about organised crime in Swiss banks (operating) in Germany."

Gabriel, who plans to make criticism of banks a centrepiece of the SPD's 2013 campaign, added the sentence for large-scale tax evasion in Germany could be as long as 10 years in prison.

In Italy, another nation quite notorious for tax avoidance, the desperately broke Italian government is beefing up tax collection efforts.

Italy's tax hunters target super-rich and their yachts off the Sardinian coast

There used to be a time when Italy's super-rich gravitated to the smartest enclaves of Sardinia for a summer of relaxation and luxury. Not any more. In an increasingly austerity-conscious country, the yacht-owning classes are coming under increasing and unwelcome scrutiny, some of which would not look out of place in a scene from the film Apocalypse Now.

"We first spotted the targets with the helicopter's radar and closed in to identify about 50 boats off the two islands," said Italian coastguard captain Pietro Mele, describing a recent raid on yachts suspected of straying too close to the coast.

Although these are only a few examples of governments' insatiable appetite for other peoples money and how people fight back, the stone cold reality is that western governments have been indulging in unsustainable spending sprees for decades. Now that the massive pile of unsustainable debt is evidenced everywhere, another stone cold reality that directly impacts the people is the austerity of cutting public services because bigger and bigger percentages of national income are diverted to debt service. Tax receipts are going to the banksters and not the people.

In a bad and worsening economy, such a situation is the sum of all fears for the government. Not only do governments lack the resources to fund entitlements and public services, they've lost the trust of the people who are waking up to another reality, namely, that a big spending corrupt government wasn't such a good idea after all.

As the world unwinds according to the laws of financial physics and the fictitious fiat monetary paradise implodes, folks will be forced to plunge into raw survival mode as they seek and invent new paradigms of survival that most assuredly won't include trust in government and its army of bureaucratic goons. .

Meanwhile, folks accustomed to feeding off of everybody else will indeed clamor for a more violent and draconian government that will militarily plunder everybody and everything. But there comes a point when there is nothing left to plunder.

The only difference between the murderous and ruthless tactics of Mao/Stalin and Gang who killed 100 million folks during the 20th century alone, and the so-called soft socialism of the west is that the former didn't have the luxury of a wealthy economy to plunder. Well, the plundering class is rapidly running out of options because there isn't much left to plunder which is why the hysteria is now focused on 'tax the rich'. In France, the socialists have passed a law imposing a 75% tax on the rich. What will happen is that what productive capital that remains in socialist France will simply pack up and move to friendlier abodes. The French economy will be deprived of scare financial resources to reboot its ailing economy, the economy will worsen and French misery will intensify. Socialists never think about the future and merely dwell on the immediate and politically expedient that invariably includes class warfare.

At this juncture, it's safe to assume that the west (Europe and America) are going down and it won't be a soft landing. Things are about to get a whole lot worse, it's won't be a pretty sight, there will be massive human suffering and probably violence and massive civil unrest.

However, if folks can just resist the temptation to implement more bad government and thieving central banks, they will finally acquire a bright and prosperous future out of the pile of statist rubble.

Simply put, the glutenous beast that is devouring us must be starved if folks are to survive in peace, liberty and prosperity.  

The Ron Paul Liberty Army Marches on Tampa. Now What?

With the RNC Convention kicking off in a week, many Ron Paul supporters are flocking to Tampa in the hope that they will witness a miracle and that Republicans will come to their senses and nominate Ron Paul. Personally, I don't believe that Ron Paul will be the nominee, not unless all those Romney delegates turn out to be closeted Paulites.

Ron Paul's entire campaign for the presidency absolutely mirrors the sole purpose of his entire public career in Congress, namely, that Ron Paul has always been about waging a Revolution for Liberty by educating folks on the issues and speaking the truth.  Ron Paul is making history and there are darn few folks in American history who possess such an extraordinarily high level of ideological purity, consistency and tenacity.

The biggest problem for liberty activists is that we don't fit into the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.  We are, pure and simple, party crashers without a party that represents our commitment to peace, liberty and prosperity as clearly defined by our founders in our founding documents.  Logically, it makes far more sense to crash the Republican Party than the Democratic Party simply because the GOP claims to be anti-statist (yes, it's lying  crock of crap) while the Dems remain adamantly and openly committed to totalitarian command and control police state Marxism.  The Republicans really are no different than the Democrats they claim to oppose; it's just that what the Democrats do openly, the Republicans do by stealth.

Overall, 2012 has been a glorious year and one that we should be extremely proud of!  Compared with 2008, the liberty movement has blossomed into a new dimension of reality and instead of liberty activists being sarcastically dubbed nutjobs, we are being taken seriously because Americans are becoming seriously aware that we do indeed live under a tyrannical and oppressive government.

To be sure, Ron Paul was the sole spark who ignited the liberty movement into money bombs, Facebook pages and extraordinary grassroots activism from sea to shining sea.

In 2008 I heard the insufferable whining of Ron Paul supporters who became despondent because he didn't win.  In 2012, I'm hearing the same thing again.  Americans are not a patient people and this is a tragedy because it's going to require a long term commitment to the Ron Paul Revolution. Victory will not be easy nor will it come quickly but if we at least have a fraction of the testicular fortitude of Ron Paul who stuck it out for decades against insurmountable obstacles while enduring non-stop media and political scorn, we will at least become worthy of being a Paulite in every sense of the word.

Think 1776.  When George Washington's pathetically decrepit yeoman farmer ragtag of an army was constantly escaping and running from the far superior British Army and Navy, the strongest military power on the earth at the time, the Revolution of 1776 only survived by the sheer will of Washington's decision to refuse to surrender.  He didn't and 6.5 years later, he won.  Imagine Washington's army marching through snow and blizzards with bloody barefooted half naked solders who were starving and freezing to death.  The human misery as recorded by those who lived through it is beyond anything that any modern pampered American can even fathom.

Now is not the time to despair and give up but it's definitely time for us to embrace the character and tenacity of Ron Paul as we move forward because:

Why Do Republicans Reject the Constitution?

As a Libertarian turned Republican turned Libertarian, one of the most frustration things I've encountered in political life is the fact that Republicans claim they revere the Constitution and liberty.  Moving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Republicans are always accusing me of being a liberal and a socialist!  Republicans need to look in the mirror if they want to see socialists. The grand Republican delusion is that they truly believe that they endorse liberty and constitutional governance.

Yet, Republicans consistently vote for anti-Constitutionalists and big government statists. In fact, Republicans vote against liberty and the Constitution every chance they get. Republicans cheered the Bush era, including No Child Left Behind (written by Ted Kennedy) and Medicare Part D, the multi-trillion dollar prescription drug entitlement.

Why is it that Republican socialism is somehow good while Democrat socialism is bad?  There is no such thing as good socialism or good statism.

For reasons no sane person can fathom, Republicans are notorious for going on a rampage accusing Obama and Gang of being socialists. Republicans and their media mouth pieces have even labeled Obama the 'Food Stamp President'.

The truth?

Bush is the REAL Food Stamp President

It’s true that the most recent figures from the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (provided to Factcheck.org/USA Today) show that a record number of people—some 46.2 million—are enrolled in the program. But the same data shows that more individuals were added to the program while George W. Bush was in office than have enrolled under Obama’s presidency: Under Bush, the program grew by 14.7 million individuals; under Obama so far, it’s grown by 14.2 million, and, as of October, was declining.

So Bush wins on volume, and Obama wins on velocity: In just a few years, President Obama managed to expand the program by nearly as much as Bush. But Obama didn’t do it without some help from his Republican predecessor, who approved policy changes that set the stage for the program’s current growth.

To some extent, the food stamps expansion the country has seen under Obama is how food stamps are supposed to work: It’s a countercyclical program, meaning that as the economy declines, enrollment grows. Typically, then, the program grows in recessions and declines in economic boom times. But with the 2002 farm bill, President Bush dramatically expanded eligibility, restoring benefits to nearly a million individuals at the beginning of 2003, and paving the way for the program to expand as it did during the rest of presidency. As a result, Bush managed to oversee unprecedented growth in the program even as the economy grew. Obama then followed up on this with an eligibility expansion of his own in the 2009 stimulus package.

It’s not unreasonable to criticize Obama for the expansion of the food stamps program under his watch. But Obama's Republican critics shouldn’t forget that it was a GOP president who helped make that expansion possible.

Meanwhile, frustrated Republicans just don't understand why Libertarians and constitutionalists just won't hold their noses and vote Republican because as they see it, the Republicans are the lesser of the two evils. But unconstitutional statist evil is still unconstitutional statist evil and Libertarians and constitutionalist see no differences between the Republicans and the Democrats, except for the social issues which they don't care about anyway because they correctly perceive that the theocrats are anti-natural rights advocates who seek to criminalize every possible human behavior that they don't like.

I don't know what will happen in November but I do believe that the advantage goes to Obama simply because the Republican Party has totally wimped out and failed to distinguish itself on critically important issues. 

Meanwhile, I urge Republicans to read the Constitution, here, especially Article 1, Section 8, that lists the specific enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the states that created the Constitution.  The Federal government has no constitutional right or authority to do anything that it wasn't specifically authorized to do.  Our founders worked hard to limit Federal powers and now we've got "Fedzilla Gone Wild".  

Military Civil Asset Forfeiture: A Draconian Extension of Civil Asset Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture is a nasty legal mechanism that allows the government at the federal, state, city and county level to steal on a massive scale even if a person has not been arrested or convicted of a crime.

Civil Asset Forfeiture - The Government's License to Steal

Many if not most of the victims of civil asset forfeiture are poor and middle class folks who don't have the resources to fight back.  Government never goes after rich folks who can afford to hire an attorney.

Horrifying as civil asset forfeiture statutes are, these instruments of terror and legal plunder have taken on a new dimension - military civil asset forfeiture.

Military Asset Forfeiture

The Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Service now has the ability to use federal asset forfeiture and “Equitable Sharing” provisions to seize and forfeit property:

"In order to gain sharper teeth in its investigations and prosecutions, DCIS added something more to its arsenal in 2007. A Memorandum of Understanding outlining basic functions and guidelines of DCIS’s participation in the DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture Program was formalized on May 25, 2007. Before this MOU became official, DCIS could only seek civil judgments and settlements for large sums of money as some form of financial punishment.

Assets being sought for forfeiture by DCIS are entered into DOJ’s Consolidated Asset Tracking System (CATS). DOJ’s CATS system, a controlled DOJ database, tracks assets through the forfeiture process and gives the Attorney General a good picture of what assets are being forfeited, in what amounts, from whom, and by what investigative agency. CATS, however, is only as accurate as the end user or data entry specialist who inputs the information at the local level. If assets are being forfeited but are not entered into CATS, DOJ has no other way to know what assets are being forfeited by each investigative agency. As the forfeiture partnership progresses, CATS should provide an accurate reflection of the assets being forfeited by DCIS.

Another aspect of the DOD/DOJ MOU is that the United States Marshal’s Service (USMS) will be the custodian of all assets seized when DCIS is the lead investigative agency. This is common practice for other DOJ criminal investigative agencies such as the DEA, FBI, and some non-DOJ participating investigating agencies such as the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS).

Part of the rationale for establishing DCIS as a participating agency in the DOJ Asset Forfeiture Program, specifically the Assets Forfeiture Fund, are the two DCIS capabilities that were not available before 2007. As previously described, DCIS now has the ability to take [*204] the profit out of crime affecting DOD and its sub-agencies. Additionally, the MOU gives DCIS the ability to receive equitable sharing funds directly from the DOJ Assets Forfeiture Fund. Equitable sharing is available to DCIS if it was not the lead investigative agency seeking forfeiture on a case but contributed to the investigation. The MOU establishes that DCIS can not only seek equitable sharing from DOJ criminal investigative agencies, but also investigative agencies that participate in the Treasury Fund and Postal Fund. An example of this would be when IRS Criminal Investigations is the lead agency on a forfeiture case that DCIS substantially assisted. Funds shared and received must be used in accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 524(c), the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Seized and Forfeited Property (July 1990), and DOJ’s policies.

With the US military and Department of Defense actively pursuing civil asset forfeiture, this constitutes a dangerous 'crossing of the Rubicon' because the military is now vested with powers it was never intended to have.  

Civil Asset Forfeiture - The Government's License to Steal

What is civil asset forfeiture? The best explanation is provided by the Institute for Justice who researches and follows this issue.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture

Civil forfeiture laws represent one of the most serious assaults on private property rights in the nation today. Under civil forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize your car or other property, sell it and use the proceeds to fund agency budgets—all without so much as charging you with a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, where property is taken after its owner has been found guilty in a court of law, with civil forfeiture, owners need not be charged with or convicted of a crime to lose homes, cars, cash or other property.

Americans are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but civil forfeiture turns that principle on its head. With civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property to boost their budgets. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit, not justice.

It's crucial to understand the difference between civil asset forfeiture and criminal asset forfeiture.  With civil asset forfeiture, a person doesn't even have to commit a crime or be convicted of a crime.  The government at the federal, state, city and county level have the legal authority to just steal and keep whatever they want and legal recourse for the victim can be difficult, time consuming and legally expensive.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also addressed the issue of civil asset forfeiture.

Easy Money: Civil Asset Forfeiture Abuse by Police

On November 18, 2009, Shukree Simmons, who is African-American, was driving with his business partner on the highway from Macon, Georgia, back to Atlanta after selling his cherished Chevy Silverado truck to a restaurant owner in Macon for $3,700 of sorely needed funds. As Mr. Simmons passed through Lamar County, he was pulled over by two patrol officers who stated no reason for the stop, but instead asked Mr. Simmons numerous questions about where he was going and where he had been, and even separated him from his business partner for extended questioning. The officers searched both people and the car, finding no evidence of any illegal activity. A drug dog sniffed the car and did not indicate the presence of any trace of drugs. Notwithstanding the total lack of evidence of criminal activity and Mr. Simmons’s explanation that he was carrying money from selling his truck, the officers confiscated the $3,700 on the suspicion that the funds were derived from illegal activity, pursuant to their authority under Georgia’s civil asset forfeiture law . Despite the fact that Mr. Simmons mailed his bill of sale and title for the truck to the officer, he was told over the phone that he would need to file a legal claim to get his money back.

For most people in Mr. Simmons’s position, the story would end there. To challenge this activity and get their money back, victims of seizures bear the burden of initiating a claim for the money. If no claim is filed, the police can keep the money. It is unlikely that regular folks whose money is taken will be equipped to seek out the appropriate statute and comply with the requirements for making a claim. While lawyers are available to do this work, the price is high — in Georgia, a standard retainer fee is $5,000. Many people lack the resources to pay that price, and even if they had them, it would not make sense to pay more than the value of the seized funds.

Luckily for Mr. Simmons, he spoke to a lawyer who referred his case to the ACLU...

Cases such as the horror experienced by Mr. Simmons are not at all unusual or even rare. Reason.com cites another horrifying example of civil asset forfeiture.

The Forfeiture Racket, Police and prosecutors won't give up their license to steal.

Around 3 in the morning on January 7, 2009, a 22-year-old college student named Anthony Smelley was pulled over on Interstate 70 in Putnam County, Indiana. He and two friends were en route from Detroit to visit Smelley’s aunt in St. Louis. Smelley, who had recently received a $50,000 settlement from a car accident, was carrying around $17,500 in cash, according to later court documents. He claims he was bringing the money to buy a new car for his aunt.

The officer who pulled him over, Lt. Dwight Simmons of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, said that Smelley had made an unsafe lane change and was driving with an obscured license plate. When Simmons asked for a driver’s license, Smelley told him he had lost it after the accident. Simmons called in Smelley’s name and discovered that his license had actually expired. The policeman asked Smelley to come out of the car, patted him down, and discovered a large roll of cash in his front pocket, in direct contradiction to Smelley’s alleged statement in initial questioning that he wasn’t, in fact, carrying much money.

A record check indicated that Smelley had previously been arrested (though not charged) for drug possession as a teenager, so the officer called in a K-9 unit to sniff the car for drugs. According to the police report, the dog gave two indications that narcotics might be present. So Smelley and his passengers were detained and the police seized Smelley’s $17,500 cash under Indiana’s asset forfeiture law.

But a subsequent hand search of the car turned up nothing except an empty glass pipe containing no drug residue in the purse of Smelley’s girlfriend. Lacking any other evidence, police never charged anybody in the car with a drug-related crime. Yet not only did Putnam County continue to hold onto Smelley’s money, but the authorities initiated legal proceedings to confiscate it permanently.

Smelley’s case was no isolated incident. Over the past three decades, it has become routine in the United States for state, local, and federal governments to seize the property of people who were never even charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. Nearly every year, according to Justice Department statistics, the federal government sets new records for asset forfeiture. And under many state laws, the situation is even worse: State officials can seize property without a warrant and need only show “probable cause” that the booty was connected to a drug crime in order to keep it, as opposed to the criminal standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, owners of seized property all too often have a heavier burden of proof than the government officials who stole their stuff.

Municipalities have come to rely on confiscated property for revenue. Police and prosecutors use forfeiture proceeds to fund not only general operations but junkets, parties, and swank office equipment. A cottage industry has sprung up to offer law enforcement agencies instruction on how to take and keep property more efficiently. And in Indiana, where Anthony Smelley is still fighting to get his money back, forfeiture proceeds are enriching attorneys who don’t even hold public office, a practice that violates the U.S. Constitution.

Banksters aren't the only crime syndicate in America with a license to steal.  The police and prosecutors routinely steal and they almost always steal exclusively from  poor and middle class folks who don't have the resources to fight back.

Not much of anything is being done about it either.  Folks really need to start aggressively lobbying their state legislatures to pass laws outlawing the practice of civil asset forfeiture.

Muppets and Mittens: Is Romney Trying to Prove that He's Brain Dead?

In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Romney claims he's going to solve our budget problems by cutting funding for PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts and and Amtrak.

Mitt Romney: Slash Amtrak, PBS Funding, But Defense Cuts And Middle Class Tax Cuts Off The Table

The federal government is spending about $3.7 TRILLION a year on tax revenues of about $2.2 trillion. If you are going to be a serious budget cutter, you start with the big ticket items first because that's where you achieve the biggest payback.

Mitt's cuts:

PBS $444 million
National Endowment of the Arts $146 million
Amtrak subsidies $1.56 billion

Now I totally agree that subsidies to PBS and the National Endowment of the Arts should be abolished and I further believe that Amtrak should just be put on the auction block for sale.  But these items are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Romney the Big Governrment Statist, just can't bring himself to even suggest cutting big ticket items that are the real problem.  Ron Paul boldly outlined his plan to cut $1 trillion year one as president.

RON PAUL “PLAN TO RESTORE AMERICA”

SPENDING: Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels.

Ron Paul has an plan to dig us out of our fiscal nightmares. All Romney had to do was just partially or wholly steal Ron Paul's plan. But weasel wimp Mittens opted instead to expose his lack of testicular fortitude.

Not only is Romney pathetically weak when it comes to slashing spending, he turns mega big spender when it comes to massively increasing defense spending by trillions.

Mitt Romney Proposes $8 Trillion Welfare Program for Defense Contractors; Prepare for Two Wars if Romney Wins

Yo Mitt, if you've got a pair, time is running out to show them.  Wimp talk just won't cut in an election where Republicans are already behind in critical swing states.  

The Unaffordable Affordable Care Act

When the Democrats passed Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, they were sufficiently astute to NOT implement most of this horror until after the 2012 election and for darn good reasons. Nobody can afford Obama's 'affordable' heath care.

Even the New York Times has chirped in on this issue.

Ambiguity in Health Law Could Make Family Coverage Too Costly for Many

The new health care law is known as the Affordable Care Act. But Democrats in Congress and advocates for low-income people say coverage may be unaffordable for millions of Americans because of a cramped reading of the law by the administration and by the Internal Revenue Service in particular....

Under the law, most Americans will be required to have health insurance starting in 2014. Low- and middle-income people can get tax credits and other subsidies to help pay their premiums, unless they have access to affordable coverage from an employer.

The law specifies that employer-sponsored insurance is not affordable if a worker’s share of the premium is more than 9.5 percent of the worker’s household income. The I.R.S. says this calculation should be based solely on the cost of individual coverage for the employee, what the worker would pay for “self-only coverage.”

Critics say the administration should also take account of the costs of covering a spouse and children because family coverage typically costs much more.

In 2011, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance averaged $5,430 a year for single coverage and $15,070 for family coverage. The employee’s share of the premium averaged $920 for individual coverage and more than four times as much, $4,130, for family coverage.

Under the I.R.S. proposal, such costs would be deemed affordable for a family making $35,000 a year, even though the family would have to spend 12 percent of its income for full coverage under the employer’s plan.

The debate over the meaning of affordable pits the Obama administration against its usual allies. Many people who support the new law said the proposed rules could leave millions of people in the lower middle class uninsured and frustrate the intent of Congress, which was to expand coverage.

The Democrats understand full well that they will take a hit and incur the wrath of its base when the reality surfaces that a low income working class family is forced to shell out 12% of its income  for government mandated 'affordable' health insurance.

Of course, the Democratic solution to the the world's most expensive healthcare system is to raise taxes and provide 'free' but very expensive healthcare.  However, the big problem with the US healthcare system is that it's unaffordable at any price.

America spends more on heathcare than any nation on the planet and by a wide margin.

U.S. healthcare costs the most but isn't the best: Report

Health Care Costs To Reach Nearly One-Fifth Of GDP By 2021

Clearly, the US healthcare system isn't working for us. It's hugely expensive, grossly inefficient, bureaucrat heavy and doesn't even deliver basic quality healthcare.

Such is the legacy of a nation that once proudly boasted of the world's finest healthcare system but that was long before the government got involved.

For more on the healthcare issue, see:

The Absurdity of US Healthcare and OMG, the Hysteria over SCOTUS upholding the Obamacare Tax! Under What Circumstances Would This Government Hating Libertarian Reluctantly Support a Single Payer Healthcare System?