Voting Doesn't Matter Because All Elections Are Controlled by R and D Big Money, Big Banksters, Big Corporations and Big Defense Contractors

Republican, Democrat or Independent, Americans are notorious for bitching and moaning about the election system but they are even more livid about the outcomes of elections.  Republicans and Democrats vote for change that never comes. None of the change that Americans vote for ever supports peace, liberty and prosperity.  While voting for big corrupt government is a national sport in America, the 2 parties actually believe they are different despite the fact that both Republicans and Democrats advocate for endless wars, bankster corruption, the wholesale slashing of civil liberties and fascist crony capitalism.  On the Democrat side, their talking points are always reduced to the Koch Brothers who are the favorite punching bags of progressives and on the Republican side it's always about George Soros and how he spreads his gargantuan wealth to liberal groups.

What voters fail to understand is that the entire election process is rigged and was never intended to be a We the People thing.  I'm not even defending democracy which I consider unlimited majority mob rule where 51% of the people get to trump the rights of the other 49%.  However, in America today the general theme on the right and left is always about our failed democracy.  Guess what? Democracy is working as it was intended to work - to concentrate wealth and power.  The establishment Republican and Democrat elites who are actually representatives of banksters, defense contractors, NSA contractors and other assorted special corporate interests are masters at getting folks to vote away their liberty in exchange for some perceived benefit.

When most American votes, they are actually voting for the police powers of state violence to rob and plunder some other citizen at the point of a gun to give them what they want and think they deserve.  Republicans vote for big bad government, the squashing of civil liberties and the endless wars that they worship like a god.  Democrats also vote for the wars and anti-civil liberty laws but they tend focus on preserving socialist entitlements, taxation and redistribution of wealth.

At the end of the day, the rich get richer, the poor get poor and the middle class is wiped out.

While I'll never be convinced that anything beneficial to humanity has ever existed in any democracy, the American democracy is especially repugnant and vile because nowhere in human history have the rich politicos and their corporate sponsors managed to bamboozle over 317 million Americans, here, or  over 207 million eligible voters, here.   Granted, far fewer actually vote and American voter participation continues to decline.

Getting back to 'democracy' and elections, America has 2 major impediments.  1.  Big corporate special interest money controls the RNC and DNC money machines and 2. The elites of the RNC and DNC machines literally ban We the People from control of the primary process by loading it up with super delegates, congress critters and DNC/RNC officials.

Primaries

Every Ron Paul supporter knows how the Ron Paul delegates were treated at the RNC Convention by the Republicans. They were marginalized, shunned and prevented from voting.  So much for fair and honest primaries.  It doesn't exist in any party.

This is deliberate and explains why the primary system is such a freaking farce.  The truth of the matter is that neither the RNC or DNC machines trust We the People.  The primary process was supposed to be a We the People event where We the People selected candidates.  It doesn't work that way and probably never has.  The Nazi strong arm tentacles of the RNC and DNC machines have effectively banished We the People from the primary process.

This week, the RNC voted to further squash We the People consisting of Tea Party folks, liberty activists, Paulites and Libertarians.

RNC tightens 2016 primary calendar, rules The Hill

A series of changes aimed at tightening the GOP presidential primary calendar sailed through a vote at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting, giving the party new tools to control its nomination process.

The new 2016 rules will make it much harder for states to cut in line in the nomination process and will help Republicans avoid a repeat of a drawn out, bloody primary many believe damaged Mitt Romney's chances in 2012 of defeating President Obama.

After a contentious Thursday hearing on some rules changes, few members joined Virginia Committeeman Morton Blackwell in objecting to the final package — the landslide vote was 153 in favor, with 9 opposing.

Mort Blackwell is one of the good guys who has supported the Tea Party, Paulites and Libertarians.  Blackwell and liberty were dealt a decisive blow by the RNC.   Moreover, the 153-9 vote is proof that the establishment GOP elites are still very much in control and not threatened in the least.  However, while the Republican elites may smirk that they struck a mortal blow to the liberty activists within the party, the GOP will ultimately pay the price for its insufferable arrogance in general elections because the liberty activists are bailing like crazy.  They are so fed up that they couldn't ever hold their noses and vote Republican.

Campaign Finance Money

This week, conservative activist journalist Denesh D'Souza was indicted by a federal grand jury for violating campaign finance laws.  Specifically, D'Souza was charged with illegally raising $20,000 for a conservative candidate.  Politico reports:

The facts of the case remain hazy: The indictment states that D’Souza reimbursed associates who donated $20,000 to a campaign and also caused the campaign to misreport the source of its contributions.  

I'm no fan of D'Souza and consider him a typical Republican theocon-neocon statist.  That said, the charges against him are outrageous and politically motivated by the Obama Department of Justice because $20,000 is an incredibly puny amount of money swimming in the vast oceanic cesspools of political money.

Politico had a far more interesting piece in May 2012, before the 2012 election. Yes, Politico is a statist leftist rag and never goes after the Dems on their fund raising schemes but the article disclosed accurate money facts regarding Republican fund raising.

GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz

Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress....

POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections...

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, proved its potency by spending nearly $50 million in the primaries. Now able to entice big donors with a neck-and-neck general election, the group is likely to meet its new goal of spending $100 million more.

And American Crossroads and the affiliated Crossroads GPS, the groups that Rove and Ed Gillespie helped conceive and raise cash for, are expected to ante up $300 million, giving the two-year-old organization one of the election’s loudest voices.

The cost of the 2012 presidential election was a staggering $2 billion according to the Huffington Post and this doesn't include congressional races.

2012 Presidential Election Cost Hits $2 Billion Mark

The Obama and Romney campaigns each mobilized competing squads of ultra-wealthy fundraisers, sought aid from free-spending allied super PACs and deployed multimillion-dollar media broadsides and armies of organizers.

The final thrust of fundraising included a massive late surge of $33 million in donations to pro-Romney political committees from a single billionaire, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson. In all, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, gave Romney and other Republican candidates $95 million during the election season, closing in on the gambling magnate's vow to give $100 million to GOP causes.

The new campaign finance filings covered the final few weeks of the race, when campaign organizations for Romney and Obama, along with a slew of super PACs, raised and spent millions toward the long-expected $2 billion milestone.

By law, an individual can only contribute $2,500 to a candidate.  Even if ordinary folks could afford a $2,500 campaign contribution to a candidate, which they can't, the lion's share of political money comes from PAC's, special interests, banksters, defense contractors etc. and these are the folks who own and control the RNC and DNC machines.

While the Huffington Post reported that the 2012 presidential election cost $2 billion,Politico reported that the cost of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections was $6 billion, here. Open Secrets, an organization that specifically tracks political money, also reported that the 2012 presidential and congressional elections cost $6 billion, here.

It's clearly evident that the rich and powerful hijacked and now own our election system.  The RNC and DNC machines are nothing but money laundering machines for special interests.

If an individual voter can only contribute a maximum of $2,500 to a candidate and if Denesh D'Souza is being prosecuted for his role in a puny $20,000 campaign finance fiasco, how is it that the Koch Brothers can legally pony up a staggering $400 million and casino magnet Adelson can pony up $100 million to influence election outcomes?

Every campaign finance reform bill passed by congress over the decades has served to increase special interest money in the election system.   Though a complicated maze of legal PAC's, dark money, dirty money, corporate money and other schemes and scams, just about every politician in America is bought and paid for.

This money is controlled by the RNC and DNC machines who pick and fund the candidates. Those candidates who refuse to be bought and bribed lose in primaries because nobody can compete with the big bucks of special interest dough, the RNC, DNC, their PAC's, their bundlers and their formidable fund raising machines.

If elections are going to ever mean anything as We the People initiatives to raise, fund and elect We the People candidates, then the special interest dough that owns our elections must be outlawed. The PAC's must be outlawed.  Bundling must be outlawed.

No one should be allowed to contribute money to any campaign except voters.  Furthermore, the most destructive aspect of our corrupt political system is the fund raising authority of the RNC and DNC.  Americans should support outlawing their ability to fund raise because it embodies the systemic corruption the permeates our election process.

Here's what a politician really looks like:

Photo source: http://www.isights.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sponsors.jpg

Whatever the flaws of democracy and despite the fact that few folks even vote with their brains, I doubt that they intentionally voted for folks who are compromised, bribed, bought and paid for.

Until We the People directly fund candidates, control the primary process and get corporate money out of elections, there really is no sane reason to vote R or D.  Voting 3rd party makes far more sense.  At least it's a repudiation of Republican and Democrat treason and tyranny and allows somebody to scream "I'm here, I'm aware, I'm politically actives and I reject you warmongering, bankster loving traitors who sellout the poor and middle class".

A more perfect election process would ban all fund raising by anybody except the candidates and they should only be allowed to raise money from individual voters.  Moreover, it would be even more fun to allow unlimited individual campaign contributions so long as they are legally required to post all campaign contributions on their websites for voters to checkout.  Really, who cares of Soros gives a billion or more to Obama or if the Koch Brothers gives a billion or more to Mittens? At least voters would know who fund candidates and to what extent.

I guarantee you that campaign financial disclosure in real time would totally freakout dishonest candidates who sell themselves to the highest bidders.  To call them whores would be an insult to decent and hardworking whores everywhere.  Full disclosure would go a long way in providing voters with highly relevant information.

Meanwhile, so long as the big R and D money machines control elections, voting is truly a waste of time unless a vote is a 3rd party vote.  For the election process to ever be meaningful, primaries must be 100% We the People initiatives and the dark and dirty special interest money must be expunged from the system.

Why Republicans are FRAUDS on Obamacare and Entitlements

As the Republicans suddenly decide to defund the implementation of Obamacare after previously funding its implementation since the ACA was passed, folks are confused.  Liberals and ACA supporters keep asking "what are the Republicans afraid of?". From a logical point of view it makes more sense for Republicans to just let Obamacare proceed and fail.  After all, if Americans so oppose the ACA then they will be motivated to vote out of office those will gave them Obamacare and that's a boatload of Dems.

What is Obamacare? Obamacare is just another massively subsidized entitlement program that will cost an estimated $1 trillion. Do Republicans oppose new entitlements?  Of course not and Republicans have a long history of creating new entitlements and expanding existing entitlements.

The Republicans embraced and passed during the Bush years Medicare Part D or what is known as a massive prescription drug program for seniors.In fact, the program is estimated to cost a trillion bucks. Government program costs tend to be estimated over 10 years and the cost of most of these programs is vastly underestimated at the time entitlement bills pass.

Back in 2009, Forbes highlighted the hypocrisy of the Republicans.

Republican Deficit Hypocrisy

The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn’t surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.....

Recall the situation in 2003. The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history–$475 billion in fiscal year 2004, according to the July 2003 mid-session budget review. But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America’s seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.

Recall, too, that Medicare was already broke in every meaningful sense of the term. According to the 2003 Medicare trustees report, spending for Medicare was projected to rise much more rapidly than the payroll tax as the baby boomers retired. Consequently, the rational thing for Congress to do would have been to find ways of cutting its costs. Instead, Republicans voted to vastly increase them–and the federal deficit–by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013...

However, the Bush administration knew this figure was not accurate...

Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.

Moreover, there is a critical distinction–the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit....

Bad as Obamacare is and it's certainly a pending disaster, at least the Dems attempted to fund it.  The Republicans made no such effort to fund Medicare Part D.

As Republicans and their wingnut pundits continue to thrash Obamacare as a new entitlement, they are also having fun calling Obama the Food Stamp President.  I decided to look into that allegation.

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.

While it's probably true that food stamp recipients have now far exceeded usage under Bush because of the miserable economy, the point is that Bush and the Republicans facilitated the massive expansion of the food stamp program.

The political parties are masters at 'bread and circus' pandering to their respective bases.  After all, when have voters ever rejected a new or expanded entitlement program?  That is the core of the disease that is eating America.  Everybody wants something for nothing or they want something at the expense of somebody else.  When voters vote, they are actually voting for the police-military powers of the government to rob and plunder others for their exclusive benefit.

At the end of the day, these programs fail and the nation is bankrupted but that won't stop voters and politicians from living a grand delusion.  Entitlements sell at the ballot box and politicians love expanding their power.

Frederick Douglass, Republicans, CPAC & Are Republicans Racists?

When it comes to racial issues, nobody steps into it more than Republicans.  At the 2013 CPAC confab, there was a panel hosted by the Frederick Douglass Republicans.  Apparently, the discussion turned ugly.

Racism Talk At CPAC Derailed When Attendee Says Slaves Should Have Been Grateful

A panel hosted by “Frederick Douglass Republicans” at CPAC was supposed to be about how Republicans can overcome their issues with race and tolerance spun out of control when an attendee suggested that Douglas should have been grateful to his slave owners “for giving him shelter and food.” Prior to this, another person at the discussion expressed frustration with what he termed the disenfranchisement of “young southern white males.”

During the breakout session called Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You’re Not One?” which was led by K. Carl Smith, a black conservative activist that committed to the movement full time in 2009, a young man from North Carolina, Scott Terry, asked him about the problems facing white people and segregation.

“It seems to be that you’re reaching out to voters at the expense of young white Southern males,” said Terry, who told the crowd that he had come “to love my people and culture.”

Smith told him that after Douglass became a freeman he wrote a letter to his slavemaster and forgave him.

“For giving him shelter? And food?” Terry muttered, promoting gasping shocks from the crowd.

Terry was accompanied by a man with a Confederate flag, Matthew Heimbach.

I do believe that most Republicans in the shocked crowd were gasping in horror at the sight of a southerner hauling a Confederate flag into the Frederick Douglass Republican CPAC panel and suggesting that African Americans should be grateful to their slavemasters for giving them food and shelter.

As a Libertarian, I quite voting Republican in 2006 because after spending a few years hanging out with Republicans to try and understand these peculiar creatures, I came to despise them as hateful and loathsome for their love of war, their social intolerance and the revolting Evangelical fanaticism that craves theocracy.  While I can think of many more reasons why I think Republicans are vile, racism isn't among them.  Republicans proudly boast that they are the party of Lincoln and by extension proclaim the GOP anti-racist.  Moreover, the Republican Party has been trying to recruit and romance African Americans and other minorities into its fold by marketing the GOP as the party of family values.

Still, it can't be dismissed that the deep south is a solidly reliable Republican stronghold and that racial issues still stir the imaginations of the South.  As a Yankee, I find the south perplexing and a complex duality which is precisely why I enjoy reading about the South.  A Southerner once told me "you love the blacks as a race but hate them as individuals but in the south we hate the blacks as a race but love them as individuals."  Effectively, I was accused of being just another Yankee fraud shamelessly advocating for civil rights which, of course, conflicted with Southern culture.

In The Road To Disunion, Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854 by William W. Freehling, I did manage to get a horrifying glimpse into American slavery and the South.  Here's what Freehling wrote about Frederick Douglass:

In the mid 1830's, Frederick Douglass, then in his early twenties, successfully ran away from slavery in Baltimore.  He soon became the most famous northern black abolitionist.  Douglass's Life and Times, one of the great American autobiographies, ranked with Theodore Dwight Weld's American Slavery as It Is and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as widely disseminated volumes having incalculable impact on northern public opinion.....

Frederick Douglass was born the wrong half white.  From his mother, a black slave, the Marylander inherited thralldom.  From his father, an unknown white and perhaps a slaveholder, the future runaway received the contempt of of a patriarch running away from responsibility for a child enslaved.  Douglass despised his anti-father father, worshipped his caring mother, and adored his mother's mother who tenderly raised him.

Such attitudes wold seem to encourage finding black beautiful and white loathsome.  But Douglass disliked much of slaves' cultural blackness.  He had no use for conjuring or voodoo or any other traces of African "primitiveness"...He carefully scrubbed his voice of slave dialect....

This transparent excuse for his own efforts to whiten himself showed Douglass's uneasiness about black styles.  He was less uneasy about his dislike for some slaves' "black-assed' behavior - fawning, cringing, eyes downcast, worshipful of whites as some superior beings.  He "quite lost his patience" upon finding "a colored man weak enough to believe" in submission.  He found plantation slaves "in point of ignorance and indolence" and "stupid indifference" to be sinking with the worn-out soil into "general dilapitation.".

In contrast, Douglass shared enslavers' vision of te ideal personality type:  independent, fearless, egalitarian, individualistic, the reverse of everything servile....

Douglass looked like a man trapped between races....

As a child, Douglass fit in nowhere, in no family, black or white, after being torn from his enslaved grandmother at the age of six.  The tearing was itself a comment on the Domestic Institution. Douglass's grandmother had been assigned to raise him while his mother labored in the far-off fields....Then one day at Massa's command, grandmother and grandson tramped many miles to the home plantation.  Douglass knew not why they had been summoned.  The grandmother lovingly carried the weary lad part of the way.....

They arrived.  Frederick could not understand why "grandmamma" looked so "sad".  Grandmamma pointed out to Frederick two sisters and a brother.  "Brothers and sisters we were by blood, but slavery had made us strangers.".  Grandmamma, "affectionately patted me on the head," to go out and play...

The lad, sensing something, reluctantly went.

Frederick never saw is grandmamma again.  He was forced to live with a cruel black lady with her own children.  She fed her own children well but starved Frederick to the point where he had to steal food.  His birth mother visited him, brought him a ginger cake and her "strong protecting arms" showered him with "deep and tender pity". Douglass later wrote "as I had never learned before, that I was not only a child, but somebody's child.  I was grander upon my mother's knee than a king upon his throne.".

Frederick never saw his mother again.  That's how it was for black families living in slavery.  Yet to this day there are folks who defend the institution of human slavery as humane, just, moral, compassionate and caring.

Remember Bat Shit Crazy Michelle Bachmann who sought the Republican nomination for president?  Bachmann's website had a reading list that included the book Robert E. Lee by J. Steven. Wilkins.  An excerpt from the book, documented here.

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

Christianity defending the institution of slavery is nothing new, although it is also true that many abolitionists were Christian.  So why did Bachmann praise a book that praised slavery?  Bachmann went even further.  She signed a petition of a Christian organization and the petition included these words when Bachmann signed it.

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.

It's a gosh darn shame that Christian groups and Bachmann never really bothered to read the true history of American slavery and its impact on black families.  Rather than seek the bitter and horrifying truth, it's much easier for pro-family Christian groups and whack jobs like Bachmann to defend the institution of slavery because in their opinion, it was Christian!  Based on the flawed assumption that slavery was good precisely because it was Christian is revisionist history at its worst.  Defending slavery as pro-family is actually a theological defense of slavery.

Freehling also discusses the rise of black churches led by black pastors during the slavery era.  The black churches were forbidden and these folks met in secret because if they were caught, and they were caught, they were severely punished.  What kind of black Christians did white Christians want?  Freehling writes:

Whites tended to see any Afro-American religion as un-American.  Whites' favorite black religion was blacks worshipping under a white who preached Christian obedience.  Slaves caught cheering while black preachers thundered about freedom could be lashed.  Bondsmen caught participating in African celebrations could be lynched.

The resulting black religion had a secretive aspect.  To worship, forbidden black style, blacks sometimes had to steal away in the dark night, bound for places called, revealingly "Hush Harbors.".   Folks then huddled around a black iron kettle turned upside down.  Supplicants prayed into the vessel, beseeching the kettle to hush the sound.

Slave preachers seldom wholly depended on such crude silencing devices.  Whites, blacks knew, might eventually hear.  Illegitimate messages had to have the sound of legitimate servility.  That need, like much else in slaves' condition, yielded an Old Testament-inspired, Moses-oriented theology.  White preachers to slaves emphasized St. Paul's injunction that "servants obey in all things your Masters.".  Slave ministers preferred the Book of Exodus, especially tales of the Red Sea opening to allow Hebrew slaves to escape.  Slave sermons dwelled on pitiful David slaying pretentious Goliath, on ridiculed Noah sailing from his scoffers, above all on mighty Moses freeing his people.

"Moses" complained a white Christ-worshipper, "is their ideal of all that is high, and noble, and perfect in a man.". Christ became not so much "a spiritual Deliverer" as a "second Moses, who would eventually lead them out of bondage.".  Slaves tended to sing not of Jesus the meek but of Jesus as warrior: "Ride on King Jesus, No man can hinder thee."

Spirituals carried slaves back to theire favorite river, "Roll, Jordan, roll" they chanted.  "Roll, Jordan, roll...O my soul a rise in Heaven, Lord, For to hear when Jordan roll".  The black "Looked over Jordan and what did I see,"

                                  Comin' for to carry me home....

The life of Frederick Douglass as a slave was a miserable and dehumanizing life.  Because slaves were not considered human beings but merely property, they were frequently relocated, leased out and/or sold.  Freehling tells the story of when Frederick was assigned to Edward Covey.

Covey was a slave breaker of the Easterrn Shore.  Lease the man your slave, went the understand, and you will receive back a modest rent payment and a slave immodestly more docile.  Covey's tactic was to order slaves to labor, then ostensibly to leave.  He often hid nearby, behind stumps or in high grass or under the bushes.  If he spied the slightest let up in hard work, he would leap out of hiding and lay into the slave.  He whipped Frederick Douglass every week for six months.  The regime....was remorseless.....

One hot humid, day, Douglass became dizzy.  He lay down.  Edward Covery booted Douglass in the side.  That not sufficing to rouse the slave, Covey smashed a hickory slab into Douglass's face.

The bleeding slave picked himself up and fled.  He ran not towards freedom but to report Massa's damaged property to master.  Douglass's owner, t first disconcerted by the damage, ultimately felt compelled to side with the damager.  He ordered Douglass back to Covey.....

A fight between Covey and Douglass ensued.  The powerful slave bloodied the brutalizer.  Covey finally retreated.....No further assaults transpired.  The slave had stepped an inch toward freedom.

Frederick Douglass the man was born and Frederick Douglass the slave was dying.  It was a long journey but that is how folks claim their liberty - they refuse to comply, to submit and to be enslaved.

The story of Frederick Douglass is an epic, historical and inspiring story of courage for all of us.

Conor Friedersdorf on How the Establishment Press Got Rand Paul Wrong

The Atlantic definitely leans establishment statist progressive but this excellent analysis of Rand Paul by Conor Friedersdorf is definitely worth digesting because it suggests profound ramifications for the powers that be on all sides of the political spectrum.

I commend Friedersdorf on his outstanding and insightful analysis that deeply and provocatively challenges progressives for falling down on the issue civil liberties because if anything, civil liberties have historically been the calling card of liberals, progressives and Democrats.

How the Establishment Press Got Rand Paul Wrong

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional nonfiction.

Most journalists failed to anticipate his role in the Senate, focusing instead on a distracting controversy about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

When Rand Paul emerged on the national scene in 2010, staffers at places like The Cato Institute and Reason backed him more enthusiastically than any other U.S. Senate candidate. Like all Tea Party-affiliated pols, Paul favored smaller government, tax cuts, and free-market reforms. Unlike Marco Rubio or Christine O'Donnell, the Kentucky Republican was expected by right-leaning libertarians to oppose the bipartisan excesses of the post-9/11 era. As Radley Balko argued that spring, Paul would be better on civil liberties than President Obama and most Senate Democrats. Few non-libertarians believed him, as evidenced by the skeptical replies of progressive writers Adam Serwer* and Jamelle Bouie, savvy civil libertarians in their own right.

Three years later, it is beyond dispute: Paul is a leading opponent of civil-liberties abrogations, executive-power excesses, and militarism. Safe to say, after last week's filibuster, that his stands on those issues are the most visible and consequential that he has taken in the Senate. Even prior to that 13-hour spectacle, Paul mounted high-profile, sometimes lonely efforts to reform the Patriot Act; formally end the president's authorization to wage war in Iraq; reform drug laws; prevent indefinite detention; extend Fourth Amendment protections to electronic communications; require warrants for drone surveillance; reform overzealous TSA screening procedures; and stop an anti-piracy bill that would have onerously infringed on free expression online.

He's also opposed calls to wage war in Libya, Syria, and Iran.

Friedersdorf then plunges into a discussion on how the progressive media focused its entire coverage of Rand Paul's 2010 campaign on the civil rights issue and nothing else.

In light of this record, the establishment press ought to reflect upon the fact that its 2010 coverage utterly failed to anticipate the most important consequences of electing Paul to the Senate. Go back, as I just did, and read every story The New York Times published about him. Its coverage was representative: The paper paid little attention to his anti-war, pro-civil liberties, pro-checks-and-balances proclivities, though those issues were certain to loom large between 2010 and 2016; it paid some attention to the political import of a possible victory by a Tea Party Republican; and it focused intensely on Paul's position on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that passed when he was two years old and certainly won't be revisited in the foreseeable future.

Basically, Friedersdorf goes into lamenting how the liberals and progressives consistently ignore the profound significance of civil liberties and why restrictions on government power is the only vehicle  to guarantee civil liberties.   He extensively focuses on Rachel Maddow who devoted an entire show in 2010 to smacking Rand Paul on civil rights.  While Maddow may be an iconic figure on the left, she has abandoned all the principles of classical liberalism and opted instead to collect her fat $4 million a year MNSBC salary to grow her $13 million net worth, here.  Maddow is very much a soul mate of the hardcore theocratic Nazi neocons that she falsely claims to despise.  While Maddow may be a shameless money obsessed tool of America's descent into a Nazified militarized police state, Friedersdorf is an honest liberal who really does ponder the morality of an issue.  Maddow is pure entertainment who fires up a largely uninformed and ignorant base, same as Fox News fires up the uninformed and ignorant on the right.  For Fox and Maddow, it's all about entertainment and firing up raw emotions in folks who cling to totalitarian thuggery, anger and hate.

Friedersdorf comes to the conclusion that Rand Paul is not only good for civil liberties but he also raises the critically important issues of the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism.

I'd argue, after three years of Senator Paul, that his record on civil rights is much better than average, and far better than what his Republican opponent in that primary would've managed. The Bill of Rights has no more consistent defender in the Senate than Paul. And he has pointed critiques of the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, the two federal policies that do more harm to minorities than any others.

Friedersdorf was especially happy as well as relieved when Rand Paul reassuring said in the words of Friedersdorf that Paul "ultimately agreed, saying that, upon consideration, he would've voted for the Civil Rights Act, becoming the millionth politician to figure out that an ideological position he'd taken couldn't ultimately be defended and complicating his position for political and substantive reasons".

Then Friedersdor did the unthinkable.  He expanded the civil rights issue to the civil liberties issues in War on Terror and finally figured out that they are indeed related and that Rand Paul is in fact a ferocious defender of all civil rights, including the civil rights of Muslims.

What almost no one in the establishment press seems to realize, even today, is that the qualities that led Paul to defend his wrongheaded discomfort with the Civil Rights Act is the same stubbornness, political courage, and deeply felt commitment to libertarian principles that makes him willing to express the opinion that just because someone propagandizes for Islamists doesn't give us the right to kill them; or that even accused terrorists deserve due process; or that if you have a cousin in the Middle East who you talk to on the phone that shouldn't put you at risk of warrantless surveillance or a drone strike.....

What's particularly galling about the people who continue to portray Paul as a quasi-racist with unenlightened views on civil rights is the fact that he is doing far more than most senators to protect the minority group presently subject to more institutional racism than any other: Muslims. He has been criticized by some for focusing in his filibuster on American citizens being targeted by drones, spied upon, other otherwise violated by the federal government. What about foreigners? This ignores the fact that he has expressed skepticism of drone strikes abroad on many occasions, once going so far as to say that "I don't believe Jesus would've killed anyone, or condoned killing, perhaps not even in self-defense;" and that when Paul defends Americans against warrantless spying, indefinite detention, harassment at the airport, and drone strikes on U.S. soil, he is opposing policies that disproportionately hurt powerless minorities and stigmatized others....

I suspect that the above words were indeed a defining connect for Friedersdorf who was able to finally grasp the concept of natural rights as they relate to civil rights and civil liberties everywhere.  It's like a Libertarian light bulb lit up in his brain.  But more importantly, Friedersdor was able to sort through the fraudulent media talking points on both sides and get to the real issue, namely, that the issue of drone strikes on foreign or US soil are wrong because they murder folks and they murder without due process.  If that's not a profoundly significant civil liberties issue, I don't know what is.

Then Friedersdorf quoted an e-mail from an American Muslim, Falguni Sheth .

Is Paul any more racist in his economic and drug policy endorsements than the White House in its policies of kill lists, targeted killings, drone strikes, TSA no-fly and watch lists, Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program or "See Something, Say Something" policy?" "Is Rand Paul more of a threat to black and brown populations (American or foreign) than the current administration, which deported more than 1.5 million migrants during its first term and separated tens of thousands of migrant parents from their children? Is Rand Paul more of a threat to our safety than the current administration?

Despite the White House's defiant disregard of procedure, transparency or accountability, the Democrats disassociated themselves from an important strategic ally -- a libertarian who is the only one asking the questions that progressives, Occupy protesters, political dissenters, Muslims, Arab Americans, African-Americans, Latinos, South Asians and undocumented migrants want an answer to: Will the president claim and exercise the power to kill one of us at his and his advisers' discretion?

Not only are the words of Sheth and Friedersdorf an outright indictment of Obama and his administration on foreign policy and civil liberties, they also constitute a justifiable critique of the left, progressives and Democrats for their utter failure to defend human rights anywhere as he talks about Bloomberg's stop and frisk policies and spying on Muslim college students.

Compare the reaction to Paul's comments on the Civil Rights Act to Michael Bloomberg's ongoing stop-and-frisk policy and the NYPD task force he sent to New Jersey to spy on innocent Muslim college students. I understand why the Civil Rights Act is regarded as sacrosanct, but treating non-racist, abstract discomfort with one of its provisions as a more important than actual, ongoing state harassment of innocent blacks and Muslims is bonkers.

I don't know of anybody in the progressive camp that has managed to raise so many important issues and strike at so many raw nerves. While Libertarians and liberty activists have indeed struggled mightily to get these exact same points across to the American people without playing the left vs. right game, I do believe that this critically important issue is finally advancing and to the shame of both Republicans and Democrats who have hidden for decades behind the facade and legitimacy of government power, a power that is finally being exposed for the civil liberty crushing nightmare than it is.

Friedersdord winds down his epic piece with:

But the establishment press should recognize that much of its early coverage of Paul did more to obscure than illuminate the sort of senator that he'd be; that this is partly due to a bias against non-establishment politicians, including libertarians; and that if Paul were to leave the Senate tomorrow, the U.S. would lose one of a very few national politicians challenging executive-power excesses, unnecessary foreign wars, and racist, xenophobic policies that have resulted in thousands of innocent people being killed, imprisoned without charges, surveilled without warrants, or otherwise harassed by authorities in the name of fighting terrorism....

While it has been the dream of Libertarians, liberty activists and civil libertarians everywhere to pierce the armor of the diehard Republican right and Democratic left to dislodge them from blind party loyalty and obedience, I believe that Rand Paul has definitely succeeded in piercing that armor.

Liberty should never be a right vs. left issue and Rand Paul is changing that paradigm, especially since neither the Republicans nor the Democrats hold the high moral ground on civil liberties and both have been a big fail.

Who is Responsible for the $16.6 Trillion Mountain of Federal Debt? Most fiscally conservative president since 1980 was Clinton!

The right wing Republican blogosphere and its websites are exploding this week with juicy headlines like:

NATIONAL DEBT EXPLODES $6 TRILLION UNDER OBAMA  Breitbart

WOW!  Obama and the Dems are evil doer big spenders.  Forget that all spending bills must originate in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.  Right now, the National Debt Clock discloses federal debt in the amount of $16.6 trillion.

Let's get to the truth of the matter and learn the source of all that debt.  When Reagan was elected in 1980, the national debt had not yet crossed the trillion dollar threshold.  But under Reagan, it didn't take long for the debt to start piling up in a big way. Bush 41 massively ratcheted up Reagan era spending.  Additions to the national debt since 1980.

Republican created federal debt:

Reagan 2 terms     $1.7 trillion
Bush 41                 1.6 trillion
Bush 43                 4.9 trillion
Bush 43                 1.3 trillion carryover deficit debt inherited by Obama and funded with debt.

Total                     9.5 trillion or 57% of the $16.6 debt mountain is attributable to Republicans

Who was America's most fiscally conservative president since 1980?  Bill Clinton!  Bill Clinton spent less in two terms than Bush 41 spent in one term.

Democrat created federal debt:

Clinton 2 term     $1.5 trillion
Obama to date      5.6 excluding Bush 43 carryover deficit inherited by Obama

Total                    7.1 Trillion or 43% of the $16.6 trillion debt mountain attributable to Democrats.

Even more astounding is that two presidents named Bush are in fact responsible for a whopping $7.8 trillion of debt or 47%.  Bush 41 and Bush 43 are indeed directly responsible for nearly half of the mountain of federal debt.

With Jeb Bush unofficially declaring himself a candidate for 2016, one thing is clear.  America cannot afford another Bush as president.

Bad as Bush 41 and Bush 43 were as big spending lovers of debt, Jeb definitely holds the potential to make them look like fiscal conservatives.  Very recently Jeb Bush publicly stated that his model of governance is LBJ and his Great Society, and he further stated that he supports raising taxes.

JEB BUSH: I WOULD GOVERN LIKE LYNDON JOHNSON AS PRESIDENT Breitbart

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he would strive to be like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat famous for expanding the U.S. welfare state through the "Great Society," if he were elected president.

Jeb Bush says revenue increase could be part of budget deal Washington Post

Fiscal conservatives have abandoned the Republican Party in droves,  In fact, it's fair to state that the Republican Party is literally disintegrating. No political party can perpetually betray its core ideology without suffering the consequences at the ballot box.

But the Republican Party isn't just a total disaster at the presidential level.  At the congressional level it's just as bad and possibly worse.

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

Can you hear the screeching roars of the Tea Party Republicans accusing the Dems of being socialists, commies, fascists, Marxists, big spenders and a whole lot worse?

Well, as it turns out, the Republicans and the Tea Party crop of Republican Congress Critters that sailed into the District of Crime in January, 2011 to clean up the Democrat fiscal mess turned out to be bigger deficit spending hawks than the Democrats they replaced.

Supporters of small governance, low taxes and fiscal conservatism do not have a place in the Republican Party.  The Republican Party is 100% committed to growing government power, growing the deficit, growing the debt, growing more taxes and growing the welfare-warfare state.

While it's absolutely true that the Dems are really no different than the Republicans, the Dems are more honest because they tell you upfront that they fully intend to financially rape and plunder you.  What the Dems do outright, the Republicans do by stealth.

Meanwhile, every fiscal conservative should implant in their brain the stone cold reality that the Republicans are responsible for 57% of the federal debt mountain and that 2 Republican presidents named Bush are directly responsible for 47% of the big pile of debt.  No Democrat comes close to those monumental achievements.

Pork and Lipstick on the Republican and Democrat Pigs

Although both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for the fiscal carnage that is destroying America and the middle class, the Republicans are focused on blaming it all on Obama and the Democrats while very conveniently ignoring the fact that Bush and Gang added $5 trillion to the big pile of debt that will absolutely impoverish future generations of America.

Granted, everything that Obama has done has only made the situation a whole lot worse but the same could be said about the Republicans in control during the Bush-Cheney reign of fiscal and foreign policy terror.  The recently passed $50 billion plus Hurricane Sandy relief bill is just another classic pork laden congressional bill that is larded up with so much special interest pork that nobody in Congress evens questions the validity of the spending.

Hurricane Sandy Bill Creates Its Own Disaster

The trouble is that the House had an opportunity to pay for the core $17 billion for disaster assistance — but took a pass.

An amendment offered by Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) would have paid for these core provisions with offsetting spending cuts to 1.6 percent of the discretionary budget. But 71 Republicans voted with Democrats to defeat that measure.

“This is truly a shame,” Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson responded. “After all the wrangling on sequestration about reducing the deficit, the moment Congress has a pork-laden bill they refuse to pay for it.”

He said those who refused to pay for the disaster assistance were “hiding behind those most hurt by Hurricane Sandy to facilitate a special interest agenda.”

A claim that is hard to contend with.

Heritage Action noted some of the more egregious pork in the bill: “repairs to the Smithsonian Institution to upgrades to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration airplanes to more funding for the federal government’s epic educational failure known as Head Start, among myriad other extraneous items. The inclusion of $16 billion in wasteful community development funds is also concerning, especially because the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated it would need a comparatively much smaller $5.2 billion for its ‘unmet needs.’”

Even worse is that more than 94 amendments that might have addressed all this waste were killed by the House Rules Committee, which is run by Republicans.

Why does Congress keep spending money it does't have while running  trillion dollar a year plus deficits that require massive debt?  The short answer is that congress critters are indeed wholly owned subsidiaries of the special interests that fill their campaign coffers.  America is no long a nation "of the people,  by the people and for the people".  America has morphed into hideously fascist statism that exclusively serves special interests and at the top of the pyramid sits defense contractors and banksters.  Unfortunately, America has a long history of doling out special interest pork as eloquently disclosed by Wendy McElroy.

PORK-BARREL SPENDING: THE HISTORY OF LIPSTICKING PIGS

The history of the American pork barrel

The phrase “pork-barrel spending” is said to derive from a practice of antebellum slaveholders; they would give a barrel of salt pork to their slaves, who scrambled and fought with each other for a share. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term acquired its political meaning in the early 1870s. Webster’s traces the American usage back to the turn of the 20th century.

Advocates draw upon two clauses from article 1, section 8 of the United States Constitution for legitimacy.

The first is called the general-welfare clause. It states, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.” Pork is said to provide for general welfare, and thus to be permitted by this clause.

The second is the so-called postal clause. It authorizes Congress “to establish post offices and post roads” as a way to expedite interstate communication. This is now construed to give the federal government the power to appropriate money for public works. (The expenses not covered by section 8 were left to the states. The Tenth Amendment later clarified, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution … are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”)

Senator Reid is correct in that pork has been around since the first Congress. Up until the 1980s, however, it was not widespread, and it was often discouraged. Some Founding Fathers were uncomfortable even with the funding of postal roads. In a 1796 letter to James Madison, who is often called the father of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson argued against the postal clause.

Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a source of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest.

The first Congress (1790) authorized pork in the form of $1,500 to complete a lighthouse in Maine, which was then part of Massachusetts. The expenditure had the active support of President George Washington and of Rep. George Thatcher of Massachusetts. On constitutional grounds, however, the same Congress rejected a bill to aid a glass manufacturer. Perhaps the second bill lacked presidential support.

Contrary to Reid’s suggestion, however, pork-barrel spending did not become common practice. The second Congress solidly rejected a cod fishery bill intended to assist New Englanders. The South Carolina representative Hugh Williamson argued that the Constitution had anticipated “the time might come, when, by greater cohesion, by more unanimity, by more address, the representatives of one part of the Union might attempt to impose unequal taxes, or to relieve their constituents at the expense of the people.”

He pointed to constitutional provisions that clearly indicated “Congress might not have the power … to gratify one part of the Union by oppressing another.”

The practice of doling out pork, while clearly out of control, was once questioned and debated on constitutional and moral grounds.  These days, there are no such restraints because the Constitution is no longer even relevant and the morality of elected officials is merely a relic of the past.

There Really is No Such Thing as Communism, Socialism, Progressivism etc. Because....

Republicans are notorious for screaming that the Democrats are socialists and communists.   The Democrats scream that the Republicans are the capitalist Great Satan pigs who must be destroyed for the collective good of humanity.  The truth? Capitalism and free markets no longer exist in America but fascism runs wild as an insidious prosperity destroying disease.  If one truly examines all the 'ism's' that folks endlessly obsess about including communism, socialism, progressivism, fascism, state run capitalism, statism etc., they all boil down to essentially the same thing:  totalitarian control of all people and resources by a handful of ruling elites who grow filthy rich by concentrating all wealth and power.  Why worry over mere semantics when the end result is the same?

Interestingly, China is a case study in communism as well as the massive concentration of wealth and power, as documented by Bloomberg.

Mapping China’s Red Nobility 

Bloomberg News mapped the families of Communist China’s “Eight Immortals” to reveal the origins of princelings, an elite class that has been able to amass wealth and influence, and exploit opportunities unavailable to most Chinese. Bloomberg tracked 103 people – descendants including children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, and their respective spouses. The Immortals, now all dead, are revered in communist lore as revolutionary fighters who led China’s economic opening after Mao Zedong’s death. The identities and business dealings of these families are often cloaked in secrecy because of state censorship and complex corporate webs. To document them, Bloomberg scoured thousands of pages of corporate filings, property records, official websites and archives, and conducted dozens of interviews from China to the United States, where many were educated and have at times made their homes.

Those who cling to the warm and fuzzy notion that statism and collectivism are somehow caring, paternal and compassionate are somewhere between severely uninformed or downright stupid.  Collectivism is the most failed ideology in human history, yet folks continue to aspire to it as the noblest of ideas that will satisfy every human want if only the government had enough power.  Well, communist nations had all the power any tyrant could possible hope to achieve and their only achievement in the name of humanity was the biggest pile of dead bodies in history.   It's well documented that communism killed 100 million folks during the 20th century alone, and mostly through starvation attributable to collectivization and central planning.  Life is always cheap and expendable when worship of the state is the only imperative as well as an exalted god that must be obeyed.

The Worker's Paradise in the communist Soviet Union and elsewhere turned out to be a big bust when the impoverished, suffering and hungry proletariat took a peek at their working class comrades in nations with respectable levels of economic freedom.  What a shock!  The working class dudes in those evil capitalist nations were enjoying prosperity and consumer goodies on a scale unheard of in the commie Workers Paradises.   In capitalist nations, the poor were joining the middle class and for the first time in human history the people rather than the ruling aristocracy were actually building wealth and power.

It was a monumental leap for humankind because wealth and power was finally being widely diffused and disbursed among the people for the first time in human history.  Effectively, free markets and property rights represented a transfer of wealth and power from the 1% to the 99%.  For clearly obvious reasons the ruling class panicked because they were no longer in control as their absolute power and privileges were acutely threatened.

Once upon a time the world was owned and controlled by kings and queens, princes and princesses, lords and ladies, and absolute rulers. There were the ruling elites, the upper class, the propertied class, the moneyed class, the educated class, the bureaucratic class and everybody else was a serf of sorts and expected to be compliant slaves – that’s what slaves do, they serve their masters. Such was the fate of humanity for thousands of years. The 1% and the 99% have existed for as long as humans have existed.

Then the unthinkable happened. In Europe, Western Civilization was born as folks started to clamor for political rights, property rights and natural rights. Monarchies began to topple, theocratic powers were usurped and the revolution for human liberty began. Although Europe was a bloodbath on and off for nearly a millennium, the great political theorists and intellectual challengers who conceived and fought to implement such foreign concepts as non-repressive forms of government and individual sovereignty finally succeeded. Eventually, limited personal freedoms and rights translated into much wider economic freedoms which elevated industry and trade while spawning an economically strong middle class.

Throughout the process, we all learned that the vast human potential so inherent in the minds and souls of free thinking human beings is, ultimately, the only catalyst for progress and civilization, without which there can no civilizations, at least none worth noticing or experiencing. Great societies and human liberation are soul mates.

The grand experiment worked wonders as power and wealth was shifting away from the 1% and to the 99%. Shorn of their shackles, mankind prospered for the first time in human history and at an unprecedented rate. A strong and flourishing middle class was born as free markets were delivering good and services, and prosperity for the masses (99%) was achieved. There was peace instead of war and government had limited powers.

But the 1% started screaming “holy shit, we can’t let that happen. We can’t allow the lowlife people and the unwashed masses to prosper with free markets and sound money so we will work to transfer that power back to us.”

Instead of using armies and violence to subdue the people, the ruling class hatched an extraordinarily clever ballot box scheme - democracy (unlimited majority mob rule) would be used to control and manipulate the people into peacefully transferring their power back to the ruling class by conferring voter approved legitimacy upon them.

Throughout most of human history, the people were barely tossed subsistence level crumbs while their overlords lavishly feasted on the finest of everything because they alone controlled all property, all resources and all of humanity.  Human rights, civil rights, property rights and economic liberty dramatically changed the equation.

But lo and behold, the people in America and Europe began to reject the responsibility of liberty and started voting to deliver themselves back into the bondage and shackles of the elites.  The elites of government offered them 'free everything' in exchange for relinquishing their liberty.  Of course, those promises will not be kept.  Just asked the Greeks.  But once liberty is lost and humankind is once again back in the shackles of government, the fiat central banksters and the elites, there is no saddle to mount to escape the tyranny, despotism and misery.

Yet, there are numerous folks in America and Europe who continue to vote for centralized powers, bigger government, massive taxes, income redistribution and the wholesale slaughter of civil and economic liberties. Such folks cling to a dangerous and deadly delusion.

If we think we are suffering now, we have only just begun to reap the poison harvest of a statist economy because the real misery has yet to hit us. When it does, the pinchers of the totalitarian state will really start snuffing out life ruthlessly and brutally. The totalitarian nations wallowing in Marxism/socialism/oligarchy/fascism/statism will always resort to the same tactics as Stalin and Mao who snuffed out 100,000,000 folks during the 20th century alone.

The only difference between the economies of Mao/Stalin that murdered 100 million folks and the so-called soft socialism of the West is that the former never had the luxury of a wealthy and productive economy to loot and plunder. Soon enough though, we will be fully plundered.

Meanwhile, the American people are drinking copious amounts of “Foolaid” as we cling to the delusion that government is the cornucopia of plenty. The lion’s share of the plunder generated by the governments looting machine only accrues to a few elites and insider power players because that's is precisely how statism has always worked throughout history.   The rest are lucky if they are tossed a few crumbs and those crumbs are rapidly dwindling.

Good News: Senate Fails to Ratify UN Treaty on Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities

  

The United Nations seeks to implement global totalitarian law and tyranny. I 100% endorse getting the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US. Every UN treaty that is ratified hacks away at US national sovereignty and the Constitution.

A treaty ratification requires a 2/3 senate majority. The vote on this UN treaty was too close for comfort at 61-38, just 5 votes short of passage.  All 38 NO votes were Republicans but 8 Republicans crossed over and voted with the Democrats who love sovereignty slashing UN treaties.

 Senate rejects United Nations treaty for disabled rights in a 61-38 vote

A United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities went down to defeat in the Senate on Tuesday in a 61-38 vote.

The treaty, backed by President Obama and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), fell five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for confirmation as dozens of Senate Republicans objected that it would create new abortion rights and impede the ability of people to homeschool disabled children.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) argued the treaty would infringe on U.S. sovereignty, an argument echoed by other opponents. “This unelected bureaucratic body would pass recommendations that would be forced upon the United States if we were a signatory,” he said.

Supporters of the treaty argued that the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities would simply require the rest of the world to meet the standards that Americans already enjoy under the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.

The treaty was negotiated and first signed under former President George W. Bush and signed again by Obama in 2009. At least 153 other countries have signed it.

Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Dick Lugar (Ind.), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted with Democrats in favor of the treaty.

As a Libertarian who is utterly contemptuous of the Republicans for their love of big government and endless wars, I do make an exception when it comes to the US Senate.

 When I Would Hold My Nose and Vote Republican

As a Libertarian and a Ron Paul Republican, I rarely vote Republican because I’ve never met an establishment Republican who wasn’t a socialist, a Marxist, a warmonger, a usurper of the Constitution, an enemy of civil liberties and a tax and spend progressive.

That said, there are circumstances where I would hold my nose and vote Republican. The US Senate. Screwed up as America is, one of the few things we have going for us is our sovereignty and while it’s constantly under attack by the UN and its treaties that are attempting to impose global totalitarian government, treaties are extremely difficult to get ratified.....

Republicans are less likely than the Dems to ratify sovereignty slashing treaties. The Dems, on the other hand, are addicted to sovereignty slashing supranational international bodies like the UN and its treaties. It doesn’t mean that all Republicans are supportive of US sovereignty, they aren’t, but Republicans are generally far less likely to cede US sovereignty to the UN.

If I lived in a swing state with a tight senate race, I’d definitely be holding my nose and voting Republican unless I knew for certain that the candidate was a UN lover (George Allen in Virginia comes to mind). While I’m a fanatical liberty activist, I’m also a fanatical US sovereignty activist.

Earth to GOP: We Can Save the Party

The Newsweek cover is vile and even overtly racist. Still, it's a bitter reminder of a big election day fail for the GOP.

The Republican base is hopping mad and, quite frankly, very disgusted with their party. Republican voters keep voting for less government, lower taxes and balanced budgets. Instead they get Democrats in elephant suits who spend, increase the debt, endorse entitlements and pursue an insane foreign policy that is bankrupting the nation.

The battle for the heart and soul of the GOP has always been the fiscal conservatives and liberty activists vs. the statist GOP elites. It wasn't just Ron Paul supporters who didn't show up to vote Republican. Many independents and very angry Republicans finally refused to vote Republican.

There's a WAR going on in the GOP and unless grassroots activists, Paulites, Libertarians, fiscal conservatives and independent voters can wrest control of the GOP from the clueless and revoltingly obnoxious elites who lord over the GOP, the Republican Party will be headed straight to the trash heap of history. Many who comprise the Republican base have been furious for a long time over what they perceive as a betrayal of conservative principles.

The independent Internet media and even mainstream media has been buzzing with tales about disgruntled Republicans.

There Is A Brutal Civil War In The GOP, And It Looks Like Karl Rove Will Be The First Casualty

Grassroots Republican operatives and Movement conservatives are quickly turning against the GOP Establishment in the wake of the party's expensive defeat this election cycle.

Republicans we spoke to this week voiced a near-universal disgust with the national Republican Party leaders and Washington political class, who are seen as having put their personal financial interest above winning the election.

What is finally happening is something that should have happened a long time ago - conservatives are finally revolting against their own damn worthless fraud of a party.

The GOP is not a unified party and never was.  The GOP has always been a fragile configuration of establishment Republicans, fiscal conservatives, paleo-conservatives, Buchananites, social conservatives, Libertarians and independents. That constituency fractured in 2006 because conservatives, diverse as they are, were thoroughly disgusted with the Republican Party and they still are.

The Republican Party didn't lose because of the Ron Paul voters and the fact that the Paulites were treated like pond scum at the RNC Convention but the Paulite vote definitely contributed to the Republican defeat because it combined with other disaffected conservative factions to deliver a decisive rejection of the GOP.

So how do we bring the cantankerous conservative factions together?  Actually, it's not that hard.  Stop spending money.  Stop building mountains of debt.  Stop the unconstitutional wars.  Balance the budget and don't spend anymore than is collected in taxes.  Stop corporate welfare and subsidies.  Stop draconian regulations that are killing entrepreneurship and driving business and capital offshore.  Endorse sound money and an end bankster bailouts.

Why is this so difficult?  It's not.  In fact, it's pretty straight forward conservatism.  But try finding one Republican who would agree and vote accordingly.  The voting records of nearly all Republicans are atrocious and an absolute affront to conservatism.

American isn't starved of conservatives or small government advocates.  America is swimming with conservatives, albeit very angry and frustrated conservatives who are delighting in extracting their pound of flesh from the GOP that betrayed them.

Conservatives need a platform of core issues that they can rally around and such a platform must be devoid of all the social conservative issues that are best handled at the state level.  Marriage has no business being a national campaign issue.

The best place for conservatives to start is with the specific enumerated federal powers stated in the Constitution.  Just stick with the Constitution and reject everything that is unconstitutional and, therefore, not authorized by the Constitution.

I suffered through the Republican debacle on a balanced budget amendment that was a total farce because it was loaded with more loopholes than Swiss cheese.  Why should a Republican need a balanced budget amendment just to balance the budget?  Just balance the damn budget.  Period.

The conservative base must fight for control of the GOP.  We need to get rid of a ton of corrupt dead weight Republican statists in Congress and at the state and local level.  The Republicans in Congress vastly contributed to the fiscal and economic nightmare we now face.  These folks need to be FIRED and replaced with true liberty candidates in the mold of Justin Amash and Rand Paul, and, of course, America's strongest constitutionalist and consistent advocate for peace, liberty and prosperity - Ron Paul..

Judge Andrew Napolitano took a swipe at the Republicans in his explanation of what 4 more years of Obama will deliver.

Four More Years for the Unwitting Authoritarian

What's going on here?.

What is going on is the present-day proof of the truism observed by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who rarely agreed on anything in public: When the voters recognize that the public treasury has become a public trough, they will send to Washington not persons who will promote self-reliance and foster an atmosphere of prosperity, but rather those who will give away the most cash and thereby create dependency. This is an attitude that, though present in some localities in the colonial era, was created at the federal level by Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, magnified by FDR, enhanced by LBJ, and eventually joined in by all modern-day Democrats and most contemporary Republicans..

Mitt Romney is one of those Republicans. He is no opponent of federal entitlements, and he basically promised to keep them where they are. Where they are is a cost to taxpayers of about $1.7 trillion a year.....

As a practical matter, we are in for very difficult times during Obama's second term. Obamacare is now here to stay; so, no matter who you are or how you pay your medical bills, federal bureaucrats will direct your physicians in their treatment of you, and they will see your medical records. As well, Obama is committed to raising the debt of the federal government to $20 trillion. So, if the Republican-controlled House of Representatives goes along with this, as it did during Obama's first term, the cost will be close to $1 trillion in interest payments every year. As well, everyone's taxes will go up on New Year's Day, as the Bush-era tax cuts will expire then. The progressive vision of a populace dependent on a central government and a European-style welfare state is now at hand.

Judge Napolitano raises a significant issue because the biggest problem facing America and the debt ridden west in general is that they've been borrowing so much money for such a long time that they now face a most hideous fate, namely that the debt burden reaches a point where nearly all tax revenues go to debt service and nations no longer have any money to fund social programs and other government expenditures.  This is precisely what is happening in Greece.  The Greeks who supported cradle to the grave entitlement programs that were funded with massive debt are now facing forced austerity as benefits are cut to service the debt.

So long as Republicans remain focused on the social issues and the pursuit of endless wars, they will continue to lose.  Most of the Republicans that currently hold congressional seats have as much backbone as cooked spaghetti.  Moving forward, the 'business as usual' attitude won't fly for a conservative base hungry and starved for real conservatism.

Republicans need to understand that their own party played a critical role in delivering the nightmare we are facing.  Americans, meet your future neighbors:

My Two Cents on Benghazi

The right wing media is exploiting the Benghazi disaster as an opportunity to diss President Obama and personally blame him for the entire fiasco.  Fox News is especially all over the story.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to "stand down."

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters.

I don't doubt any of the above facts. Most news reports have pretty much included the same information. But here's the problem: the military and the CIA have a long history of hating each other. The CIA is a secretive and covert organization that pretty much operates without any scrutiny whatsoever. Moreover, the CIA literally controls the US State Department and always has. Benghazi was not the US Embassy, which is in Tripoli. The CIA is notorious for creating these consulates as bases of operation for CIA missions, missions that typically include arming and funding radicals and jihadists for the purpose of destabilization of a nation and regime change.  It's been going on at least since the days of Jimmy Carter who funded and armed the Afghan Mujuhadeen, now the Sunni Islamist Taliban, to fight the Soviets.  The CIA was a key 'on the ground' player in Afghanistan during the Cold War and is directly responsible for arming some of the most dangerous folks on the planet.

Unfortunately, the US has a very long history of being in bed with radical Sunni Wahhabist Salafist Islamists and the top of this disturbing pyramid goes straight to the House of Saud, the kingpin of Wahhabist Sunni Islamist terror.  It's no coincidence that 15 of the 19  911 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.  The foreign policy of the US is to support, fund and arm radical Sunni jihadists and we've been doing it for a long time.  The US government and the CIA backed and supported Pakistan's nuclear arms program, along with Saudi Arabia.  Pakistan used to be a nation teeming with radical Sunni Islamists but now, courtesy of the US and it's Saudi alliance, is a nuclear armed radical Sunni Islamist nation.  It's only a matter of time before some zealot Sunni nutjob seizes control of Pakistan's nukes and starts firing away.  Moreover, Pakistan was once a benign Muslim nation until Saudi and Gulf Sunni money and madrassahs started pouring into the nation to radicalize the population.

The hardcore neocon website, familysecuritymatters.org, is accusing Obama of being an ally of Al Qaeda.

Arms Flow to Syria May Be Behind Benghazi Cover-Up

Stevens was tasked with helping to coordinate U.S. assistance to the rebels, whose top military commander, Abdelhakim Belhadj, was the leader of the Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). That means that Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum, allied ideologically with Al Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that's not supposed to exist anymore after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2012.

The above assessment is erroneously ludicrous on several levels.  First, Al Qaeda isn't even an organization with the power to do anything.  Al Qaeda is, however, just one of many, many Islamist groups funded by our friends the Saudis and the CIA. Nothing, however, stops the neocons from accusing Obama of being an appeaser of radical Islamists.  In fact, it was only a few short months after 911 when President Bush entertained Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at his Crawford, TX ranch in April 2002.  Few international dignitaries got invites to the Bush ranch but the Saudis were always welcome.  The Saudi-Bush family connections date back to the days of the George Herbert Walker Bush.

If there's a concern about US presidents and government officials being all warm and cozy with 911 jihad terrorists, look no further than the Bush family affection for radical Sunni jihadists.

The Bush-Saudi Connection - The Bush Crime Family has a very long history of being very close to the evil House of Saud.

The absolute favorite photo of the neocons is the photo of Obama bowing before the Saudi King according to protocol.  US presidents have bowed before many foreign leaders according to the prevailing custom.  At least Obama wasn't kissing and holding hands with King Abdullah, the King of Islamist Sunni terror.  Bush was being overtly and outwardly affectionate with King Abdullah while Obama was just being polite and respectful.  Big difference!

George Herbert Walker Bush is also a former CIA director with deep ties to the organization and its clandestine operations.  The CIA has been funneling arms and money to dissidents of all religious and political stripes for decades and such folks were probably on the CIA payroll.  This is nothing new.  Again, it's important to note that the US State Department is heavily staffed with CIA, officially, and unofficially through US Aid programs.  Even neocon Glenn Beck chirped in on the issue.

Glenn Beck Explains How Obama Used Ambassador Stevens to Funnel arms to Libya and Syria

It's probably true that Ambassador Stevens was carrying out a CIA mission under the guise of a State Department consulate but this is quite common.  Obviously, something went very wrong and what most probably went wrong is that the Islamists the CIA trusted and were doing business with turned on them when they saw an opportunity to humiliate the US by successfully attacking the Benghazi consulate.  Also, the issue of the mysterious mission of Ambassador Stevens is being raised.

How US Ambassador Chris Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria 

....there was a CIA post in Benghazi , located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as "a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles" ... and that its security features "were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died."

And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In any case, the connection between Benghazi and the rise of jihadists in Syria is stronger than has been officially acknowledged.

The entire Benghazi fiasco is covered with CIA fingerprints.  But the burning question is this:  why didn't the US military come to the rescue of the CIA?

The CIA kind of functions as its own military, much to the consternation of the US military.  The CIA is also decisive and is not gnerally hampered with too much in the way of chain of command restrains.  Conversely, the US military is heavily a top down chain of command operation.  Getting somebody to make a decision can be very difficult depending the potential blowback of the situation.

The entire attack was over within a matter of hours but during the attack urgent messages were coming out of the Benghazi consulate.  The Benghazi timeline is here.  More interesting is that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta wiggled out of the situation by proclaiming that the military didn't have enough information to warrant putting forces at risk which is the equivalent of Panetta giving a birdie to the CIA.

Panetta on Benghazi attack: 'Could not put forces at risk'

The U.S. military did not get involved during the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, last month because officials did not have enough information about what was going on before the attack was over, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Thursday.

Where was the military and why didn't it respond to CIA calls for help?  Panetta claims the military didn't have enough time.  Another critical factor that is missing in the analysis is the location of the US military presence in Libya.  Nobody seems to know if the military was anywhere on the ground in Libya, obviously something that neither the US government or the military wanted disclosed.

What is known is that the Benghazi consulate was a CIA front engaged in weapon smuggling to Syrian Jihad rebels.  President Obama knows what the CIA does, even if he doesn't know what the CIA is actually doing because that's how the secretive and unaccountable CIA has always operated.  The CIA is one of those things that nobody in government ever wants to talk about because, well, the CIA is very dangerous, it kills folks, it arranges assassinations and exactly who it reports to isn't exactly clear although formally the CIA Director reports to the president.  It's been speculated by many CIA observers that the CIA is really nothing more than the private and personal military of the New World Order, the banksters and resource seeking corporatists.  It's also widely believe that the CIA is self-funding through the drug trade.

The CIA is the Biggest Drug Dealer on the Planet

President Kennedy said he wanted to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  According to James Douglass who wrote JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why it Matters, the CIA murdered JFK.  Douglass writes "We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy.  That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious.  The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it."

That the CIA is feared by the political class is an understatement.  But what makes Benghazi so intriguing is that it's increasingly more difficult to cover-up dastardly CIA deeds given the explosion of non-government controlled alternative media.   The Benghazi cover-up, bungled and clumsy as it was, was solely to protect the CIA and its mission, whatever the cost.  Ambassador Stevens and those who worked with him were not victims but were active participants in the CIA's work.  Most probably, Stevens wasn't an ambassador at all, just a CIA operative masquerading as an ambassador.  Moreover, it's probably also true that the military just didn't want to get involved, assuming it could have done something, because of its natural hostility toward the CIA.

I  believe that Obama was probably horrified by what happened in Benghazi but when your lust for power is so great that you decide to bed down with the CIA spooks and spies, anything can happen.  At the end of the day, Benghazi was just another Fast and Furious gone bad.  Republican attempts to capitalize on the Benghazi fiasco are indeed shabby and reckless.  If anything, Republicans worship the CIA and its evil and secretive missions far more than the Obama and the Democrats.