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Whoa! Great read!   I think i've met my doppleganger. And he can write.  Funny but earlier today Marbux and i had a lengthy eMail exchange about this exact same topic.  Clearly we are not alone in wondering what has happened to the Tea Party?   I have been trying to get my thoughts together about the rope-a-dope of Rush Limbaugh, which predictably resulted in the fragmentation and total route of the Tea Party Patriot movement. Thirty three days into the election primary cycle and the hands down winner is, The Big Government Establishment".  How did the establishment of trough feeding repubicans, democrats and corporatist/banksters do this? And do it so quickly and efficiently? This article attempts to describe the gradual push towards big government socialism.  No doubt the democratic party is the party of socialism, running the gamut from liberals, to progressives, to Euro socialist, to Marxist, communists and hard core Stalinist. Obammunism itself is a rather unique blend of Marxist enviro socialism driven and funded by fascist crony corporatism/banksterism.    The article further describes what used to be moderates as big government social progressives with a strong dose of military merchatilist interventionism.  The artile also calls these types "neo conservatives"  I guess because the neo moderates are describing themselves as new conservatives. Which is an insult to any Goldwater - Reagan conservative.  Like me.  Or at least i was until this past summer when a kind group of libertarians educated me on the Constitution.  I was Federalist  style, social/militarist conservative.  Now i'm a Jefferson-Madison libertarian strict Constitutionalist. So i've been there.  And "neo conservative" is not conservative in any sense other than that of militarist-merchantilist make the world safe for democracy through big, really big, government social and military programs.  And oh yeah, the neo moderate is a Federal Reserve big corporatist/bankster ty

Good article on Newt; covers the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Personally i don't trust Newt.  As former repubican senator Jim Talent of Missouri says, "He's not a reliable and trusted conservative leader".  Strangely, Talent supports Romney. And there is nothing conservative about Romney.   The one thing i do like about Newt is that he is a bomb thrower extraordinaire.  There isn't a Libertarian (moi), conservative, or Constitutional conservative anywhere that wouldn't love to see Newt in the ring with Obama, hammering his Marxist ass without mercy.  But i'm not so sure that that desire is enough to overcome the serious character flaws and self centered egotistical baggage Newt hauls around.  He proves time and again that he lacks the core values of a true conservative, including dedication to the upholding the Constitution and Rule of Law. Funny though that a valueless establishment repubican "we can manage big government more efficiently and make it work" guy like Romney is attacking Newt as not being a true conservative?  What does that make Romney?  At least Newt can point to the awesome Contract with America repubican take over of Congress - after 40 years in the wilderness. Even though Ron Paul has lost it on foreign policy, i continue to send money.  My switch from Reagan Constitutional Conservative to Libertarian has "nearly" everything to do with the 2008 financial collapse, and the years of research and study that followed.   I say "nearly" because i just couldn't pull the trigger until unexpectedly i found myself in a Bloomberg discussion questioning my support for Herman Cain.  Sadly, Herman supports the Federal Reserve, including full approval of both Greenspan and Bernacke policies that have destroyed the US dollar and enabled the Banksters to run off with over $29 Trillion of our money.  Of course, this is an indefensible and inexcusable position.  The Libertarian's in the discussion pointed out that the problems this country faces cann

disclosure: I met Cokie and Steve Roberts at an intimate house party in NH. Probably in 1991. Very nice people but they are full blown unionist-socialist-progressives iron bent on the European Socialism model. Not Constitutionalist in any way shape of form. Certainly not Constitutional Capitalist or free market types either.

Cute. The Ukrainian government needs $17 billion to service its debt to the banksters. The IMF agrees to hand over another $3 billion loan, while Obama promises another $1 billion, not nearly what is needed (Russia had offered $15 billion, an offer withdrawn in light of the coup instigated by the U.S. Now the austerity measures and privatization that always accompanies IMF loans begin. One of the first announced was to cut pensioners' monthly checks in half. Meanwhile, Iceland's economy continues to rebound after having refused to bail out its banksters and putting them in prison instead.

While I'd be the first to agree that the degree of fiscal mismanagement of this nation's economy is beyond insane and have to admit that I see very little to admire in Barack Obama's presidency, the meme about Executive Order 13603 authorizing confiscation of any property and enslavement of the American public needs to be put to rest. See http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/2012.html#13603 E.O. 13603 is not much more than an updating of similar executive orders issued by prior presidents beginning with Dwight Eisenhower. In fact, in skimming it a few minutes ago, I didn't see anything drastically different from some of the prior related orders. E.g., it reflects that a bunch of agencies that were formerly either independent or under other departments are now under the newish Department of Homeland Security, whose Secretary now gets the authority formerly delegated to other department and agency heads. If blame must be cast, it belongs on the Congress that enacted the Defense Production Act of 1950, 50 U.S.C. 2061, et seq. The executive order does no more than obey that Act's instructions. For example there is a section authorizing pre-emption of manufacturing capacity of critical industries over any existing civilian contracts in the event of a national emergency, but that language is in the statute as well. But that power hasn't had much traction since Harry Truman tried to nationalize the steel industry to break a nationwide strike. The Supreme Court swatted down that effort as an abuse of a power that would be lawful in a true emergency, like another major. But even that semi-radical "survival" power is ameliorated by other provisions of the statute and the order that authorize loan guarantees for companies' construction and maintenance of critical productive capacity. Much of that has been implemented over the years as outright grants. So for example, many chemical manufacturing plants were built with Defense Production Act funds, with

Thank you Thomas DiLorenzo for having the courage to set the record straight.  IMHO, Lincoln should be remembered for freeing the slaves and standing up to the International Bankster Cartel and Wall Street.  But what he did to the USA Constitution and the Bill of Rights was an unprecedented assault on individual liberty.  Good thing the guy could write beautifully on liberty and freedom because his actions amounted to a historic assault on everything the founding fathers held near and dear. excerpt:    "confronting academic "Lincoln revisionism." "Who was Lincoln really and why have you spent so much of your career trying to return Lincoln's academic profile to reality? Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln mythology is the ideological cornerstone of American statism. He was in reality the most hated of all American presidents during his lifetime according to an excellent book by historian Larry Tagg entitled The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President. He was so hated in the North that the New York Times editorialized a wish that he would be assassinated. This is perfectly understandable: He illegally suspended Habeas Corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political critics without due process; shut down over 300 opposition newspapers; committed treason by invading the Southern states (Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution defines treason as "only levying war upon the states" or "giving aid and comfort to their enemies," which of course is exactly what Lincoln did). He enforced military conscription with the murder of hundreds of New York City draft protesters in 1863 and with the mass execution of deserters from his army. He deported a congressional critic (Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio); confiscated firearms; and issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice when the jurist issued an opinion that only Congress could legally suspend Habeas Corpus. He waged an unnecessary war (all other countries ended slavery

Are worker-owned co-ops replacing unions as the method to ensure that workers share in business profits and productivity gains? The thought had occurred to me until now. But we buy most of our groceries from Winco, a worker-owned grocery chain because their prices are lowest, even lower than Walmart. And many of the forestry-related companies in our area are worker-owned co-ops. They have big competitive advantages for several reasons, not the least of which is that their bottom-up leadership is far smaller and less expensive than the leadership of a top-down stock corporation with comparable sales. No competition between the workers and upper managers/external stockholders for profit sharing. Far less turnover in workers; as owners the workers are more committed to the co-op and to staying with it. Are co-ops part of a shadow economy emerging from the ashes of the U.S. bankster-driven economy? And is there enough flexibility in U.S. law for a bottom-up shadow government to begin taking shape, based on contract law perhaps? No one could be forced to sign the contract, of course, but I see room for at least an alternate dispute resolution process to resolve disputes between contract parties. One based on mediation rather than arbitration, as the U.S. judicial system behaves. (The U.S. judicial system is beyond salvage, in my studied opinion.)  Food for thought. 

"Newsmax asked vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan to provide his prescription for fixing the American economy and a defense of his proposed agenda, in light of the Obama's administration's refusal to address out-of-control entitlements. Here is his exclusive Newsmax Op-Ed. When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he assumed a degree of command over the federal government that few U.S. presidents have enjoyed. His party had just enlarged its already-large majority in the House of Representatives, and gained a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The president enjoyed tremendous popularity following his historic victory. During his campaign, then-Sen. Obama argued that what had stopped us from meeting our nation's greatest challenges had been "the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems." To solve this problem, he pledged to help us "rediscover our bonds to each other and get out of this constant, petty bickering that's come to characterize our politics." Urgent: See Newsmax's Special Report on Paul Ryan - Includes Exclusive Interview The last three and a half years of divisive politics and broken promises have been disappointing. "

A few random thoughts on the budgetary gridlock in Congress: -- The elephant in the room that both parties are ignoring is bankster control of the money supply. Any budgetary reform is doomed unless the power of banksters to print as many dollars as they want is eliminated. In terms of purchasing power, the incredible dilution of the dollar's value that commenced when we abandoned the gold standard has put massive upward pressure on prices and budgets, both governmental and private. The Constitution explicitly forbids anything other than gold or silver to be used for payment of debts. -- Both parties and Obama have been guilty of drawing lines in the sand as preconditions to negotiation. E.g., no entitlement cuts, increased taxes on the wealthy, no defense cuts, no new taxes, etc. These are terms of surrender, not terms of negotiation, akin to an advertising campaign based on the fine print of the sales agreement rather than on why the customer should buy the product. As any successful negotiator knows, the keys to a successful negotiation are: [i] agreeing at the outset that there s no deal until all terms have been agreed to; and [ii] focusing on what you are willing to offer the other side as incentives to agree to a deal, not on areas of disagreement. A successful negotiation results in a deal where both sides feel that the deal puts them ahead of where they began. -- Arguing over pre-conditions is not negotiation; it is no more than a lame excuse for not negotiating. But that is what the White House and both parties have been doing. -- By functioning as an echo chamber for preconditions to negotiation, constituents, wittingly or not, aid in prevention of serious negotiation. Serious negotiation has no substantive preconditions; everything is on the table. And the focus is on what each side is willing to give the other if the entire deal is agreed to, not on what each side is unwilling to offer. -- The major players in the White House and Congress alre

But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Obama's major contribution to deficits has been a record spending spree. In 2007, before the recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009 expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the overall spending increase was 22%. In one year. CBO confirms that Democrats have taken federal spending to a new and higher plateau: 24.7% of GDP in 2009, 24.1% this year, and back to an estimated 24.3% in 2011. The modern historical average is about 20.5%, and less than that if you exclude the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s that helped to win the Cold War and let Bill Clinton reduce defense spending to 3% of GDP in the 1990s. This means that one of every four dollars produced by the sweat of American private labor is now taxed and redistributed by 535 men and women in Congress.

A rough equivalent of the EU for South America and the Carribean? De-dollarization? A common currency? Regional defense sovereignty? Quite obviously, the CIA needs to expand its destabilization operations in Venezuela to a few more countries, else the banksters get grumpy. 

"America Is Exhibiting All of the Signs of a Failing Empire Posted on October 10, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog The American Empire Is Quickly Declining Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson - former chief of staff to Colin Powell, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary - notes that the U.S. is exhibiting all of the signs of a failing empire, including: Relying on massive military force (and using gigantic complexes to support it) as the be-all and end-all of power, and belittling diplomacy Maintaining standing armies, instead of disbanding military forces between wars Using more mercenary forces than citizen troops Spending disproportionately large amounts of blood and treasure in order to counter threats on the status quo … which simply exacerbates the threat against the empire Going ethically and morally bankrupt Ending up up having bankers and financiers end up running the real power Suffering great hiccups in finance and trade The leaders no longer really believe in or follow the ideals of the founders"

The 1 hour-25 minute video talk is well worth listening to. Col. Wilkerson is now a professor who has deeply studied the decline of empires. He speaks from deep knowledge both as a former insider and as a scholar about the state of the American Empire. But notice that the linked page has two copies of the same talk embedded. Don't bother watching both unless you want to hear it twice. :-)

President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown. Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

James Madison was not specifically contemplating Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, when he wrote Federalist No. 63. But reading the document - one of the seminal arguments in favor of adopting the U.S. Constitution - it's clear Madison knew their type. And he knew they would come along again and again in American history, if Americans were lucky enough to have a long history. Obama and Pelosi, along with their most ardent supporters, are the types to see a crisis, like our current economic mess, as a "great opportunity," as the president put it last Saturday. They are the types, after a long period out of power, to attempt to use that "great opportunity" to push through far-reaching changes in national policy that had only a tangential connection, if at all, to the crisis at hand. And they are the types the Founding Fathers wanted to stop. In the Federalist Papers, written 221 years ago, Madison addressed the need for a Senate to accompany the more populist House of Representatives. An upper body, he wrote, "may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions."

Good Charts comparing the spending of USA Presidents starting with Eisenhower. Spending in Bush's first year (FY2001) was $1.863 trillion, thus he presided over an 83-percent increase in overall federal spending, which includes defense, domestic, entitlements, and interest. Even without TARP and Fannie/Freddie, spending was up a huge 70 percent under Bush over eight years. By contrast, total spending under eight years of President Clinton increased just 32 percent. These are the overall increases in nominal dollars. Now let's look at the real annual averages. Figure 1 shows the average increase in total spending under recent presidents. Bush II was the biggest spender since LBJ. His spending increases were far larger than the three prior presidents.

The underlying assumption of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) is that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the disorderly bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. This is evident in the statements of officials and the principal elements of the act, which would tighten the regulation of large financial institutions to prevent their failing, and establish an "orderly resolution" system outside of bankruptcy if they do. The financial crisis, however, was caused by the mortgage meltdown, a sudden and sharp decline in housing and mortgage values as a massive housing bubble collapsed in 2007. This scenario is known to scholars as a "common shock"-a sudden decline in the value of a widely held asset-which causes instability or insolvency among many financial institutions. In this light, the principal elements of Dodd-Frank turn out to be useless as a defense against a future crisis. Lehman's bankruptcy shows that in the absence of a common shock that weakens all or most financial institutions, the bankruptcy of one or a few firms would not cause a crisis; on the other hand, given a similarly severe common shock in the future, subjecting a few financial institutions to the act's orderly resolution process will not prevent a crisis. Apart from its likely ineffectiveness, moreover, the orderly resolution process in the act impairs the current insolvency system and will raise the cost of credit for all financial institutions. 

"September 10, 2001. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldt stated that 2.3 trillion dollar from the Pentagon's annual budget could not be accounted for. September 11, 2001, the Pentagon's accounting office and the Naval Command Center were targeted, allegedly by a plane. Survivors would report about explosions inside the Pentagon prior to the alleged plane impact. During a 2012 Forestall Lecture , Admiral James G. Stavridis noted that he was working as a newly selected 1-star accounting officer at the Pentagon and that he was lucky to have survived. By 2009 Stavridis would have been promoted to the rank of Admiral and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Responsible for NATO's 2011 military operations in Libya, Stavridis would describe NATO's intervention in Libya as "a teachable moment and model for future interventions". "

Why the anti-war and 99-percenter "progressives" never get around to ending wars and reforming Wall Street. Spot on. An excellent snapshot of where the real political power in the U.S. is. And for Gary, George Soros gets mentioned more than once.