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I like it!  Great idea ..... excerpt: "Pass two simple bills in the House.  Bill A extends current tax rates for those with incomes of $250,000 or less.  Bill B extends current tax rates for all the rest.  Keep both bills just that simple - include nothing else in either one.  Both will pass in the House thanks to the Republican majority. As the bills are moving to the Senate, Speaker Boehner holds a press conference and begins with a short address to the American public to promote both bills. First, Boehner points out that Bill A should pass the Senate promptly and be signed by the president.  Reid and Obama have promised as much. Second, the Speaker points out that Bill B will be likely be blocked in the Senate and/or on the president's desk.  Reid and Obama have (virtually) promised to do that too. "

Lots of comments posted on this page.  Search for "Econ101" and "garylyn" to find my comments.  I have posted here a surprisingly extensive explanation of how i became a libertarian. excerpt: "How's this for a simple GOP strategy to avoid blame for fiscal-cliff tax-rate increases and seize the public relations initiative from an overconfident president? Pass two simple bills in the House.  Bill A extends current tax rates for those with incomes of $250,000 or less.  Bill B extends current tax rates for all the rest.  Keep both bills just that simple - include nothing else in either one.  Both will pass in the House thanks to the Republican majority. As the bills are moving to the Senate, Speaker Boehner holds a press conference and begins with a short address to the American public to promote both bills. First, Boehner points out that Bill A should pass the Senate promptly and be signed by the president.  Reid and Obama have promised as much. Second, the Speaker points out that Bill B will be likely be blocked in the Senate and/or on the president's desk.  Reid and Obama have (virtually) promised to do that too. "

Looks like Florian was right after all.  Google is a front for the big Media-Federalis-Bankster-Corporatist elites. excerpt: "The hand-in-hand nature of this White House and some of the nation's biggest corporations is seen in yet another incident as Barack Obama's 2012 campaign data team is now moving from team Obama to team Google. This week, Bloomberg reported that Obama's data mining team, used to such great effect during his 2012 re-election for president, has been hired nearly wholesale to go work for Google. This may not come as such a great surprise, however, as Google's Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, helped organize and run Obama's re-election e-team. Schmidt "helped recruit talent, choose technology, and coach the campaign manager, Jim Messina, on the finer points of leading a large organization," Bloomberg reports. Since he came onto the national political scene, Barack Obama has campaigned like a veritable David vs Goliath with evil corporations standing in for Goliath while Obama presents himself as David loading his sling shot to do battle. But the reality is not quite that cut and dried and Google has been a big recipient of Obama's largesse. The Washington Examiner's Tim Carney points out that the administration is filled with Googleites and that President Obama and Google have a long standing love affair. Remember Obama's No. 2 tech staffer at the White House was Google's former top lobbyist-who improperly worked with active Google lobbyists on pushing polic.... Obama appointed non-registered Google lobbyist and max-Obama donor Vint Cerf to a science advisory board. Then there was the time when Google chief Schmidt is reported to have told a Google staffer to make sure that the search engine did not connect his entries to his own political donations so that it was a bit harder to find out to whom he donated campaign cash."

"In the week prior to the administration signing what should constitute an international climate treaty, one think tank, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was subpoenaed for casting doubt on the agreement's associated science of climate catastrophe. As disturbing as such thuggery from state attorneys general would be in any case, the premise of the subpoena is faulty. The Competitive Enterprise Institute did not cast doubt on the dubious climate science. The actual data cast the doubt. The think tank and others have simply pointed out what the data show. It looks like thoughtcrime has now moved from George Orwell's novel "1984" to the twisted reality of our judicial system. pointing out facts should never be a real crime. The Heritage Foundation's new Paris-bubble-popping science summary is also a case of letting the numbers tell a story. A story many never hear in the media-hyped spectacle that is international climate policy."

Meanwhile, the latest poll out of California shows Clinton support continuing to drop while Sanders support continues to rise. Once behind in California by 50 points, Sanders has closed the gap to 2 points. If Sanders takes delegate-rich California, the Democratic nominating convention will be a wide-open brawl. 

Peter Schiff talks about his new book "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country".  I caught the Coast-to-Coast "Financial Crisis Special" interview with Peter earlier this week where he spoke on the "Real Crash" issues.  Stunning stuff.  His hour on Coast was followed by Lindsey Williams who pointed out that the New World Order - Illuminati - Bankster trigger point would be signaled by a collapse in the derivatives market. The derivatives market is now over a quadrillion dollars of  casino style gambling.  This is where Banksters make huge bets on things like whether or not interest rates will go up or down.  Then they take out insurance to cover their bets, which further compounds the cost.  Recent events like the Jon Corzine MF Global gamble that the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel would backstop explosive European sovereign bankster debt are the first indications of collapse in the derivatives market.  We now know that JP Morgan placed similar bets on a European bailout by the Federal Reserve and World Bank, and lost big.  The only difference is that Corzine robbed his clients personal accounts to cover his bets. While Schiff argues the facts on the table, the "what", Lindsay argued the "why"; claiming that this escalating debt mess is all by design.  Lindsay claims that an operational fundamental of the New World Order elites is to first overturn the USA Constitution.  Using a Machiavellian Principle known as, "out of chaos comes order", they seek to de-stabilize and overthrow the USA Constitutional Republic using massive and crushing debt to first destroy the dollar currency.  This will create massive chaos requiring martial law and government seizure of private property and production. Peter Schiff warns that the government is driving us deeper into debt at exactly the time we should be saving and investing those savings in future private sector productivity.  Lindsay argues that this is all by desig

Very interesting post from Douglas French concerning the repubican primaries and F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfom" comments on modern politics. Fascinating stuff. Hayek argues that, in politics, "the worst rise to the top", and he outlines three reasons why: .... Choosing is the problem. Informed people are more "nuanced" - they have many divergent opinions and views. Uniformity however drives the group dynamics behind a democratic process. Uniformity of opinion rules, and the less informed a person is, the more uniform and drawn to larger groups they will be. The "lowest common denominator" rule rules the democratic process. Mobocracy at work. .... Those on top, pursuing the political leadership positions, must appeal to the masses and weave together the groups driven by the "lowest common denominator" rule. The docile and gullible "are ready to accept whatever values and ideology drummed into them". Advantage to big media, the socialist assemblage ruling public education, and public workers unions. ..... Third, political leaders "don't promote a positive agenda, but a negative one of hating an enemy and envy of the wealthy. To appeal to the masses, leaders preach an "us" against "them" program." The great unwashed and uninformed being guided and driven "by emotion and passion rather than critical thinking." Not sure i agree with any of this, much as i admire and recognize the importance of Hayek and his seminal, game changing "Road to Serfdom". One reason is that some of the most informed people i know are goose stepping socialist hell bent on ending individual liberty - as in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", in exchange for Marxist social equality. Another reason i would disagree is that the salt of the earth "bitter clingers" Reagan Conservatives that rock the Tea Party movement are exactly what the establishment elites call the "uninformed masses". Not sure if that's what Hayek meant, but his viewpoint does look a

Excellent analysis of the 2012 elections based on recent polling data and the voting history of five generations. excerpt: Pundits have long been predicting that the presidential election will be much closer and much meaner in 2012 than it was in 2008. Closer it now is. According to the RCP Poll Average, the race is now a virtual tie: Incumbent Obama now leads by a mere 1.8 percent over Romney, whereas challenger Obama led McCain by 7.6 percent exactly four years ago. It will certainly revolve around a very different array of issues-much less argument about the war on terror and GOP performance, and a lot more about the stagnating economy and Democratic performance. In one respect, however, the next election will be a replay of the last: There will be a historically large divide in the preferences of younger voters (under 30) versus older voters (65+). In 2008, this divide (21 percentage points) was wider than in any election since the advent of age-bracketed voting data in the 1960s. The second-biggest divide (16 percentage points) was back in 1972, when nearly half of all young voters voted for McGovern while older voters went overwhelmingly for Nixon. I've been tracking generational leanings in the polls pretty carefully. The Pew Research Center has issued several reports (most notably, The Generation Gap and the 2012 Election) exploring this divide, and Time followed up with its own cover story ("The New Generation Gap"). More recently, Mike and Morley, Forbes, The New York Times, and many others have also weighed in. Bottom line: Every generation is today a bit more favorable toward Obama than they were in 2010 and a good deal less favorable than in 2008. The partisan gap between the Democrat-leaning young and the Republican-leaning old, however, remains as strong as ever-at around 20 percent. Back in 2008, the big story was how and why today's rising Millennial Generation voted by a large and decisive margin for the D

There's more detail not quoted, but AIPAC (and the War Party) are indeed having a horrible year, already.  Perhaps worst of all for AIPAC, even mainstream media is now willing to discuss AIPAC's blunder. See e.g.,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/obama-state-of-the-union-iran_b_4702457.html ("AIPAC's hopes to override Obama's veto ended with a whimper, AIPAC's whimper.") When even mainstream pundits are willing to discuss AIPAC's blunder in public, that's a spotlight on an organism that can't stand the light. 

"Date: 03-16-14 Host: George Knapp Guests: Joseph P. Farrell, Brad Olsen In the first half, George Knapp was joined by author Joseph Farrell, who detailed his research into the possibility that a secret, breakaway civilization was formed by American elites following World War II. He explained that, after the war, the United States was faced with three formidable challenges: escaped Nazis bent on recreating their empire elsewhere, the Cold War, and the UFO phenomenon. In turn, Farrell surmised, a secret system was put into place to develop defenses against these dangers facing the country. He theorized that, in order to surreptitiously fund such a massive undertaking, the United States used the vast wealth that had been plundered by Japan during WWII to bankroll various projects. Farrell suggested that, over time, similar secret infrastructures were created by other technologically advanced countries such as England, Russia, and China. In the ensuing years since its creation, Farrell said, the American organization likely developed amazing technological capabilities far beyond what is known to the general population, hence the concept of a 'breakaway civilization,' which shares our planet but exists within a world of knowledge far different from our own. Manmade UFOs, weather control, and zero point energy may be achievements that have secretly been accomplished, but remain classified for fear of revealing technologies which could be weaponized and used against the United States. Farrell pointed to the emergence of 3D printing and the push for mining in space as potential signs of previously accomplished breakthroughs which are now slowly being introduced to the public. --------------------------------- In the latter half, author Brad Olsen discussed flaws in modern history and how conspiracy theories, esoteric insights, and fringe subjects can be used to help change a dead-end course for humanity. He contended that nearly every facet of human life, from science,

"This discussion needs your direct support or direct critique that I might respond.  Other idea's please start in a new discussion (note: this has been revised after 400+ comments, but if possible read all of them) thank you for your time: (revised July 20th,'13) I thought it would be helpful (stike that, it's absolutely imperative!!!!)  to have a T Party pre-primary prior to the RINO primary so we wouldn't split our vote.  That thread sort of grew to the following two steps: The following two step approach would require a temporary meeting of the minds from the various larger conservative Tea Party factions for the following purposes:: 1. Having a pre-primary to avoid the late RINO primary so we avoid splitting our vote and being able to get out there now to campaign because we have some serious hills to climb (our message, government news and funding etc.). But the main point here is that we always split our votes in the regular RINO primary, we need to avoid this.  We need some sort of (temporary or other) unified effort of all the un-unified groups for this purpose.  Make sure you don't miss a word utilized here and that the whole 'idea' is understood.  Along with this we also need to have the above bonded with the following item number 2, as follows: 2. Implement a plan to organize and recruit deep into every precinct of the T-Party. This would include the larger T-P groups to supply their associated local smaller groups with solid information to be distributed and used as a means to educate both door to door and if possible via ads in their local news papers when feasible. (with an increase in some recruiting, this can work - I've checked out the cost). We have great web sites on the internet but many republican's, democrats and independents don't go there.  We need a serious ground team for all of our upcoming elections.  Many of our small groups are getting smaller and many not associated would like to be contacted by us.  Our idea's

Interview Date: 07-27-13 :: 3 hours on mp3 Host: John B. Wells Guests: William E. Binney This amazing interview covers 3 hours with William Edward Binney; the former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) turned whistleblower who resigned on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency. He joined John B. Wells to discuss living his life as a whistleblower, the NSA scandal and related topics. "The NSA was chartered to do foreign intelligence only, not domestic intelligence," he said. Prior to the Bush Administration, if the NSA happened to randomly intercept a U.S. citizen's communications, the database was purged of the collection and records erased, Binney revealed. After 9/11 and per a "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act, the NSA decided it could build a register of every phone in the country, he explained, noting that they now keep records on who every U.S. Citizen calls, how often and for how long. A person has the right to free association with others only as long as the NSA knows about it, he admonished. According to Binney, there is substantial danger that data collected from phone and internet communications as well as financial records will be used to target particular Americans, a scenario recently played out when the IRS was caught harassing tea party members, he pointed out. Because the threat is real and the spy organization's reach well beyond its original charter, Binney said he has signed an affidavit for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit challenging the NSA's constitutional authority to collect this kind of information. Another peril to U.S. citizens are FISA Courts (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) which can order the transfer of domestic intelligence data but have no way of validating the intelligence being given to them, he continued. Binney called for the defunding of FISA Courts since they, like the NSA, are in violation of their original charter. He

"There is a lot of ruin in a nation," wrote Adam Smith. His point was that it takes a long time for nations to fall, even when they're dead on their feet. And he was certainly right. America took its fatal blow in 1913, one hundred years ago; it just hasn't hit the ground yet. This is a slow process, but it's actually fast compared to the Romans. It took them several centuries to collapse . The confusing thing about our current situation is that America - and by that I mean the noble America that so many of us grew up believing was real - has long been poisoned. Its liver, kidneys, and spleen have all stopped functioning. Its heart beats slowly and irregularly. But it still stands on its feet and presents itself as alive to all those who would let their eyes fool them. And I'm not without sympathy for those who want to believe. They find themselves in a world where politics is almighty, and where their comfort, prosperity, and perhaps their survival all hang in a delicate balance. They don't want to upset anything, and questioning the bosses is a good way to get yelled at. But just because someone wants to believe doesn't make it so. We are not children and we are not powerless. We Producers should never be intimidated by those who live at our expense. So let's start looking at the facts. 1913: The Horrible Year For all the problems America had prior to 1913 (including the unnecessary and horrifying Civil War), nothing spelled the death of the nation like the horrors of 1913. Here are the key dates: February 3rd : The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose income taxes on individuals. An amendment to a tariff act in 1894 had attempted to do this, but since it was clearly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court struck it down. As a result - and mostly under the banner of bleeding the rich - the 16th amendment was promoted and passed. As a result, the Revenue Act of 1

"So is Obama really the leader of a cult? Based on the above checklist, I'd have to say he is-and it's a pretty big cult, at that. If you agree, it behooves us to define the overarching beliefs of the cult over which he presides. In my view, those beliefs were accurately summed up by Thomas Sowell in his classic, A Conflict of Visions, as revolving around the idea that we humans can and should be made ever-more perfect by government policy. With that idea at the core of the cult's belief, almost no action, no matter how extreme, is off the table when it comes to government action. Deception, artifice, bullying, war-making, spying, money-printing, regulation, forcing Ritz crackers on children, taking over large swaths of the economy, or propping up companies in favored industries are all justifiable parts and parcels of the whole. Unfortunately, because the cult offers financial handouts to join, the ranks of this particular cult have swelled in recent decades. So much so that it has reached the point where, like an uninfected human in a world full of zombies, those who don't belong increasingly have to maintain a low profile or risk having their faces eaten (or, perhaps less dramatically, being subjected to a forensic audit by the IRS). This is equally true, and maybe more so, with private corporations, which keep their mouths shut as the healthcare burden of non-workers is transferred to their balance sheets, or which trumpet the fact that they're "green" in order to avoid being targeted by cult members."

Interview with former Assistant Treasury Secretary, Paul Craig Roberts. He comments on the relationship between the Debt Limit Crisis, and the "Continuity of Government Plan" that would be triggered by a catastrophic emergency. The triggering of the Continuity of Government plan would result in the end of our Constitution. There is no provision in the Constitution for any kind of "Continuity of Government" plan. Especially a plan that would suspend or infringe in any way on the rights and liberties of individual Americans. Nothing!! "You can forget about any default in the debt ceiling crisis.  Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Dr. Paul Craig Roberts says, "The debt ceiling will be raised.  No government wants to lose its power or lose its ability to borrow.  So, if they don't raise the debt ceiling, it is just a way of Washington committing hari-kari.  It simply removes the United States as a super power."  Dr. Roberts goes on to say, "If they don't make a deal, one of two things will happen. . . . The Federal Reserve, on its own authority, lends the Treasury the money. . . . The other alternative, Obama . . . can simply declare a national emergency and raise the debt ceiling on his own initiative.  He could govern as a dictator." What would happen if the U.S. did default?  Dr. Roberts says, "The danger of default is the rest of the world dumps dollars.  If they dump dollars, the Fed loses control, the whole system blows up.  The banks fail.  The bond market collapses.  The stock market won't go down 1,500 points; it would be cut in half. " No matter what happens, there is still an enormous and growing debt.  Dr. Roberts contends, "The situation is unsustainable."  It will blow up at some point, and Dr. Roberts predicts, "It will be worse than the Great Depression because in the Great Depression, prices fell along with employment.  Now, prices will be rising and employment would be falling. . . . Gold and silver prices

Excellent thinking and a great presentation from "Utah". A must read if ever there was one. Conclussion: "This is where we are in government. Our Republican leadership is failing, even as the Democrats fail at almost everything, especially their big "achievements". Obama and his team are failing because they have refused to change after their ideas didn't work - the Obamacare rollout is a perfect example. Now they are telling America that the solution is more taxes, more borrowing and more intervention - in essence, they want us to paddle harder. Just trust them, they ask - they just aren't quite through fixing things yet. As many observers have pointed out, there are no rational people who think that the current levels of borrowing and taxation can cure our ills. There are only those, many exposed in these most recent government shutdowns, who simply want to delay Obamageddon until someone else's term. The fact is that we simply have enough fatal structural defects in our approach to our governance model that just working harder and spending more cannot fix it. You can't beat structural defects with performance. I've seen it all before in companies who were burning themselves out and wasting their resources by paddling harder against a current that was too powerful…and never recognizing that rescue was only a course change away. Simply paddling harder won't do it, especially when government has been taking paddles away from some through taxation and regulation and pulling some 47% of tax filers completely out of the canoe. This will not get fixed without pain. We need to get ready for it. No amount of avoidance will forestall the inevitable crash - we have to make sure that it is only a hard landing. Something will have to be sacrificed to save the whole; I have little doubt about that. Everything can't be given to everybody - there never was going to be a unicorn in every garage and Peggy Joseph never was going to get Obama to pay

This is a January 2010 article by Glenn Greenwald. The Sunstein paper referred to was published in 2008 and is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585  Sunstein left the Obama Administration in 2012 and now teaches law at Harvard. He is the husband of U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice,a notorious neocon.  His paper is scholarly only in format. His major premises have no citations and in at least two cases are straw man logical fallacies that misportray the position of the groups he criticizes. This is "academic" work that a first-year-law student heading for a 1.0 grade point average could make mincemeat of. This paper alone would seem to disqualify him from a Supreme Court nomination and from teaching law. Has he never heard of the First Amendment and why didn't he bother to check whether it is legal to inflict propaganda on the American public? But strange things happen when you're a buddy of an American president. Most noteworthy, however, is that the paper unquestionably puts an advocate of waging psychological warfare against the foreign populations *and* the American public as the head of the White House White House OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2008 through 2012 and on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court. Given the long history of U.S. destabilization of foreign nations via propaganda, of foreign wars waged under false pretenses, of the ongoing barrage of false information disseminated by our federal government, can there be any reasonable doubt that the American public is not being manipulated by false propaganda disseminated by their own government?  An inquiring mind wants to know ...   

Softball Interview here. . I wasn't really expecting Obama to reach out to the ACLU and EFF for a good civil liberties lawyer recommendation, but this appointment is lame, the former Director of Privacy for Dept. of Homeland Security, those wonderful folk who keep the homeland safe from terra-ists. The airport gropers, secret no-fly listers, and masters of border protection, where all Constitutional privacy rights do not apply, per the Supreme Court., the coordinators of our glorious "fusion centers," the provisioners of funding for armored cars and surveillance equipment for local police, etc. A sample from her interview linked above that I transcribed (omitting all the umhs and ahs): "When you think about NSA, privacy there for them was privacy of its employees, about contractors, about the average person walking down the street - it was not as concentrated on, this is the big collection that we're getting through these means, and so what this job does is that it brings it up under direct reports to the director of NSA and it is just as a focal point, to bring all of those and -- I walked in the building and people were already asking questions so ..." Heaven help us; has this lassie's brain yet matured to the point of completing her first sentence? This is the lady who is going to keep Admiral Rogers on the straight and narrow path of respecting our civil liberties? I suspect not.  I may return to this inarticulate and non-assertive young lady in later posts. Let it suffice for now to observe that the Dept. of Homeland Security, whose raison d'etre is a virtually non-existent terrorist threat manufactured by the politics of fear, has not exactly been a champion of the People's civil liberties. Moreover, I've had recent occasion to dig rather deeply into exactly what it is that Privacy Officers do and don't do. Telling heads of agencies that they cannot lawfully do what they want to do is no