CalExit, I'm Your #1 Fan

http://time.com/4875921/pakistan-village-revenge-rape/?xid=homepage

A village council in Pakistan ordered the teenaged sister be gang raped as punishment for her brother’s alleged rape of another young girl. This makes sense how???   

à And we want to argue all cultures are equal and should be respected…

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/brion-mcclanahan/secede-california/

Conservatives should be the biggest advocates of Calexit.  

“So red state America, here is our opportunity to rid real America from the cancer to the west and north.

The California attorney general has gotten the ball rolling. Red state America should not only push it along, it should become the most vocal CalExit cheerleaders.”

I’m a cheerleader.  How about you?

http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/27/best-reactions-hillary-clintons-new-happened-book/

I really enjoyed these memes.  I despise the Clintons. But mostly Hillary. 

MisEducation

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/charles-hugh-smith/there-is-only-one-empire/

 “There’s only one global empire, that of Finance. If you want global hegemony, you must accept the dominance of global finance and pay tribute. If you don’t want to submit to the empire, then you cannot be a global hegemon.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/no_author/single-payer-food-insurence/

“Isn’t it high time that the USA adopted a single-payer system of food insurance. After all, nothing is more important than food; no one can survive more than a few days without eating. Leaving the provision of food to the whims and caprices of the free market is simply a recipe for malnutrition and starvation. And obviously the poor and the minorities have very little access to food under horse-and-buggy market arrangements.

Under the proposed system, the government would establish a National Feeding System (NFS) to which everyone would be required to belong and make premium payments. Everyone engaged in producing and distributing food would be drafted into the system. Whenever anyone got hungry, he would present himself to a licensed provider, who would be authorized to provide stipulated types of food, the costs of which would be billed to the NFS at prices the agency had established. Only foods the NFS had found to be necessary for the individual eater would be provided and their costs reimbursed.

This system would permit great reductions in administrative costs. Unnecessary duplication (e.g., 75 different kinds of breakfast cereal, 27 different kinds of yogurt, etc.) would be eliminated. The poor, at long last, would all get adequate food; the rich would get the same food, thereby ensuring equity and equal dignity at the dinner table. Farm organizations would no longer be required, because all farmers would be organized into vast collective farms where government managers would ensure that only the best methods, seeds, fertilizers, and so forth were used, according to strict government requirements based on settled science.

Would not this arrangement be a huge improvement over the anarchy of the present means of food supply and distribution? What could possibly go wrong?”

– Robert Higgs

https://www.fff.org/2017/07/26/trumps-rejection-tyrannical-system/

“Notwithstanding President Trump’s many faults, failures, and foibles, let’s give credit where credit is due. Last week a suspected member of Al Qaeda named Ali Charaf Damache was extradited to the United States to stand trial. Trump had a choice: He could have had Damache sent into the Pentagon-CIA kangaroo ‘justice’ system in Cuba or to the federal court system that was established under the U.S. Constitution. Trump chose the latter.”

On this I say, “good job Trump,” and to Sessions, “Have you lost your mind and understanding of our Constitution?”

   

http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/07/somebody-should-tell-trump.html

Wenzel makes the point and my only real opinion on transgender in the military issue –

“Somebody should tell Trump that US military meddling overseas creates ‘tremendous medical costs.’  It sometimes results in soldiers getting their penises blown off even when they don't want them cut off.”

http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/07/college-official-drop-algebra.html

California community college system Chancellor wants to abolish the requirement that students successfully pass algebra before graduating.  She calls it “the biggest barrier to underemployed or unemployed Americans.”  California is comical – unfortunately for me, Illinois is no better.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell071204.asp

Thomas Sowell hits the nail on the head.  I agree with his response to snobby, socialism loving western European intellectuals.

“The two biggest ideological disasters of the 20th century — Communism and Fascism — were both created in Europe. Both of these blind fanaticisms led to innocent civilians being killed by the millions, during peacetime as well as in wars.”

https://mises.org/blog/why-some-people-are-poorer-others

A comparatively long read, but worth your time to consider both progressive and conservative ideology regarding poverty.  I am heartened by the concluding paragraph reprinted below.  And let us always remember, the answer lies in the free market!

“Fortunately, in the United States the problem of relief is now merely a residual problem, likely to be of constantly diminishing importance as, under free enterprise, we constantly increase total production. The real problem of poverty is not a problem of "distribution" but of production. The poor are poor not because something is being withheld from them, but because, for whatever reason, they are not producing enough. The only permanent way to cure their poverty is to increase their earning power.”

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0717/goldson_taking_the_high_road.php3

I very much enjoyed this essay by Rabbi Yonason Goldson titled Take Pleasure in Taking the High Road.

“Anything worthwhile requires investment and effort. Life is too short to squander it on fleeting pleasures when there is so much real joy for us to experience.”

Reign in the Military

https://fee.org/articles/a-socratic-dialogue-on-murder/

An interesting Socratic dialogue.  Try substituting American for Greek and Syrian for Corinthian.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/07/laurence-m-vance/military-need-rebuilt/

I concur with this quote wholeheartedly:

“The military doesn’t need to be rebuilt, not when it engages in:

·         invading other countries

·         occupying other countries

·         nation building

·         regime changes

·         fighting foreign wars

·         making widows and orphans

·         garrisoning the planet with troops

·         fighting immoral wars

·         launching preemptive strikes

·         torture

·         transporting insurgents and detainees to torture-friendly countries

·         spreading democracy at the point of a gun

·         fighting unjust wars

·         using humanitarian interventions as a guise for imperialism

·         unleashing sectarian violence

·         supplying peacekeepers

·         fighting senseless wars

·         bombing other countries

·         fighting unnecessary wars

·         building overseas bases

·         being the world’s policeman, fireman, and social worker

·         being the president’s personal attack force

·         killing civilians and dismissing it as collateral damage

·         enforcing UN resolutions

·         destroying foreign industry, culture, and infrastructure

·         providing humanitarian aid in other countries

·         enforcing no-fly zones in other countries

·         providing disaster relief in other countries

·         unnecessarily sending American soldiers to their deaths

·         rebuilding infrastructure in other countries after destroying it

·         intervening in other countries

·         creating terrorists and insurgents because of its interventions

·         making us less safe because of its interventions

·         being a global force for evil

·         carrying out an aggressive, reckless, and belligerent U.S. foreign policy

·         carrying out drone strikes that regularly miss their targets

·         fighting wars that are not constitutionally declared

·         going where it has no business going

·         supporting a network of brothels around the world

·         offense instead of defense

Not only should the U.S. military not be rebuilt, it should be cut and then limited to defensive actions only.”

Gun Control and Two Interesting Observations

http://www.mygovcost.org/2017/06/26/uncle-jerry-wants-your-magazine/

“Gun-control politicians fancy themselves as compassionate progressives but their approach recalls the highly restrictive policies of National Socialist Germany.”

Gun control has always been pushed by states that become the most brutal and oppressive we have ever seen (Communist China, North Korea, NAZI Germany, Soviet Union, Castro Cuba).

AV à Interesting observation #1:  Of the four candidates most likely to win the Presidential election in 2016, Bernie, Clinton, Cruz and Trump, three were under FBI investigation by the FBI.  Cruz is the lone exception.  Seems we have gone wrong somewhere.

AV à Interesting observation #2: I get into work this morning and read the news. I have already seen 3 articles on Jared Kushner hiring a lawyer within 5 minutes.  I have seen none on Bernie Sanders and his wife committing bank fraud.  I don’t believe this would be the case if a conservative were under FBI investigation for bank fraud.

Flip Your View on Foreign Affairs and Environmentalism

http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/19/net-neutrality-nothing-corporate-power-grab/

Herein lies the key to understanding why I believe government can never be the answer.

“Here is the lesson in all of this: since the New Deal, progressives have told us that if the government gains control of an industry, it will be made equal so that there are no winners and losers. But, instead, there are still winners and losers—the only thing that changes is who chooses them. And if we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that the government is never neutral.”

http://blog.independent.org/2017/07/18/what-is-kim-jong-un-thinking/

Please take just 2 minutes to think about world affairs from a non-US perspective.  I am not saying take the interests of other countries – just consider them so as to understand strategy.  It makes perfect sense for Kim Jong Un to want nukes and to act crazy.  It is the only thing that has prevented the US from taking him out and/or declaring war on North Korea like we did with Saddam in Iraq and Gadhafi in Libya amongst 5 or so other similar countries.  The quote below is written as if from the perspective of Kim Jong Un…

“The advantage of the guy who makes others think he is crazy is that he alters their expectations. Had I not seemed insane, just like my father, the great Kim Jong-il, the evil bourgeois Westerners would have launched a devastating surgical attack on my nascent nuclear program. But my nuttiness served as a deterrent. What they believed to be dementia was nothing more than my ‘Juche’ ideology, a nationalist self-confidence, my grandfather Kim Il-sung’s glorious contribution to socialism, which makes us indecipherable to foreigners.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Take the time to read this – it is critically important.

“It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact between those who govern and those that are governed: but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

– Thomas Paine

https://www.fff.org/2017/07/19/end-federal-asset-stealing-legalizing-drugs/

Civil asset forfeiture is the most barbaric part of our government.  A very slippery slope …

“It really is the perfect way to steal. No need to go to Congress and seek a tax increase. Just stop people traveling on the highways and take whatever cash they happen to be traveling with.

And that’s the way asset-forfeiture or, more accurately, asset-stealing works — by simply taking money from people against their will, like with robbery.”

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0717/stossel071917.php3

A better solution, Stossel points out, lies in legalizing the ownership of these protected animals, treating them as private property, aligning the incentives of the sellers with the animals themselves.  This is similar to those criticizing the cutting down trees in the rainforest not realizing the best thing they can do for this is to use more paper – not less.  People fail to understand markets at even the most basic level. 

Stossel sums it up brilliantly:

 “Market-hating environmentalists will love endangered animals to death.”

A Different Direction on Foreign Policy

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170717-the-country-that-cant-choose-a-side

“During this time, it became clear that the Swiss had fought too many wars on too many sides to be able to safely pick one for the long haul, especially when all the big powers wanted Switzerland for themselves because of the country’s strategic location guarding the Alps. So when the Congress of Vienna met in 1814–15 to sort out European peace after the French Revolutionary War (during which the Swiss had continued to serve as hired bodyguards for the French monarchy, including the last king, Louis XVI) and the Napoleonic Wars (during which the French invaded Switzerland and broke up the old confederacy), the Swiss put forth an elegant win-win solution for the whole continent: let us be neutral. This validation was key. As Goetschel points out, ‘Neutrality only makes sense if the other powers recognise you.’"

“… there’s actually a definition of the neutrality policy on the Swiss government website … In addition to focusing on the country’s humanitarian bent, it lists some of the rules: The country must refrain from engaging in war, not allow belligerent states to use its territory and not supply mercenary troops to belligerent states.”

Switzerland has been largely neutral in many past and ongoing conflicts.  Also notice Switzerland doesn’t have terrorism issues.  Interesting….

AV - - As a side note, I fully support every common sense American who has begged for Maxine Waters to run for President.  Waters’ campaign would be the greatest thing ever for this country.  She provides more comic relief than Louis CK every time she speaks.  

Freedom

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/janet-yellen-wants-the-fed-to-remain-in-the-shadows

Audit the fed.  I can’t decide if Janet Yellen is a moron, evil or both.  Considering she works in government, she is most likely both.

https://fee.org/articles/entrepreneurs-have-been-proving-experts-wrong-forever/

Experts have been proven wrong time and again.  Trust entrepreneurs and capitalism every time. 

https://www.fff.org/2017/07/20/progressives-warped-view-democracy-freedom/

Can you distinguish the difference between your right to read whatever book you so choose with your right to spend your money however you choose? Think it all the way through.

Three quotes from the article:

1.  “Consider what people read. Should it be subject to democratic vote? Liberals-progressives correctly respond: ‘Of course not, Jacob. People should be free to read whatever they want, even if the vast majority of people disagree with what is being read.’”

2.  “The liberal-progressive blind spot comes into play with respect to people’s money. They cannot see that what people do with their honestly acquired wealth is no different in principle from what books people choose to read.”

 3 “Suppose John has $1,000 that he has received at his job. It’s his money. It’s his right to do what he wants with it. Let’s say that a local minister approaches him and asks for a $100 donation. John has the right to say yes and the right to say no. If he says no, the minister cannot rob him. That’s partly what freedom is all about — the right to decide what to do with your money.

Liberals-progressives (and, for that matter, conservatives) agree with that but also believe that what a person does with his money should be subject to the vote of the majority. So, if the majority decides that John should donate $100 to the minister, even though he doesn’t want to, they see nothing wrong with using the state’s taxing power to forcibly take the money from him and give it to the minister. They say that this is what democracy is all about. In fact, for statists ‘freedom’ is measured by the extent to which the state is empowered to control and dispose of people’s wealth. In the liberal-progressive mind, the more power the state has to control the disposition of people’s money, the ‘freer’ that society is.

So, in the liberal-progressive mind, freedom is a democracy in which the majority lacks the power to determine what a person reads but, at the same time, wields the power to determine what a person does with his own money. Like I say, it’s a warped and perverted view of democracy and freedom. Hypocritical too.”

http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/20/civil-asset-forfeiture-skyrocketed-under-obama/

Add this to the laundry list of reasons why Obama is the worst president we have ever had (maybe with the exception of FDR).  Trump is on pace to be worse than Obama, I do admit.  

Healthcare Reform

AV -à Republicans have a dilemma – pass a watered down bill to partially repeal Obamacare or completely repeal it and start over.  My view is COMPLETE REPEAL. 

I concede the points given by Dennis Prager and those who agree that the most important thing is we repeal Obamacare, even if it means doing it in steps. 

On the other hand, I agree that when the system fails (and let’s be clear – there is quite literally 0% it will succeed in aggregate) republicans will get blamed, whether they partially repeal or take no action.

That however is not my main qualm with the strategy of repealing even with a piece of shit bill.  The main issue is republicans have been using this strategy since I was born and it has not worked once.  Conservatives always give in to moderates on tough political moves.  What happens?   The size of government always grows – every single year in the past 20 years.  Bush doubled the size of the debt only to have Obama double that.  Trump now wants to do the same.  In every single political category, America has moved left. 

We have politicians claiming the Senate Bill is blood money repeal – a disgustingly inaccurate statement.  Had the Senate passed this bill eight years ago, it would have been the biggest entitlement program in US history.  Government is forever and always growing and if we keep conceding to the middle ground between moderate and increasingly extreme left wing views, we will move increasingly left, continuing to grow the size of government, and our debt.  This strategy cannot and will never work.  As soon as you give the imbeciles on the regressive left any ground they double the distance they move left.  This is a losing strategy and at some point we need more Rand Paul’s that grow a pair and stand up to the most regressive political landscape in the history of the United States.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/06/hans-hermann-hoppe/4-step-health-care-solution/

“This essay was originally published in The Free Market in April 1993.

It’s true that the US health-care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.”

For more on healthcare here are the four best steps for the getting cheap high quality healthcare to the common people.

1.       Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, medical doctors and other health-care personnel.

2.       Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices.

3.       Deregulate the heath-insurance industry.

4.       Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy.  You get more of anything you subsidize. 

Check the Data

https://fee.org/articles/what-the-us-can-learn-from-portugals-drug-decriminalization/

Portugal decriminalized ALL drugs in 2001.  Note Portugal did not legalize all drugs. Fines and treatment programs replaced criminal records and incarceration    Fast-forward to 2017 when the number of drug induced deaths per million population between ages 15-64 is 6 in Portugal.  Comparably, the same statistic in the USA is 185.more than 30 times the rate in Portugal.  So much for America’s “War on Drugs” … 

http://www.aei.org/publication/saturday-afternoon-links-all-graphic-edition/

See Chart III.  Annual US CO2 emissions per capita are at the lowest levels they have been since 1959.  The free market will solve the global warming problem.  It has in the past and it will in the future.  We have no place for fear-mongers.

Change Your Perspective

http://blog.independent.org/2017/07/12/three-times-interventionists-moved-the-goalposts-part-i/

“One of the most frustrating things in debate is when you decisively win the initial point of contention, only to have your opponent ‘move the goalpost’ to a different claim. To be sure, this is a human failing, not unique to any particular political perspective. I’m sure I myself do this too. But I have certainly noticed it when people use it against me, and so in this series of posts I’ll review three times that interventionists moved the goal posts in a political debate.”

 This is why we cannot win in politics.  The goalposts will always move when the left loses. 

We need to get rid of the government so there is nothing to debate.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/health-insurance-marketplaces-for-2018/

Analysts can manipulate data to “prove” both the successes and the failures of Obamacare, depending on their intentions.

BUT, we fail to admit that Obamacare was designed to implode and lead to single payer. 

https://www.fff.org/2017/07/13/slavery-north-korea-u-s/

This is a GREAT article!  Please read it.  It will open your eyes.

There is no denying taxation is theft and the government having the force to take our money is in fact slavery …

“Would an 80 percent take by the IRS constitute slavery for Americans? The question misses the point. The percentage is irrelevant. What matters is that when the state wields the power to seize whatever portion of a person’s income it wants, it becomes the sovereign and the person becomes the serf or the slave.”

… even when those monies are used for politically-correct social programs.

“Here is another funny part about the Times article: To buttress its slavery argument, it points out that the North Korean government takes out even more money ‘to cover living expenses, mandatory contributions to a so-called loyalty fund and other “donations.”’

It’s particularly funny that the article places the word “donation” in quotation marks. That’s undoubtedly because the Times doesn’t view them to be genuine donations given the fact that the state mandates them.

But would the Times recognize that the same principle applies to the money that is taken out of the paycheck of American workers to cover Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Homeland Security, or other U.S. welfare-warfare programs? Of course not. The Times would undoubtedly say that unlike the North Korean exactions, those U.S. “donations” are what freedom and free enterprise are all about.”

AV  à It is truly one of my favorite things in the world to watch Larry Elder confront someone who says we still have institutionalized racism.  He starts out by asking for one example and then no matter the example given he refutes the case with facts and numbers.  I have never seen him fail to do this and I have never seen someone do it better than he does.  I commend this work.  We all need to work towards this ability.  READ UP PEOPLE.   And not just headlines or social media posts.  Read from independent researchers.  Read from diverse perspectives.  READ.

Pentagon Fake News

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2017/june/28/mattis-claims-white-house-threat-to-syria-worked/

I do find this curious.  Think about the lunacy of the Pentagon with Secretary of Defense Mattis making statements claiming the success of US threats against against Syria for thwarting an imminent “chemical attack” without any evidence of the attack.   

“Either way, Mattis seems happy enough with the results. Most days go by in Syria with no chemical weapons attacks, of course, but on this rare occasion US officials seem to feel like they can take credit for that fact, despite another idle US threat clearly being wholly unrelated to the result.”