Will the the 21st Century See The Dismantling Of Centralized Power?

“The story of the 21st Century will be the dismantling of centralized power.“ : Richard Bledsoe

I can’t think of any evidence for this. Are there any governments on earth which are smaller than they were ten years ago? Is Google’s power shrinking? Amazon’s? Big banks? Has Giant Faceless MegaCorp decided to break itself up into independent twenty employee segments?

We have seen in the last couple decades the creation of a global surveillance state of intertwined governments and private businesses which not even the Stasi could have dreamed of in their wildest drug induced fantasies.

We in the US have evolved from a nation of independent small business owners aka farmers and artisans, into a nation of employees trained to take orders. Our fundamental mindset has changed from that of owners into obedient order takers.

I see no evidence whatsoever that anyone in either major American political party would even consider overturning the foundation of the modern regulatory state -Wickard vs Filburn (look it up)- much less return our government to only those activities authorized by the Constitution.

The UN and leading politicians around the world are working openly to end national sovereignty, criminalize free speech including criticism of Islam and of immigration. Merkel may lose her office, but she has succeeded beyond the dreams of the mullahs in Islamizing Germany, and those people are not going to leave. Nor are those in France, Britain, Holland, Spain, or Italy.

Islam is hardly a force for decentralization, nor is the wave of socialism sweeping Americans who have been taught to despise individualism, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie.

Quite the contrary to decentralization: I think we are far more likely to see the complete politicization of economic activity coupled with a surveillance state like the world has never seen.

William Lloyd Garrison

Gotta love a patriotic guy who would get up on the banner-bedecked stage with flags flying proudly and burn a copy of the US Constitution at a 4th of July rally. He had his reasons.

I’m not sure of the relationship but I think his wife was my great-great-great-grandmother’s first cousin. Something along those lines. Anyway, it isn’t my fault.

His name was William Lloyd Garrison, and he published a rabble-rousing abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator. At one point some Democrats in Boston lassoed him and dragged him through the streets on the way to tar and featherdom on Boston Common, but the sheriff came to the rescue by arresting Garrison and locking in the pokey. So Democrats’ behavior has improved, if only slightly, since then. They’re working on it tho.

“On July 4, 1854, he publicly burned a copy of the Constitution, condemning it as "a Covenant with Death, an Agreement with Hell," referring to the compromise that had written slavery into the Constitution.”

Now that’s a rabble rouser for you. We could use more Republicans like William Lloyd Garrison. The Democrats took sledge hammers to his printing press, and still he soldiered on. Burned the Constitution at a 4th of July rally. Just imagine.

More here.

Will Progressives Re-think Their Struggle For Greater Federal Power?

I doubt it: Greater federal power is what progressives are for.

Several years ago -back in 2013, in fact- I started asking lovers of gun bans, particularly AR-type guns, who would contemptuously dismiss any claim for need for Americans to be armed as the ravings of the lunatic Right: "Would any sane German in 1913 have said it was even possible that within the remaining lifetime of an already middle-aged German, the German government, government of one of the most educationally, philosophically, and industrially advanced countries on Earth, would build extermination factories and run over 6,000,000 innocent people through them?"

Yet that is exactly what happened. It took only 25 years to descend from the pinnacles of European culture into the Holocaust.

I was interested to find that nearly all responded with "That cannot happen here, because THIS IS AMERICA!" Apparently the phrase "This is America" is a magic talisman against evil, even among those who like to harp on the evils that America has participated in, harped in some cases to the point that one might think they considered America the rightful predecessor and inheritor of Naziism.

Yes, chanting 'THIS IS AMERICA' will surely protect us forever from the all powerful state which has surveillance drones, satellite surveillance, GPS enabled cell phones, GPS enabled automobiles, self-driving automobiles which might someday be hacked by federal law to deliver us to the appropriate authorities, NSA recording all email and telephone calls' meta-data in the world (is it still only the meta-data? Was it ever? If so, must it remain so limited?), recording of all financial transactions involving a check, credit, or debit card -at the same time we are moving away from the financial privacy of cash, and $100 bills with less buying power than a $20 bill in 1973-, military armored vehicles distributed to police forces great and small, a political party already with a demonstrated history of claiming to the Supreme Court that the 1st Amendment allows criminalization of a movie criticizing a politician during an election campaign? And claims that the government could ban any such book as well? (If you doubt that, read about "Citizens United", for the Administration did in fact make the claim in oral arguments that they could ban a book criticizing Hillary Clinton, just as the movie criticized her.)

Will Progressives re-think their commitment to ever greater federal power? I doubt it, because ever greater federal power is exactly what Progressives want.

But of course, a Holocaust can't happen here because THIS IS AMERICA.

Election Day 2016

If you think the last year has been awful, wait for the next four to make it look like The Good Old Days. No matter who wins.

When government controls every part of the economy, every part of our lives, who is in charge becomes surpassingly important. Boys MUST be allowed to shower with the girls, Citizen, or else. Your inefficient 85 cent lightbulb is a federal offense, Citizen, because our donor's efficient $25 bulb hasn't been selling well. Your suburban street sign does not meet our specs, Citizen: Take them all down and replace them. Or else. Air a movie or publish a book criticizing Hillary Clinton, Citizen? To prison with you. Yes, that was what 'Citizens United' was about.

Either the people who are tired of dictates which have no constitutional authorization lose, in which case they will remain...tired, or they will win, in which case the people making a great deal of money off dictates will be screaming "Nazi slave raiders at the gate!" until they are back in control.

So it doesn't matter all that much who wins today: somebody will see themselves as losing something important, and the next four years will be far more hate filled than the last year. Plan on losing friends and family.

There Was A Reason We Seceded From Britain...

...and there still is.

Pam Geller, if you don't recall, organized the Mohammed Cartoons show in Garland, TX, at which Muslim murderers arrived to slaughter the crowd, only to be gunned down by security.

It didn't get nearly the news play which was accorded far less important events.


Secretary of State Kerry believes mass murders by Muslims, such as in Paris, have a certain "legitimacy" because they are offended by cartoons. This, of course, may be extended to those who cut off Christians' heads and sell Christian girls into sex slavery. Christians who protest are anti-Muslim bigots.

But we already knew that.


http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/18/geller-the-nation-that-gave-the-world-the-magna-carta-is-dead/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breitbart+%28Breitbart+News%29

“Less Hamas, more hummus”

It was ‘very poorly received’ in Beirut, he concludes.

Some people don't have much of a sense of humor, I guess, unless they think burning people alive, raping them, or cutting off their heads is just plain funny.

The rest is predictable, from the Muslim faction known as the Religion of Peace or I'll Kill You:

A French street artist was severely beaten up in Paris after refusing to remove a work of art calling for coexistence between Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Street artist Combo was physically assaulted in eastern Paris on Saturday after refusing to take down one of his artworks, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

On a wall in the Porte Dorée neighbourhood, the 28-year-old put up a picture of himself wearing a djellaba (a full bodied outer robe common in Arabic-speaking countries) and then painted the word “co-exist” next to it, replacing the “c” with the Islamic crescent, the “x” with the Star of David, and the “t” with the Christian cross.

Four men approached the artist and insulted him, demanding that he remove the painting. The artist wrote on his Facebook page that when he refused to comply, all four of them beat him up severely, leaving him with a dislocated shoulder and bruises.

More here.

BTW: Making it illegal to carry weapons, for practical purposes puts the government -any government which does so- squarely on the side of the criminals. Disarming the victims while being unable or unwilling to arrest and lock up criminals who attack the decent members of society is unequivocally pro-criminal.

Fast & Furious: Email Shows DOJ Shut Down CBS Investigation By Sharyl Attkisson

DOJ called CBS to shut down an embarrassing news reporter's investigation, and CBS complied. re: Fast & Furious: ATF sending guns to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel. It does look like DOJ said in writing they were going to try to get CBS to shut down Sharyl Attkisson's investigation. That is consistent with what Attkisson said in her book, now the emails have surfaced in a DOJ FOIA response.
The emails are a pain to find in over 42,000 pages, but if you bother, start looking at around 518.

One of the documents provides smoking gun proof that the Obama White House and the Eric Holder Justice Department colluded to get CBS News to block reporter Sharyl Attkisson. Attkisson was one of the few mainstream media reporters who paid any attention to the deadly gun-running scandal.

In an email dated October 4, 2011, Attorney General Holder’s top press aide, Tracy Schmaler, called Attkisson “out of control.” Schmaler told White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz that he intended to call CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer to get the network to stop Attkisson.

Schultz replied, “Good. Her piece was really bad for the AG.”

Nothing will come of this, of course: Reporting it would be embarrassing to both CBS and the Obama Administration, so we don't need to know about it. One more brick has been laid in the building called The American Police State.

More here.

UPDATE: PowerLine has more here:

It is obvious that the Department of Justice has withheld other emails that are relevant to the above exchange. Schmaler’s reference to “Sharryl” is out of the blue. There must have been prior references to her, but they do not show up in a search of the documents that have been produced. That means that they have been either redacted or withheld. Still, what we have is bad enough: the Obama administration targeted the only reporter who was following up on Fast and Furious, and went to her editor and to elder statesman Bob Schieffer to pull her off the case–to get her, as they said, under “control.”

The New Civility = The New Totalitarianism

Robert F. Kennedy Jr thinks climate change "deniers" should be imprisoned. Others of his persuasion apparently think the Internet should be nationalized to deny those who disagree with them any chance of speaking to the proles.

That sounds pretty Kennedyesque to me. In fact, it seems downright Democratic.

The Heckler's Veto Wins In Dearborn

Eugene Volokh in the Washington Post:

The society we live in stems from the incentives we create. Incentives for violent speech suppression mean more violent speech suppression. That, I think, will be the consequence of the Sixth Circuit panel decision, if it is not reversed by the en banc Sixth Circuit or by the Supreme Court.

Some Christian proselytizers demonstrated in what seems to have been a fairly obnoxious manner at the Arab International Festival in Dearborn, some Arabs responded with violence.

The court upheld the police cracking down, not on the violent people, but on the proselytizers. Thus, the heckler's veto, in which lawful free speech is shut down by criminal violence, violence rewarded by the government itself shutting down the protected speech.

The minority opinion is worth reading.

Forty Questions About Gaza

Here. I doubt that any will be asked aloud, much less answered honestly.

Senator Ted Cruz Questions FBI Director James Comey on IRS Investigation of the IRS Scandal

Director Comey gives the appearance of stonewalling. He won't even say if the FBI has interviewed more or fewer tha 10 of the alleged victims.

Harry Reid: Abolish The 1st Amendment

Mr. Reid and his fellow Democrats say the government should have the ability to decide who can spend money in elections and how much they are allowed to spend. That would apply to candidates and other Americans, including the interest and pressure groups that play an increasing role in campaign advertising.

Yeah, that will give me confidence in our government.

Harry Reid should be impeached.

UPDATE: Harry Reid et al should be impeached, tried for treason, and imprisoned for life. Read this. Read as written (DUH) this would empower Congress to make it a federal felony to contribute money to Republicans, but not to Democrats. Or vice versa. As I read it, there is nothing which demands equal treatment: It empowers Congress to set limits, which might be zero. "It shall be a felony to contribute or solicit contributions to, any political candidate or party which does not adhere to the Platform of the Republican Party."

Read the sponsors of this resolution: The most despicable power freaks in the Senate.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio Questions ATF Director B. Todd Jones

Why can't more reporters ask questions like these?

Oh....Yeah...Nothing to see here. Move along.

Law Professor Tyler Cowen Pepper Sprayed At George Mason University

A little bizarre. Cowen blogs at Volokh Conspiracy, which was recently picked up by the Washington Post. I wonder if this was random, or if he was targeted. It sounds like the latter, in which case my guess is that the assailant is somewhat left of center. In any case, I hope he gets more than a slap on the hands.

Rand Paul Speech At CPAC

Rand Paul's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, here.

That Nice Mr. Roosevelt

Yet more evidence that Franklin Delano Roosevelt held the US Constitution in utter contempt:

Klass fondly recalls the day she saw Franklin Roosevelt speak from a train platform in Cedar Rapids. “I still remember the scene, the railroad car. It must’ve been an autumn afternoon, because I remember the sunlight coming through the leaves of the trees. I think I was on my father’s shoulder or standing next to him, and my dad was saying, ‘Now you can always say you have seen the President of the United States.’ Roosevelt had crutches, and he was dragging his legs to get to the edge of the platform. The Secret Service men were going through the crowd. They would take each camera, open it up, expose the film, and politely hand it back. Roosevelt didn’t want pictures of him dragging his legs.”

It's great that the treasonous son of a bitch got us through the Second World War, but that doesn't change the fact that he should have gotten a fair trial for treason, followed by a swift and public hanging. The man despised the Constitution because it didn't give him the powers he needed to control us to his satisfaction. Unwilling or unable to amend it to his likes, he packed the Supreme Court with those who would simply declare the Constitution says that which it does not. That's subversion, and subversion is treason.

The Tea Party, Nazis, and Maoists

“You can see gradations of the ‘polarized mind’ at work in virtually all destructive political movements from Nazi Germany to Maoist China to our very own Tea Party. In fact, it is the pervasive malady of the 20 and 21st Centuries,” says (psychologist Kirk J.) Schneider.

At least Herr Doktor seems to think the Maoists were destructive. I will give him points for that.

IRS Harasses Sarah Palin's Father 6 Times Since 2008?

According to Chuck Heath Jr's FaceBook page,:

My father, who worked multiple jobs and faithfully and honestly paid his taxes for fifty years, had never heard a word from the IRS. In 2008, his daughter was tapped to run for vice president of the United States. Since that time, he has been, in his words "horribly harassed" six times by the agency. They've tried to dig up something on him but he's always operated above board.

As usual, our government is the greatest enemy of the American people.

ACLU on Data Mining Americans

This should be scary, but few will care.

As I responded to the person who sent the link to me:

Of course, they are also doing the same thing with this email.

Who got it.

Who responded.

Who forwarded it.

To whom it was forwarded.

How many times anyone on the meta data list has interacted with any one else.

What the other email metadata shows.

USGov.org motto: Of COURSE we respect the Bill of Rights.

Properly interpreted, that is.

By others on our side.

People wonder why the right wingnuts have spent the last decade arming like it is 1775.

Maybe they are on to something. Maybe they remember that once in power, no one could vote Hitler out of power. One of Barack Obama's successors may decide the same thing.

And they will know all about this email.

Nothing to see here.

Move along.

Or else.

The Peanut Butter And Jelly Sandwich is Racist.

If you don't believe so, you have just encountered you own inner racist. Prepare to hate thyself, churl.

The terms 'Constitution' and 'Founding Fathers' are also racist.

The Principal of a Portland school say so, therefor it must be true.

This lunacy would be funny, but they control entire school systems. That is not funny.

The story seems to be over a year old, but for some reason has taken on a new life. As well it should.

Several of the comments are spot on. One commenter by the handle of 'Turtle' suggests that the following must also therefore be racist:

1) (American) football

2) hot dogs (some cultures don't eat them!)

3) bacon (it's existence is Islamophobic)

4) Womens & Gay rights (again, Islamophobic, some cultures don't like it!!!)

Basically, if you think women should have rights, you are racist against several cultures, if you think gays have a right to live, you are extra racist.

If you respect the rights of both while eating a bacon-wrapped hot-dog and watching football, you are basically hitler.

I think this pretty much catches the idea.

Still more here.