We’re All Soviets, Now

For decades the US government kept its populace in fear of the Soviet Union, We were constantly warned about the Evil Empire that wanted to destroy our liberties, are distinctive way of life and our economic freedom. Tens of billions of our tax dollars were spent and thousands of lives sacrificed to supposedly keep the Bear at bay. But since the dissolution of the Soviet Empire we’ve witnessed a US government hell bent on imitating its vanquished foe.

As we see more and more central planning of people’s personal and economic lives and the rapid, aggressive, advancement of the Federal police state, it becomes obvious that the Soviet Union did not disappear- it merely relocated westward.

The always perceptive Bill Bonner recently made this observation in The Daily Reckoning:

“Let us look back. What has been the major trend of the entire past 50 or so years? Government has played a larger and larger role in the US and most western democracies. Only in the formerly (and for many, still) communist countries has government been rolled back.

The communists learned their lessons. They proved that government spending does not make people rich. But now...what's this...? The US and other countries are greatly increasing the percentage of GDP spent by the government.

The communists proved that central planning didn't work. But again, the US and others are now planning their economies more than ever - managing interest rates, directing capital to one industry while denying it to others, raising taxes on this...subsidizing that...regulating everything that moves...

The communists also proved that state ownership of industry was a bad idea. But the US and others now own banks, insurance companies, almost the entire mortgage business, and one of the world's largest automakers.

Perhaps most importantly, almost all the 'old' democracies - notably the US - are taking on much more debt. Bankers do stupid things - the feds take over the debt. Homeowners do stupid things - the feds give them more low-cost credit. Politicians do stupid things - and the feds run up even more debt“.

Why did this happen? You have to believe that the political elites that inhabit the DC swamp see no benefit in allowing their subjects to live undisturbed, self-directed lives. There’s no power and money in that. Therefore, the trend has been toward more subjugation and intervention. Expect to see more of the same until, like its predecessor in tyranny, it all unravels into a messy and (possibly) bloody, chaotic mess.

But in the meantime, come forth, comrade, and tell us how you love Big Brother!

The Eyes Have It

So much can be learned about this young woman just by looking at her eyes. It’s all there- the vacant stare characteristic of those who submit to a revered ruler- be it a king, a senator, a president. Notice the gaping mouth, no doubt shouting in revelry about the wonderful gifts offered by her chosen master.

How sad that some insist on seeing other fellow humans as ordained superiors, empowered to rule and control the merely mundane. How sad that some believe there actually exists those who possess some mystical knowledge or power that qualifies them to control and direct the lives of other individuals.

You, the sovereign individual, are born with all the tools necessary to successfully live as a self-directed, self-ruled person. Certainly, seek advice from elders and those you respect. But never be lead blindly by con men who display the trappings of benevolence and omniscience, but in reality offer nothing more than servitude and indigence.

Followers merely walk in the path worn by the herd- a path littered with the droppings of exasperation, misfortune, shattered dreams, and lost hope. Watch where you step.

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”

Mother Teresa

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“Why do swindled citizens applaud trillions squandered on programs to buy small business cyanide and economy-sized nooses? The trick, as usual, lies in a carefully plotted economic public relations campaign. It's in the way these schemes are sold. As George Orwell once noted, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." People seldom riot while waiting in line for a free lunch. Recognizing this, politicians and their lackey economists go about convincing people that a nation really can spend its way to riches.”
Joel Bowman

“When there's significant government allocation of resources, the most effective means of organizing for the gains are those proven most divisive, such as race, ethnicity, religion and region.”
Walter Williams

“Predator drones are a progressive example of current military technology blurring the distinction between real and the digitally contrived. These technological terrors desensitize the inherent human aversion to violence by reverting harsh reality into an entertaining simulation. Such technology encourages a delusional mindset that killing in war can be sanitized, without the unpleasant experience of suffering the emotions of remorse or revulsion.”
Ron Shirtz

“Countries can't attack countries, as this would simply be a battle between ideas. The physical manifestation of the state resides in its agents, the swelling ranks of professional busy-bodies, bureaucrats, and armed thugs who invoke petty nationalist sentiment and bigoted paranoia to gull their subjects into conducting or supporting these pointless acts of wholesale slaughter.”
Cal Bittersmore

“Borders are gang turf boundaries, usually drawn by conquest and upheld through repressive measures. Those who cross lines drawn across the earth should not have to ask permission from the tyrants who created those lines.”
Darian Worden

“We all know that politics and politicians are dishonest, no matter what their alleged ideological stance; they lie and no one is shocked, especially their supporters. 'He has to say that to get elected!' We all have different standards for politicians than for business associates, friends, and family, which indicates our real, if inchoate, view of the state. No one defends the crooked plumber, but almost everyone will defend the crooked politician, so long as he belongs to their tribe.”
Lew Rockwell

**********************************************

From the Darkness:

"NASA must continue at the frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology and set the standards of excellence that will enable commercial space ventures to eventually succeed. Canceling NASA's human space operations, after 50 years of unparalleled achievement, makes that objective impossible."

From a letter authored by a group of 27 NASA astronauts, flight instructors and other employees, in an open letter published by the Orlando Sentinel.

“If we accept second or third place in the space race ... behind China and India, for example ... we may as well go ahead and accept that the sun has set on a part of what has made us great."
Tom Foreman, CNN

“We do wonder whether there’s human involvement in all of these eruptions, earthquakes, storms.”
Diana Rehm, National Public Radio.

“You know we’ve seen a lot of wacky weather but that’s just a microcosm for what’s happening around the world and how much climate change is contributing to earthquakes and volcanic ash – it’s a really good question.”
Elise Labott, senior State Department producer for CNN.

“We will rise or we will fall together — as one nation."

B. Obama, speaking about Wall Street “reform.”

“It's looking like this may be a long decade. And if we don't pull carbon out of the way we energize our lives soon, a small clump of our not-too-distant surviving descendants may find themselves, as Gaia scientist James Lovelock has direly predicted, like the first Icelanders: gathered on some near-barren hunk of rock near one of the still-habitable poles, trying yet anew to eke out a plan for human civilization.”
Alan Weisman, CNN, blaming human caused global warming for causing the Iceland volcano and all the recent worldwide earthquakes.

"In my opinion, we have waited long enough for the diplomacy to work. Iran is a festering sore in the world."
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, keeping up the enthusiasm for war.

“When a tobacco product that looks like candy is potentially deadly to children, government needs to act. These tobacco candies could hook a new generation of teenagers. We need to consider clearing them from store shelves until the effect on young children and teenagers is better understood.”
Sen. Frank Lautenberg, pushing to yank Camel’s dissolvable tobacco products from store shelves.

Image Review of the Week

Come forth to your master. Your chains await:

I’m on break. Killing this young “terrorist” will have to wait:

"Smuggling" - a statist term for free exchange of goods and services:

Two of a kind. Johnny Mac stays in good company:

Always willing to give a hand…………..into your wallet:

Guns in DC. Let your firearm represent you, not lying, thieving gangsters:

Just another white phosphorous day over Gaza:

America loves its Emperor:



Democracy in action- 51% stifling the other 49%:

Ho hum- State pornography gets boring after a while:

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The USA looks like a Third World resource-rich backwater ruled by inbred cannibals wearing uniforms who are busy stuffing their Swiss bank accounts.
John Q. Public worries about paying the mortgage while the political elite strip-mine the nation they manage. After all, we expect it.”
David Calderwood

“It is striking that the war on terror has spoken so strongly about democracy and had so little to say about liberty. This must partly be because the alleged war required a suspension, even abolition, of many of the rules of liberty and demanded a new relationship between the individual and the state—perfectly symbolized by the illogical persecution of airline passengers, a scheme whose chief purpose seems to be to accustom as many people as possible to a future in which they will spend more of their lives being ordered about by unquestionable state functionaries.”
Peter Hitchens

“We live under a class state, a system of class rule, and the machinery of the corporate state serves the interests of that class rule. “Moderates” and “centrists,” by definition, are those who accept that system as fundamentally legitimate in all its essentials, and just want to tinker around the edges of corporate rule without altering its fundamental nature.”
Kevin Carson

“The State tries to convince us that it is exempt from the Laws of God and Nature – in other words, to the effect that IT is the God which we must obey, and not the God which speaks to us through our personal conscience. In this attempted divorce of man from conscience lies proof that the State is a non-human machine-entity, and thus truly beyond the influence of the human conscience.”
Jeff Knaebel

“We verge ever closer on the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet the average American will declare loudly that he is a free man and that the United States is the freest country in the world.
As the state seeks to control virtually everything and crushes all real opposition, Americans now inhabit a country that would be completely unrecognizable to its founders. Indeed, it bears only faint resemblance to the country it was just 50 years ago.
More and more, 'Land of the Free' is becoming nothing but an empty, pathetic boast.”
Robert Higgs

"The main function of national elections in this country is to give the people the illusion that they are in charge and can change policy whenever necessary. However, the basic policies never seem to change. Elections allow people to blow off steam and thus serve as a safety valve for the regime that allows them to rule us for another four years."
James Ostrowski

“From a pragmatic point of view, the space program is nothing more than a massive socialist spending program with militaristic intent, but which benefits handsomely from hysterical and maudlin appeals to hope in the government’s ability to accomplish anything, provided enough time and taxpayers’ loot.”
Ryan McMaken

“The state – an institution that is defined in terms of enjoying a monopoly on the use of violence – is particularly attractive to men and women whose "dark sides" are closer to the surface than those of more tolerant and peaceful persons.”
Butler Shaffer

“A government cannot be created unless there is at least one person who has a strong enough desire to control the outcome of what others say or do. Furthermore, that one person must be smart enough to sell his idea to others, which will most likely mean (if bribes don’t work) preying upon their fears….”
B.R. Merrick

“Statism makes the claim that since the State makes the rules- defines the ‘sins‘, if you will- the State can do things that would be evil if done by you or me, yet maintain its holiness in the eyes of its followers. While individual priests of Statism (politicians and state apologists) can sin, the State as a concept remains unquestioned, as does its sacredness.”
Kent McManigal

**********************************************

From the Darkness:

“Our plan has four pillars: requiring biometric Social Security cards to ensure that illegal workers cannot get jobs; fulfilling and strengthening our commitments on border security and interior enforcement; creating a process for admitting temporary workers; and implementing a tough but fair path to legalization for those already here. We would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card.”
Senators Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer describing their plan to require biometric national ID cards for every American worker.

"We know that organizations like al Qaeda are in the process of trying to secure a nuclear weapon -- a weapon of mass destruction that they have no compunction at using."
B. Obama

"It's unfortunate. It's clearly not helpful. But by the same token, I think -- think it should not have any lasting consequences."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, commenting on the video showing U.S. Apache helicopters killing 12 people, including two Reuters news staff.

“The problem with Ron Paul, Joe Wilson and the many neo-confederates who support or work in the Republican party is that you can not separate slavery and the Confederacy, once you defend one, you defend the other. That is like separating Nazis and the holocaust.”
Casey Gane-McCalla

“As a State, nothing we do is more important than protecting the lives of our children."
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley

"I've been a little amused over the past couple of days when people have been having these [Tea Party] rallies. You would think they'd be saying, 'Thank you.'"
B. Obama

“[Andrew] Napolitano has joined other conspiracy theorists in falsely claiming that efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act were responsible for the crash of the economy in 2008.”
From the Southern Poverty Law Center website. [So, claiming A causes B makes you a “conspiracy theorist?”]

"The [second world] war revealed what might be called ‘the dirty little secret’ of American capitalism. The myth of capitalism is that the free market is the most efficient economic system. But it is not. Governmentally sponsored and regulated production is far more efficient. It was the war, not the New Deal, that finally reversed the Great Depression."
Garry Wills

Quotes of the Week

From the Light:
“The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another person's loss. As such, political decision-making and allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market decision-making and allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict.
When there's significant government allocation of resources, the most effective means of organizing for the gains are those proven most divisive, such as race, ethnicity, religion and region.”
Walter Williams

“There are two ways to deal with a poisonous snake: Avoid it, or kill it. The same is true of the state.”
Thomas L. Knapp

“The left and the right love power, and although that power is often directed against their own when the other side is at the reins, they cannot abandon the idea that a police state can be pinpointed only against those they hate, and not those with whom they sympathize. The responsible, non-partisan and indeed American thing to do is to harbor extreme skepticism toward the state when it spies, infiltrates, arrests and imprisons anyone, and most especially those whose alleged crime is “sedition” or “conspiracy” or in any way being the enemy of the state.”
Anthony Gregory

“The moral nature of a man is unchanged by the existence of an organization or his position within that organization. Organizational pursuits wherein the only real criteria for participation is desire and the threat of negative market response is non-existent – such as politics and government bureaucracy – will, given time, attract those who are both desirous of the benefits afforded by the available ways and means and motivated by the lack of negative feedback. (In other words, losers.)”
Wilt Alston

"In spite of the blame game that is played when it comes to soldiers being culpable for their actions, they are responsible and will have to answer to a higher power than their commanding officers. That higher power may be their religion, philosophy, moral code, or conscience, but unless they have made a god out of the military, it will be something."
Laurence M. Vance

“The government and government beneficiaries are lining up in anxious opposition against the much larger, much more creative and decentralized populations that existentially threaten its comfortable, profligate and power-wielding existence. This is the real reason that ragtag and broke down militias, tea partiers, entrepreneurs, raw milk drinkers and libertarian thinkers of every stripe are obsessively feared by the state, and state media.”
Karen Kwiatkowski

“The answer, ultimately, to the health care debacle, or any other point of political contention, is the death of politics itself. Voting and requesting “reform” from an institution utterly immune to any manner of functioning except in the manner it currently does (and always will, until its eventual demise), is like beseeching Dr. Josef Mengele or John Wayne Gacy to just please calm down, behave, and be a good guy. You cannot expect an inherently immoral institution to exist and operate according to certain moral standards. It’s a wholly irrational concept.”
Alex R. Knight III

“Constitutions are 'screeds' offered as justifications for unethical behavior. Don’t believe the hype.”
Tzo

“If Washington really wanted to end terrorism, it would stop bombing Moslems, who would then get bored and stop bombing us. What a concept. You saw it here first. But there’s no money in it.”
Fred Reed

“The idea that coercive government is destructive to civilization is a dangerous idea. Not because it is wrong, but because it is demonstrably right. It is dangerous to those who depend on having the appearance of legitimacy as they do things as ‘government‘, backed up by the guns of government, that they would be killed for doing individually.”
Kent McManigal

“Apparently, libertarians have been right all along by pointing out that an armed citizenry provides the best defense against common criminals and especially, criminal bands armed with national hymns, flags, fake history books, tax collectors, and a customs office.”
Juan Fernando Carpio

“Our soldiers are hardly the ‘heroes’ that our government and our media automatically refer to them all as. They are armed gangsters, sent out to enforce US hegemony over desperately poor societies, and their basic strategy is to spread fear and terror in hopes of isolating those few who dare to fight back against absurd odds from the general public. Of course, the majority of US military personnel are also victims--victims of poor education, victims of an economic system that leaves many without any opportunity other than military enlistment, victims of propaganda, and victims of recruiters' lies. But for all that they are not heroes.”
Dave Lindorff

“What is this ‘road to [economic] recovery’ nonsense? Don't these people know the world is in a prolonged deleveraging stage? Don't they know that we are unwinding from half a century of credit expansion, of living far beyond our means? Don't they know that western economies are hemorrhaging and that Band-Aid welfare fixes are temporary, at best? Don't they know that living off demand stolen from the future on a currency beaten into submission is not the kind of recovery on which to build a smile and a brighter tomorrow? Don't they know that people are cutting back?”
Joel Bowman

“As far as we can tell, the last successful government program was WWII. And that was only successful because the competitors' programs were also run by government.”
Bill Bonner

**************************************************

From the Darkness:

“Look at the steam in the man’s stride! Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?”
Chris Matthews, MSNBC stooge.

“The politicians have failed. Now it’s up to us. We must break the law to make the laws we need: laws that are supposed to protect society, and protect our future. Until our laws do that, screw being climate lobbyists. Screw being climate activists. It’s not working. We need an army of climate outlaws.”
From the Greenpeace website.

“I think we have to have a credible threat of force and the preparation to use force against Iran. It would be much better if we used force against — to delay the Iranian nuclear program than if Israel did and there is no evidence that the US government is being at all serious about the use force there.”
Bill Kristol, Fox News

"This is really about helping those people out, getting them ready as far as the choice for best course of study for the financial future. So you may consider the possibility of enlisting in public service. Demand is really high right now for government jobs ...and any remaining debt on federal student loans will be forgiven after you work full-time in public service for ten years."
Stephanie Elam, CNN business news correspondent, promoting “public service.”

"While patterns may change before the start of the hurricane season, we believe current conditions warrant concern for an above-average season."
William Gray, Colorado State University, announcing his 2010 hurricane forecast [Note: The same folks predicted a busy hurricane season last year but it turned out to be the quietest season in 12 years.]

“We respect the right of freedom of expression, but forcibly entering government buildings is not an appropriate means of protest.”
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley, rebuking protesters in Thailand for storming the country's parliament saying forcing their way into government buildings." [But, of course, it’s OK for government to forcibly enter OUR buildings.]

"I don't think you can understand the Confederacy and the Civil War unless you understand slavery.”
B. Obama, showing no understanding of history.

“So inflation is an important tool in getting us out of this mess. It’s painful and unfair–those who have been responsible and saved money will pay the price for those who borrowed money, racked up huge debts, and spent more than they could afford. But it’s what the Fed is (quietly) aiming for.”
Peter Gorenstein

"No one I've met is looking for a handout.”
B. Obama

“It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that emboldens the handful of sociopaths in our midst who are always spoiling for a fight. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.”
Sara Robinson

“Advertently or not, Mr. McDonnell (Virginia’s governor) is working in a long and dispiriting tradition. Efforts to rehabilitate the Southern rebellion frequently come at moments of racial and social stress, and it is revealing that Virginia’s neo-Confederates are refighting the Civil War in 2010. Whitewashing the war is one way for the right — alienated, anxious and angry about the president, health care reform and all manner of threats, mostly imaginary — to express its unease with the Age of Obama, disguising hate as heritage.”
Jon Meacham, Newsweek editor, babbling hysterically about the Virginia governor’s proclamation recognizing April as Confederate History Month.

“Just as radical Muslims have a warped sense of religion, Confederate supporters have a delusional view of what is honorable. The terrorists are willing to kill their own to prove their point, and the Confederates were just as willing in the Civil War to take up arms against their fellow Americans to justify their point.”
Roland S. Martin, Confused News Network

Image Review of the Week

Nothing says “Easter” more than hired killers holding candles in occupied territory.......



.......and saluting dictators cavorting with large rabbits:

"A well-spent day brings happy sleep."

Leonardo da Vinci

Turn it around. “Look at all those dead bastards”

Prosperity & a better life? A check mark placed adjacent to a name......

...... brings neither:

"To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly."

Benjamin Franklin

Impeachment? A more practical method of removing heads of state:

When times get tense, watch the rats scatter:

BDO- A scrubbed, illiterate mind reads yours:

A blessing for Satan’s warriors:

Tinkering with the Rules of Engagement:




From order comes boredom:

Dude! We rule!

A Lefty in more ways than one:

But indoctrination strengthens the nation:

The #1 import- Toyotas? Nope- boxed bodies from Afghanistan:

Taking a break from the Federal teat:

A friendly reminder- return your census form......

…….and pay your income tax:

"Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always."

Guy Debord