Harry always had it Right

Memorial Day, when we pretend that we live in a free country because of all the people who were killed in the government’s senseless wars. ~Harry Browne

Lord Monckton wins global warming debate at Oxford Union

By Anthony Watts at Watts Up with That

I’m waiting for actual photos of the event from the official photographer, but for now I’ll make do with what can be found on the Internet. For those who don’t know, the Oxford Union is the top of the food chain for scholarly debate. This is a significant win.

Founded in 1823 at the University of Oxford, but maintaining a separate charter from the University, The Oxford Union is host to some of the most skillful debates in the world. Many eminent scholars and personalities have come and either debated or delivered speeches in the chamber. Monckton was invited as part of the formal Thursday debate.

It is described as follows:
The Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 182 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.

Oxford Union Debate on Climate Catastrophe

Army of Light and Truth 135, Forces of Darkness 110

For what is believed to be the first time ever in England, an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis. The only previous defeat for climate extremism among an undergraduate audience was at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, in the spring of 2009, when the climate extremists were defeated by three votes.

Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world’s premier debating society, carried the motion “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110. The debate was sponsored by the Science and Public Policy Institute, Washington DC.

Serious observers are interpreting this shock result as a sign that students are now impatiently rejecting the relentless extremist propaganda taught under the guise of compulsory environmental-studies classes in British schools, confirming opinion-poll findings that the voters are no longer frightened by “global warming” scare stories, if they ever were.

When the Union’s president, Laura Winwood, announced the result in the Victorian-Gothich Gladstone Room, three peers cheered with the undergraduates, and one peer drowned his sorrows in beer.

Lord Lawson of Blaby, Margaret Thatcher’s former finance minister, opened the case for the proposition by saying that the economic proposals put forward by the UN’s climate panel and its supporters did not add up. It would be better to wait and see whether the scientists had gotten it right. It was not sensible to make expensive spending commitments, particularly at a time of great economic hardship, when the effectiveness of the spending was gravely in doubt and when it might do more harm than good.
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The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation


*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

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The Political Spectrum Con

by by Nelson Hultberg at Americans for a Free Republic
August 1, 2005
One of the most important issues in today's world entails a very exasperating fallacy being implanted into the American mind in order to justify the massive centralization of modern government. It is the leftist academic community's warping of the political spectrum so as to smear the concept of a free, capitalist society.

The idea of a political spectrum, is one of the first concepts taught and analyzed in poly-sci and economics courses in college. It is a listing of the world's various political-economic systems on a chart, placing each system on the chart toward the left, middle or right, according to the basic type of government that system upholds. It is a natural way to provide the overall perspective needed in judging the different political and economic forms that exist, and thus a very important tool in teaching what the political world is all about.

To understand why the political spectrum that is taught today is so perniciously false, we must first delve into a bit of Aristotelian philosophy. The notion of a political spectrum with three poles of left, right and center has come to us as a legacy from Aristotle's idea that virtue consists of the "rational course" that lies between two opposite and natural extremes. This rational course he called the Golden Mean. For example:



As Aristotle tells us in his Nicomachean Ethics, if a man is confronted with danger, he meets it in one of three ways. He succumbs to the extreme of cowardice, or to the opposite extreme of rashness; or he chooses the middle course of courage, which is contrary to both. In like fashion, a man can choose liberality, which is midway between the opposite extremes of stinginess and extravagance. He can choose self-control between the extremes of abstemiousness and drunkenness, and he can choose ambition between sloth and greed. [1]

Aristotle's theory was based upon the fact that in most human action, there is a wide range of intensity, all the way from too little (defect), to too much (excess). In between such defect and excess, there lies an appropriate mean which would be virtue, with the two opposites of defect and excess being vices. In other words, good is the wisdom of balance, and evil is when you stray away from the Golden Mean toward one of the two extremes.

There are, of course, many values of life (other than the ones Aristotle put forth) that can also be placed upon a spectrum to determine a Golden Mean. Human life entails a wide array of desires, actions, traits, conditions and needs, numerous of which can be portrayed in terms of a vice-virtue-vice relationship. Listed below are a few examples that I have put together:



You see here the basic triad that Aristotle defined -- vice, virtue, vice. Midway between the defect of apathy and the excess of zealotry, there lies the rational balance of concern. Between vulgarity and prudery, there is the mean of decency. Between chaos and regimentation, there is order. And the same thing with all the other triads of value listed here.

What is so beautiful about Aristotle's doctrine is that it shows all the noblest and most desired values of our existence to be means -- such as loyalty, faith, love, peace, order, and freedom. All the things we value most in life are "means" between two opposite vices. This is the way reality is constructed. Almost always there is a mean between two evils.
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A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

By c2084 - editor Enemy of the State
May 5, 2010

This picture says it all. What does it say?

It says the establishment is furious because serfs have gained access to knowledge that only the priest/monarch caste should be able to access.

How is propaganda and the false left/right paradigm going to be effective if we know the truth. The Internet is the Gutenberg's removable type printing press in the 21st century.

As the printing press made knowledge available to the serfs leading to the social advancement that brought us out of the dark ages, the Internet is driving similar shifts. Only we live in exponential times, think reformation & renaissance at 10x.

The establishment is living in fear...about time!

Corporate Media Plays Down Pro-Illegal Immigration Thugs Who Terrorized Santa Cruz

Paul Joseph Watson at Prison Planet
Monday, May 3, 2010

Imagine the uproar if 200 Tea Party members had gone on a rampage through a downtown city, smashing windows, starting fires, and spraying graffiti everywhere, the corporate media would be all over it, and yet gangs of pro-illegal immigration demonstrators do this and much worse on a regular basis, with no national news coverage whatsoever.

“A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker’s and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said,” reports Santa Cruz Sentinel.

An Associated Press report states that eighteen businesses were damaged as pro-immigrants rights activists engaged in violent riots, spraying graffiti, smashing windows, setting fire to shop fronts, and causing damage to a cost of up to $100,000 dollars.

“The damage that was caused was without purpose,” Capt. Steve Clark said. “It was senseless violence that victimized a community who cannot afford to be victimized in this manner. This did nothing to add credit to whatever they believed their cause was.”
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US Marines Operation: Enduring Poppy Crop

From FAUX NEWS Geraldo the Goon reports

I cannot add words to this joke of propaganda piece. Mr & Mrs America do not worry about Johnny’s addiction because US foreign policy will ensure he can score. Spreading Democracy?? c2084

Giving Passes in the War on Terrorism

by Jason G. Hornberger at Future of Freedom Foundation

There is still no trial date set in the federal case of Luis Posada Carriles, the foreigner whom Venezuela accuses of having planned the terrorist downing of a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976 that killed 73 innocent people, including 24 members of Cuba’s national fencing team.

After Carriles entered the United States in 2005, Venezuela sought his extradition, pursuant to an extradition agreement between the United States and Venezuela.
U.S. officials, however, have refused to grant Venezuela’s extradition request, which would appear odd given the U.S. government’s ardent commitment to waging war on terrorism and, also, given its steadfast insistence that the Taliban government turn over accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, notwithstanding the absence of an extradition agreement between the United States and Afghanistan.

What is the reason they give for their refusal to extradite Carriles? They say that Venezuela might torture him. This is not something, U.S. officials say, they could countenance, given their steadfast opposition to torture as part of their war on terrorism.

But there could be another reason that they are vigorously fighting to protect Carriles from being extradited. He just happens to be a former CIA operative, one who allegedly was involved in the CIA’s nefarious activities in Cuba as far back as the Bay of Pigs invasion in the 1960s. The last thing the CIA would want is for Carriles to be put in a position in which he might begin singing about the things he did for his former employer, including, of course, the possible commission of terrorist acts in Cuba itself. Cuban officials allege that Carriles was, in fact, involved in a series of terrorist bombings in Cuba in 1997.

One of the interesting aspects of the federal case in which Carriles is being prosecuted is that many of the documents in the case are sealed from public view. Imagine that! I wonder why they have to be kept secret. National security, I suppose.

So, what’s the federal case against Carriles all about? No, it’s not about the terrorist bombing of that Cuban airliner that he is accused of orchestrating. Instead, they’ve indicted him for lying to U.S. officials when he entered the United States.

Now, that doesn’t seem to be an extremely difficult case to prosecute. Yet, it’s been a year since he’s been indicted, and there’s still no trial date. Just recently, the presiding judge in the case, Kathleen Cardone, granted the government’s unopposed motion to postpone a status conference in the case from May 20to June 2. Obviously, a status conference is not a trial date but rather a hearing to determine whether a trial date should be set at some point in the future.
The question we have to ask is: Is the Carriles prosecution nothing more than a sham, one designed to make it look like the U.S. government is taking action against an accused terrorist while actually protecting a loyal operative of the CIA who has the ability to disclose many uncomfortable and embarrassing secrets? Indeed, we need to ask whether it’s possible that the government will end up granting Carriles favorable treatment out of fear that he might disclose the things that he did on behalf of the CIA.
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I Voted Yes but Did Not Mean It

C2084- Editor, Enemy of the State
4/30/2010

I participated in this USA Today Poll on the 2nd Amendment. The question is stated:
“Does the Second Amendment give individuals the right to bear arms?”



I voted “Yes” but do not mean it. I absolutely disagree with the question as stated but needed to vote yes because it would express support for the right to bear arms.

What I disagree with is that the right is given to me by the constitution or any other mortal entity. My right to self defense is a God given right that was mine the day I was born into this world. The constitution reaffirms this right – but does not give it.

If you can be convinced the government is where our rights originate then you could be convinced government should be able to deny our rights. For about 70 years public education has taught many generations that it is indeed the government that gives us our rights. They have also furthered the misrepresentation that we are a democracy.

These two concepts are paramount to why things are so messed up in Wash. DC.

If the majority of corrupted congress critters vote for something, even if it is repugnant to the law of the land, the democracy lie has convinced us majorities make it legal.

The USA is everything that anti federalist feared. Somewhere we bought the lie that government, the federal government, is the ultimate authority. When you multiply this with the impact of the democracy lie you have the district of criminal as it stands today in all its hubris and criminality. The ultimate shame in all of this is Lady Liberty is now the lost love of America.

Become acquainted with our heritage. You will find Liberty a most beautiful object of admiration.

In Liberty,
C2084

What's More Important: Liberty Or The Entity That Protects It?

By Chuck Baldwin
April 27, 2010

Let me ask readers a question. What's more important: freedom and its undergirding principles, or the entity meant to protect it? A word of
caution: be careful how you answer that question, because the way you answer marks your understanding (or lack thereof) of both freedom and the purpose of government.

Thomas Jefferson--and the rest of America's founders--believed that freedom was the principal possession, because liberty is a divine--not human--gift.
Listen to Jefferson:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." (Declaration of
Independence)

Jefferson could not be clearer: America's founders desired a land in which men might live in liberty. By declaring independence from the government of Great Britain (and instituting new government), Jefferson, et al., did not intend to erect an idol (government) that men would worship. They created a mechanism designed to protect that which they considered to be their most precious possession: liberty. In other words, the government they created by the Constitution of 1787 was not the object; freedom's protection was the object.

Again, listen to Jefferson: "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men." In other words, government is not the end; it is the means. Government is not the goal; it is the vehicle used to reach the goal.
Nowhere did Jefferson (and the rest of America's founders) express the sentiment that government, itself, was the objective. Listen to Jefferson once more:

"That whenever ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (Declaration) (Emphasis added.)

Jefferson is clear: people have a right to alter or abolish ANY FORM OF GOVERNMENT that becomes destructive to liberty. To America's founders, there was no such thing as a sacred cow when it came to government. Government had but one purpose: "to secure these rights." When ANY FORM of government stops protecting sacred, God-given liberties, it is the right and duty of people to do whatever they deem appropriate to secure their liberties--even to abolishing the government.

To America's founders, patriotism had everything to do with the love of liberty, not the love of government!

Today's brand of patriotism (at least as expressed by many) is totally foreign to the fundamental principles of liberty upon which America was built. I'm talking about the idea that government is an end and aim in itself; the idea that government must be protected from the people; the idea that bigger government equals better government; the idea that criticism of the government makes one unpatriotic; the idea that government is a panacea for all our ills; and the idea that loyalty to the nation equals loyalty to the government. All of this is a bunch of bull manure!

When government--ANY GOVERNMENT--stops protecting the liberties of its citizens, and especially when it begins trampling those liberties, it has become a "destructive" power, and needs to be altered or abolished. Period.

Can any honest, objective citizen not readily recognize that the current central government in Washington, D.C., long ago stopped protecting the God-given rights of free men, and has become a usurper of those rights? Is there the slightest doubt in the heart of any lover of liberty that the biggest threat to our liberties is not to be found in any foreign capital, but in that putrid province by the Potomac?

Therefore, we must cast off this phony idea that we owe some kind of devotion to the "system." Away with the notion that vowing to protect and prolong the "powers that be" makes us "good" Americans. The truth is, there is very little in Washington, D.C., that is worthy of protecting or prolonging. The "system" is a ravenous BEAST that is gorging itself on our liberties!

Patriotism has nothing to do with supporting a President, or being loyal to a political party, or anything of the sort.

Is it patriotic to support our country (which almost always means our government), "right or wrong"? This is one of the most misquoted clichés in American history, by the way. Big Government zealots (on both the right and the left) use this phrase often to try to stifle opposition by making people who would fight for smaller government appear "unpatriotic."

The cliché, "My country, right or wrong," comes from a short address delivered on the floor of the US Senate by Missouri Senator Carl Schurz.
Taking a strong anti-imperialist position and having his patriotism questioned because of it (what's new, right?), Schurz, on February 29, 1872, said, "The senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, 'My country, right or wrong.' In one sense I say so, too. My country--and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." (Source: The Congressional Globe, vol. 45, p. 1287)

Schurz then later expanded on this short statement in a speech delivered at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference in Chicago, Illinois, on October 17, 1899.
He said, "I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves . . . too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: 'Our country, right or wrong!' They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of TRUE patriotism: 'Our country--when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.'" (Source: Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, 1913, p. 119) (Emphasis in
original.)

Amen! In a free society, genuine patriotism demands that our country be RIGHT, as our nation's policies and practices reflect the values and principles of its citizens. To feign some kind of robotic devotion to a nation without regard to sacred principle or constitutional fidelity is to become a mindless creature: at best, to be manipulated by any and every Machiavellian that comes along, or, at worst, to be a willing participant in tyranny.

As to loyalty to a President merely because he is President, Theodore Roosevelt may have said it best:

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth--whether about the President or anyone else."

Hence, freedom-loving Americans cannot afford to become infatuated with Washington, D.C. We cannot allow these propagandists on network television to distort the meaning of true patriotism in our hearts.

Patriotism means we love freedom. It means we understand that freedom is a gift of God. It means we understand that government has only one legitimate
function: to protect freedom. It means that our love of liberty demands that we oppose, alter, or even abolish ANY FORM of government that becomes destructive to these ends. And it means that we will never allow government to steal liberty from our hearts.

As I asked at the beginning of this column, What's more important: freedom and its undergirding principles, or the entity meant to protect it? The right answer is, freedom and its undergirding principles. If you understand that, then you rightly understand that the current government we find ourselves under is in desperate need of replacement. And whatever, however, and whenever that replacement reveals itself is not nearly as important as that liberty is preserved.

On the other hand, if you mistakenly believe that government (the entity meant to protect liberty) is more important than liberty, you are both tragically deceived and pathetically impotent to preserving freedom. You may also have identified yourself as an enemy of freedom.

As for me and my house, we will stand with Jefferson's Declaration of Independence--in whatever form it may present itself in a modern world bent on dismantling our liberties. In other words, I pledge no loyalty to any government that seeks to destroy our freedom--including the current one!

18 Veterans Kill Themselves Every Day: Report

Army Times

Troubling new data show there are an average of 950 suicide attempts each month by veterans who are receiving some type of treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department.

Seven percent of the attempts are successful, and 11 percent of those who don’t succeed on the first attempt try again within nine months.
The numbers, which come at a time when VA is strengthening its suicide prevention programs, show about 18 veteran suicides a day, about five by veterans who are receiving VA care.

Access to care appears to be a key factor, officials said, noting that once a veteran is inside the VA care program, screening programs are in place to identify those with problems, and special efforts are made to track those considered at high risk, such as monitoring whether they are keeping appointments.

A key part of the new data shows the suicide rate is lower for veterans aged 18 to 29 who are using VA health care services than those who are not. That leads VA officials to believe that about 250 lives have been saved each year as a result of VA treatment.
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Inventing Disorders

The Psychiatric Drugging of Children
By Evelyn Pringle at Counterpunch

Of all the harmful actions of modern psychiatry, "the mass diagnosing and drugging of children is the most appalling with the most serious consequences for the future of individual lives and for society," warns the world-renowned expert, Dr Peter Breggin, often referred to as the "Conscience of Psychiatry."

"We're bringing up a generation in this country in which you either sit down, shut up and do what you're told, or you get diagnosed and drugged," he points out.
Breggin considers the situation to be "a national tragedy." "To inflict these drugs on the growing brains of infants and children is wrong and abusive," he contends.

The kids who get drugged are often our best, brightest, most exciting and energetic children, he points out. "In the long run, we are giving children a very bad lesson that drugs are the answer to emotional problems."

Dr Nathaniel Lehrman, author of the book, "Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs," believes that giving infants and toddlers "powerful, brain-effecting psychiatric medication is close to criminal activity."

"Giving them these drugs," he says, "has no rationale, and ignores the basic fact that youngsters are very sensitive to their environments, both social and chemical, with the juvenile brain easily damaged by the latter."

During an interview on ABC Radio National in August 2007, Dr David Healy, the noted British pharmacology expert, and author of the book, "Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder," told reporter Jane Shields: "Just to give you a feel for how crazy things have actually got recently, it would appear that clinicians in the US are happy to look at the ultrasounds of children in the womb, and based on the fact that they appear to be more overactive at times, and then possibly less active later, they're prepared to actually consider the possibility that these children could be bipolar."

On April 9, 2009, Christopher Lane, author of the book, "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," published an interview on his Psychology Today blog with Dr Healy. In the interview, Healy explained the history behind the drastic rise in the sale of anticonvulsants and antipsychotics as "mood stabilizers," and the diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

"The key event in the mid-1990s that led to the change in perspective was the marketing of Depakote by Abbott as a mood stabilizer," Healy tells Lane, and further explains:

"Mood stabilization didn’t exist before the mid-1990s. It can’t be found in any of the earlier reference books and journals. Since then, however, we now have sections for mood stabilizers in all the books on psychotropic drugs, and over a hundred articles per year featuring mood stabilization in their titles.

"In the same way, Abbott and other companies such as Lilly marketing Zyprexa for bipolar disorder have re-engineered manic-depressive illness. While the term bipolar disorder was there since 1980, manic-depression was the term that was still more commonly used until the mid-1990s when it vanishes and is replaced by bipolar disorder. Nowadays, over 500 articles per year feature bipolar disorder in their titles."

"As of 2008, upwards of a million children in the United States—in many cases preschoolers—are on "mood-stabilizers" for bipolar disorder, even though the condition remains unrecognized in the rest of the world," Healy points out.
"But there is no evidence that the drugs stabilize moods," he says. "In fact, it is not even clear that it makes sense to talk about a mood center in the brain."
"A further piece of mythology aimed at keeping people on the drugs," he reports, "is that these are supposedly neuroprotective—but there's no evidence that this is the case and in fact these drugs can lead to brain damage."

Healy says the FDA's decision to add a black-box warning about suicide to SSRIs likely had little to do with the switch to prescribing antipsychotics as safer for children. What "was quite striking was how quickly companies were able to use the views of the few bipolar-ologists who argued that when children become suicidal on antidepressants it's not the fault of the drug," he points out.

"The problem, they said, stems from a mistaken diagnosis and if we could just get the diagnosis right and put the child on mood stabilizers then there wouldn't be a problem," he explains.

"There is no evidence for this viewpoint, but it was interesting to see how company support could put wind in the sails of such a perspective," he says.

Because having just one label was very limiting, Healy says, child psychiatry "needed another disorder—and for this reason bipolar disorder was welcome."

He reports that the same thing is happening to children labeled with ADHD. "Not all children find stimulants suitable," he advises, "and just as with the SSRIs and bipolar disorder it has become very convenient to say that the stimulants weren't causing the problem the child was experiencing; the child in fact had a different disorder and if we could just get the diagnosis correct, then everything else would fall into place."

A report titled, "Adverse Events Associated with Drug Treatment of ADHD: Review of Postmarketing Safety Data," presented at the FDA's March 22, 2006, Pediatric Advisory Committee meeting bears witness to Healy's explanation by stating in part: “The most important finding of this review is that signs and symptoms of psychosis or mania, particularly hallucinations, can occur in some patients with no identifiable risk factors, at usual doses of any of the drugs currently used to treat ADHD.”

Between January 2000, and June 30, 2005, the FDA identified nearly 1,000 cases of psychosis or mania linked to the drugs in its own database and those from the drug makers themselves.
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The Money That Is Sold Abroad Is You!

Please take a few minutes to watch this video. If you wouldn't mind please share the reflexive thoughts of denial you experience. Do not take this personally we have all been programmed with a denial reflex to uncomfortable truth. Sharing our individual reflexes could be interesting, and helpful in understanding this reflex. ~c2084

End Insanity of the War on Drugs

Start With Decriminalizing Marijuana at The Federal Level
By Dr. Ron Paul at CNBC.com

In light of the recent drug-related violence in Mexico, it is appropriate to reflect on how our current prohibition laws affect crime, law enforcement and the economy.

Many will have the knee-jerk reaction of wanting to see more of a crackdown on illegal drugs. But I have to ask: Haven't we been cracking down on drugs for several decades only to see the black market flourish and the violence escalate? Could there be a more effective approach?

The illegality of drugs is, in fact, the Number One factor that keeps profits up for dealers and cartels, and ensures that organized crime dominates the market.

Cocaine, for example, has about a 17,000-percent markup and sells for more than gold in some areas. This is nothing new or unique to drugs, but a predictable outcome of prohibition.

During alcohol prohibition, Al Capone and others involved in organized crime made fortunes taking advantage of the dangerous and lucrative underground market the laws had created. Every time law enforcement makes another bust, profits rise for the remaining suppliers. These types of economic forces are insurmountable for law enforcement, but make for very good business for dealers and cartels.

For the rest of us, however, it is a disaster. The war on drugs keeps our prisons full to bursting at great expense to taxpayers, but also at great danger to the public at large when the real criminals, the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, are let out to make room for non-violent drug offenders.

We imprison more of our population per capita than Russia or China ever have, and yet criminals like Philip Garrido (Jaycee Lee Dugard's kidnapper) are out there able to rape and kidnap again and again. (It is interesting that in his case, a little marijuana caught the attention of law enforcement more than repeated reports from neighbors of children in his backyard).

The War on Drugs skews the priorities of law enforcement to the detriment of the public.

Repeal of alcohol prohibition certainly did organized crime no favors. So too today, if we wanted to pull the rug out from under violent drug cartels, create legitimate job opportunities in place of the black market, realign the priorities of law enforcement, and make room in prison for the people that ought to be there, we need to end the insanity of the War on Drugs.

Decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level would be a start.
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V-shaped Explosion

The Bear’s Lair
By Martin Hutchinson the Asia Times

Commentators, including the egregious Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, are increasingly claiming that the United States is in the process of a V-shaped recovery from the Great Recession. Certainly first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP), to be announced next week, is likely to show a substantial bounce, albeit not quite the inventory-driven 5.6% annualized growth of the fourth quarter. Yet commentators should be careful what they wish for: a V-shaped recovery is likely to lead not to a prolonged period of healthy growth, but to an economic explosion and collapse.

This may seem counter-intuitive. You would normally expect a period of above-normal growth after such a deep recession, whatever the political environment. After all, even in 1934, a year in which the federal government was taking a hatchet to the banking system and capital markets through the Glass-Steagall Act and was micro-managing wages, prices and product specifications through the National Recovery Administration, US GDP, it is now estimated, rose by an extremely healthy 10.9%. Indeed, 1933-34 form the principal supporting evidence for the efficacy of Keynesian "stimulus" - real federal expenditure rose by 23.7% in 1933 and no less than 34.2% in 1934, a public sector bloat rate of which even President Barack Obama might be proud.

In the very short run, intuition may be right. Manufacturing numbers for the last couple of months have been good, while surging retail sales and the plunging savings rate suggested that the US consumer has discovered yet another credit card in an old jacket pocket that he had forgotten about. Automobile sales too have rebounded nicely, and Ford in particular is looking more solid than it has for several years. Tech sector profits seem to be "surprising on the upside" as they say, with Google reporting sharply rebounding ad sales. With such growth, even the projected federal deficit may decline by US$50 billion or so, still not quite a rounding error.

The recovery may be V-shaped in the next quarter or two, but it is very doubtful indeed whether it can continue to be so for long enough to define itself as a true recovery rather than merely an intermediate bump in a "double-dip" recession. On unemployment, for example, since 8.4 million jobs have been lost in the recession, a US recovery that lasted two years from now would have to create 350,000 jobs per month to restore the jobs lost, and that would still leave unemployment much higher than in December 2007, at 6.5-7%, because over 5 million more people would have been added to the labor force between December 2007 and April 2012.

With an employed US labor force of 139 million at present, job creation at 350,000 per month implies an increase in the work available of 0.252% per month or 3.02% per annum. Add the 2% trend growth in productivity, and you're talking more than 5% GDP growth for two full years. A lovely V-shaped recovery if you could get it, but in terms of duration and extent, the bare minimum necessary for the recovery to qualify as a true economic expansion and not simply a bump in a prolonged recession.

So what are the chances of 5% US annual GDP growth for the next two years and commensurate growth in international markets? To see the problems involved, consider the question of commodity and energy prices. In the last 12 months, while the global economy has been operating far below capacity, the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries benchmark crude oil price has risen from $50.20 to $81.52 per barrel, a 62.4% increase. Yet US GDP, which bottomed out last April/May, has risen no more than 5% in the last 12 months, probably less. Thus two years of 5% GDP growth would imply energy prices rising at least as quickly as in the last 12 months, as Chinese and Indian growth continued rapid and US oil consumption rebounded towards historic trends.
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RAHN: Could the U.S. become Argentina?

By Richard W. Rahn
at the Washington Times
April 21, 2010

"Obama policies have put the nation on a similar downhill slide..."

A century ago, if you had told typical citizens of Argentina (which at that time was enjoying the fourth-highest per capita income in the world) that it would decline to become just the 76th richest nation on a per capita basis in 2010, they probably would not have found it believable. They might have responded, "This could not happen; we are a nation rich in natural resources, with a great climate for agriculture. Our people are well educated and largely descended from European stock. We have property rights, the rule of law and an open free-market economy."

But the fact is, Argentina has been going downhill for eight decades, and it has the second-worst credit ranking in the entire world - only Venezuela has a lower ranking. Argentina, despite its natural resources and human capital, has managed to throw it all away. Argentina did not become relatively poor because of having been involved in destructive conflicts. It became poor because it has had a series of both democratically elected leaders and non-elected dictators who never missed an opportunity to make the wrong economic decisions. It is, once again, trying to renege on paying the principal and interest on Argentine government bonds to foreign bondholders, and hence New York state (where many of the bonds are serviced) may take further action against Argentina, including fines and asset seizures.

In the 1930s, the Argentine government increased its interventions in the private economy. Juan Peron took over in 1946 and ended up nationalizing the railroads, the merchant marine, public utilities, public transport and other parts of the private economy. For much of the past half-century, Argentina has engaged in a series of erratic monetary policies, often resulting in periods of very high inflation and economic stagnation. Because of their political power, the unions have been coddled, resulting in unsustainable wage-and-benefit programs. Excessive government spending has caused recurrent fiscal meltdowns, where both foreign and domestic debt-holders have lost many of their investments.

According to the Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report (published by the Fraser Institute in cooperation with the Cato Institute and others), Argentina ranks 105 out of 141 countries surveyed. Similarly, the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom (published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal) ranks Argentina 135 out of the 179 countries surveyed. (The U.S. is No. 8 and falling.)

The U.S. has a per capita income of about $47,000 per year, while Argentina's is just $14,000 on a purchasing-power parity (PPP) basis. A hundred years ago, Argentina's per capita income was about 80 percent of that in the U.S. If Argentina had done as well relatively as the United States, it would have a per capita income of about $38,000 today. Countries can become wealthy in a few decades, as have South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland, by following the correct economic policies. They also can become relatively poor, as have Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela, by doing the wrong things.
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Liberty is a Cause Worthy of Defense

Thursday, 5 June, 1788; Patrick Henry is at the Virginia Convention considering ratification of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights does not exist. Henry is adamantly opposed:

I shall, with the aid of my judgment and information, which, I confess, are not extensive, go into the discussion of this system more minutely.

Is it necessary for your liberty that you should abandon those great rights by the adoption of this system? Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty?

Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessing — give us that precious jewel, and you may take every thing else! But I am fearful I have lived long enough to become an old-fashioned fellow. Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned; if so, I am contented to be so.

I say, the time has been when every pulse of my heart beat for American liberty, and which, I believe, had a counterpart in the breast of every true American; but suspicions have gone forth — suspicions of my integrity — publicly reported that my professions are not real.

Twenty-three years ago was I supposed a traitor to my country? I was then said to be the bane of sedition, because I supported the rights of my country. I may be thought suspicious when I say our privileges and rights are in danger. But, sir, a number of the people of this country are weak enough to think these things are too true. I am happy to find that the gentleman on the other side declares they are groundless.

But, sir, suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the preservation of the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds: should it fall on me, I am contented: conscious rectitude is a powerful consolation. I trust there are many who think my professions for the public good to be real. Let your suspicion look to both sides. There are many on the other side, who possibly may have been persuaded to the necessity of these measures, which I conceive to be dangerous to your liberty.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

I am answered by gentlemen, that, though I might speak of terrors, yet the fact was, that we were surrounded by none of the dangers I apprehended. I conceive this new government to be one of those dangers: it has produced those horrors which distress many of our best citizens. We are come hither to preserve the poor commonwealth of Virginia, if it can be possibly done: something must be done to preserve your liberty and mine.

How Long Does the USA have left?

About the time the original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.' 'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.''
From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.'

'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years'

'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election.

Number of States won by:
Gore: 19 .
Bush: 29.

Square miles of land won by:
Gore: 580,000.
Bush: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by:
Gore: 127 million
Bush: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by:
Gore: 13.2
Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase. If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years. If you are in favor of this then do nothing... if you are not then Pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.

Someone Admits the Clear Sky Looks Blue

In another case of stating the obvious, the London Observer’s Will Hutton penned an essay that shows the 2007 financial meltdown was engineered. What is astonishing to this citizen is that Mr. Hutton may be the first mainstream source to put this conspiracy realty on the Record.
~C208

Now We know the Truth. The Financial Meltdown wasn't a Mistake – it was a CON
By Will Hutton at the London Observer
April 18th 2010

Hiding behind the complexities of our financial system, banks and other institutions are being accused of fraud and deception, with Goldman Sachs just the latest in the spotlight. This has become the most pressing election issue of all...

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick, the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank – a bank which looks after the Post Office's financial services – was arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.

Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British taxpayer. Along the way there is a long list of so-called "entrepreneurs" and "innovators" who were offered loans that should never have been made. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO, remarked only semi-ironically that his bank was doing God's work. He must wake up every day bitterly regretting the words ever emerged from his mouth.

For the Goldmans case is in some ways the most damaging. The Icelandic banks, Anglo Irish bank and Lehman were all involved in opaque deals and rank bad lending decisions – but Goldman allegedly went one step further, according to the SEC actively creating a financial instrument that transferred wealth to one favoured client from others less favoured. If the Securities and Exchange Commission's case is proved – and it is aggressively rebutted by Goldman – the charge is that Goldman's vice-president Fabrice Tourre created a dud financial instrument packed with valueless sub- prime mortgages at the instruction of hedge fund client Paulson, sold it to investors knowing it was valueless, and then allowed Paulson to profit from the dud financial instrument. Goldman says the buyers were "among the most sophisticated mortgage investors" in the world. But this is a used car salesman flogging a broken car he's got from some wide-boy pal to some driver who can't get access to the log-book. Except it was lionised as financial innovation.

The investors who bought the collateralised debt obligation (CDO) were not complete innocents. They had asked for the bond to be validated by an independent expert into residential mortgage-backed securities – a company called ACA management. ACA gave the bond the thumbs-up on the understanding from Fabrice Tourre that the hedge fund Paulson were investing in it. But the SEC says Tourre misled them, a pivotal claim that Goldman denies. The reality was that Paulson was frantically buying credit default swaps in the CDO that would go up in price the more valueless it became – a trade that would make more than $1 billion. Worse, Paulson had identified some of the dud sub-prime mortgages that he wanted Tourre to put into the CDO. If the SEC case is true, this was a scam – nothing more, nothing less.

Tourre could see what was coming. In one email in January 2007 he wrote: "More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now… only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] .. standing in the middle of all these complex highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities". Fabulous Fab, like his boss, will not be feeling very fab today.

The cases not only have a lot in common – using financial complexity allegedly to deceive and then using so-called independent experts to validate the deception (lawyers, accountants, credit rating agencies, "portfolio selection agents," etc etc ) – but they also show how interconnected the financial system is. In Iceland Citigroup and Deutsche Bank covered the margin calls of distressed Icelandic business borrowers, deepening the crisis. Lehman uses the lightly regulated London markets and two independent British experts to validate that their "Repo 105s" were "genuine" trades and not their own in-house liability. The American authorities pursued a Swiss bank over aiding and abetting US nationals to evade tax.

Bankers will complain these cases all involve one or two misguided individuals, but that most banking is above board and was just the victim of irrational exuberance, misguided belief in free market economics and faulty risk management techniques. Obviously that is true – but, sadly, there is much more to the crisis. Andrew Haldane, executive director of the Bank of England, highlights the remarkable reduction in the risk weighting of bank assets between 1997 and 2007. Put simply, Europe's and the US's large banks exploited the weak international agreement on bank capital requirements in the so-called Basel agreement in 2004 to reclassify the risk of their loans and trading instruments. They did not just reduce the risk by 5 or 10%. Breathtakingly, they claimed their new risk management techniques were so wonderful that the riskiness of their assets was up to half of what it had been – despite property and share prices cresting to new all-time highs.

Brutally, the banks knowingly gamed the system to grow their balance sheets ever faster and with even less capital underpinning them in the full knowledge that everything rested on the bogus claim that their lending was now much less risky. That was not all they were doing. As Michael Lewis describes in The Big Short, credit default swaps had been deliberately created as an asset class by the big investment banks to allow hedge funds to speculate against collateralised debt obligations. The banks were gaming the regulators and investors alike – and they knew full well what they were doing. Simon Johnson's 13 Bankers shows how the major American banks deployed vast political lobbying power and money to create the relaxed regulatory environment in which all this could take place. In Britain no money changed hands. Gordon Brown offered light-touch regulation for free – egged on by the Tories, who wanted to go further.

This was the context in which Goldman's Fabulous Fab created the disputed CDOs, Sean FitzPatrick allegedly moved loans between banks and Lehman created its Repo 105s along with the entire "debt mule" structure revealed this weekend of inter-related companies to shuffle debt around its empire. London and New York had become the centre of an international financial system in which the purpose of banking became making money from money – and where the complexity of the "innovations" allowed extensive fraud and deception.

Now it has all collapsed, to be bailed out by western taxpayers. The banks are resisting reform – and want to cling on to the business practices and business model that has so appallingly failed. It is obvious why: it makes them very rich. The politicians tread carefully, only proposing what the bankers say is congruent with their definition of what banking should be. Labour and Tories alike are united in opposing improved EU regulation of hedge funds, buying the propaganda those operations had nothing to do with the crisis. Perhaps Paulson's trades at Goldman, and the hedge funds' appetite for speculating in credit default swaps, may disabuse them.

It is time to reframe the question. Banks and financial institutions should do what economy and society want them to do – support enterprise, direct credit to where it is needed and be part of the system that generates investment and innovation. Andrew Haldane – and the governor of the Bank of England – are right. We need to break up our banks, limit their capacity to speculate and bring them back to earth. Britain should also launch an official investigation into what went wrong – and hand the findings to the Serious Fraud Office. This needs to become this election campaign's number one issue – not one which either a compromised Labour party or a temporising Conservative party will relish. The Lib Dems, the fiercest critics of the banks, have begun to get very lucky.
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Ron Paul and the Libertarian Moment

By Justin Raimondo at Anti.War.com

The news that a Rasmussen poll has Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) running in a dead heat against President Barack Obama in a hypothetical Paul-Obama face-off for the White House has the pundits fuming. Ben Smith, over at Politico, can hardly contain his annoyance: the poll "is a useful reminder of how totally flaky early polling is," he rants, and "this is the Ron Paul who polled, literally, thousands of votes placing fifth in the Iowa caucuses," and then only breaking ten percent after everyone but McCain had bailed. This evaluation depends on a static model, however: back then, there was no bank bailout, no insurance industry takeover, no tea party movement, and Ron had no real public record to run on – the 2008 campaign, in short, was a way for the country to get to know Rep. Paul, and the Rasmussen poll is a clear indication they liked what they saw. Instead of invoking Paul’s showing in the Iowa caucus, it’s more useful to compare this poll to the results of another similar Rasmussen poll taken in 2008, in which, as the pollster reported, "For Ron Paul, 10% of all voters would definitely vote for him. Fifty-nine percent (59%) say it’s No, no matter what."

Voter sentiment is now completely reversed: today, he’s in a dead heat with a sitting President. No matter how hard you try to minimize that, it’s an astonishing fact.

What Smith has to say about the perils of early polling would normally be accepted as beyond dispute: after all remember when Fred Thompson was the man to beat for the GOP nomination? However, we are not living in normal times, which I define as any period when Americans abandon their traditional attitude toward politics: i.e. indifference bordering on contempt. These days, the indifference has given way to not only awareness but also to active engagement, and the contempt for politicians has turned into a burning hatred, i.e. the very stuff and fuel of politics.

What makes it possible for Paul to ride this untamed mare is that he isn’t a politician at all: he is, in fact, the archetypal anti-politician, a professorial figure who lectures Republicans on the gravity of their fiscal and foreign policy sins, and is about as charismatic as plain oatmeal served without milk and sugar. What’s more, he tells the public what politicians have been loath to tell their constituents, and that is the necessity of deflation and the bearing of economic pain. In Paul’s view, the economic bubble generated by the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies has led to the current downturn, and nothing less than gritting our teeth, cutting spending radically, and allowing the market to correct itself from government-induced distortions, is the cure.
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As if it were written today...

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?"

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue."

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed."”

~Ayn Rand

Did The Fed Just (Surreptitiously) Bail Out Europe?

By Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker
No, not just Greece - all of Europe. Without Congressional authorization or notice, of course.
"Hattip to a nice emailer...." -KD



That nice little vertical line is a gain of $421.8 billion dollars of outstanding loans and leases in one week's time.

WHERE THE HELL DID THAT MONEY GO AND WHAT COLLATERAL WAS TAKEN AGAINST A FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLAR INCREASE IN OUTSTANDING LOANS?

You won't find anything like that in the records - because it's never happened before. That's beyond unprecedented, it's ridiculous, and assuming it's also accurate, someone has some 'splaining to do on what clearly appears to be some sort of back-door game being run.

Update: It has been suggested that this may be related to the FASB changes and securitized loans coming back on the balance sheet. If so, where's the alleged memorandum items on the other side and the footnote on FRED? The latter is missing, but the necessary data on FRED to confirm that is not yet updated.

Nonetheless, if this is the case, it's still bad (just not catastrophic) as this will directly hit capital ratios. Or, put another way, where's the additional capital that "should" be there to support what is now on balance sheet and was previously off (never mind that it was crooked as hell to have it off in the first place!)

Club of Rome Behind Eco-Fascist Purge to Criminalize Climate Skepticism

by Paul Joseph Watson at Prison Planet
April 13, 2010

The British lawyer who last week called for introducing international laws through the United Nations which would make it a crime against humanity to question the reality of man-made global warming has close ties with the Club of Rome – the ultra elitist organization which openly bragged of how it invented the climate change scare as a means of manipulating the global population to accept world government.

British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins (pictured top) recently launched an initiative to have the UN put pressure on national governments to pass laws that would declare the mass destruction of ecosystems a crime against peace, punishable by the International Criminal Court.

Under the guise of going after big corporations and polluters for the war crime of emitting the gas that humans exhale and plants breathe, the proposal would actually target individuals and people who merely express skepticism towards man-made global warming.
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If you needed any further proof regarding Climate Hoax

If you required any further proof regarding the sheer totalitarianism lurking behind the climate hoax – here ya go. UN may add “Ecocide” to international crimes against humanity.
Point of clarification:

I believe the climate changes – it ALWAYS has, what I doubt is human impact and more specifically C02. I will not believe that regulating and removing of the four life giving elements on the planet is sound idea.

In liberty - c2084

British Campaigner urges UN to accept ‘Ecocide’ as International Crime crimeby Juliette Jowit at SPPI

A campaign to declare the mass destruction of ecosystems an international crime against peace – alongside genocide and crimes against humanity – is being launched in the UK.

The proposal for the United Nations to accept “ecocide” as a fifth “crime against peace”, which could be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC), is the brainchild of British lawyer-turned-campaigner Polly Higgins.

The radical idea would have a profound effect on industries blamed for widespread damage to the environment like fossil fuels, mining, agriculture, chemicals and forestry.

Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.

“Ecocide is in essence the very antithesis of life,” says Higgins. “It leads to resource depletion, and where there is escalation of resource depletion, war comes chasing behind. Where such destruction arises out of the actions of mankind, ecocide can be regarded as a crime against peace.”
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Leaked U.S. Document Calls For “Global Regime” To Tackle Climate Change

by Steve Watson at Prison Planet
April 12, 2010

Says “critics must be disarmed, all elements of Copenhagen Accord must be operationalised”

A confidential U.S. government document obtained by the London Guardian highlights the ongoing agenda to create a structure of global governance in the name of combating climate change.

“Titled Strategic communications objectives and dated 11 March 2010, it outlines the key messages that the Obama administration wants to convey to its critics and to the world media in the run-up to the vital UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico in November.” The Guardian Reports

The newspaper says that the document (full text below) was “accidentally left on a European hotel computer” before it was passed to their editors.

Text of the leaked document:

Strategic communications objectives

1) Reinforce the perception that the US is constructively engaged in UN negotiations in an effort to produce a global regime to combat climate change. This includes support for a symmetrical and legally binding treaty.

2) Manage expectations for Cancun – Without owning the message, advance the narrative that while a symmetrical legally binding treaty in Mexico is unlikely, solid progress can be made on the six or so main elements.

3) Create a clear understanding of the CA’s standing and the importance of operationalising ALL elements.

4) Build and maintain outside support for the administration’s commitment to meeting the climate and clean energy challenge despite an increasingly difficult political environment to pass legislation.

5) Deepen support and understanding from the developing world that advanced developing countries must be part of any meaningful solution to climate change including taking responsibilities under a legally binding treaty.

Media outreach

• Continue to conduct interviews with print, TV and radio outlets driving the climate change story.

• Increase use of off-the-record conversations.

• Strengthen presence in international media markets during trips abroad. Focus efforts on radio and television markets.

• Take greater advantage of new media opportunities such as podcasts to advance US position in the field bypassing traditional media outlets.

• Consider a series of policy speeches/public forums during trips abroad to make our case directly to the developing world.

Key outreach efforts

• Comprehensive and early outreach to policy makers, key stakeholders and validators is critical to broadening support for our positions in the coming year.

• Prior to the 9-11 April meeting in Bonn it would be good for Todd to meet with leading NGOs. This should come in the form of 1:1s and small group sessions.

• Larger group sessions, similar to the one held at CAP prior to Copenhagen, will be useful down the line, but more intimate meetings in the spring are essential to building the foundation of support. Or at the very least, disarming some of the harsher critics.
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Bonn or Bust

The UN’s Last, Desperate Bid for Unelected World Government
Source : From The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Bonn
Published at the SPPI Blog

There are not many empty seats in the dismal, echoing conference chamber in the ghastly concrete box that is the Hotel Maritim here in Bonn, where the UN’s latest attempt to maneuver the 194 States Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change gets underway today.

The “international community”, as it is now called, is here in full force, in the shape of expensively-suited, shiny-shod bureaucrats with an urbane manner and absolutely no knowledge of climate science whatsoever.

However, one empty chair is a pointer of things to come. The Holy See – a tiny nation in its own right, with a billion citizens around the world – has left its chair empty. And that is significant. If “global warming” still mattered, the Vatican would make sure that its representatives were present throughout this gloomy gathering of world-government wannabes.

This emergency conference, called by the UN’s bureaucrats because they were terrified that Cancun this December might fail as spectacularly as Copenhagen did last year, is a much quieter affair than Copenhagen. Not only has the air of triumphalism gone, after the scandals of Climategate, Himalayagate, Amazongate and so forth, but the belief that “global warming” is a global crisis has largely gone too.

There are a few true-believers left among the national delegates, but more of them than before are open to discussion of the previously-forbidden question – what if the climate extremists have made the whole thing up?

The Chinese Xinhua News Agency, for instance, came up to the table manned by the environmental campaigners of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which takes a hard-boiled, cynical view of the notion that a tiny increase in the atmospheric concentration of a trace gas is likely to cause a thousand international disasters.

The reporters were genuinely interested to hear that there is another side to the story. Huan Gongdi, the Agency’s senior correspondent in Germany, asked me what I thought of the Copenhagen accord (a waste of time), what was happening in Bonn (a desperate attempt to ram through a binding Treaty that can be put in front of the US Senate before the mid-term elections make Senate acceptance of any such treaty unthinkable), and whether or not there was a climate crisis anyway (there isn’t).

I explained to Mr. Huan that even if the UN had not exaggerated the warming effect of CO2 many times over there was still nothing we could do about the supposed “crisis”, because we were emitting so little of the stuff in the first place.

For the record, I did the sum in front of him. The atmospheric concentration of CO2 today is about 388 parts per million by volume. However, we are adding just 2 ppmv a year to the air. So the warming we cause each year, even if one believes the UN’s wild exaggerations of CO2’s warming effect, is just 4.7 times the natural logarithm of the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration from 388 to 390 ppmv.

Thus, 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.043 Fahrenheit degrees – less than a twentieth of a Fahrenheit degree of “global warming” every year. That is all. Putting it another way, it would take almost a quarter of a century with no carbon-emitting activity at all – not a single train, plane, automobile, or fossil-fueled power station – to forestall just 1 Fahrenheit degree of “global warming”.

That is why no Treaty based on controlling the amount of carbon dioxide the world emits can possibly work. And that is why there is no hurry anyway. The only reason for the UN’s sense of urgency – a panic no longer felt by the majority of the delegates here – is that the bureaucrats know the game is up. Opinion polls throughout the free world show that no one now believes a word of the climate extremists’ nonsense any more. If they can’t get a binding treaty this year, they won’t get one at all, and they know it.

I shall be reporting frequently from the conference as events unfold. Check back often at the SPPI Blog .