Democratic Platform for 2020

"When one observes the nightmare of the desperate efforts made by hundreds of thousands of people struggling to escape the socialized countries of Europe, to escape over barbed wire fences, under machine gun fire - one can no longer believe that Socialism, in any of its forms, is motivated by benevolence and by the desire to achieve men's welfare."

Ayn Rand - The Monument Builders - 1964


Just when you think the Political Left can't get any more radical, they somehow manage to come up with crazier schemes to "help" the American people.

So, with a few additions, the Democratic party has strengthened their resolve to bring the reforms they think we all deserve.

Open Rebellion

Here's an idea that hasn't been tried since the 1860s; open warfare. Brute force disguised as compromise. Compromise usually means that both sides make concessions. One gives a little to get something in return. But there is nothing offered in return. You either go along with the plan or you are an enemy to be crushed.

A Living Wage is a Right

An unearned benefit for the worker and an unchosen obligation for the business owner and increased costs all around for the consumer. Inflation would rise and the "living" wage granted by government would just even out by the increased costs. Government imposing a price rise is not a market force and the market will react quickly and naturally to restore equilibrium. And loads of people and businesses will be hurt in the process.

You don't have a right to an income. The Founding Fathers only state that you have the right to the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself. You have the right to take the steps you feel necessary to make you happy. This does not mean others must make you happy.

The Green New Deal

One doesn't have far to read into this "Thing" to find that it means Confiscation, Appropriation and Re-Distribution. It's great if you're the one taking, not so great if you're on the other end. And oddly, the "Poor" never seem to see a dime of it. Ask all those dead Bolsheviks who spent 3 lifetimes waiting for the payoff of the Glorious Revolution that never came. Ask all the dead Chinese who were told that abundance was just a little bit further but further than they lived to see. Ask all those stupid-assed Chavanista's who are fending for food in the daytime and trying to hold onto their misled lives at night. All easily pusueded yet stubbornly hard to convince in regards to who led them down the primrose path of good intentions and copious pools brackish water.

Climate Change is REAL! Really! It Really is!

No, it isn't. Never was. The only people who say they believe in it are the ones who foolishly think that they will be among the people who stand at the top of the heap in power. Little do they know that assassination is more likely their fate. The higher they think they'll climb the more hurt they'll feel when they realize they've lost the game. If you really do believe it's true, you basically have a weak mind and can't tell the difference between a truth and a lie.

Just the collusion between NASA and NOA exposed by WikiLeaks should have been enough to show the world how much of a hoax it all was but since Climate Change has become a religion unto itself, there's no talking to these people now. They are just insufferable, intolerant crazed berserkers.

Retroactive Birth Control

That's right folks, a woman can choose to terminate her pregnancy right up until the child is ready to start Junior High School. After that, it would be murder.

Abortion on Demand has morphed to abortion any time regardless of viability. Just kill 'em if they want. We'll make it the law.

The Rights of the State vs Individual Rights

And this is the crux of the whole thing. Does the Individual have rights to do what they desire in life or does the State have the right to tell them what their desires are and that they must sacrifice their dreams for the good of the many. To the Socialists, there is always a payoff just up the road. All your sacrifices will be worth it...later. But it's coming...just a little bit further.

Not to worry, you'll never live to see it.

Conclusion

So the 2020 election objectives are pretty darn clear. Collectivism or Individualism. In the latter, you carry the burden for yourself. In the former, you carry the burden for others.

You can give up the fruits of your labor for the greater good or you can put your sweat and efforts into providing for you and yours and expect your neighbor to do the same for himself.

There is a word for someone who toils but does not reap the benefits of their own labor. We call that person a SLAVE.

So, for whom do you want to bear the burden? Your family or someone else's?

Vote!

Democrats Rush to Economic Apocalypse

As far as campaign promises go, giving away free stuff is always a big seller. But when you promise too much and give to little just to gain power, that power is fleeting. Unless your plan is to totally destabilize the country to hold onto this power.

Medicaid for All

Why have Medicaid for All? Isn't the Affordable Care Act givng away enough already? The ACA is a shining example of costing too much and delivering to little, of people who pay too much and people who pay not at all. The cost averaging that the insurance companies has resorted to in order to make the cost annual jumps in premiums palatable has lead to massive age discrimination since the people with the potential to drive up the what the average worker in the organization has to pay are the oldest. This cost must be eliminated. And then try to find another job bucko!

There isn't enough money in the world to make Socialized Medicine work. We've already seen shortages of vaccines and cancer drugs, drug company profiteering and poor substitutes for the real thing. Remember when regular people went to the emergency room? Now it's avoided at all costs.

Think about that one.

A Wall IS Border Security

How can an inanimate object be immoral? When you're a Leftist Democrat Anarchist who doesn't care if the country is over run by illiterate Visigoths just because a Republican is president.

But won't that effect everybody? They don't care.

Walls work. Hadrian's Wall in Roman Britain did a good job until the lack of a wall along the Rhine River in 407 CE caused Rome to fall. Stop me if you've heard this before. Thousands of uneducated non-Romans poured over the boarder over time until they outnumbered the Roman army, overwhelmed their resources and set up independent domains in Roman territory until, realizing they had greater numbers, they decided to just sack the place. The once mighty Roman legions were so depleted at this point that many in the army were either barbarians themselves or slaves, both holding on allegiance to the cause. The confidence in the government institutions declined and then it was every man for himself and then blamo, the Feudal System.

The Democrats don't want a wall.

Infanticide for All

But they do want third trimester abortions and are willing to pay for you to have them. Now if they can just come up with a way to make abortion retroactive. Perhaps the government run healthcare system will come up with a way to deal with people who take too much from the system. Once the healthcare money becomes "the public trust" anyone who may use too much of the "people's resources" for health care will most likely be scrutinized. It will become the government's right to do so since they are the keepers of the "people's trust".

Now it depends how many of the people trust them.

Tax the Rich!

The problem that will arise the longer this goes on is "who is rich?". You may be surprised to find that more and more people who never thought themselves rich will fall into that category.

However, initially, we can be assured that the category of Rich will be the people who make slightly more than Massachusetts State Senator Elizabeth Warren. So if she and her co-conspirators are worth $15 million, then the Rich people will be the one's making $18 million.

Of course many rich people don't have an income per se. Many, like Nevada State Senator Mitt Romney, take income from their stock dividend accounts which are taxed at a lower rate so they won't be effected by a higher income bracket. Either that or they'll just move.

But you, you working stiff son-of-a-bitch, will see a tax increase to make up for the shortfall!

This was another issue with the fall of the Roman Empire. Since the political hierarchy and landed gentry were exempt from taxation, Caesar taxed the Roman middle class out of existence so there were either the very rich or the very poor and the people either fled or were turned out of their property and the tax revenue dwindled further. The great estates then abandoned Rome altogether to become authorities unto themselves since Caesar had no resources to march against them either.

This is where Alaric, king of the Visigoths, shows up on the outskirts of Rome in 410 CE and gives them the old "Your money or your life" routine.

And that, boys and girls, was the end of the Classical Age. There was a lot of chaos loss of life involved with all of this of course.

But the Left wants the chaos. It's the only strategy they have. 

Venezuela Over and Over

It's a lesson the world never seems to learn. Collectivism spells certain doom. The slogan: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need" has proven to be a death sentence for the populace at large.

It's all there for the clear minded to see.

But we're not talking about clear minds are we? We are talking about Class Envy, Want and Revenge.

You can explain the economics of it and they don't care. You can show them the pictures of the people in Zimbabwe drinking out of mud puddles, the Venezuelans standing in hours long lines in the hopeful anticipation that there will be something on the shelves to buy when they get into the store. It makes no difference.

No, no, it's all about seizing power. The chance to tell those rich bastards what to do and to make them pay for the gall they had to take a risk and give people jobs. It's about taking that which they've built, not because they don't deserve it but because we now have the power to take it away from them.

And don't think for a moment that the "Poor" are going to see a farthing of these confiscated resources. No, they are spoils that only go to the victor.

Was Stalin concerned that people were starving? Was Mao? Pol Pot? Chavez? Castro didn't care one whit that his country was stuck in 1956 just as long as HE was the boss of it. Castro was king of a backwards impoverished land. He must have been so proud.

And what about now with Nicolas Maduro, is he even remotely sympathetic?

Hell no. Just as long as he's in charge. That's what its all about.

And once Maduro is dead, and he most certainly should be executed for his crimes, there will be another who will rise to prominence on the slogan power of their promises of Equality for All, for the Rich Paying Their Fare Share, and of Justice for the Workers!

And so the cycle begins again. The producers walk, the people want and the bloodshed escalates as the resources dwindle.

Nope, nope, nope, no use talking about it when you deal with such ignorance. The new young crop of Leftists in the U.S. Congress have already shown how little they know about history. But they do know Class Envy, they do know that their constituents are dumber than they are and are easily swayed by promises of fixing their problems by first creating class demons and they promising they'll be punished. No need for personal responsibility. YOU have been wronged by the Society Haves and you will be Compensated by them. How dare they sign your pay checks!

It's a mindset.

If Hugo Chavez came back to life and drove into Venezuela and said he was going to make everything right again if the people just vote him back into office, they would vote him back into office again in a heartbeat. Most of the people never blamed him for the slow circling of the drain that began in 1999 when he was first elected. They loved Chavez. They blamed everything else but him.

And here we are.

Although the nation has become increasingly Socialist since the 1950s, this latest surge of "Progressives" rivals U.S. Socialism's heyday of the 1900s. Popularity of the party dropped dramatically once the Bolshevik revolt was underway and their intentions of spreading the "Revolution" around the world became evident and was known as the "Red Scare".

You see, once people see what happens when the Collectivists take over, almost always by force, they want no part of it. The tough part about that is that once they are in power, it's tough to put that Genie back in the bottle. The whole country turns upside down and right is wrong and wrong is wrong and there's a whole lot of nothing to give out. And then things get out of hand.

So follow your peer groups latest charismatic leader. Believe them when they tell you that "this time will be different". I promise you will be disillusioned. I promise you will regret it. I promise that you will pay dearly along with most of your group as well as your family and the nation.

We've seen this all before, hindsight is 20/20.

Oil: The Ball Bearing of Industry

Nothing moves without it and without it nothing will move. 

All the solar and wind power in the world isn't going heat your house or keep your air conditioner going all day, all week, all month or all year.  Oil is still the biggest bang for the buck and the world is awash in oil. It's cleaner to store, is transportable and if we need more, it's just right under foot.

Petroleum products are in everything. They grease the gears in wind turbines, they are what electric cars ride on in the form of roads and rubber tires, coat the wires that carry the current, insulate the power supplies and make up the hoses that the coolant passes through from the engine to the radiator. Oil is what makes everything go and to deny this fact is to merely delude yourself. While it's good to save money and to become more efficient, to waste resources on less efficient means of energy production and passing the higher costs onto the consumer weakens the nation and hurts those less able to afford to pay.

This is why rather than sink all this government money into subsidizing alternate forms of energy, taxpayer money I might add, the nation could just as well have put that money into making engines that run on gasoline and diesel more efficient. Since what was the point of alternative energy? It was supposed to help us burn less oil and have less emissions. So if there was an engine, say, that could run 100 miles on a gallon of gasoline instead of it's current 34 miles per gallon, would that not do the same thing? By making oil more efficient would we not require less of it? 

But that doesn't fit into the current blind hate narrative. We HATE oil even though it's in everything and along with it's immature cousin, Coal, is actually what makes the world go around. We would rather have more costly and less reliable wind and solar power and store that power in expensive and massive acid-based batteries for when the wind either doesn't blow or blows too much or when the sun doesn't come out for days. We just want to get rid of fossil fuels!

But it's not going to happen no matter how good this pipe dream makes you feel. It's not making the world any cleaner, safer or more secure. 

Feel good about your electric car? Where does that electricity come from? Hint: Not from a wind turbine! With the more electricity an electric car needs, some guy in a power plant up the road is only going to throw another shovel full of coal into the furnace that runs the turbines. What did you think, that electricity came from an electric-powered power plant?

We've wasted a great opportunity to put the resources into oil efficiency. With all the dough we've already wasted with so little to show for it, we could have funded an oil based Manhattan Project. Who knows what that could have achieved?  But because of politics, this did not/will not happen. Making oil more efficient doesn't even come up in environmental conversation. 

But Oil isn't really the target in all of this nonsense now is it? 

It is industry and the Capitalist mentality that drives industry that is the real target. The environmental movement, Socialist in nature, hopes to control the means of production by regulating what type of power that drives it. The political wing of environmentalism wishes to tell you what power to use, what kind of car you can drive and what kind of power you'll use to drive your business. 

If a manufacturer came out tomorrow and said they could make a production gasoline engine that could get 200 miles per gallon of gasoline, how would you think the environmental movement would react? or perhaps a generator that could power your house all day on just a gallon of diesel? 

Would the environmentalists embrace such dramatic monumental discoveries? 

I'll put my money on an emphatic "no" since it would set back the environmental "movement" if you want to call it that, back a half century.  I think they would attempt to suppress it and claim that it was a concerted effort by Capitalists to discredit their work to "Save the Planet" and that they should still be allowed to continue to explore alternate energies and keep their government funding. Oil and gasoline will still continue to be evil. 

We have yet to wring nearly as much energy out of an oil molecule as lies within it. It would be money better spent to get more out of the most reliable source of energy that we have. 

But that would make sense.  

McCain Stops Criticizing President Trump

He never met a war he didn't like.

He was complacent and entitled.

He was gripped by ego, jealously and spite.

And more than all that, he was angry and bitter. Especially at the end.

The Buddhists would say that anger and bitterness are not emotions one wants to carry into the next life. John McCain is carrying a heavy heavy load into the Summerlands for sure.

I will forever remember John McCain as a man who put his own sense of importance above those of the American people. He didn't care who would be hurt, it was all about him and his pain. He could never put his own interests aside for the good of the country. 

When he lost his bid for president, he blamed his vice presidential nominee and when it came time to cast the deciding vote to abolish the monstrously misguided Affordable Care Act, he voted to keep it. Not because he believed it was good but because the President and the people who voted him into office, an office he could not attain, knew it was bad.

All because he HATED them.

Let us hope that he finds in his next life the peace that eluded him in this one.

The Left Continues to Hound President Trump 

The Leftist Media with their Progressive enablers have continued their offensive of manufacture and outrage at his every sentence and pronouncement regardless of the outward hypocrisy.

But it's not going to work.

Everybody knows its bullshit.

All this will succeed in doing is destabilizing the country. But the Left does not care. The ends justify the means. Facts don't matter, evidence does not matter, what the public feels does not matter. Russian collusion was never the real focus. It was all a Red Herring.

This whole thing was always about "Get Trump" and if they couldn't, let this display serve as a warning to anyone else who even THINKS they want to run for president as a Republican because you better have Big Balls in order to put up with the unheard of onslaught of hate and vitriol spewed from every orifice of the outraged entitled political Leftists in this country because this is what will happen to you too!

What matters is what THEY feel. THEY will show YOU why you were wrong in electing Donald Trump president of the United States. THEY will take over and SHOW you how THEY could have done it all better.

But they really don't know how.

I know Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

And who doesn't really? She is just another Know-Nothing Socialist who will promise you, the American "Down-trodden", the equality and "rights" you seek but has no working knowledge of how to actually reach this objective. She doesn't understand economics but she knows she doesn't have to. She is an ambitious revolutionary and all revolutionaries have to know is how to seize power. After that, the rest is gravy.

She may succeed in grabbing power but once in her hands, she will totally blow up and everyone around her will too. And she knows how weak the substance of her ideas are, hence she won't debate anybody who questions them. She can't be bothered since it's not what she's come for. She's in it for the power and she will say anything, promise everything, for a chance at it.

This is why she's already been caught out by claiming to support New York cab drivers but who uses Uber to get around NYC instead. Now that's support you can trust!

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is just another in a long line of tin-pot socialist hypocrite dictators-in-waiting from a socialist borough in socialist New York City, a city that spends so much on entitlements that people literally move there from all over the country just to get on public assistance.

Good luck to her, lets see how far she gets.

Elizabeth Warren's New Plan

Siding with illegal aliens in the wake of the Mollie Tibbetts murder was probably not the best career move for the clueless Massachusetts Senator but it's her nationalization of all businesses that make $1 Billion annually that is a real non-starter. Once a business breaks the proposed threshold, the US Federal Government would then dictate who sits on their Board of Directors! Can you believe this?

But is she really proposing such an absurd piece of legislation in order to move to the political Left of Bernie Sanders in order to make a presidential run of her own in 2020?

We'll see how her act plays on the national stage. It is my guess that the only thing anyone will be asking the Massachusetts Senator during a mythical campaign would be: "Are you really an American Indian?".

Blaming Capitalism

Capitalism is not a government. It is not an Army. Capitalism is not a Decree or Invention.

It is a Force of Nature.

It cannot be stopped, ultimately, by any government. All Socialist nations return to a market economy eventually and the only delay is that Socialist and Communist countries have to deploy people with guns to keep people from practicing what comes natural to every human being at birth; "Working to better themselves.".

No matter who you are or where in the world you live, we all want the same things: we want food and shelter, we want meaningful work so we can gain food and shelter, we want to keep our families protected and our children warm. We want to be free from harm and free to pursue a direction in life we can choose for ourselves.

Capitalism, that force of nature that people, millions of people, making personal decisions about what to do with the money they earn, makes the world go around. You stop this and the world stops.

South Africa Decides to Kill Their Economy

Another wise choice by the people of Africa who have no idea what a Democracy actually is. And this latest move will put them closer to finding out just how far from a Democracy they are.

Nobody wants to invest in a murderous Dictator. South Africa's government has fostered violence against the white farmers and seeks a "Blame Whitey" agenda for their lack of policy and wanton graft in the 24 years since they've held the reins of the government.

Here's a wild guess. If you are a poor black subsistence farmer in South Africa now, you will be a poor black subsistence farmer five years from now after the land grab. I'll bet money.

The American Leftist Press seems to be totally ok about South Africa's land grab since they helped the South African government defend their land "appropriation without compensation' against a tweet by President Trump. The irony here is that Cuba did the same thing back in 1956 to American businesses there and we've had an economic embargo on that country ever since.

Let's hope that time will not stop for South Africa like it has for Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, and Mexico. All countries caught in a time-warp of lack of advancement.

And enlightenment.

Trump Gets His Point Across

Whether you feel Donald Trump “won” his debate with Hillary Clinton Monday night or not, the one sure thing that did happen was that Mr. Trump left no doubt as to what he believes should be done to provide jobs and to bring the United States economy back from the edge of the cliff.

Instead of focusing on what Trump SHOULD have said, since we know his points already by heart, we should focus on what he DID say because he said a lot.

Donald Trump was on a roll before Lester Holt deftly stepped in to get him off of the prone body of Hillary Clinton. Had he not knocked him off his line of thought and put him on the defensive, Trump would have continued to pound Hillary on the Obama Economy and her long failure of a roll in it.

Donald Trump, speaking more to the American people out in Television Land than the debate audience, outlined his plan to cut the corporate tax rate to stimulate business growth. He railed against the excessive regulation that is not only killing existing businesses but keeping new businesses from forming.

Trump hit his points on foreign trade, jobs leaving the country, inner cities crushed by no work and high crime, and the Obama Government’s responsibility for it. He also blasted that POLITICAL HACK Janet Yellin at the Federal Reserve and let the people know just how precarious a bubble the economy is perched upon. Trump also accused Yellin of playing politics with the economy after promising to raise interest rates and then differing doing so until after the election. Trump even got in the fact that we are in the worst “recovery” period since the first Great Depression. All this he said.

It was clear even before this debate that this was going to be an election of who has the right idea of getting the economy going. There has been little left to the imagination from both candidates.

Hillary has told us again and again that she plans to tax our way to prosperity. Her plan to raise taxes on the “rich” to pay for the “work” programs to get the economy going again. The Robin Hood approach is a well-worn Democratic boiler-plate idea that has never failed to fail.

Economies do not work that way, never have. When an activity like spending is discouraged, the linchpin of the economy dries up. It was clear during the debate that Hillary has NO IDEA how business actually works or how to bring the economy back. Donald Trump is correct to say that it’s about time we had a president who knows money. He said that too during this debate.

We can go off about Hillary’s email. We can go off about her lying about it to Congress. We can go off on her use of the Clinton Foundation as a license to print money and more of her nefarious missteps and oversights, the worst being Bengazi since Ambassador Stephens saw it coming and asked for help, was ignored by Hillary’s State Department and now he and three of our best are dead. There was so much to say and so little time. We were all trying to fill in the blanks.

I know there were many people leaning in their chairs hoping for Donald to land that clean punch when Hillary said she had poise and stamina because she was interrogated by Congress for three hours. We all wanted to say “And why was that, Hillary?” And I’m sure there was many a Trump supporter yelling at the Television urging him to say more about Hillary’s email server tech, Paul Combetta, pleading 5^th Amendment protection in front of a Congressional hearing.  But what he said was enough and acknowledging that Hillary did have experience but it was all bad experience certainly got the message across.

Could he have said more about Hillary? Sure, but he only had an hour and a half.

Donald Trump said everything he needed to say. We all wish he could have said more but it wasn’t us up on that stage with the camera’s and millions of people watching. It wasn’t us in a room full of people just looking for one flaw to undermine years of hard work and the hopes of productive people across the nation.

There will be more time to get it all in. 

The Anarchist Mentality

My last girlfriend was and remains an Anarchist.

I have to admit that living here in suburbia that one doesn’t get to meet or have everyday interaction with a real Anarchist so it was a bit of a shock to the system upon the revelation of that Anarchist attitude toward our society as it is presently.

We met on an Internet dating site and she lives in the city of Boston.

The thing that attracted me to her was that we had similar backgrounds. I was born into the projects of the City of Boston and she was born into the projects of New York City. We both had gone to public school, were around the same age, liked many of the same things culturally and were, essentially, city dwellers. We were both employed although she works for a public radio station in the city and I work in the private sector out in the burbs.

What I didn’t like about the relationship was her attitude. Her attitude politically, in my opinion, was disturbing.

It wasn’t that she was a Liberal, because she was and I could deal with that, but also her distain for and desire to destroy the pillars of what had built in the United States from the very beginning. The tenants of Capitalism, self reliance, of working hard to build wealth, private ownership of property and even Democracy when it got in the way of what was "Right".

She wished for the whole system to collapse, the economic system, the political system, our society and yes, our Constitution, the document upon which is was all built, to be done away with. This was unbelievable to me.

I would ask “Well doll, what would you propose we replace it all with?” No clue. She didn’t care about that part. “You know, I continued, this will hurt not just the well-to-do but the working class and yourself as well. If the system is destroyed, wouldn’t you lose everything too?” She didn’t care about that either. It was only important that the people who were in power lost theirs and the consequences to her, her family and her friends were secondary.

This is the mind of the Anarchist. They don’t care who gets hurt or what happens afterward, they only wish to tear down what is there now. There is no thought of "after". 

Greece is currently displaying the Anarchist Mentality as it has been plying its Con Game with the European Union. Greece didn’t join the EU to be a part of something greater, they joined because they saw an opportunity to scam some money from some high-minded aristocrats who traditionally had looked down their noses at them. They saw an opportunity to spend other people’s money because they know that once established, the EU would throw more money at them to hold it together. Now when they’ve pushed the EU monetary ministers to their breaking point, Greece, which has already stated that they are in War Mode, will only work to pry the EU apart. Too bad the EU didn't believe it when they first heard this said. 

But this is what Anarchists do. It’s Comeuppance. To them, it’s what the EU deserves for taking home a sick, half-dead rattlesnake and nursing it back to health. They should have known better. You cannot expect gratitude from a snake. 

One place where I think the paths of my ex-girlfriend and I diverged was when my family had to enter the projects in Roxbury, my mom, who was the head of the household, remained working. We were in public housing but we didn’t go on the welfare track. She had always worked from a young age, from fighting boys for the coal that fell off railroad coal bins as the trains passed by during the first Great Depression and then in the war factories of WWII. She ran a giant turret lathe and drilled cannon barrels for tanks. She always told us how the oil that lubricated the drill wreaked havoc with her complexion. When the boys came home from the war, the women were let go and told to start families. The work ethic stayed strong and when she was left widowed with three children, she went back to work.

In the projects, where few people actually got up everyday and went to work, Ma got up every day and went to work. We saw this. This is how the work ethic is built. There were things we couldn't do with her because she was working. There were things she couldn't do with us because she was working. That's why they call it "work". This also fostered resentment among those who did not work and there were tensions, threats and sometime physical violence which myself and my older brothers had to deal with. Me being the youngest, I became the easiest target for some of this. We were different and the "so, you think you're better than me?" mentality was evident. This is a divide for the ages. When they couldn't get to us, they went after my mother's car and that had to be defended too on occasion. And one of my most vivid memories was one winter when ma slipped on the ice, fell hard, hitting her head and then getting up and still going into work. She said the next day that she doesn't remember a thing about the day or what she did.

Back then women weren’t viewed as the bread winners and you only got your start as a secretary. A secretary salary only goes so far.  Still, through hard work, taking college courses at night and seeking higher opportunities, ma was able to work herself into a better position to get the family out of the projects which she eventually succeeded when I was halfway through elementary school and my brothers were entering junior high school. She bought a house, not the best house, in a suburb of Boston in a blue collar neighborhood. Up to the time we could work, we never asked for money.

Neither I nor my three brothers went to our high school Proms. We didn’t go on school trips that required money. We didn’t go out to eat much except for an occasional trip to McDonald’s or Howdy’s and a big trip was going to Lake Pearl way out in Franklin, MA to swim. When we got old enough to work, we saved every dime and contributed to the house. One brother and I both worked our way through college, myself through night school. We took nothing and we owed nothing. 

My girlfriend’s upbringing paints a different picture. When her family came to New York from Puerto Rico, they went on public assistance even though they had an intact family unit since her father and mother, who were married, were together. She lived in public housing right up until she graduated high school and went to college. College was paid for through the State since she lived in public housing and was “poor”. The family was all this time on the welfare system. She went to the University of New York and also got her master’s from prestigious California University, all on the public arm.  She now works for a “non-profit” communications group funded by the State and by listener contributions making a better wage than I do. Was that life hard for them? I bet it was but it was very different from my experience growing up.

So it stands to reason that she would be All In on the Welfare State since all that she is today is because of it. The gulf between us was wide and deep and although I was very fond of her, our relationship was doomed.

One time I noted that my organization really likes to hire minorities and would do so at every opportunity yet, due to the nature of the work, most don’t tend to stay long. She asked me what kind of community outreach we were doing to correct this “problem”.

My reply was, after “Are you fucking kidding me?!” was that we are an equal opportunity employer and if someone, anyone, can’t make an effort to apply (online even) and walk in our door for an interview, what good will it do to go looking for them? Success does not cater to the unmotivated. Community outreach indeed. We have plenty of Portuguese employees since we are located on the south coast of Massachusetts, THEY are a minority group and THEY seem to have no trouble finding the place.

This is a fundamental rift of the entitled. They hate the very system that hands them everything and they should since we’re doing nobody any favors by giving them the very things they could earn themselves if given half a chance. In this instance the Welfare State served only to create and support Anti-Capitalists and Anarchists.  

At least one that I know anyway.

One sees people doing well and works to get ahead like they did and the other just wants to take it away from them by force if necessary as if somehow they cheated them or others to get where they are and are keeping them down through The System! If only they were allowed to make it so.

But there are many others just like her who work with us, walk among us and are currently in our government. Judge the actions and not the words but their words give them away if we actually take the time to listen to them. Anarchists tell us everyday what they are after. We just refuse to believe it. 

Because of the situations of our upbringing, both of us were left with chips on our shoulders. But only one of us wants to destroy what another has built. Sure there is corruption but there is plenty that was built the right way, through hard work, commitment and capital risk. Capitalism may not work for everybody but no system does and we only need to view history to tell us how well Socialism has worked.

Socialism has sunk Greece. It sank Venezuela and Brazil. It will sink Spain. It will sink Italy. And it will most certainly sink the United States of America so yes, my ex will most likely get her wish and feel good about being a part of its downfall. The white European majority, whatever that really is, will fall. But what then?

Zimbabwe got rid of the Europeans and within a year after many of them were drinking out of mud puddles and dying of Cholera in the streets while their economy collapsed and the nation fell to ruins. It’s still a ruin.

But they didn’t care. Anarchists don't think that far ahead. It wasn’t about them living; it was about destroying the white farmers and taking what they had built. That was all that mattered. They neither thought nor cared where the food was going to come from. They didn’t know shit about running a farm but they drove out the ones who did because that’s what Anarchy does. It destroys indiscriminately and without a plan for the future.

Once the Communists gained power in Russia, they quickly learned their plans didn’t work but still took 78 years to collapse. The misery the people of Russia suffered under the Soviet Union is well documented and heart rending.

All the Marxists cared about was taking power, what happened after that was not important and subject to improvisation.

Anarchists can’t run a country. Terrorists can’t keep the lights on.

They can only destroy.

The Obama of Everything!

An excerpt of today's fact sheet released from the White House:

“Laws in 19 states—some specifically written by special interests trying to stifle new competitors—have held back broadband access and, with it, economic opportunity. Today, President Obama is announcing a new effort to support local choice in broadband, formally opposing measures that limit the range of options available to communities to spur expanded local broadband infrastructure, including ownership of networks."

Taking over your school lunch programs. Expanding your government run school system. Taking over your healthcare providers. Expanding your welfare programs. Taking over immigration. Running the country through cabinet ministries. Circumventing a spineless Congress. Spending money your kids haven't even earned yet...

And now taking over what Al Gore began, The Internet!

That’s right, the man who keeps on taking and taking and giving and giving is going to provide equality among the masses: Everybody’s Goose is Cooked!

The President was later heard to say: "Hey, you can't beat us, we have ALL THE MONEY!" as he left for his 1, 279th round of golf since he's been in the Whitehouse.

You will never speak or send another message that doesn’t pass through the government’s able hands. You will never email another picture of your kids birthday that some elite government hack doesn't have access to. You will never view naked pictures of pregnant women that someone in government doesn't know about. As the Whitey-hating rage filled Reverend Wright once said: This is your chickens come home to roost.

There is always someone left out. Always someone discriminated against and Mr. Obama can use that person to drive a wedge between the public at large and the U.S. Constitution. Good show Mr. President!

Somewhere there is a person without a government handout and the president is going to FIND that person and give him (or her) a check, a phone, a free lunch AND the Internet. After all, someone must have oppressed that person in the first place that they don’t have all that already.

What won’t he do next that rascally totalitarian presidential emperor!

By decree, his phone and his pen Barak Hussein Obama will right the wrongs meted out by society and the world. His word will carry and all will be well again.

Your Internet is HIS Internet to do with as he pleases. And he pleases that the government should be the guardian of Free Speech!

What can possibly go wrong!

No private enterprise is safe.  They are all bad for people, bad for equality and bad for the nation. Producing things for people to actually purchase, how absurd. Don’t they know like the President knows? Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they have done.

And what is next?

Your 401k perhaps. After all, the government is already going to take care of your retirement with Social Security, you won’t actually be NEEDING that extra cash where there are so many more deserving than you.

Your home. You don’t own it anyway, the bank does and the GOVERNMENT owns the banks. Even if you pay it off, the GOVERNMENT owns the land and you’ll never be able to afford the taxes if you even TRY to pass it along to your heirs.  Give it up now and we’ll go easy on you.

You fly? That’s the government’s airline you’re flying on. Take a train? Ditto!

The statues are being carved and the two story posters are being printed and will soon be in position.

Never say Never.

Obama for everyone!

Obama Business Model on Display In Venezuela

This is what awaits us under the iron fist of Big Government. They know better than you about how to spend your money and they see that you don’t get to keep too much of it. After all, there are others that need it more than you do.

Shortages, hardship and pain await the Socialist Nations of the world more so than the still productive countries of the world who are struggling to throw off the yoke of their benevolent self-destruction disguised as social justice. You can’t give what you make or do away for free. The world does not turn on the redistribution of wealth and it NEVER HAS.

If nobody minds lining up for the most necessary of sundries like laundry detergent, paper towels, sugar, rice and beans then by all means let us continue the path we are on to it’s ultimate conclusion.

Imagine the police, and we have A LOT of police in this country, telling you how much you can charge for goods in your store just before it turns into yet another empty store front and you are out in the street with everybody else vying for a piece of an ever shrinking pie.

The politicians RIGHT NOW are talking about improving education when the State run education system sucks up so much of the taxpayer resources, more than half of every town budget, and gives little to the point where taxpayers are supporting the public schools from their property taxes and then ponying up more money to send their kids to a private school. And the people who can’t do that are left with the standard, substandard, public school. This is most prevalent in the nation’s cities where the public school system is SO BAD. So how is more of THAT going to do ANYTHING?

And what good is an education, nobody seems to mention, if you don’t have a JOB to go to?

The streets of Venezuela awaits us all if we continue down this path. It may already be too late but if something happens tomorrow, if someone still cares about doing a good job and is interested in the American Ideal of Independence, Self-Sufficiency, Self-Reliance and doing the right thing, who knows?

But if we don’t get it, it’s every person for themselves anyway. There’s no reason to continue acting like the money is good and that the law is on your side. We must all turn to the golden rule of boxing:

Protect yourself at all times.

The prepared will suffer. The unprepared will starve. 

Crumble, Crumble Goes Socialist Venezuela

The growing protest movement in Venezuela, organized by those opposed to Socialist Crazy-Man Nicolas Maduro and his total ignorace of everything economic and logical, will end badly.
 
When people are pushed to the breaking point, they will fight back. The freedom loving people of Venezuela will conclude that rather than waiting at home for the end, either by being murdered by thugs, dragged off by Maduro's undercover police or just shear starvation, that it would be better to die fighting than by any other means currently available in that South American Socialist Paradise that is the country of Venezuela.

As the country goes the way of all other Socialist nations, either being held together by walls or by guns, the Libertarian can once again look into the mirror and say, "Oh well, right again."

This isn't really about economics any longer, mainly because Socialism isn't based upon economics, it's based upon buying support of the uneducated majority and using them as a hammer against the educated and productive. With the exception of todays United States, nowhere has this been more evident than in Venezuela where the lower classes are kept down not by the upper classes so much as the government they've grown to rely upon for everything from their daily bread to the clothes on their backs. The government needs them so why the hell would they want them to advance themselves?

But these great unwashed, uneducated and devoted Socialist masses remain a force to be reconded with. With the government's blessing and support, they will fight the anti-socialist forces and mix their blood with the grime of their Venezuelan slums that they've never seemed to improve upon even though they has supported the government for the last 12 years.

The oposition had better be ready to fight because their freedom from Maduro's idiotic repression and total abandonment will not by given. It has to be taken. Walks for Peace ain't gonna cut it with the people with the guns and the will to use them. There is a decision to be made.  

It looks like years of hardship has taken it's toll on the thinking population, those people who work their jobs and businesses to make a living for themselves and their families. The loss of even the most basic items we take for granted everyday and without which makes living in an atmosphere of fear, scarcity and no future truely hard to bear.

They may not be able to dislodge Maduro but the Opposition can marginalize him. They can take back their townships and run them in a practical and functional way and dare Maduro and his minions to march against them into the countryside where their influence is not as strong. And like every revolutionary, the Opposition must contemplate the consequences of their actions and resistance. Under the present circumstances the choices are few.

People can only be pushed so far.
 

The End of Argentina's Economy

Argentina’s president, Christina Fernadez, and her Minister of Finance, Hernan Lorenzino, have just announced a nationwide freeze on prices to last for two months. They do this in a doomed-to-fail attempt at curtailing the runaway inflation that these to idiots have unleashed on their own nation because they can’t stop printing and spending money the nation does not take in and can no longer borrow.

Sound familiar?

Argentina defaulted on their national debt in 2001 and have been printing money to pay their debts ever since. In her effort to continue to buy the vote, Christina Fernandez has just let the presses go and has done everything she can to make the Argentinian people look the other way. But her attempts at distraction first by pointing a finger at England and the Faukland Islands and then the International Monetary Fund, are transparent and futile. Argentina doesn’t have the cash to wage a war over the Fauklands and doesn’t have anybody else to lend it money so their method of last resort is to freeze prices for two months.

This will do nothing.

Freezing prices does not work, has not worked and will not work. Two months will go by and prices will jump to where they were going to go all along but will happen all at once.  This is what the market does and although prices may be frozen, costs do not freeze just because a government says they do. In fact, regardless of what a government may impose and what people may believe, markets know no boundaries and are only under the consumer’s control. Freezing prices just shorts the seller and will only lead to less. If a product costs more to produce than what the manufacturer receives, there will be less of that product. The army can show up at the factory and attempt to make it run or even try to force the manufacturer to produce but history has shown that slaves are poor producers in comparison to adequately compensated workers. You can’t defy gravity for long and Argentina is just another in a long line of Socialist states that will find this out.

In 1971, U.S. President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price freezes along with other measures that moved the United States off the gold standard. What was initially a 90 day freeze turned into a 1000 day freeze and was a total failure brought on by a president who actually knew better but did it anyway and behold, it did nothing to keep down prices or inflation. Only cutting government spending and balancing the national budget can do this.

This is always the last resort of government.

Like the U.S. in the 70s and the U.S. in the future, Argentina has seen its share of shortages, deficits and hardship and they are not through yet. This will only cease if they can find a way to elect a real president with an economic education rather that the say anything, spend the treasury to stay in power charismatic despots they always seem to get.

Hmmm, that sounds familiar too.

Economic Double Talk

How tiresome is all this ‘wink wink” media spin on what is good news and what is bad news on the US economy? Spin it anyway you want to, we all know its bad news.

If everybody knows that people dropping out of the work force are not being tallied in the national unemployment figures then why is anybody even talking about them? It makes no sense yet this totally useless unemployment “statistic” is reported every month even though it has no meaning.  

One media outlet will say “less people applied for unemployment benefits this month”, Good news, Good President! Another says “more jobs were lost than created this month”. Bad news, Bad President! Who watches Television News anymore?

Then there is this "job creation” myth. A government can only create a job in abstract since it can either get in the way or out of the way of a private citizens ability to make their own way in the world. In that respect, one can reason, a government can create a job. The government can declare something “illegal” and create an industry like our public sector multi-billion dollar Corrections Industry that keeps more people locked up than any other nation in the world. It’s ok though folks, they’re all criminals!

Or the government can declare you can’t throw certain items in the trash and create a recycling industry. And then the government can decide an industry is needed like the new Green Energy industry the present administration is breaking the bank over.

The hard distinction for people to contemplate is that these “industries” are artificial. They can't stand alone and they lose money. Many times lots of money. And since they are publicly funded ie: taxpayer supported “businesses” the shortfall is made up from public funds. These government organizations operate at a deficit and never can go out of business or become bankrupt since taxes are always taken to shore up the loses. 

We see these people in our community, good people, like us almost, who want to do a good job and raise their kids and have a home etc. But they aren't like us because we in the private sector pay their salaries and they are often higher than our own. How does that work for you?

You see them working and you think the government has created these jobs but they haven’t. What you DON”T see is the jobs and industries that ARE NOT created because the government has taken resources out of the economy to insure that their programs are funded. The money has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is the private sector because the private sector is the only group in ANY nation that actually produces something and creates jobs and wealth. Governments do not create wealth, the money they use comes from the people; taxpayers.

In other words: The Government Sucks…resources from us to transfer it to THEIR idea of what industries this nation should have and, as we have seen, has created a hell of a voting block to boot. It’s not about doing things better or more efficiently, it’s about control and when the government takes too much, private business and private citizens suffer the consequences. And here we are.

Spending tax money to the point of massive deficits does not create jobs. Increasing the public’s tax burden is not going to create jobs. Giving away resources for free isn't going to create JOBS. Not real jobs anyway that last beyond the government's ability to prop them up. If the public has less money in their pockets or are afraid to spend what they do have, no business that isn't selling an absolute necessity is going to survive. All other industries will be in for a hard ride. 

And if you think American citizens are so soft, so spoiled and so obsessed that they couldn't stop buying stupid stuff like the Salad Shooter or go without a pedicure or cable Television, think again. The tougher the economy and the tougher the tax burden the more people will change their behavior and the less they will spend.

And here lies the great unsolvable dilemma of a Socialist state. Try as it might, it can't pick a "right" industry. And as the State grows, it causes other aspects of society to shrink. Like a Cancer. Without the means of production and process of consumption, the jobs decrease and the taxes decrease and the system will fall. It is the unsolvable dilemma of Socialism.

So the Federal Reserve can continue to lower borrowing rates and the government can continue to borrow to hold up it’s public sector house of cards but one has to keep in mind that it’s all borrowed money and there is less and less of the private sector every day to pay it back.

Call it anything you want but this is not a design for a successful nation but more so a design for calculated failure.

And we’re closer to that today than we were yesterday.

Why Ron Paul?

There is yet another resurgence of Ron Paul as a candidate for President of the United States. Why? Isn’t he an open borders America hating kook with a cult following? The media doesn’t want you to hear his ideas. The political left and the political right don’t want you to hear his ideas. So why is he so popular?

Maybe it’s because the citizens of the United States are sick of the same candidates over and over again. There is nobody but the same candidates to vote for and no matter what they call themselves, either Democrat of Republican, they are on the same team. Taxes always go up, we’re always at war and we are in everybody else's business more than our own

The people of the United States are tired of constant war and sending our best and brightest children to fight them. War isn’t something a nation reaches for at the drop of a hat. War is something to be pondered and reasoned and VOTED UPON by the US Congress. Yet each President has their wars: Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya and Somalia and now they want Iran.

But we as a nation have grown tired of war. Witness the revelations of our men and women returning from Iraq. I have yet to read that ONE of them believes it was worth it. And you know what? It wasn’t worth it. It was a waste.This is not the fault of the people we send to fight, it's the responsibility and the fault of the people who sent them ie: The President of the United States and the US Congress.

The other trouble with always being at war is that when a real nation defending conflict comes along, nobody wants to fight it. We should save the swords for when we really need them.

This is why people are getting behind Ron Paul. The Libertarian credo is “Free trade and non-intervention”. How radical is that?

People are tired of trying the same wrong things over and over. Boom, Bust, Boom, Bust, bank bailouts, a ceaseless drug war, foreign aid to countries that hate us, the government aiding the support of an illegal alien workforce and then going after states that try to defend themselves from the onslaught. The list can go on. This is not how a nation is supposed to work. What we have passing for a fiscal policy and taxation is not Capitalism nor is it a Free Market. We have lost the expertise and knowledge on how a real free market is supposed to work. So much so that people don’t even believe it works any more. They’re actually frightened by the notion.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to take a different approach to how we see ourselves and the world we interact with. It is time to respect the workings of sovereign nations that have ideas different from our own? Is just merely being a trading partner enough for us? Should we make sure we’re secure here at home and that our economy is strong?

We’ve tried it the other way, with huge bureaucracy, armies of government workers, costly national programs for education, health, social welfare and commerce that don't really provide a benefit to the people they’re supposed to help and have actually made things much, much worse.The history of these programs is deficits, overruns and cutbacks.

People are wising up to the diversions, the subterfuge, the politics and the out-right lies we’ve been hearing for decades. Times up.

It is no surprise to a Libertarian that US citizens are tiring of the same people becoming president and trying to “Pass a Law” that will solve the nation’s ills. People are finally coming around to the idea that just passing a law isn’t going to do it. We the people have to be behind it.

This election is no different from past ones. We have a Marxist president and a two left-leaning Republocrats to “challenge” him. Once again we have nobody to vote for.

The American people deserve more than this. Time for a change.

Maintaining the Government House of Cards Through Occupation

As one such future oppressor has stated; “We are trying to limit the power and privilege of the wealthy”.

If only they had used the word “Government” instead of “Wealthy”.  But this is a good example of the difference between the Tea Party and the Occupiers.

But there are other differences. Many not so well defined on the Leftist Occupiers but very much defined on the Conservative/Libertarian Tea Party side.

o       The Tea Party is made up of working people who save to send their kids to college. The Occupiers want you to pay for their college too.

o       The Tea Party wants to win change through the ballot box. The Occupiers want to win change through, well, occupation or in other words: intimidation. One does not "occupy" for democracy.

o       The Tea Party are working and waiting for the next election. The Occupiers are working so there won’t BE a next election.

The Occupiers believe it’s time for a “re-thinking” of the way we as a nation govern ourselves” and with the addition and full fledged support they are getting from public labor unions, public school teachers, Leftist politicians, openly Marxist groups, mainstream TV news, social advocates and other propagandists, we the working people who actually pay taxes into this house of cards we call a government are beginning to see just what that re-thinking will entail.

All this piling on is really all just for one reason; to sustain government. 

According to the latest US Treasury report, government spending has actually increased in 2011 over what it spent in 2010. Federal government spending has increased 5% over last year and local state government spending is up 10% from this time last year. But this spending was largely fueled by the last Stimulus Package, which was $830 Billion if anybody was keeping track, and that money has just about run out.

Enter the Millionaires. The government needs money since they refuse to cut a dime out of the Federal budget. Republocrats and Demlicans have accomplished nothing since the 2008 elections to change the government’s spending habits. We were all looking for a change but no changes seem to be made. So going after millionaires will serve two objectives: The government vacuum needs cash from anywhere it can get it and it gives the government and it’s minions a group to vilify along with bankers and The Jews.

Is anyone alive yet aware that the Stimulus packages were never intended to create jobs? These measures were passed to sustain government at its present level. No roads were ever meant to be built, no bridges were ever meant to be repaired. There were a bunch of signs printed up about how your tax money was being spent but it was all a lie. 

And here we have president Obama back for more and this time with a street mob.

The mob is there for when we run out of millionaires.

The federal and state governments are running out of places to get cash. Their collectivist tax policies and share the wealth give-a-ways have already destroyed 7 million jobs over the last 4 years in the United States. That reduction in tax revenue must be made up from somewhere and that somewhere is you and I. We are the ultimate target.

Ever since the Great Society of Lyndon Johnson we have had government attempt to mediate the outcome for an entire nation. By social engineering and a theory of bringing people up by bringing others down has fostered an ever growing segment of society that literally gets something for nothing, receiving their sustenance from the silk gloved hand of government. But that money came from other working people, working people that still had bills to pay and needs to provide for. Fast forward to now and we see what such policies have wrought upon us. This is what just giving people a fish can do. A fish somebody else worked hard to earn.

As the Occupier mobs grows larger, more belligerent and more unruly, they will attempt, encouraged by a faltering Marxist presidential regime and its media cohorts, to pull something violent and destructive. It’s only success will be measured by the size of the chaos it provokes as though to say to the world; “If we can’t have it, you can’t have it either”.

That’s the problem with creating a dependent class of people, they expect too much.

Obama has no answers...

The telling part in the President’s speech yesterday was that Mr. Obama only has his social conscience, his moral outrage and his class envy platitudes to fall back on and the more he spouts them, the more clueless he looks.

• He is now appalled at the prospect that the nation can’t fix the roads even though the ever increasing gas taxes we’ve been paying for decades were originally allocated to fix the roads. Where has that money gone all these years? 

• He is now morally outraged that we can’t fund education even though half and increasingly more than half of every town budget goes to pay for the schools. Where's THAT money going?

• He is saddened to live in a country that won’t be able to fund Medicaid and Medicare even though there really was never enough money in the world to keep those pyramids from toppling over now. And their decline is accelerating with each government give-a-way.

President Obama sees no problem with government that more money couldn’t solve. And specifically the problematic Federal Government who over the last 50 years or so has bought its way into every facet of the American economy with plenty of strings attached and public unions, added regulations and unfunded mandates to ice the cake.

Government has grown and expanded its bogus services creating $ billion industries like the School Lunch Program, now so ponderous and inefficient that some systems are mandating that kids not bring their lunches from home so they must also pay into the system. Sound familiar?

But that’s the recipe for failure government programs cook up. Now that the gravy train has come off the rails, what we’re hearing on the airwaves right now are interviews with school teachers and other public union representatives on how they’re “reforming” their systems to work more effectively. NOW they’re reforming! NOW! Yes, it’s the NEW reform. Not like the OLD reform. They’ve had 20 years. When will they get it right?

Well, actually, the answer is NEVER. Government can never get it right. The system isn’t setup for getting it right and truly, it’s not about getting it right. It’s really just about CONTROL. The Federal Government buys its way into a market by allocating public resources at a greater extent than a private firm can do. It can also control lending rates which a private firm cannot do. But the major difference between government and private entities is that the government will continue to run at a deficit. So that year in and year out losses in gov’t programs do not result in a re-examination of how things are run or to incorporate efficiencies, it just throws more taxpayer money at it.  The program budget grows and the results decrease. It’s greatly evident in our public school systems where the overhead just gets larger and the results weaker. One doesn’t need a sheet of statistics. Dont' take my word for it, just ask a teacher.

So when the president addresses a looming financial crisis with a speech to the American public and says we have to actually increase funding to a wasteful and bloated education system or that we have to continue to fund a failing Medicare and Social Security system that will sink not only this generation but the next one too, and seeing a so called leader who by rote tosses out the old Class Warfare rhetoric, well I can’t help but think that we are truly the modern Romans.

But not the bitchen’ battling Republic of Rome but the gasping, grasping, toppling Empire of Rome.

Never thought I’d see this in my lifetime.