Japan Continues to Get It Wrong

Japan's economy contracted 7.1% this past quarter.

How can a country with so many smart people have no clue about what makes an economy grow or is it more about the politics of keeping the status quo vs economic reality?

Is the government so concerned with not wanting to anger the public sector that it is willing to sink the entire country rather than deal correctly with the public debt? Is Prime Minister Shinzo Abe so afraid of the political fallout of making what will be an unpopular decision in the public sector that he just won’t do the right thing ever? This is the way it’s looking.

Since raising the national sales tax to 8% with an option to raise it to 10% in 2015 isn't a popular decision in the private sector, Mr. Abe and his political cronies had no problem with that decision.

It boggles the mind that economists think raising the sales tax, a tax on purchasing manufactured goods, is a good way to stimulate the economy. These people should not only be FIRED from their cushy jobs but have “Idiot” branded on their forehead so that nobody with any sense would ask them another serious question ever again.

Here’s a quote from that Leftist  Propaganda Outlet, the Associated Press from a guy named Junko Nishioka, a so called economist from RBS Japan Securities in Tokyo:

“Theoretically, there should be no impact from the consumption tax increase on corporate spending or long-term corporate planning, but a large number of Japanese corporations seemed to see a large impact from the hike on final demand”.

And why not? What theory is this guy relying on? The theory of drawing a paycheck for saying stupid shit I’d say. Kill this man!

So in light of the recent contraction, Mr. Abe is now having misgivings about raising the sales tax another 2% to a whopping 10% in 2015! That’s $.10 of every dollar spent, a dollar more for every $10.00. And consumption theoretically shouldn't be curtailed? How out of touch is this way of thinking?

This is the same old “the government can make money happen” theory that fails every time it is tried. Government can only transfer money, it cannot produce wealth. On the contrary, like we are seeing with Japan, the government can only siphon off money from production and thereby curtail growth. The government has too much overhead and in Japan, overhead is the 1000 lb gorilla in the room.

Japan’s public sector is mostly work for work sake. Their private businesses are streamlined and efficient and their public services are in the dark ages and are people heavy.

I was in Tokyo earlier in the Summer and went to the post office. You can’t even mail a letter yourself. There is no box to put the letter in. You have to go to a clerk and he will give you the stamps. Now Tokyo is a city that has 5 million vending machines. That’s right, hot and cold drinks, peach soda, coffee in a can everything…except stamps. What post office in the U.S. doesn't have a stamp machine? They all have a stamp machine. You can buy your own stamp, put it on your letter and put it in the mailbox yourself. In Japan I couldn't do that. I had to give it back to the clerk. Why? Because he needs a job.

If Japans government wants to address their public debt, then they have to address it directly. They have to cut the waste. Their bloated public works system is loaded with waste and is hemorrhaging money. They should deal with that before they go back to the already over-taxed private sector for more money.

Government has a responsibility, they never live up to it but they do, and that is to run the public sector as efficiently as possible as to be less of a burden on the taxpayers because the taxpayers ARE the economy. If they don’t have enough money to purchase goods because it has been siphoned off by government taxation then the economy will sink. The more they tax the less and less they will take in as consumption decreases which btw affects big corporate earnings because people aren't buying what they’re selling.

And it’s the poorest of the working class that are affected by sales taxes. Taking money out of the pockets of people who produce and putting it into non-productive public sector should not pass as sound economic policy nor a means to save a flailing economy, and Japan's economy is certainly that.

No, the Japanese government has had this all wrong for well over a decade now. The solution is to cut the public sector workforce and reduce the costs to taxpayers. Then cut the corporate tax rate probably in half so these now out of work people can find private sector jobs and then cut the sales tax back to 5% so people will have money to spend to buy goods and services that the companies can provide.  

It is obvious that government is too big and takes too much money out of the economy. That is the reality of the situation. Now having the BALLS to deal with it is something else again. Who is going to tell it like it is in the Japanese government. Obviously not Mr. Abe who would rather go along with a stimulus policy that has already been TRIED and has FAILED in every country it has been implemented. Look at the damage the stimulus has wrought in the United States: High public debt, increased taxation that equals reduced consumption, wage deflation, minimal job creation, stagnation and little hope a full seven years after the crash of 2007. And this is the plan that SAVED the United States from bankruptcy? Not yet it hasn't.

Cut the taxes and the public sector burden or eventually it will cut itself in the form of economic collapse. The economy can either be brought under control or it will hit the wall. Right now there is still a choice.

  

So which will it be Mr. Abe? 

Welfare States Weaken World Economies

Smoke and mirrors will only get you so far.

The European welfare state is finding that raising taxes and thereby raising the cost of doing business isn't getting them anywhere. Now there’s a shock.

By favoring big business, global governments ignore the real engine of the economy and innovation: Small business.

Microsoft didn’t start as a multinational conglomerate. Neither did IBM, NCR or Apple. They all started small as people armed only with an idea.

As I drive through my town, Obscurity, Massachusetts, and see empty strip malls and empty storefronts, I am reminded that there is no recovery here in the United States either. It’s all just borrowed money and eventually it will need to be paid back and when the person who is last in line puts their hand out and the person who is supposed to pay them has nothing to give them, this whole house of cards will come crashing down.

What we are finding out, like we needed to live through this again to know, is that a Welfare State is a weak state. People without work are people without purpose. Government can give people sustenance but they can’t give people purpose. Only a job can do that, a livelihood.

We have almost 100 million people receiving some kind of public assistance in this country and that is an obscenity to the American Dream. Does anybody else find it strange that government taxes people into dependence on the State and then gives them enough to get by? Had they left their money in their own pockets would they not be better off? But no, the money has to come from Government. You can’t just make it on your own. You NEED them and they will fulfill your needs.

It is a downward spiral of dependancy, despondency, drugs and violence.

Is it any wonder that the youth of our inner cities would trade their subsidized existence for the harsh terrain of Iraq or Afghanistan to fight for the new Islamic State? What do they have here to look forward to? They have substandard government schools, they have substandard government housing and they have substandard subsidies for food. 

What difference does it make to these lost souls of the welfare state? Would they rather die out on the streets in a drug turf war or flock to the Iraqi Caliphate where at least they die fighting for something. A Purpose. A purpose in life is something the welfare state cannot give them.

A welfare state is a weak state.

Take a look at the world’s largest welfare states in the world today. They are all in a prolonged state of stagnation. Their economies are either contracting or growing at a pace that would be considered no growth in decades past. Their bureaucracies have become unwieldy and take too much from the people who actually produce. There is no glad talking this situation or fudging the numbers since one only has to drive down the street to see the reality of the situation. We are all approaching our individual “Lost Decades”. 

When government becomes the arbiter of success, there is little success. 

Millions of aimless people languishing in the welfare states means too many idle hands.

Will Islam finally accomplish what the old Bolsheviks of the last century had hoped for? Establish an Islamic state of their own and inspire like-minded people around the world to revolt against their governments, overthrow them and have the world become united in an Islamic Caliphate?

Why not? What is any of these governments offering today’s youth? You don't have to guess, I’ll tell you the answer: NOTHING. Nothing but debt and no means to pay it off. What our young people see is a slow, purposeless existence of the welfare state.

Steps have to be taken now or this will end badly.

The taxmen of the U.S., like Europe, lays a heavy hand on the populace and sucks the life out of our economies. Because of the government "safety net" here is no incentive to work. The national systems that the first world nations impose upon their people are wasteful, full of fraud and are without transparency. They answer to no one. This increases people’s powerlessness but also leads to their disenfranchisement.

Government must stop it's wasteful practices, get out of the healthcare, education and lending businesses, cut taxes, de-regulate business and put money back into the people’s pockets and end their controls or disorder will ensue. We will all pay a high price.

The welfare state has to be ended and people must learn to fend for themselves. The slaves have learned to love their slavery but no nation can continue to give services and taxpayer money away for free to anyone with a want.

Just as a union shop cannot compete with a non-union right-to-work business, a  welfare state cannot compete with an economy based on self-reliance and personal achievement.

Money should be earned. And money earned is the property of the person who earned it. Without the work/reward system, the world stops turning.

The evidence is everywhere.

New Obama Strategy: Arm Everyone in Middle East!

“This really will solve a lot of problems.” 

So says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. “This way, everyone in the region has a chance to defend themselves from radical Islam.”

Mr. Kerry elaborates, “Since ISIL is now the best armed military force in the region thanks to the Iraqi military running away and leaving their U.S. supplied tanks, shoulder-fired rockets and other nefarious high-end devices of death to be picked up by this latest radical militant group, the United States has no choice but to now give EVEN BETTER weapons to somebody else in the hope that they can stop their advance. It's just common sense."

"It doesn't matter who we give weapons to really. All anyone has to do is take a pledge not to use them against U.S. troops in the future and it's “Here you go, boys!”.

Have a laser guided Hellfire missile installation! Here, take a couple of trunks full of night vision goggles! We were only going to give them to the Day County South Dakota police department anyway so that they could intimidate people who cross the street in the center of town against the light.” Says Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, “We just have so much of this war stuff lying around, it would be a waste not to use it for SOMETHING.”

U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie Harf sums up the situation, “First the U.S. arms the regime of Bashir Assad. Then Assad falls out of favor so the U.S. government was forced to arm all the different opposition groups trying to overthrow Assad. In this manner the U.S. also is arming ISIL opposition groups even though they too are radical Muslims. We supplied military arms to the opposition groups in Libya who were working to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi too. Unfortunately, these were the same people who attacked the U.S. Embassy building there, killing ambassador Christopher Stevens along with agents Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, but those are the chances you take when you are try to win the war on terror, right?”

John McCain, U.S. Senator from the state of Arizona had this to say about his full endorsement of the new Obama military policy, “Since these radicals have very sophisticated weapons now, it is the obligation of the United States to keep arming opposition groups. What these groups are actually opposed to is not the point. As long as they are opposed to killing people, they are the people to arm and hopefully they will only kill for peace.”

Whitehouse Chief of Staff Denis McDonough explains the implementation of the new strategy, “With so many splintered groups opposing not only ISIL, Assad and Al Qaeda, the Pentagon has just decided to drop weapons into the desert and let whoever finds them form their own opposition group. They’re just going to shoot somebody anyway.” 

“And why wouldn't ISIL want U.S. weapons?” asks the rhetorical U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, “We make the most sophisticated weapons in the world. Nobody is even close, except maybe for China but you have Bill Clinton to thank for that. Just think about it, we can hover a heavily armed drone above your house for 20 hours a day almost anywhere in the world so when you eventually come out to walk the dog, Blamo! You never even know what hit you! How cool is that?”

Mr Holder goes on, “It’s not important who gets killed by these weapons but that somebody is putting them to use. Weapons are a big export of the United States and as long as somebody is using them, we can make more. It’s good for the economy. Hell, we've been giving them away to Mexico for years.”, he states proudly.

Vice President Joe Biden adds, “What’s the difference if people in the Middle East are killing each other with knives or top-of-the-line high powered sniper rifles? They’re just as dead, right?” In this part of the world we see a niche and we work to fill it, that’s what we do!

President Obama hopes to just declare this new strategy the law anytime now.

Jackbooted Police Attack Press in Ferguson, MO

The Press is outraged!

How ironic.

Visiting journalists have had teargas canisters shot at them, had real guns pulled on them , been shot by rubber bullets, arrested and released with no charges, been manhandled, shoved around and bruised, forced out of areas for their own “safety” and generally threatened and harassed as the enemy.

How did it come to this?

Perhaps it is because they ARE the enemy.

Isn’t this the same esteemed people of the press who have looked the other way and underreported the Obama administrations flouting of the U.S. Constitution?

Are these the same people who have attacked every Tea Party political candidate and orchestrated smear campaigns against the people of the Tea Party, regular working-class folks who sincerely have concerns about the power of our federal government, and branded them as “Kooks” in their left-leaning publications and jokingly referring to them as that homophobic slur “Tea Baggers”?

Could these be the same “Journalists of the People” who have never bothered to take to task the criminality of the National Department of Justice, repeatedly giving Attorney General Eric Holder a pass on his felonious activities such as running American arms to the Mexican drug cartels resulting in hundreds of deaths on the border including U.S. boarder agent Brian Terry and issuing orders to not deport illegal aliens? The same press corps that has not taken President Obama to task for not enforcing the nation’s immigration laws?

Is this the press corps that is now shocked to discover the same disregard for the Bill of Rights has been applied to them?

How pathetic.

In some degree the police are getting the chance to do what many taxpayers would have liked to do but I’m afraid that there is more to this action than a little comeuppance for our honored American press corps.

The tear gassing and manhandling of the press in Ferguson, Missouri  a small suburb of St Louis with a population of 21,203, will serve as a training ground for the future as our government ramps up their troops which used to just be the local and state police forces. Manuals will be written and future police training classes will be initiated in the art of "Handling the Press". But it will not stop there.

With the militarization of the world come the militarization of our nations police forces who now have a wide arsenal of weapons at their disposal including full body armor, night vision goggles, gas masks, stun grenades, semi-automatic shot guns, hollow-nosed bullets in their high-capacity 9mm handguns, fully automatic machine guns and armored personnel carriers with mounted machine guns. 

The pictures coming out of Ferguson, MO right now with people standing with their hands in the air while police in military armored vehicles train machine guns at their heads is a most wondrous sight. 

Now every American town can have their own little Tienanmen Square or Czech Occupation and finally get to know what it's like to be looking down the barrel of a loaded high-powered automatic weapon just like everybody else in the world has. That's a new experience for many U.S. citizens but one I'm sure they will take in stride like they have with everything else that's been going on in the country. Just pay your taxes and shut up and sit down. 

Ferguson, MO looks to be a dress rehearsal for what awaits us all in this country after the shortages our governments “Borrow and Spend, Tax and Spend, Print and Spend” monetary and regulatory policies will bring if allowed to continue. They have made their power grab now let’s see if they can keep it. There will still be a vote come this November.

But the guns are just there to remind us all to keep in line.

Perhaps a bread line.

United States Escalating World Wide Warfare

President Obama has been taking some heat as the Republocrat War Mongers in the U.S. Congress have climbed over each other to gain the ear of the American public to make political hay from the advancing Muslim horde in Iraq.

This is one of the major public statements Mr Obama has said:

“What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government, so let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis — a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there, and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq. So that entire analysis is bogus and is wrong. But it gets frequently peddled around here by folks who oftentimes are trying to defend previous policies that they themselves made.”

And actually, what the President said here is true. The Obama administration was indeed negotiating to stay in Iraq but that notion was shot to hell when the "Democratically elected Iraqi government" refused to indemnify U.S. troops which was a critical factor in keeping a force in that country. It wasn't like it was refused once either but the Obama administration was repeatedly rebuked in it's attempts and urging for an agreement to keep U.S. troops in Iraq. But having been denied this agreement, Obama then ordered the troop withdrawal. It was all over the news. This happened three years ago in 2011 by the way.

So in fact Obama was for keeping troops in Iraq before he started taking credit for withdrawing troops, finally, from Iraq. I mean, it was a major campaign promise back when he was elected president the FIRST time in 2008. 

The Iraqi government has spoken. It's not our fight any more and really it never was. We destabilized the country and now lament that it is unstable. If Turkey wants to keep ISIS off their border I suggest they get busy and intervene their own selves. The U.S. should not be in the business of doing the dirty work for nations and governments who are unwilling to do the work and take an interest in their own defense. We've got enough to worry about right here at home.

But here in the United States, war is business. Big business.

What needs to be pointed out in all this is that the escalating arms race that we are heavily involved in is the root of the very problem we claim to be trying to solve. The more arms we supply only serves the purpose of fueling the need for, you guessed it, more armaments.

ISIS has become the best supplied army in the country why? Because they have all the tanks, Humvee and shoulder-fired rockets that we've been supplying the no-show Iraqi army. Who knew? Everybody knew! We've heard for a decade that the Iraqis weren't going to fight. Now it's a surprise. But the bottom line is: We've been sending high-end weapons over there and now ISIS' got 'em. Good Thinking!

One side orders U.S. arms to counter the arms from Russia or Iraq that the other side is getting and then we send in our armaments and so that in turn increases the orders for more Russian and Iranian made armaments. It's quite a little experiment in free market economics.

The Middle East is a weapon manufacturer's wet dream. Millions of uneducated religious fanatics going at each other driven by religious fervor, oil money and a desire to destroy the "unbelievers". The constant consumption and need for arms is just too good to pass up. And who cares if people get killed? They LIKE it when they get killed. Just too perfect.

But plenty of people who don't like it get killed too. Nothing is ultimately achieved. Generations are wasted, societies fail to advance and the people fail to prosper. Nobody is saved. It has just been a blood orgy for as long as I can remember. And many times the "Made in the U.S.A" label is on the product.

The solution is: We have to quit selling tanks to any idiot with a bank account. We've got to stop supporting demi-tyrants and dictators who's jack-boot tactics foster a dedicated opposition.
 
I don't want the Republocrats back if all they want to do is to continue fighting wars especially in the Middle East where we've been for over a decade just squandering our resources and children's futures. We don't need it and it hasn't been working, has it? 

Selling weapons is a big money maker for the U.S. and we sell the most but at some point we've got to assess what is behind the escalating violence and it the answer is in the mirror.

The United Nations: Just Another Jewish Hate Group

It's obvious, it's glaring and it's telling.

The actions of the United Nations runs counter to events on the ground in Gaza. The IDF has found weapons in multiple United Nations facilities especially the U.N. schools. The first time that missiles were discovered in a U.N. school, they just handed them back to Hamas. A U.N. spokesperson was quoted as saying; “Oops!”

The U.N. vowed an investigation. I wonder how that turned out.

But the U.N. being caught out in the open does not register with them. They will not let facts get in the way of their mission of bailing out Hamas.

It is an open secret that Hamas has been subjecting foreign journalists with intimidation when they should happen to inadvertently photograph or film Hamas in an “unfavorable light” like when they dress in civilian clothes as they fire rockets at Israel or firing rockets from hospital grounds or more pointedly U.N. facilities and schools. Only journalists who have left Gaza have been able to report these truths. Hamas, whether by accident or on purpose, even bombed their own refugee camp…nothing, it is all forgotten. To the U.N. the onus is on Israel to prove every step while Hamas operates with impunity in their eyes. “Prove to us that Hamas is firing rockets from refugee camps. Prove to us that Hamas is using human shields!” they demand. What does Hamas have to prove? This is absurd.

Who admonishes Hamas to “do more” to protect their “civilian” population? Who is calling for Hamas to stop using their population as shields? I haven’t heard that out of the U.N. Must’ve missed that press release.
 

They aren’t fooling anybody.

So far the United Nations has never failed to pull Hama’s bacon out of the fire (pun intended). Hamas has come to depend on it and with the U.N. behind them, they are further emboldened in their single-minded nefarious enterprise.

This is why Israel has to defeat Hamas. They have to pound them and pound them again. Right into the fucking ground until they yell “Uncle”. You don’t hear them say it, then, keep at them. Only when there is victory over this pestilence in human form, will there be a pause for reflection and peace in the region. Otherwise they will slither back into the light of day and need to be stomped back into the soiled earth that they sprang from. The U.N. has done it's best to keep this conflict going but it should succeed no longer.

 

There are no civilians in Gaza

 

I find it an odd occurrence that whenever an Israeli plane shoots a missile at a terrorist, it can hit nobody but civilians. How can their aim be so poor?

Under media questioning all Gazans seem to spout Hamas “talking points” like they were trained in politics. Listen to them next time and you will hear them. End “the siege” or "We are prisoners of Israel." and witnesses  of “random fire” from the IDF. 

This is a puzzle to an outside observer, how can they be in unison? Nobody ever says, “ I wish Hamas would stop the rockets.” They are all either plants for visiting media or they are all soldiers in their war with the Jewish State. I will say they are the later: Everybody in Gaza is a soldier for the fall of Israel.

These people have been brought up hating Israel.  It’s what they do. When they aren't shooting at Israel, there is little to do in the enclave but make more bombs. It’s not like they were busy stitching blue jeans together at their clothing factory for export to Sears or Walmart before the latest conflict started.

When a Gazan declares a dead comrade a "martyre in the fight against Israel" then that person, along with his dead comrade, is a soldier. But not just against Israel for when they go to fight wearing the insignia: "There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet" they are also soldiers against humanity.

The people who inhabit Gaza are taught from birth to hate Israel and their training to fulfill the declaration of the elimination of Israel starts on their first day on Earth. 

The reality of the situation

There is a suspension of belief here in the United States about the Gazan Arabs. We find it hard to believe that people will live this way on purpose. We project our abilities of recognizing what’s right and wrong, our working class sensibilites, onto other peoples of the world and think that "We are all brothers under the skin." We see these orchestrated images coming from the conflict and think them real. Because really, how can an entire population be enlisted in such a fashion and how can people just put their children in harm’s way like this?

This message of Israeli oppression that Hamas is sending is for us.

This is the same naive thinking of America prior to September 11, 2001 that lead to the World Trade Center buildings being knocked down. The attackers told them nobody would be hurt. We just want the plane. So they gave up the plane.

They said that’s all they wanted.

Obama to Blame for Libyan Debacle

There is no one more responsible for what is happening in Libya today other than the current President of the United States, the irresponsible Barack Obama.

His ill-conceived intervention in the region has destabilized what was, for the most part, a long functioning state. For all that Moammar Gadhafi was, he was no different than any of the other regimes operating in that part of the world, holding onto power and keeping the radical element of his religion at bay.  Plus, it was none of our business.

Well no longer thanks to Mr. Obama.

What makes this worse for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner was that he was advised that intervening in a civil war of a sovereign nation would most likely throw the region into chaos and usher in yet another victory by radical Islam and thereby all but sanction an Islamic religious Caliphate?

But Obama didn’t care.

President Obama defied Congress, defied the American People and outright violated the U.S. Constitution in his single-minded resolve to enter the Libyan civil war on the side of the radical element of Islam. Why? It boggles the mind.

And here we are almost three years after the death of Gadhafi, watching Libya continue to fight, continue to fail and continue to bleed. That is, if the national media cared to even look or report it with anything like the zeal they save for Israel.

Thank you Mr. President.

But Mr. Obama could not have achieved this all on his own. “The Party” was behind him.

Some helpful members of note include:

The former Democrat and now Independent Senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, a man who once trumpeted the School Voucher Program to aid poor families to choose the schools they could send their kids to only to abandon it when Al Gore tapped him as his running mate for his failed bid in the 2000 Presidential election. Lieberman was all for it.

Former Massachusetts Senator and current “Hypocrite of State” John Kerry, then the chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations floated the total delusion that imposing a No-Fly Zone on a foreign country did not constitute a military intervention.

Then there were well known Liberal lackeys Jack Reed D – RI and Dick Durban D- NY

Of course Republocrat Senator John McCain from Arizona was for intervention since he never met a war he didn’t like. Plus he’s crazy as a hoot owl but he keeps getting re-elected. How many times can a guy be dead- wrong about a situation and still not pay the price? A man so muddle-headed he even referred to the people who eventually stormed our Embassy in Libya “Freedom Fighters”.

Does he even have a mind left to reflect upon this? If it were me, I’d kill myself.

Right-Wing Wacko and resident FOX TV war monger Sean Hannity was all for it too, of course “America must lead!” and we did and now what?

Ultimately intervention was Obama’s decision to make and what he has to show for it is more bloodshed leading up to our Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens killed along with fellow Americans Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. This is the president’s gift that just keeps on giving.

And so where the support for Libya now as chaos continues to reign? Where are the weapons we gave the “Freedom Fighters” and whom are they killing?

Whether it’s Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, every side Obama has come down on has been the wrong side and every place we have trampled has turned to shit.

The blood is on the hands of President Obama and all who supported him in this abject failure.

Hamas Losing Control of the Message

Hamas wants it both ways. They want to be free to bring in fuel and food through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt AND the rockets they use to shoot at Israel.

“How can they want a cease –fire when they won’t let us smuggle in weapons?” complained a Gaza “civilian” of Egypt. “Israel says they want to be our friends but they won’t let us shoot at them!” seethed another.  “As long as Israel continues to keep us from importing rockets and other weapons to shoot at them, there will be no peace!”

Logic like this is hard to argue with.

The national Leftist newspapers like USA Today are trying to help Hamas control the spin on their latest campaign when they offer quotes from a Gaza resident as describing Israeli tank fire as “random” and that “even ambulances came under fire”.  Did the reporter SEE this happen? No, but he has it on good authority because somebody in Gaza TOLD him. This is important to notice. These are not off-hand quotes; they are ‘’weasel words” meant to tilt the opinion of the reader.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas “doesn't give a whit about the “Palestinians”, all they want is more and more civilian deaths.” And it looks like the majority of the world is now more willing to believe him. They can see it clearly with their own eyes if they care to.

In an incredible display of the the bold-faced hypocrisy of their words when compared with their deeds, Hamas obviously thinks we’re all fools. But to be fair, Hamas didn't just jump to this conclusion on their own, the actions of the rest of the world all but convinced them that this is true.

Up until now the Gaza wing of the Arab Assault Force (AAF) on Israel has relied upon the intervention of the UN and other countries like the United States and the European Union to stop the Israelis from retaliating with full force once they initiate their attacks. 

Their whole propaganda machine is geared towards “showing” the world how unfairly they are being treated just because they have shot a few harmless rockets at Israel in frustration at being unable to get the materials they need to prosper. They would be “somebody” in this world if it wasn't for those spiteful Israelis, Goddamnit!

So the EU, the U.S. and Egypt negotiate a settlement, Israel stops it’s shooting and then Hamas re-groups and re-supplies and comes back just a little bit stronger, a little bit more resolved in their belief that they can fulfill their ultimate calling: Driving the Jewish State to its knees. So with the help of the rest of the world, who don’t seem to like the Jewish State much either, Hamas lives to fight on. This is a tiresome cycle. 

But there are growing signs that the world is tiring of their act and sees through the staged “destruction”, the human shields, the staged "man in the street" media interviews and the “casualties” who have been known to get up and walk once the pictures have been taken.

Even the politically ambitious and leather lunged U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has come out to decisively straddle the situation when he said that Israel is justified in taking action to protect itself. 

This is a departure in message. Gone is the knee-jerk denouncement of Israel’s defense, replaced by "concern' over civilian casualties.

When you go to the well too often, the well runs dry.

Some have described Israel giving up Philadelphi Corridor, the 14km long, 100 meter wide swath of land that once separated Gaza from Egypt as a big mistake. Or giving up Gaza for that matter 2 years earlier but if those two events have lead the region and the world to where we are right now: Finally believing that it Hamas is the sole driver of this conflict. They have only used such concessions as an opportunity to import the rockets that fly over Tel Aviv today.

Had they held onto Gaza and the Corridor, Israel would always be on the defensive about the speculation of what kind of state the disenfranchised “Palestinians” could have achieved had they gotten the opportunity.

Well now we know don’t we? They have fashioned an armed camp out of what once was not and filled it with cannon fodder that pass for people. They have manufactured an incredible honey comb of a land where armed men and weapons can be moved across the area and never have to be exposed to the surface. They have fashioned a state so twisted in its single-mindedness of purpose to kill Jews that they have neglected to build any other industry of worthy of merit.

So the plan to keep arms out of the hands of Hamas never was workable since Hamas always manages to get the weapons. The next best plan then, is to make them pay a BIG PRICE when they use them.

To the radical Muslims there are no civilians in their cause.  Everyone is an enemy soldier and every State an obstacle. In order to defeat these people, their way of fighting and their immutable way of thinking is to beat them down and after that, to beat them down again until they come up, pardon the use of an American colloquialism, “a Christian”.  History holds many examples of where this strategy was applied with success. 

My philosophy professor in college opened our first class by asking the question; “Suppose you lived in a society that did not value life and when walking one day you passed over a bridge and upon looking down you noticed someone was drowning. What, given the society you were living in, would you be inclined to do?”

I answered that I would most likely have just stood there to watch that person drown.

I see no difference in that question and the kind of society that has sprung up in Gaza.

So now, regardless of how they actually feel, the world's politicians seem to be more inclined to watch how it’s done while Israel finally moves to at least attempt to solve their problems with a society upside-down in its thinking, upside-down in the purpose for which they live their lives and with the people who support it financially from the sidelines safely out of harm’s way.

Let's hope for civilizations sake that Israel prevails in their mission and that they maintain the resolve to take their fight to its successful conclusion. And afterwards, some reflection will be in order for Hamas, the UN, Iran, and Arabia upon their rolls in this conflict and the world at large but also reflection is called upon for the European Union and these United States. 

All the condemnation, all the scolding and all the threats towards Israel over the years for the crime of self-defense from an organized and sometimes praised hate group has had to be hard to bear for them.

And heaven forbid any nation should have John Kerry foisted upon them as much as he has been upon Israel. Imagine Mr. Kerry coming to your office and basically talking you to death. 

That is also a crime against humanity.

I Wish Dick Cheney Would Just Shut Up

I know there is some unwritten rule that past presidents don’t open their mouths and interfere with their successor while they are running the country and I think this should go for former Vice-Presidents as well. 

Especially since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are probably the biggest reasons why we got Barack Obama as President, Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader and that fiasco of fiasos, Obama-Care.

I hate to break it to Mr. Cheney but George Bush was no great shakes as president either. Although he didn't spend nearly the amount of money that Obama has, it wasn't for lack of trying. G W Bush still spent way too much taxpayer money on give-a-ways and vote buying. 

He piled onto the bogus and wasteful War on Drugs, forgoing education, prevention and treatment and instead focusing on attacking the demand side of the equation by channeling most of the money to law enforcement and building more jails. He spent Billions in his efforts to curry favor with the law enforcement industry and buying their votes. 

He also connived to expand Medicare with his Prescription Drug “Improvement” plan with its prescription drug benefit coverage which was just a vote-buying scheme for the AARP at the future expense of their grand kids who will be the ones left with the crippling balloon payments once grammy and grampy have gone to the big beyond.  Instead of cutting costs for Medicaid, which was pretty much broke at the time, George W. Bush expanded its benefit payouts, increased costs and provided no funding mechanism for the budget increases thus ballooning the deficit by an alarming amount. 

Then there was Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” attack on education. It provided all of the bureaucracy and none of the means to pay for its implementation of new testing for students or the hiring and training of more teachers. This funding was left for the states to provide at local taxpayers expense. Thank you Mr. President!

And ALL the Republocrats went along with it in the same lock-step the Demlican Leftists are being accused of now. People like the former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi and former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, R-Texas, people so driven to follow the President that they totally disregarded the political and financial fallout. History now shows how massive the fallout was. 

And for Dick Cheney’s part, just how "divested" of Halliburton was he when the organization when they got those massive contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan that reaped Billions for the company and it's shareholders at the expense of the American people.

The Bush Administrations prosecution of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq left a lot to be desired. It was almost as if they went about it like union contractors and didn't want to “Kill the Job” by actually trying to win. After all this time there was never any lasting change in the country. There were never any decisive victories and the Administration left legitimate Prisoners of War to languish in Guantanamo Bay instead of setting up a Military Tribunal to try them in a timely fashion, preferring to let the next administration do that part. The Bush/Cheney Administration should have tried them quickly and remove any future of botching the job. But that wasn’t the point was it? The Iraq war was all about the money.

Rand Paul isn't alone when he openly accused Dick Cheney of pushing for the Iraq War so that Halliburton could profit.

Until Barak Obama came along, it was GW who was spending money like a sailor on shore-leave. Obama just picked up his baton and ran with it. At this point in history the arguement shouldn't be so much a case for Obama being the worst President ever but more about who are the worst Presidents ever since back-to-back both GW Bush and Barack Obama have proven to be a deadly duo to this nation.
 

And one has to laugh when Cheney accuses the present Republican Party of Isolationism because they,  over a decade and Multi-Billions of dollars later, with little to show for the lives and other resources expended, didn't want to continue the wars in the Middle East! 

So for Dick Cheney to come out and say ANYTHING right now looks to me to be a FEEBLE attempt at political redemption.  It’s like saying “Yes, we were a bunch of fiscally irresponsible screw-ups but look at Obama, he’s really BAD!”

Please Mr. Cheney, haven’t you caused enough damage to the United States already?

Please just go away.

Arab Front Group Attacks Israel

The great unwashed of the Arab world have once again mounted an offensive against Israel upon the urging of their Arabian backers. These illegitimate children of Saudi Arabia are again attempting to fulfill their true reason for being since they live for nothing else but to die for the Arab cause: To wipe Israel from the map.

The Gaza Strip serves as the rocket and bomb making factory and import depot for this latest offensive while the rest of the area lives in hovels and celebrates either impending victory or martyrdom.

Just a quick glance at the pictures tells volumes about the civilization that is Israel and the lack thereof that is Gaza. One lives to prosper, the other lives to kill. Tel Aviv is a modern city bright with glass walled business buildings and terraced neighborhoods while Gaza is a wasteland of discarded weapons boxes, gray reinforced concrete buildings, graves and tunnels with only a whisper of any local industry other than the manufacture of killing devices. Physical effort does not go into recreational sports but into the training of troops. Education does not go beyond the Koran and how to either dig, shoot or fight. They vow destruction and live in a world of shit, subsisting off the provisions of their Arab masters who sit safe from the conflict, their hands free of soil. While the Gazans die, it is they that lead.

This is the war for the world. Where every retaliatory strike by Israel is a photo opportunity for the militant propaganda machine with the world media so quick to pick it up regardless of its staging or reason. The war where it is Israel that has to tread lightly while their opponents stop at nothing. The poor “Palestinians” the media pouts, they’re so poor and Israel, that power of prosperity keeping them down, they have so much.

Just how long would you put up with having your neighbor fire missiles into your yard? Good thing Israel gave up the Gaza Strip because without that, the Arab militants would have to build bigger rockets to reach it. Glad that piece of international negotiation worked out, eh? If and when this conflict dies down perhaps U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will ask for negotiations for the Golan Heights.

So we are now on the eve of another ground war where Israel has to again go into the rat’s nest to weed out the terrorists  and the international “community” will be there to report every ‘civilian” death on in the Gaza as a human interest story.

They only want a homeland and right now that homeland has a bunch of Jews standing on it.

The Arabs are aiming to fix that issue.

Whooping Cough and the South American Boat People

Immigrants that play by the rules and go about citizenship the right way are now set at a disadvantage. They were suckers for trying to follow the laws of their adopted country. They should have just broken in, made themselves at home and let the big business lobbyists do all the heavy lifting for them. It’s the new American Way.

Even though this latest mass of migration from  out “neighbors” to our south has been the result of the clarion call of the Obama Administration that has made no secret that they will not uphold their bargain to the citizens of the United States and uphold the law to defend our borders, the prime mover is that there is nothing for them in the countries of their origin.  

These are the FAILED STATES of South America. Their corrupt governments have decimated their economies by adopting pie-in-the-sky Socialism and have killed off the business class, sucked out opportunity, never offered an education worth a damn and have put their people on the move a la Fidel Castro back in 1980 when he “allowed” people who wanted to leave Cuba a chance to do so and then emptied his jails and was also rumored to have emptied the mental hospitals on top of that.

And here we are.

There are no perceived consequences to any economic action in South America. Argentina defaults on loans it took out to cover the massive debt it accumulated to cover for its destruction of successful private businesses and then becomes upset that some of their creditors, who lost big heaping wads o’ cash, actually have the gall to want to be paid back. It is they, Argentina cries, who are destroying the Argentine nation. Oh really? And they make this accusation with a straight face without a hint of irony. It takes real balls to say something so disconnected from reality.  

And there isn’t much left to be said about Venezuela. There is no place to go but rock bottom for them.

With the exceptions of Columbia and perhaps Peru, South and Central America is just one big graft-fest and their governments have pretty much acknowledged that fact by telling their people to go to the United States. Let them feed you, let them educate you, let them take care of you.

But guess what? We can’t do it either. The public schools in every major city are crap. The same goes for the housing.  You will leave your third world slum for a first world slum but it’s still a slum except that our slum neighborhoods come with cable TV and indoor plumbing.

But with the influx of South American peoples attempting to gain entry into the United States and the many who are successful, a new issue is dawning on the mental giants behind this move: These new arrivals haven’t had their shots!

This has proven to be a big problem here because diseases that were heretofore though gone from our townships and cities have made sudden reappearances. And one of those diseases that is rearing its long forgotten head here in the U.S. is known as Pertussis or the Whooping Cough.

“Whooping cough? You mean that viral cough that my grand-mother told me about? It disappeared sometime in the 1960s until it "cyclically" came back into the southern states in the early 2000s and has only spread since then. That Whooping Cough? “

Yes, that Whooping Cough

But Wal Man, many experts say that these diseases are just following a natural cycle, how do you know they were carried by illegal aliens?

If that were so, we’d be hearing about Whooping Cough outbreaks from all over the nation but that is not the case. These "outbreaks" are isolated to the Border States with Mexico: Texas, Arizona and Southern California. It is absolutely unheard of in the Midwest and the formerly industrialized Northeast. 

Sacramento, California, which not so long ago had declared itself a sanctuary city for illegal aliens to live without fear of deportation, now appears to be at the center of the epidemic. Perhaps this is no small coincidence. Neighboring states like Washington and Oregon have managed to avoid the same fate.

Does anyone truly believe that a nation sending so many people who can't read and write their own language let alone speak a word of English and seemingly have never set foot in a school but somehow they all have gotten a vaccination?

In contrast, a child can't enter a school in the U.S. without a vaccination certificate. Some people have fought this over the years but they get a battle every time and every adult my age has a vacination scar on their right shoulder.

Whooping cough may not have totally disappeared in the U.S. but it has truly been unheard of on any newsworthy level until its re-emergence beginning in 2003 where cases spiked to approximately 11,651 and have risen every year to where it reportedly stands at 24,231 according to the governments Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if one is to believe such things.

All I know is that Whooping Cough was only something I ever heard of as a child and then only told as a legend along with Goitre, the abnormal enlargement of the Thyroid Gland just under the Adams apple, that people used to get prior to the introduction of Iodine into America’s table salt in 1924. Throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s, Whooping Cough cases seldom exceeded 3000 per year.  Rates began to rise beginning in 1986 which is, coincidently, after Ronald Regan sign

The Bubonic Plague also seems to have turned up in the Southwestern part of the country and has been in the news with multiple reported cases. The last time I heard of anybody getting THAT in the Americas was back during that little altercation in Peru with the Conquistadors and the Incas in 1532. 

If we keep this up we will see more of every disease and our capacity to combat them overwhelmed.  

The Constitutional Disconnect Over Anwar al-Awlaki (part II)

Under the Freedom of Information Act, although the all-important reasoning behind the decision is still redacted, most of the memo associated with president Obama's order of the drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim extremist and U.S. citizen, has been released.

We now know that it was a person named David Baron, then the acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council. HE is the one who concluded that killing al-Awlaki would be legal for the U.S. government to carry out based on the conclusion that al-Awlaki's citizenship did not protect him from the use of force abroad. Mr. Barron was assisted by another lawyer for the Justice Department, a Mr. Martin Lederman. We only hear their names now because they are just a small part of the vast unelected nameless-faceless hive of bureaucracy that is writing law over the citizens of this country.

Now they are passing death sentences and we didn't even know it until now.

Neither of these people were judges. They were lawyers, lawyers attempting to justify the lawlessness of the actions of their President and their government.

Both the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution address the right of a U.S. Citizen to the Due Process of law. In a nutshell: If an individual is facing the lose of his life, liberty or property, the law of the land requires that individual receive notice, representation, a hearing and most importantly, to be judged.

So there we have it. Mr. Baron, Mr. Lederman and Mr. Obama: Judge, Jury and Executioner. All done with the sweep of a pen. No hearing, no jury and no lawful judge.

Killing Anwar al-Awlaki going on three years ago was an unlawful act and has set a dangerous precedent for U.S. citizens tomorrow.

It is now PROVEN that our leaders had abandoned the founding principles of their Country, their Constitution and their Faith in a desperate attempt to reverse the the rise of opposition to and the impending collapse of our despotic and destabilizing interventions into the affairs of sovereign nations in the Middle East.

It has all proven to be false and useless in the long run.

(original text below - originally published March 5th, 2013)

"I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.” - Rand Paul

My copy of the U.S. Constitution makes no distinction where an American citizen may be whether it be on American soil or in Yemen, they are still entitled to the same protection under the law.

Everybody applauded when a drone strike killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American Citizen, in Yemen without any due process of law. Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney and Texas Governor Rick Perry, all expressed praise for Obama’s drone strike on what actually turned out to be the U.S. Bill of Rights.

President Obama signed an order in 2010 that put al-Awlaki on the governments “Kill or Capture” list but the President had no Constitutional authority or legal precedent to sign such an order. He just ordered it and almost everybody in Congress, went along with it.

It was also said many times by the so called right wing television and radio wags that al-Awlaki had forfeited his rights under the Constitution by taking up arms against the United States. No he didn't, he couldn't. But the comfortably established, well paid and certainly well fed public face of American Conservative thought had NO PROBLEM with the killing of al-Awlaki and openly said so.

And here we are.

So with the announcement by The Government that these very same drones are going to be deployed right here in the good old US of A and whoa, NOW it’s a problem!

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, that figurehead for the Department of Justice, has sent a letter to U.S. Senator Rand Paul stating that he can see a legal justification where these drones could be brought to bear upon other American Citizens right here on U.S. soil. Well what did you expect?

But how can they do such a thing? We are American Citizens, what gives them the right? Gee, let’s think about that one, shall we?

You can't pick and choose which part of the Bill of Rights you wish to believe in and when you wish to believe in it. You take them as a whole or you take none of them. It's a document for all U.S. Citizens and not just a few. And good deeds, like nice speech, needs no Constitutional protection.

But that didn’t give pause to the people who are now suddenly outraged about the deployment of drones on the North American continent. They see no connection between the death of al-Awlaki and the possible use of drones in the U.S. for the very same reason.

It's this kind of Wrong Thinking that has fostered the erosion of our civil rights and emboldened Government to reach for more power. What if the government now declares a certain person or group of people to be in "Revolt"? Who shall be the next to forfeit their rights by opposing Government?

But don't worry; it can't happen here, right?