The Republican Presidential Sideshow Freaks and Government Security

Last week’s nauseating, nonsensical, and pathetic GOP presidential debate hosted by CNN and the neoconservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. is both an epitome and a disturbing reminder of the lunacy of the Republican sideshow freaks (except for Ron Paul as usual) who have consistently demonstrated their naivete to the American public at large. These reprobates – from Mitt Romney to Herman Cain – will never learn and acknowledge that an offensive, aggressive, and warlike foreign policy will proceed to put American lives in jeopardy until they trace the history of this interventionism from Jefferson’s attack on the Barbary Pirates (rather than to pay bribes to them) to the present day evils committed in the Middle East. (Take the United States government’s present incursions here for instance.)

However, it goes without saying that the stentorian choruses of defending, protecting, worshiping, idolizing, and insulating the status quo are certainly over-the-top but not surprising. Ranging from preserving American foreign aid to Israel to “American exceptionalism” and “America leading the free world,” they are nothing but contrivances to prop up pseudo images of the State’s “benevolence,” the self-deceit and vanities of the governmental players involved, and the State’s self-appeasing, self-serving, and self-aggrandizing way of fashioning its own hubris under the guise of self-reassurance.

All of these things are said to shroud “national security” (which is government security) from the American people. The Democrats are just as horrendous on this issue, because they see it as a part of the government’s need to engage in humanitarianism abroad with the backing of the U.N., unlike the GOP that prefers to have Americans and the Pentagon declaring war against a foreign regime for “defending national security first” and then “humanitarianism second.” (Even Rick Santorum shares the Democratic trait on that thinking alone, despite his tough talk on terrorists and terrorism.)

Despite their minute differences on those issues, both major parties favor barbarism and welfare-warfare equality. With Republicans and Democrats like these (who are the heart of the tyrannical two-party system that expands, operates, and fuels the federal government), who needs enemies at all?

The Earmarks Racket

The Republicans’ wailing over earmarks is laughable at best. That even goes for the mainstream media as well.

The claim that they are spreading is that earmarks account for 1% of the federal budget. That’s hogwash! That’s a cute ruse employed by the thugs in Washington to obfuscate the real picture of the budgeting itself. It’s rather paramount to put this matter in its proper perspective. It actually accounts for 1% of discretionary spending, which only constitutes 37% of the entire federal budget. That said, earmarks only make up 2.70% of the budget itself. Still, that is a meager amount, and the elimination of them wouldn’t make a dent in the entire spending whatsoever.

Another ruse that the media proliferates is that earmarking is spending, which is an absurd canard on its face. Earmarks are merely an allocation of appropriated (“assigned”) tax (“stolen”) funds to a politician’s district for various political interests such as economic development, infrastructure, and other purposes. Remember the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” under former Governor Sarah Palin’s watch?

Senate Republicans are already posturing as grand opponents of earmarks by signing on board with a two-year moratorium on the issue, although that is simply a farce by itself. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his fellow GOP colleagues are known on record for requesting earmarks for their districts. The Center for Public Integrity, which focuses on “investigative journalism for the public interest” by investigating congressional and senatorial politicians and their legislative records, points out that McConnell appeared on CNN in July of 2009, asserting the following:

The stimulus was a big mistake. I think we can fairly safely declare it now a failure.

The Center even went further:

Two months later [McConnell] signed five letters requesting funds from the Department of Transportation for a variety of stimulus projects, including a railroad rehabilitation program that he said could “attract industry, create jobs, and move goods through areas underserved by national highways.”

At least one of McConnell’s requested projects was accepted, with $20 million being earmarked by the Department of Transportation for a bridge replacement between Milton, Ky., and Madison, Ind.

What’s more, McConnell is also on record for requesting a $1 billion in pork for Kentucky. Now McConnell is having a crisis of morality years after supporting earmarks for his own district? Balderdash!

This is nothing more than political showboating and grandstanding from the Republicans as a way to snooker the public into believing that they are really cutting spending when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Earmarks enable them to buy votes from their constituents and their special interests. The absurdity of their opposition to earmarks would be hilarious if it weren’t terribly pathetic. Not that I’m defending this practice (as I really don’t), but the reality is that, if they ban earmarking, it would destroy any political capital they could reap during every midterm and presidential election season.

Earmarks should absolutely be abolished; however, what the Republicans are calling for is nothing short of a racket. They must be called out on this fraud, which they are perpetrating.

Senator-elect Rand Paul Chooses Campaign Aide as Chief of Staff

Senator-elect Rand Paul, who won his senatorial race in Kentucky against Democratic opponent Jack Conway, has chosen campaign aide Doug Stafford, a long-time GOP political consultant, to be his Chief of Staff who will be responsible for assembling a Senate staff.

WLKY.com reports:

Stafford serves as vice president of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and as a consultant to the Campaign for Liberty, an organization chaired by Paul’s father, Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and former GOP presidential candidate.

I will admit that, while Conway was worse than Paul on a number of key issues, Rand has made me feel uncomfortable throughout the election season with his comments on a handful of issues that obviously paint him as a social conservative on that front. His troubling positions, as best as I can assemble them, include his positions on gay marriage and medical marijuana, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act* (specifically because of his poorly-argued, poorly-worded semi-libertarian defense of private racist proprietors who refused service to people on the grounds of their skin color), his defense of the War on Terror (specifically his opposition to closing down Guantanamo Bay a.k.a. Gitmo and trying the “enemy combatants” in New York that issue became the center of a much-publicized controversy), his polarizing stances on illegal immigration and birthright citizenship, abortion, transferring some functions like disbursing student loans and Pell Grants of the Department of Education (which he does favor ending, and I concur with him on this) to other departments and agencies in lieu of eliminating them, to name a few. Additionally, his comments on the recent BP oil spill, in which he called Obama’s criticism of BP “un-American,” rankled me because, although I oppose the federal government’s involvement in the clean-up, BP ought to have been held responsible for the spill and be forced to pay for the clean-up costs.

I’m willing to reserve judgment and see how he handles his first six-year term. But don’t expect me to hold my breath either.

[*Note: While I agree in principle that racist proprietors have a right to be racist and do have a right to exclude anyone for any reason (even if it has to do with that individual’s skin color) because of my support for freedom of association, that does NOT translate into me saying that I condone the behavior. I am a much bigger fan of community organizing (like Obama is), and I do favor boycotts, sit-ins, non-violent and voluntary ostracism, and other forms of non-violent protests aimed at private statist employers who use their bigotry as a moral and rational justification for averting non-violent customers from entering their establishments. Such criticisms of these grotesque practices are valid and widely accepted in the Liberty movement. It is regrettable that Paul had to reverse his position on that provision of the bill due to the ugly fall-out of his comments which were clearly poorly-constructed and ill-thought out.]

Hypocrisy and Absurdity Reign in This Election Season

Today is Election Day, and nothing can be worse than the incessant impetus of the state-worshiping electorate swarming into their local voting precincts, whether they are public “government” schools, firehouses, and other state-approved municipalities, to cast their state-sanctioned, state-endorsed, and state-approved votes for their preferred candidates for public “government” office. This even entails their votes for or against state-approved measures on the ballot.

The Tea Parties’ call for constitutional government, tax-and-spending cuts, no cap and trade, fiscal accountability, and a repeal of the recently-passed, Obama-approved health care program, as stated in its recently-circled “Contract from America” document which has been pushed and lobbied by many of its backers, rings hollow in comparison to their steadfast backing of the establishment’s Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and controlling and their need to militarize the borders between the U.S. and Mexico. One must include their lack of condemnation of the former Bush administration’s profligate spending (although some of them like conservative The Dana Show host Dana Loesche have skewered W.’s domestic agenda). Last but not least, they have not even bothered to deplore the Department of Homeland Security‘s Transportation Security Administration checkpoints’ thoroughly invasive search and frisking procedures commonly known as “enhanced patdowns” along with its utter disregard and violation of passengers’ privacy and civil liberties via its screeners’ use of naked body scanners at nearly every airport across the country. (Ironically, the Bush and Obama administrations “informed” us that the scanners wouldn’t record our images, but the recently-leaked photos of the scanners prove otherwise. Even the U.S. Marshalls Service admitted it.) Given that the conservatives’ “revolutionary” movement has put Congressmen John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and nearly the entire GOP in the House and the Senate “on probation,” should we seriously take them at their word?

The “Contract from America” document is a de facto embarrassment and fraud on the American electorate, its semi-libertarian undertones notwithstanding. It’s nothing more than a descendant of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” although a number of GOP’ers more or less liken the GOP’s “Pledge to America” document to it. No where in this newest proposal does it tacitly say anything about repealing nearly every federal agency, regulation, and a host of entitlement programs. There is no call to end the U.S. federal government’s disastrous energy and foreign policies (which go hand-in-hand in reality). For example, the manifesto calls for an “Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy,” which mandates the following:

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

Even worse, there is no call to repeal the federal income tax, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and repeal all the federal spending (which constitutional scholars on the laissez-faire/minarchist side would deride as “unconstitutional”). Only a mention of a “moratorium on all earmarks” unless a balanced budget appears, but why a moratorium? Why not outright abolition of the earmarks and the spending? In the interim, a gutting of the spending would be much preferable to that option, but obviously this is done specifically to pander to a base of conservatives who really don’t want cuts in or repeal of entitlement, pork, and defense spending out of fear that such moves would affect their piece of the welfare-warfare pie. After all, there’s nothing better than a conservative politician who is buying votes from blocs of welfare-worshiping, warfare-worshiping Tea Party activists and their voting base who are primarily interested in and defensive of propping up and maintaining their hegemonies of the Middle East.

One would think that the Tea Parties would field GOP candidates who are solid on pro-peace, pro-civil liberties platforms. With the possible exception of Ron Paul, the idea of said candidates is an oxymoron in terms. The vast majority of the Republican establishment is a warmongering outfit, and one can include all the Tea Parties on that column. Republican congressional candidates running on anti-war and national-security state platforms might have been worthy of consideration for the electorate (despite the likelihood of grumblings from the Tea Partiers), given that it might have energized scores of Americans who have been increasingly viewing the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as both fiscal albatrosses and embarrassing quagmires. But don’t count on that. The Tea Party is fundamentally opposed to that idea, and their conservative underlings would scream bloody murder at the prospect of an anti-war, anti-state Republican in their midst. Thank you Tea Partiers and Republicans. Your pro-war, anti-civil liberties records have emboldened President Obama to magnify his assaults on the peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire Middle East, and on our own shores as well and bolster international support for global hegemony. Obama’s barbaric policies, which were carried over from the Bush administration and made into his own, ought to incite anger from every American.

The “Pledge to America” manifesto is worse than the above-mentioned one. It gives lip service to slashing spending and paring down the deficit, but it barely elaborates on some specifics. The Republicans’ conservative base and the Tea Party are heavily putting an enormous amount of stock in the GOP to retake the House (which is very likely after today) and possibly conquer the Senate to carry their agendas, but they are foolish to do such a thing. The GOP is asking the Tea Party and their conservative supporters to have faith in their fiscal restraint, but what do they have to show for it after Bush’s rampant spending during his years in the Oval Office? After being wiped out politically in 2008, their credibility and respectability have been virtually obliterated beyond repair. Even their support for the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, and other pervasive government programs have never wavered. What will it take for the Tea Party candidates to wake up and realize that, despite one of their concerns is cuts in entitlement spending (despite the fact that 63 percent of the movement is opposed to that), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are also government programs? Even the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex are programs too.

And what of the Democrats? The Democrats have come off as absurd hypocrites on the home and war fronts without question. President Obama has broken more than a handful of promises to the American people, promises that he made to his constituency and his base who backed him to deliver his promise of “change” to the U.S. His promises, such as making his administration transparent to an already-skeptical, already-cynical American public, ending the Bush-propped, Bush-backed War in Iraq (which he’s failed to do twice in a row), digging the economy out of the Bush-imposed recession, and ending Washington’s culture of interest interests and lobbyism, were never intended to be delivered. After all, he has already backpedaled on his intentions to end the military’s old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (twice in a row, point of fact), and his appeal to a federal appeals court that overturned that Clinton-era executive order has already enraged his gay progressive Democratic base. Oh, and his expensive stimulus and Cash-for-Clunker programs and bailouts of GM and Chrysler have really bloated the deficit even further, which have become fodder for the right-wing talking heads on Fox News.

Obama has already embroiled the nation further in the Iraqi and Afghani conflicts than Bush ever had. After all, we are talking about the same current president who has proceeded with Bush’s war policies by amplifying his genocidal killings in the Muslim nations and blatantly declared war on our civil liberties and the Constitution. Unlike Obama, Bush did not so much possess a morsel of authority to engage in assassinations of Americans in the name of the War on Terror without a shred of due process. His pledge to pull the plug on Guantanamo Bay — that is, releasing all Americans imprisoned as “enemy combatants” who would be tried by a an American criminal court in New York (given that they are constitutionally accorded with the right to due process and a right to a speedy trial) in lieu of a U.S. military tribunal without the presence of a jury of their peers and the right to a defense by an attorney on their behalf — was rescinded due to conservative outcries because expressions of sympathy and empathy for “terrorists” would be tantamount to appeasing and treason. Such a move would give the loopy fringe right wing plenty of ammunition, thereby denouncing Obama as a supporter of terrorism. Obama’s backpedaling on reversing Bush’s foreign policy would enable the Republicans to brand the President sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause. Can you imagine how that would play out for Obama’s re-election chances? Those labeled slapped on him and the Democratic Party would make the Democrats’ chances for re-election to the House and the Senate more problematic than it is now.

Americans who are convinced that the country is moving towards the wrong direction should realize that the GOP’s power grab of the House and possibly the Senate won’t do anything to unroot the manifestation, cause, and flow of statism in this country and abroad. The state’s tentacles have reached every facet of American and international lives as we know it. Republicans who claim that this election is about a “referendum against Obama” are deluding themselves because it’s truly a referendum to exact more control of American lives and wiping away more of our freedoms than ever Republican-style. The Democrats are at least honest about not being in favor of laissez faire and individual liberty; after all, they have never believed in the individual, just only in the collective. But the Republicans’ incessant claims of championing those values are not worth the campaign literature on which they are printed. Every statist action from exacting conquest of other nations (including the Muslim world) to engineering government-mandated pensions and medical care for retired and poor people must be scrapped. The much-worse welfare-warefare state that has inundated the United Kingdom and Europe will soon metastasize to our soil. The welfare-warfare statism in our homeland is untenable and unmanageable.

All the odious signs of the Republicans are there. Once they are in power (and after tonight, they will be), they will proceed with the War on Drugs and be more aggressive with their xenophobic, nationalistic, and jingoistic anti-immigration zealotry. All the campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, the Tea Parties and their Republican operatives will conquer and rule the American people like their Democratic counterparts in a statist conservative Republican manner.

Hypocrisy and absurdity surely reign in this election season. Especially on Election Day today.

The Moral and Economic Bankruptcy and Ignorance of Real Time Host Bill Maher

Statist liberal and Barack Obama shill Bill Maher, host of his populist HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, fired a rant that contained a series of smears and ad hominems at the Republicans who are up in arms over the passage and enactment of ObamaCare.

Here’s a YouTube clip* of Maher making his speech on the March 26, 2010 episode of his show:

Medical Statism a.k.a. ObamaCare Passes in the House

ObamaCare, which is officially known as Patient Protection and Affordability Act of 2010 (H.R. 3950), has just passed in the House. The vote tally comes at 219-212.

It’s now expected that Herr Obama will sign it on his desk this upcoming Tuesday. But how can he sign a bill into law if the Senate hasn’t applied the “fixes” that the Democrats made to the House-passed version of the bill hours ago? Because those “fixes” aren’t REAL fixes. Those are just last-minute amendments to the bill AFTER it was passed, and they are heading to the Senate. The bill has already cleared the halls of Congress. According to the Voice of America news website, “[T]he Senate must still sign-off on a series of changes approved by the House.”

Obviously, so many backroom dealings had occurred on the House floor. The key provisions of the legislation that the medical lobbyists and Big Insurance (like Blue Cross Blue Shield) are backing include:

1. Coercing individuals to buy insurance or be faced with a penalty of 2.5 percent of income. That penalty would come to an annual amount of $695 if individuals refuse to accept that coverage.
2. Coercing employers to offer insurance to their workers or face a penalty of $2,000 per worker. Specifically, employers will be coerced to cover 65% of family premiums or fork over a penalty based on payroll. Small businesses with less than $500,000 on payroll will be exempt and payrolls up to $750,000 will have a reduced contribution.
3. Banning private insurance firms (that don’t have the political clout like Big Insurance does) that want new business from denying coverage to policyholders having preexisting medical conditions.
4. Coercing above-mentioned firms to accept new government regulations and mandates.
5. Coercing parents to keep their children on their medical plans until they reach the age of 26.

The most laughable aspect of this “debate” on the House floor is that Democratic Congresscritter Bart Stupak from my home state of Michigan, who was originally against the bill because of a provision in the bill that would allow taxpayer financing of abortions, flip flopped on it because of a meaningless deal that Obama cut with him by saying that he would issue an executive order to prohibit the funding. Stupak wasn’t against the bill because it would solidify the state’s entrenchment in the medical care system; he was against it because of his pro-life views. If that provision had not been written in the bill in the first place, does anyone really think he would have voted against it? Not in a New York minute!

(Interestingly and hilariously enough, the congressman was branded a “baby killer” by a Republican colleague in the House, although he has an idea of who said it.)

Once the bill is signed into law and goes into effect, one can be certain that millions of Americans will not obey the law. This is what happens when the state furthers itself into the medical care system much more than it has in decades. Any chance of restoring a true free market medical care system went up in smoke the second the bill passed.

It’s time for all Liberty activists to start practicing civil disobedience and educate the masses in a clear, concise, and innovative way. No more the state! More freedom than ever!

Penn Jillette on Larry King Live: "I Think The President Should Have Much Less Power…"

Libertarian magician/TV personality Penn Jillette was on Larry King Live last night, with leftist talk radio show host Stephanie Miller, leftist Clintonite James Carville, and conservative and former RNC advisor Terry Holt, in which he points out that Obama “should have much less power.” Collectivistic liberal Miller rebutts his argument by saying:

STEPHANIE MILLER: Penn, we got to have, you know, help around the world with the War on Terror. I mean, I know, after the Bush administration, it’s kind of a low bar for an overseas trip [to London for the G20 Summit]. Uh, as long as, you know, he didn’t throw up on someone, uh, chew with his mouth open, or give someone, uh, an unnecessary back rub, I guess we’re happy. But, I do think his popularity around the world is really going to help us. You know, I mean, he said something starting for an American president. He said, “I’m gonna listen … I’m here to listen and not just talk.” And I think, I think that’s really important.

Jillette responded with the following:

PENN JILLETTE: I was just going to say Bush didn’t say the opposite. I mean, it’s not, uh, that’s not a very profound to thing to just say that you’re going to listen. I mean, yes, people like him more. He’s better looking, he’s a better speaker, and I guess that’s okay. But the whole country rallying behind somebody is always a bad idea.

And the following exchange between Miller and Jillette occured, especially given her smug remarks:

MILLER: Listen, Penn, the only people that are in bad shape after George Bush is gone are the people in the effigy business, because he was burned in effigy more times when he went on overseas trips…

JILLETTE: You can’t, you can’t, you can’t I pretend I’m pushing for Bush. I’m not. I’m just saying the President shouldn’t have that much power.

Right on, Penn! That statist scumbag Miller, whose demeanor on the show is atypical of a limousine leftist, thinks that the American people shouldn’t be exercising individualism whatsoever. And not only that, she claims that we must “have help around the world with the War on Terror.” But wait a second! Aren’t Democrats for civil liberties? Aren’t they for ending the War in Iraq? Aren’t they against the War on Terror?

The answers to those questions are no, no, and no. It certainly proves that the Democrats were never against the War in Iraq; they were against Bush’s handling of the war, because, had they had the White House for eight years after the attacks of 9/11, they would have launched their own invasion and occupation of Iraq. It proves that they are not for civil liberties, as they are not for releasing the inmates of Guantanamo Bay into civilian custody, even though Obama allegedly ordered an end of the detention center. It also proves that they are not for ending the war in Iraq, despite the fact that Obama claims that military operations will “cease” in Iraq on August 31, 2010.

The fact that Miller takes a hostile position against Jillette shows the Left’s hypocritical nature and its vile, repugnant ways.

King himself arrogantly says, “You can be individualistic as much as you like. Someone’s gotta think for the masses.” Excuse me? Someone’s “gotta think for the masses”? This sheeple mentality is indicative of the statist mind, including the limousine leftists like King, Miller, and Carville.

Can someone please remind these clowns that America was founded on the ideals of individual liberty, personality responsiblity, and limited government, not collectivism of the tyrannical kind, protection from personal responsibility, and limitless, out-of-control government?

Watch the video of the chat if you dare:

[Cross-posted at the Freeman Chronicles.]

Update: I was told by a fellow libertarian (a big LRC’er) that the conservative guest Terry Holt under Penn Jillette “was also okay but not as forceful.” He also said that Holt was “more of a conservative” and had embraced “too many of the democrat premises and terms.” For once, he’s right. The conservative clown seemed to be more in agreement with Carville and Miller than with Jillette, although he did side with Jillette by saying that the government creates a system of “winners and losers” via the tax system. But, as a typical right-winger, he refuses to call for ending the state’s control over the individual, especially by ending the federal income tax and other vile, diabolical government machinations.