Upon first hearing of the incident my initial reaction was “meh, big whoop”.  I personally thought it was a bit crude but couldn’t really criticize those brave young troops who are daily engaging an enemy with no sense of honor or humanity.  There is no doubt in my mind that the subhuman filth that were assuming room temperature in the video would have done much worse to our dead as they have shown repeatedly in the past.  So I was a bit surprised at first to hear criticism of our servicemen from the right side of the aisle.  After hearing the critics explain their positions I better understand where they are coming from.  Their concerns are that “we are better than that” and that the left and the bad guys will automatically point to this episode as further proof that we are the barbaric baby killers they claim we are.  And of course that it will serve as a recruitment tool for the Taliban and al-Qaeda and further outrage the “Arab Street”.

In my honest opinion, it really doesn’t matter.  The liberals don’t need any more proof to make up their minds that our military is made up of a bunch of uneducated Hitler Youth.   And the “Arab Street” is already 100% saturated in unhinged psycho self-righteous outrage anyway so this neither adds to nor subtracts from their hysteria.  In regards to the “we are better than that” argument, yes, perhaps we are.  However, the frustration of the young men and women of our military that have worked diligently over the past decade to provide a better life and path for the people of this region is understandable. The fact is that they are still attacked and maimed– or worse– tortured and killed by an un-uniformed, un-civilized barbaric enemy that continues to receive widespread public support in spite of all the humanitarian efforts we have made.  Peeing on corpses doesn’t “lower ourselves to their level” any more than burning Qurans would have.

Yet another side of the argument is that “this is war”.  The meaning I assume is that in a situation where hot steel is hurtling through the air constantly threatening to rip your body to shreds and possibly visiting sudden death upon you at any minute, perhaps a little well placed urine is a pretty minor thing in the big picture.  While it is hard to argue with that position, the problem is this is not a war.  From a legal standpoint it never has been.  Congress has never declared war and we have not ever stated that we are at war with a country and its people.  Our mission, as described, is to go out and round up and kill off those fanatics that would do us harm around the world.  An argument could be made that we should have declared war and waged a “total war” on the persons and the countries that harbor and support them.  But the fact remains that we never did that.  Now as far as the average Mark the Marine out there goes, he does not struggle with the concept of whether or not we are formally at war.  From his perspective there are people out there trying to kill him in the most hideous ways.  I cannot doubt that he really does not care what the status of the conflict is.

Bottom line, I can’t condemn these servicemen for their actions.  In the heat of combat with buddies killed and wounded, unfair and uncivilized tactics being used by the enemy and a confused message from our political leaders about the mission, anything they do to relieve some steam like this is no big deal.  Now there is some question whether or not any real urination took place.  A friend of mine sent me the following video and for the life of me I cannot “see the pee”.  (warning graphic content)  The only criticism that could possibly be leveled is that, just like at Abu Ghraib, the idea to bring a camera to the party was not very bright, and for that little indiscretion, unfortunately, they will be court-martialed and quite possibly face jail time.

(video provided by Darwin Teague)

In other words, schooling and education can indeed be exclusive of each other.

In the United States, literacy rates have dropped steadily over the past hundred years; taking their sharpest turns for the worse over the past few decades. It now seems that schooling has become more about seeing to a child’s self-esteem than it is about their education. There is little given incentive for success. One of our older children (who was adopted from Russia in 1998 at the age of 7) was shuffled through the public education system from grade to grade, barely passing a number of subjects, and now he struggles to complete job applications accurately. (This was despite our extra help and tutoring. He is a rather confident fellow though – but has little to back that up in terms of reading and math skills.) We (and he) had trusted the system to give him the best possible education.

It did not.

As parents, we have decided to pursue other avenues than this one-size-fits-all approach to education. But before we began, we needed to do some homework. This led us to some important reading. I highly recommend The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto as a primer on what the original (and continuing ) purpose of compulsory public education was (and is) in America. The book is a well-researched and annotated eye-opener about the role of education, which is essentially “non-education.” (You can read the book for free online by following this link: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm )  Another interesting take on the current system of public education is from a fellow named Ken Robinson which is briefly explained through a video done by an organization called the RSA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkPvSCq5ZXk&feature=related .

 ”But what about socialization?” 

If any of you are familiar with the book Lord of the Flies, I think you’ll understand our answer to that question. There is NO other place in society where people are segregated solely according to age like children are in the system of public education. (Think about it for a bit.) Prior to the advent of public education in America, where did kids get the opportunity to socialize and with whom did they socialize? Our peers are those whom we CHOOSE as our peers and not those whom we’re TOLD are our peers. Our youngest children have friends their own age, but they also have friends who are in their 60′s through their 80′s! Is it better to learn manners and acceptable behavior from someone older or from a kid your age who knows about the same as you do? We would rather subject our children to the ‘peer pressure’ of role models who have ‘been there, done that’ than tossing them into an artificial social fray of like-aged people struggling to find their own way and making up their own rules as they go.

Context is everything.

I highly recommend the book Hold On To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate. It offers an explanation of a phenomenon coined by the authors as ‘peer orientation’ wherein children form stronger emotional attachments to their peers than their parents, which leads to many of the social issues we see among the youth of today. The book is not free online like the Gatto book referenced above, but perhaps your local library has a copy. (Here is a link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375760288/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=704690682&ref=pd_sl_1j8blgcdem_e  . And here is a link to part of the forward by its author: http://www.transformativeparenting.com/book-excerpt )

My wife and I don’t consider ourselves ‘home-schoolers.’ We consider ourselves home educators, as we have found there is a vast difference between schooling and educating. We do it because we love our kids, because we want to adapt their learning experiences to them, to their strengths, to their interests and to give them the very best of learning experiences. Learning is fun, it is not rote, it is not done for the purposes of testing – and in the end it is not done merely for the purposes of credentialing. Learning is a lifelong process of gathering / sorting / sifting our experiences for the purpose of making sense of the world we live in – and not just a means of ‘making’ a living.

Learning IS living.

Paramount Pictures released its newest Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie a few weeks ago to great fanfare and an all out advertising blitz. Cruise reprises his role as Ethan Hunt, and true to the title of the film, Hunt takes on the seemingly impossible task of trying to avert all out nuclear war against overwhelming odds. This primary season and the run up to it appear to present patriots with an equally impossible mission, getting an actual conservative candidate nominated for the GOP ticket to run against Barack Hussein Obama.

 
After the 2008 election and the GOP’s disasterous choice to nominate a moderate to carry the party colors, and then the rise of the Tea Party and a resurgence of Libertarian ideals, the smart money bet was on another Reagan revolution for 2012. Conservatives and libertarian-leaning conservative types felt sure that they would be able to push forth a staunch Constitutional candidate with deep conservative/libertarian bona fides as our candidate to go after the second coming of Jimmy Carter. What we didn’t consider was the commitment on the left and the “Republican establishment” to do whatever they had to in order to prevent that from happening.

 
The problem is that since 1990 or so the left has moved much further left, and the “right” has moved with them. Today’s RNC more closely resembles the Democrat party of Tip O’Neil than the party of Ronaldus Magnus. Part of that is due to the badly mistaken philosophy that moderation appeals to independents. Another part of it is the avalanche of Democrats at the state and local levels that changed party affiliation during the 80’s and 90’s then sought offices at the federal level. The left moved further left because, quite honestly, they could. With the Republicans commandeering the middle ground, the Democrats that didn’t change their stripes had no problem moving in the direction they wanted to take the country in anyway.

 
And this is why we cannot seem to nominate that 21st century Ronald Reagan as the GOP standard bearer. Both sides are scared to death of the idea and will do everything in their power to torpedo any real conservative that comes forward. Such a candidate would piss in the Apple Jacks of both groups. You see, they know that a proper patriot in the CIC role with a principled attachment to the primary founding document will be more successful and beloved than any president in the past 30 years. They also know that a person like that, can sweep like minded Congresscritters and Senators into office along with them and break up the “good ole boy network” of RINOs and Marxists.

 
Luckily for the evildoers in DC, they have a trump card, one that they play often and with devastating effectiveness. It is known as the national news media. They are the willing accomplices of these jackball enemies of freedom not because they are aligned politically, but because they share the same overwhelming hatred of Libertarians and Conservatives. These tools are all too willing to run with whatever concocted story they are fed by the political operatives in the GOP and DNC. Anyone that is determined to be a major threat can look forward to a plethora of lies and innuendo to be spewed from every news outlet in the media loudly and at the top of the broadcast every day until they cease and desist in their effort to save the Republic.

 
Sarah Palin was the target in the run up to the 2008 race. McCain, in an effort to overcome the disadvantage of running against the first black presidential candidate to gain a major party’s nomination, selected the attractive “Caribou Barbie” type governor of Alaska as his running mate. Before long though, it became apparent that she was much more than a pretty face with a Remington. Once this woman started speaking to the crowds at rallies she became a star and excited all the wrong people. On top of that she had her own ideas about what the role of government should be and what the causes of the nation’s ills were. Before you could say “Sarahcuda” the long knifes came out from not only the left and the media but from within McCain’s own campaign staff. In spite of the venom spewed her way she became the most popular half of the ticket and once the race was lost a full court press was on by all sides to kill her off politically. Never in the history of politics were so many unsubstantiated charges leveled at a political figure– none of them, by the way, ever had a single iota of truth to them.

 
Over the next three years the media and the professional politicians spared no invective in discussions of Sarah Palin. Afraid that she would re-emerge as a political force during the 2012 campaign for the White House, they did their dead level best to discredit her at every opportunity. While they concentrated on her though, some other ulcers were developing for them. One of them was named Herman Cain. At first nobody took him very seriously, conventional wisdom, (which I like to refer to as professional stupidity), dictated that since he had never held public office he was no threat. “Just a novelty candidate that would fade away soon enough on his own.” Then after a few very good debate performances, he surged ahead in the polls. His ideas of limited government, flat taxes and– horror of horrors!– shutting down parts of the federal government scared the bejeebers out of the GOP, but his color petrified the DNC. There was no way a man of color that had personal accomplishments beyond being a community organizer could be allowed to get the nomination.

It was quite obvious that he would make mincemeat out of the Marxist Messiah in the general election and deny him of one of his favorite claims: racism from the right. After tooling around with several different attacks that wouldn’t stick, an old Axelrod trick was pulled out of the bag. Sexual perversion is a favorite weapon of the left and the media. Women can always be found in a professional man’s past that have an axe to grind or are eager to capitalize on an opportunity afforded by knowing someone who is running for President. In quick succession the left trotted out three harlots with claims that Cain had acted “inappropriately” with them. Those who cared to could find lots of information on these “ladies” (and I use that term very loosely) that indicated they were anything but pillars of their communities, but no news outlet would cover those facts. Cain vehemently denied any wrongdoing but finally relented and withdrew from the race in an effort to save his family and his name from further ridicule. The funny thing was, as soon as he withdrew, all news on the subject and further accusations ceased. What a co-ink-e-dink!

 
With the demise of the Cain train an old boogie man of the left (and some on the right) raised his head. Newt Gingrich could not be considered a staunch conservative by most but he did have the annoying habit of speaking truths that were, shall we say, inconvenient. And he endorsed most of the same ideas that Cain had. He even had the bad taste to claim that the “Palestinians were an invented people”. The national press collectively gasped and soiled their underwear as they planned his lynching. Of course a Rino opponent with deep pockets went after him as well. It didn’t take long to start him sliding down in the polls as a result.

Of course one of the main antagonists of the establishment has always been Ron Paul. The man exudes Jeffersonian/Libertarian ideals that I love. Like him or not, Ron Paul has done more than any politician since Barry Goldwater to blur the line between conservative and libertarian politics, and for that he deserves recognition.  Candidates as mainstream as Perry and Bachmann would never think to make abolition of the DoE a campaign promise without the influence Ron Paul has made.  But no matter how much bits and pieces of his philosophy have become mainstream, he remains far outside of most voters’ comfort zone due to his foreign policies.  Unfortunately, that in itself provides condemning fodder for the media and his opponents and they waste no time in using it to disparage him. The sad part is when they do this they are able to ignore all those domestic issues he is dead on correct about.  While this Tea Party got its start at his 2007 Presidential campaign kick-off and although they share a primary focus on fiscal conservatism, many Tea Partiers find themselves unable to back a candidate seen widely as a blame-America-first pal of Alex Jones’.

 
Having proved himself the not-Romney candidate by topping Ron Paul in Iowa, the next target for annhialation will be Rick Santorum. Not only has he espoused social-conservative ideals, but he has also suggested the maddening idea of cutting 5 trillion from the federal budget and applying Lean Six Sigma management principles from the private sector to all parts of the federal government. After a win in Iowa (yes, he won, when you spend one tenth the amount of money of your major challenger and only miss by a handful votes, that is a win) he will become public enemy number one to the political class in this country. The attacks won’t be based on legitimate concerns like his votes on debt ceiling increases.  They will be grounded in the establishment’s goal to destroy him rather than risk him challenging the status quo.  The media’s first shot has already been fired across their bow by taking his comments about black folks and welfare out of context.  Only in the Age of Obama could saying that you don’t believe you can rise one group up by giving them others’ money be considered a controversial statement.  And this is only the beginning, I am sure.

 
So Conservatives and Libertarians, your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to talk to your friends and neighbors. Convince them that we must nominate at least a fairly principled candidate that is committed to restoring this Republic to a semblance of its former glory. And eject the jug eared wonder boy from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Join a campaign, put up signs, knock on doors and raise funds for the candidate of your choice. Most of all, don’t get discouraged because the guy you want gets beat. Remember what the number one goal is, and make it happen!!

This message will self destruct in 10 seconds………

I would be remiss not to begin by saying that this is not a critique of the decision not to homeschool.  A good friend of mine is a mother who sends her children to the public school that my son would have attended.  We mutually respect one another’s choices for our children and trust that each of us has made a fully informed decision.  As I will later discuss, my decisions are not an attack on others’ choices and I am anything but threatened by their choices— nor am I threatened by attacks on my own.

Too often I have heard criticism of the choice my husband and I made for our son’s education, claiming that he will fail to receive the socialization or well-rounded education that public schools provide.  What it really comes down to, however, is that those who oppose homeschooling do so generally for one of two reasons—either ignorance of what homeschooling means, or insecurity over their own choices. 

In regard to socialization, I fail to see what is so beneficial in having my child exposed to the influence of children who I would abhor to have in my home.  Children who are using drugs before they are even in junior high, ones who are permitted to address their parents with vulgarities, and students who deliberately waste their teachers’ time by interrupting class—all of these are children who represent a negative influence that my son will not have to contend with.

That is not to say that homeschool children are denied opportunities to form friendships with a diverse and varied group of other children.  Homeschooling associations are more popular than ever, allowing parents to network and share responsibility.  Those with exceptional writing skill can teach English “classes”, those who scored 750 in the math section of the SATs can assume that role, etc.  Exposure to the “one teacher, many students” model that some claim to be a necessity for college preparedness is not mutually exclusive of homeschooling. 

In addition, most states provide for homeschoolers to take select classes at the local school, and even to participate in sports.  While homeschooling, I took Driver’s Ed at my sister’s future high school.  It served as a good reminder of why I was thankful for the ability to choose my own friends. 

Returning to the issue of why homeschooling parents receive so much criticism, I find that a lack of understanding is actually less frequently the motivation.  The majority of hostility toward homeschooling is from those who take another family’s choice as an indirect attack on their own.  Their insecurity over whether they really did what was best—whether they felt they didn’t have the option to homeschool, or they enrolled their children in public school by social default—it seems a great many parents are too blinded by their own feelings of inadequacy to accept that for a great many children, homeschooling is the ideal choice.

Many such parents will huffily respond, “Well, my children went to public school, and they turned out great.  Homeschooled kids aren’t prepared for college and the real world.”  I’m sure that’s true in some cases, though the statics prove that such stories prove very much the exception, not the rule.

Homeschooled children outperform public K-12 students by 30-37 percentile points in all subjects—disproving the stereotype about how parentally- and independently-educated children are denied proper access to the sciences.  While those new to homeschooling tend to rank around the 59^th percentile (a noteworthy amount above average), those who have doing so for two or more years are at an amazing 86^th to 92^nd percentile. 

As for preparation for college, 72% of 18-24 year olds who were homeschooled have taken college level classes, compared to 46% of the general population.  The overall trend is that home-educated children grow up to be better-educated, more likely to attend college, and ready for the adult world sooner than their public school peers.  It’s not uncommon that a homeschooler would already taking college coursework while underage; I  began college at 15 with a high school diploma from an accredited homeschool resource center—ironically more than a full year prior to taking Driver’s Ed with what would have been my peer group.

There are children in the government-run education system who have the potential to meet or exceed these remarkable statistics.  However, the system itself is not designed for those students to do so, it’s a one-size-fits-all in which parents must have determination as well as luck.  The potential outcomes in education are akin to cooking for one’s self at home verses eating out.  In a restaurant, whether or not you like your meal depends on where you eat, who prepared it, and whether what you expected lines up with what the chef was trying to create.  In homeschooling, as in cooking at home, there’s a much better chance your end result will be what you intended– provided you know what you’re doing.

Assuming the parent does know what they’re doing, educating their children at home can also be a more time-efficient choice.  Because homeschooling and independent learning don’t waste time covering subjects longer than necessary for the benefit of slower students, most homeschool parents find the portion of their child’s day dedicated specifically to learning is far shorter than that of a traditional school day. 

Also, there is a general trend that homeschooling parents seek out ways to make recreational time educational as well.  While baking together, my son and I discuss fractions and the chemistry involved in the cooking process.  When I discuss politics with him, his unprompted queries are– almost without exception– ones asking why the government thinks it should be involved in matters that the free market could resolve.  He is four years old.

The statistics on homeschooling outcomes and our promising start are encouraging.  The choice to push forward– like all my decisions as a mother– is based on another of Ayn Rand’s ideas: the virtue of my selfishness.

My love for my son and my conscience as to whether I am doing right by him are fully selfish feelings.  All that I do for him is grounded in the joy that he gives me, and the joy that comes from giving him all that I can.  Many misunderstand what selfishness really means, or how it differs from inability to love anyone but one’s self.  But as Rand has said in both novels and interviews, “In order to say ‘I love you’, one must first be able to say the ‘I’.”

Acting out of the love of myself and acting out of my love for my son are one in the same.  I love him as deeply as Dagny Taggert loved her railroad, as deeply as Ayn Rand believed in the power of man to achieve.  To give all of yourself in service of what or whom you love is to abhor the cowardice of not giving them the whole of yourself.  For me, a large part of that is to homeschool.

The values that Galt’s Gulch was founded on—the ability to reason and a recognition of the value of one’s self—are ones that are already fully established in my son’s personality.  I provide him what he needs educationally, but far more important parts in homeschooling are helping him learn to reason rather than blindly accept, and to teach him that personal responsibility can overcome any obsticle. 

While responsibility for his education falls primarily on my shoulders, his identity is in no way a mere extension of my own. 

There is no literal Galt’s Gulch for me to raise my son in, but I fully intend to raise him in one of my our creation.

Do you know why Democrat majorities are so tremendously successful in achieving the goals of their agenda?  It’s because even the most moderate members of their party will vote for the most extreme of them for Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader.  Our party doesn’t have any Blue Dog Democrats willing to take the heat for acting in solidarity and choosing an effective Speaker, because they’re all Blue Dog Democrats.  For all the high hopes we placed on the Tea Party Freshmen, almost without exception they’ve fallen victim to the GOP establishment and turned in their backbones after the swearing-in ceremonies.

These people have the majority in the House– the chamber from which all bills are supposed to originate, the one with the most opportunities to spout talking points– and look who they’re being beaten by.  They’re getting done like a hot hotel maid when Kobe Bryant is in town, and they’re taking it from the most limp-wristed, Beta male president in history.  I mean, really people?  The mom jeans wearing, underhand baseball throwing, helmet on a bike wearing, serial bower to foreign dictators?  I have a cat that singed his whiskers trying to sniff fire once (true story) and even he is less stupid than the Congressmen who are willing to bend over for Obama.

It’s been over two years since the Democrats have proposed a budget.  In spite of the 1974 law mandating that they create one annually, and in spite of the fact that they controlled a trifecta of domination in DC, they couldn’t even agree with each other enough to pass a big-spending budget.  Many of the more moderate Democrats lost their seats in 2012, there’s still quite a few who remain and would happily go along with a GOP plan if it were shown to be a compromise.  Except that there’s nothing for the GOP to compromise on,  because the cuts they’re suggesting even before drafting bills are so washed down that there’s nowhere to go from there. 

Boehner: “We’ll raise the debt ceiling for the bazillionth time this presidency, but we’ll off-set it by the same amount of cuts.”   Me: “Oh, that’s actually an okay deal.  I’ll sign off on that.”   Boehner: “Ha!  Gotcha!  The savings use the stimulus-inflated spending as a baseline, and are calculated over the course of a decade.”   Me:  “…”

We can talk all we want about “calling Obama’s bluff“, but so long as we cheer on the Balanced Budget Amendment and then offer up a budget like that, it’s not Obama whose bluff I’m worried about being called.  And c’mon, even freshly-seated Senators are only guaranteed their seats for another 5 1/2 years, why would anyone take seriously a spending plan that only starts “saving” money after the point where a brand new House, Senate, and President would have to give it the okay? 

As Senator Rand Paul said, if the deficit is bigger than the year before, and the debt is bigger than the year before, THAT IS NOT A CUT.  More on Senator Paul and his common sense later.

The jumping off point for all negotiations should be trim the budget so drastically that we spend no more than the revenue we take in, and refusal to raise the debt ceiling.  In spite of the White House talking points that some people are naive enough to believe, we can easily avoid default even if the debt ceiling is not raised.  It’s not the end of the world.  The sun won’t spontaneously explode, the seas will not turn to blood, nothing all that different from the consequences from our current debt will happen– unless it is by deliberate choice. 

Take a look at the differences between who will be paid in a shutdown, and who was paid during Clinton’s.  Clinton was a lot of things, but he was a politician first and when they’re not dirtying up my own party’s agenda, professional politicians do serve a purpose.  Clinton followed guidelines set in place since Reagan’s presidency regarding the payment of our troops during a government shutdown.  He knew that the pro-military vote was a significant one, and logic would suggest that when we’re in however many wars we’re fighting (I’ve lost track) that supporting the troops would be important now more than ever. 

Eh, not really.  Keeping from hurting the military doesn’t matter if you can keep them from voting against you.  Leading up to the 2010 election I wrote about the blatant violations of the MOVE Act, where overseas troops and their spouses were being systematically stripped of the right to vote.  You know, rights?  Those things that our men and women in war fight for?  They aren’t entitled to them, apparently.

This isn’t about being “the grown-up in the room“, it’s about playing chicken and throwing our servicemen in the trunk of the car to do it.  Obama knows that he’s in control of whether they get paid or not, and that if he chooses not to pay them, that it won’t even hurt him that badly politically.

If we can see this, then there is no way that our elected officials are unaware of the game being played.  They know what’s at stake here, but nonetheless they’re playing footsie with Obama under the table even while they pretend to talk tough.

The false dichotomy about “default or raise the ceiling” should not be accepted as the basis of any debate on the debt.  Our revenue exceeds the interest on our debt several times over, and the prioritization of other spending over paying interest on our debt is just as much a deliberate choice as the refusal to pay our troops.

A lot of people are saying that since we don’t have control of the Senate, that we need to accept that our Congressional majority isn’t significant; we should compromise and try to be more productive when we get our chance at the trifecta of DC dominance.  Except, um, that’s not an inevitability.  No one is going to flock to the polls next year unless they think there will be a meaningful outcome from giving the GOP complete control. 

While the veto power of the Executive Branch trumps the authority of the Legislative, that works to our benefit, not against us.  Even if the GOP didn’t back down and they were painted as forcing a shutdown, there’s ways to even work THAT to our political advantage.  Rand Paul’s “Shutdown Prevention Act” would ensure that spending during a shutdown is prioritized to pay current Medicare patients, Social Security recipients, and our troops AND prevent default– while only paying Congressional employees and the President at 50%.  It also disallows the funding of ObamaCare or any agencies who provide abortion.  Did I also mention that he drafted a budget which would eliminate the annual deficit in only five years? 

As much as Rand Paul makes me “giggle and heave and sigh“, another part of me gets angry because he seems to be the lone member of the GOP who both takes exception with Republican moderates and also provides an alternative.

If we’re going to negotiate, these are the terms we should be laying down in the debate.  If the Democrats aren’t going to compromise too, we should be passing the Shutdown Prevention Act in the House and forcing the Senate to give it an up or down vote. They’re going to call us extremists regardless and say that they’re trying to “save life as we know it” by going against our plans, or that we’re going to “kill Christmas“.  We might as well deserve it by going in with a plan that means business, and offering that as a jumping off point for any potential negotiations.  I’m not holding my breath, though.  The Senate Republicans are too busy calling their colleagues “Tea Party hobbits” to actually work together toward either a solution or an agenda.

We can control the narrative if we want to, and if we did that, we’d control the entire outcome of the debate.  The question is whether the House GOP wants to do that, or if they’d rather just bend over.

Salt bars were used as currency of exchange for more than 1000 years. Travelers report that some are still circulating among the nomads of the Danakil plains in Africa. In ancient Greece, slaves were traded for salt, and an unruly slave was deemed not “worth his salt”. 

Humans have (and still are in some parts of the world) been used as currency.

Pieces of twisted iron called “kissi money” have been used in regions of Western Africa as money. The value of the bar was dependent on the length, which ranged from nine to fifteen inches. If one broke, it was deemed worthless until a ceremony could be performed to restore its value – usually by the local witch doctor with a blacksmith assisting (to re-join the broken pieces).

Weirdly – shaped rocks, some with holes in them or carved with images, have been used as a form of currency in many regions of the world. The larger ones were declared more valuable than the smaller ones.

Colored beads, blankets, and trinkets were reportedly used by the colonists to acquire the island of Manhattan from the indigenous people of the “New World.”

Today, as the economy fails to show signs of real recovery, gold investing has become the newest trend for many (rightly) concerned about the enduring value of our paper currency here in the USA. Late night infomercials hawk gold as a “sound investment.” Sure, it’s true that “gold has never been worth nothing,” but really, everything has some value to someone, so that’s an easy claim to make. Houses in Detroit for instance, which at one time had sold for over $100,000.00 can now be purchased for less than $10,000.00. Many models of used cars have gone up in value because of the disaster of the “Cash for Clunkers” program which effectively took thousands of perfectly good used cars out of the marketplace – displacing thousands of buyers (younger buyers mostly) who can’t afford a new car.

The difficulty in understanding and investing in gold is that there’s no good way to measure its value.  There’s no cash flow or earnings, and the rate is primarily determined via buyers and sellers.  There’s also no intrinsic value to gold – no utility or usefulness (besides looking at it).

The value of gold is simply what someone will pay at a certain period of time. That’s the “value” of anything else, for that matter. “The Rule of Value” should read: “Anything is worth exactly what what someone will sell it for, and what someone else will pay for it.”  Sure, for centuries gold has been used as a measure of value and has assisted people in transferring value. 

While gold has never been worth nothing, it’s important to note that this statement is true because society will always use something (like gold, food, or paper) to transfer value between parties.  Gold has been used because of its scarcity and difficulty to imitate/counterfeit.

Before you invest in gold, I’d suggest you ask yourself this simple question: Why?  Are you counting on something to store value in, or are you looking at it as an investment?  If you’re viewing it as a store of value, be careful to realize that it’s only as valuable as someone will pay at a given time.  If your fear for society is truly great, you might consider storing items that truly provide value – like nonperishable foods, water, clothing, medicines, ammunition, guns, even alcoholic beverages, etc. 

If you think of gold as a good investment, I’d caution you to think back to the internet boom, tech bubble, and housing bubble that we watched over the last two decades.  If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

So investing in gold (or any other commodity) is not necessarily a bad thing, but one mustn’t view it as a “savior plan” for any impending doom. View it for what it is – an investment that needs to be cashed in when you feel you’ve reached a peak value comfort zone: Profit.

 Then take the profit to the store and buy beans, rice, dried and canned foods, clothes, tools, blankets, medicine, ammunition, and even some booze.

If the “end of the world as we know it” becomes reality, those items will get you much more return on your investment – when it really counts.

Cameras are on just about every traffic light and street corner these days, too. In some cities, that is not an exaggeration – and every parking lot of every shopping mall, every convenience store, every truck stop, and even some of the “nature trails” in some city parks now have cameras installed.  The initial motive behind all this surveillance was “security.”

The unintended consequence of all this surveillance is a total loss of privacy for all (please note: If you live in a remote area of say, Montana, and are all but “off the grid,” this may not affect you. But – there was reason for you going off the grid to begin with, huh? And don’t forget the spy satellites, Bubba … just sayin’ …).

Now, if you’re a law abiding citizen with absolutely nothing to hide, then this probably isn’t something that concerns you … or is it? Read on, campers …

The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy.  The Bill of Rights, however, reflects the concern of James Madison and other framers for protecting specific aspects of privacy, such as the privacy of beliefs (1st Amendment), privacy of the home against demands that it be used to house soldiers (3rd Amendment), privacy of the person and possessions as against unreasonable searches (4th Amendment), and the 5th Amendment’s privilege against self-incrimination, which provides protection for the privacy of personal information.  In addition, the Ninth Amendment states that the “enumeration of certain rights” in the Bill of Rights “shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.”  The meaning of the Ninth Amendment is elusive, but some have interpreted the Ninth Amendment as justification for broadly reading the Bill of Rights to protect privacy in ways not specifically provided in the first eight amendments.

The question of whether the Constitution protects privacy in ways not expressly provided in the Bill of Rights is controversial.  Many strict Constitutionalists, including most famously Judge Robert Bork in his ill-fated Supreme Court confirmation hearings, have argued that no such general right of privacy exists.  The Supreme Court, however, beginning as early as 1923 and continuing through its recent decisions, has broadly read the “liberty” guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee a fairly broad right of privacy that has come to encompass decisions about child rearing, procreation, marriage, and termination of medical treatment.  Any number of polls will show most Americans support this broader reading of the Constitution.

Privacy concerns were addressed in the Warren Court of the 1960s when, in Griswold v Connecticut (1965), the Court struck down a state law prohibiting the possession, sale, and distribution of contraceptives to married couples. 

In 1969, the Court unanimously concluded that the right of privacy protected an individual’s right to possess and view pornography (including pornography that might be the basis for a criminal prosecution against its manufacturer or distributor) in his own home. 
The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman’s right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right.  Kelley v Johnson (1976), in which the Court upheld a grooming regulation for police officers, illustrates the trend toward limiting the scope of the “zone of privacy.” (The Court left open, however, the question of whether government could apply a grooming law to members of the general public, who it assumed would have some sort of liberty interest in matters of personal appearance.)  Some state courts, however, were not so reluctant about pushing the zone of privacy to new frontiers. 

 The Alaska Supreme Court went as far in the direction of protecting privacy rights as any state.   In Ravin v State (1975), drawing on cases such as Stanley and Griswold but also basing its decision on the more generous protection of the Alaska Constitution’s privacy protections, the Alaska Supreme Court found constitutional protection for the right of a citizen to possess and use small quantities of marijuana in his own home. 

In 2003, in Lawrence v Texas, the Supreme Court, overruling an earlier decision, found that Texas violated the liberty clause of two gay men when it enforced against them a state law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. 

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest.  Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question.  Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees.  The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed.  The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy.

So where does that leave the phone cameras and surveillance technology that intrudes on our lives every day?  The cameras can be used for good – criminals have been caught, kidnapped children have been recovered, and questionable accidents have been remedied because of all this surveillance. In today’s world, every police car and even the officers’ uniforms are equipped with camera technology to assist in the prosecution of their arrests.

Bad cops operating outside the prevue of their actual duties and responsibilities have been “caught in the act’ of brutality, theft, coercion, and other transgressions.

But – many law enforcement agencies claim it’s illegal to video tape its officers while in the act of performing their job. With more and more ways to take pictures or images, police departments are lobbying state legislatures to pass laws which in effect allow them to operate without public oversight. But police work is done in public and if they are being photographed in public that gives the public the ability to judge their work. Many say that getting prosecuted for taking pictures of police is the end of police and official intimidation, and when people are ordered to stop taking pictures of police, few want to test the veracity of those threats, most will comply. Those who don’t will be arrested, but attorneys say it makes little sense to say the government can take our pictures without letting us take pictures of them. That could say something about the mentality of government.

At last check, they work for us, we don’t work for them. Which should end the debate over our right to videotape their job performance, but it doesn’t.

In at least three states, it is illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the “shooter” rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where “no expectation of privacy exists” (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

In short, recordings that are flattering to the police – an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog – will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent.

When the police act as though cameras are the equivalent of guns being pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.

On a positive note, even as the practice of arresting “shooters” expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested “shooter,” the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.

So be mindful of your rights – or lack thereof when it comes to your I-phone cameras and encountering a police action that appears to have gone horribly wrong – you may have the best intentions of “righting a wrong,” but you could end up in a world of hurt (literally) and embroiled in a long drawn out court proceeding, at the very least.

The Indiana Supreme Court lost their minds (and their copies of the Pocket Constitution, as well) when they ruled that citizens have no right to resist an unlawful police entry.  If the police decide to enter your home without a warrant, they needn’t have probable cause nor even a terrorism accusation that would allow them to hide behind the Patriot Act.  No siree, says Justice Steven David.  The 4^th Amendment—you know, part of that Constitution-thingie that judges are supposed to abide by?—is incompatible with a policed society.  Wait… what?

“A right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” Justice Steven David wrote in his ruling. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

According to the Indiana Supreme Court, the responsibility of violence against police officers during unconstitutional arrests can’t be placed on the arresting officers’ shoulders.  No siree, the problem is those damnable folk who refuse to ignore their 5^th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination by letting the police into their home without a warrant.  Two portions of the Constitution effectively erased in one ruling. 

Granted, the petitioner in this case was not a terribly likeable fellow.  The police were called in regard to “a domestic violence in progress” occurring between Richard Barnes and his wife, and he was still yelling when they arrived.  According to the full text of the ruling, the police entered the home after being told that he did not consent to their entry, and when the arresting officer entered—unconstitutionally, mind you—Barnes fought back.  He was arrested for Class A misdemeanor resisting law enforcement, Class B misdemeanor disorderly conduct, and Class A misdemeanor interference with the reporting of a crime.  He wasn’t arrested for anything for which the police had been called, he was arrested for the results of an unconstitutional entry.

An appropriate ruling would have been a limited one regarding excessive force, or at most, an expansion of Indiana state law regarding domestic violence.  Instead, the judiciary made a broad ruling that sets a dangerous precedent, one guaranteed to invade the rights of those who are not even suspected of any crime, let alone guilty of one.

This precedent wasn’t lost on the Indiana law enforcement community.  Sheriff Don Hartman Sr. declared thrice in one interview that he would support random, warrantless searches of homes—and insisted that people would happily cooperate if there was the potential for catching a criminal.  Thank goodness that Indianans are so civilized that they would willingly forfeit the 4^th and 5^th Amendments so that the police can arrest those hooligans who eat garlic and then attend the theatre, or who dare kiss while mustached.   Both groups are criminals in Indiana, of course.

I was tempted to think that maybe Indiana had gone sixes and sevens, and that Douchebag David’s Decision ™ would perhaps be undone when it went to the federal Supreme Court.  Turns out, you’re more likely to catch Sarah Palin at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser than you are to see federal appeal to overturn this ruling.  This week SCOTUS proved that they too have no respect for the 4^th Amendment when they ruled in a Kentucky case where cops entered a home without a warrant because they “heard noises” within an apartment.  No, seriously, that was their reason.

The full text of the Kentucky v. King ruling qualifies as your daily hour of exercise under the Let’s Move campaign, because I guarantee your eyes will roll hard and long enough to burn at least 600 calories. Here’s the jist of it:

“Police officers in Lexington, Kentucky, followed a suspected drug dealer to an apartment complex. They smelled marijuana outside an apartment door, knocked loudly, and announced their presence. As soon as the officers began knocking, they heard noises coming from the apartment; the officers believed that these noises were consistent with the destruction of evidence. The officers announced their intent to enter the apartment, kicked in the door, and found respondent and others. They saw drugs in plain view during a protective sweep of the apartment and found additional evidence during a subsequent search. The Circuit Court denied respondent’s motion to suppress the evidence, holding that exigent circumstances—the need to prevent destruction of evidence—justified the warrantless entry.”

So basically, they knocked once—that’s what “as soon as they began” can be taken to mean—and because they heard noises within the apartment, they assumed that said noises were “the destruction of evidence”.  Help me out, because I’m drawing a blank here: what, pray tell, is the telltale noise which indicates destruction of evidence so surely that it qualifies as probable cause?  A toilet flushing?  Running the garbage disposal?  Since the text of the ruling conveniently left this handy piece of information out, you’ll have to forgive my cynicism in assuming that it was something even more ambiguous. 

That the officers chose which apartment to knock on based on the smell of marijuana coming from within is fair, I’ll grant that.  Even if the marijuana scent was actually coming from elsewhere, or if their decision to knock on that specific door was based on nothing more than a hunch, that’s totally within the law.  But it’s not probable cause to actually enter the home.  Nor does it qualify as probable cause that the officers heard some yet-unspecified noise from within.

This is where most people, conditioned by a lifetime of seeing their rights stripped away one by one, start condoning unconstitutional actions by the police.  They claim that because the police did in fact find drugs, that the ends justify the means and it doesn’t matter how or why the police came to find them.  Except that that’s not how it works.  Or at least, not how it’s supposed to work. 

The “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine is supposed to exclude evidence that was improperly obtained.  There have been countless cases where guilty parties went free for this reason, and yeah, that totally sucks.  It’s lame that sometimes justice is not served because of a technicality, and that months of investigation turns out to be for naught.  But you know what sucks worse?  The majority giving up the rights which our forefathers acknowledge were “endowed by our Creator”– not granted by the Constitution, not offered as an exclusively American birthright, but given by the Almighty– so that the police have an easier time getting a conviction.

It’s not even as though the “noise as probable cause” aspect is the only reason that this case should have never gone to a jury.  Also noteworthy is that the police did not give the suspect adequate time—any time at all, really—to voluntarily answer the door.  Nor was this lost on the justices:

“Respondent contends that an exigency is impermissibly created when officers engage in conduct that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry was imminent and inevitable, but that approach is also flawed. The ability of officers to respond to an exigency cannot turn on such subtleties as the officers’ tone of voice in announcing their presence and the forcefulness of their knocks. A forceful knock may be necessary to alert the occupants that someone is at the door, and unless officers identify themselves loudly enough, occupants may not know who is at their doorstep. Respondent’s test would make it extremely difficult for officers to know how loudly they may announce their presence or how forcefully they may knock without running afoul of the police-created exigency rule. And in most cases, it would be nearly impossible for a court to determine whether that threshold had been passed.”

Allow me to summarize: “It’s kinda hard to draw a black-and-white line when there is so much potential for grey area, so screw it, we’ll just say the cops have no duty to announce their presence.”  The Indiana ruling was 3-2, so there’s some comfort in knowing that at least a noteworthy portion of the justices saw what a stupid decision it was.  No such luck in Kentucky v. King, which was an 8-1 ruling. 

The saddest part is I’m not even surprised.  The Department of Justice declared nearly a decade ago that the issuance of federal “no knock warrants”, where cops bust in your door without announcing who they are, is A-OK with them.

“After giving full consideration to these submissions, and having reviewed the pertinent statutes and case law, we conclude that federal district court judges and magistrates may lawfully and constitutionally issue no-knock warrants – i.e., warrants authorizing officers to enter certain premises to execute a warrant without first knocking or otherwise announcing their presence where circumstances (such as a known risk of serious harm to the officers or the likelihood that evidence of crime will be destroyed) justify such an entry.”

That, ladies and gents, is what makes unelected forms of government so dangerous.  The Attorney General isn’t accountable to the public nor even recallable.  In regards to the craptastic concept of “no knock warrants” we can’t even blame Obama.  As for the judges, you can thank nearly every president in recent history for having given us such Constitutional scholars.  Yeah, I know… when you can’t just blame Obama, it’s even more depressing. 

If the unappealing petitioners in the above cases inspire no sympathy, how about a Marine who, after surviving two tours in Iraq, was slaughtered in the presence of his wife and their preschool-aged son?

Jose Guenera was killed when the Pima County Sheriff’s Department fired 71 shots into his home, while his wife and son hid in a closet.  While the PCSD initially claimed that Guenera had fired an AR-15, but later admitted that it had been a misfire by one of the SWAT team’s own weapons.  As insult to injury in Guenera’s tragic—and horribly unnecessary—death is the fact that after paramedics were called, they were prohibited from tending to the dying Marine for well over an hour.  Semper Fi.

From what has been released thus far, their evidence of an arrest is sketchy at best, and in no way indicates the necessity of a SWAT team for an arrest.  Even if they had thought Guenera armed and dangerous, why didn’t they provide an opportunity to at least prevent harm to an innocent woman and child?  Upon further inspection of the story, I noticed that Clarence W. Dupnik is the Sheriff for Pima County.  You may remember him as the charming fellow who thought a mix of racism and Sarah Palin were to blame for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords.  (More on the ridiculousness of his claim can be found in my blog, “Obama’s Empty Words and Missed Opportunity”.)

Cases like these and deaths like Guenera’s are the direct result of a judiciary which holds convictions, rather than the Constitution, in their highest regard.

When did we get to this point?  As a general rule, I very much support the police officers who literally risk their lives daily to ensure our safety.  However, it is the duty of the majority to stand up to the injustices of the minority—whether it is the police standing up to the low ethical standards for their conduct, or the citizenry standing up to the results of those standards.    

When the judiciary makes these kinds of rulings, they’re stripping away the rights that are supposed to be fundamental to American liberty.  Further, they’re also making it that much easier to falsely paint all cops as sadistic psychos eager to participate in the next Waco.  The result of that isn’t the prevention of violence against police as the Indiana judiciary seems to think, it’s incitement for anarchist distrust of police– which is counterproductive to the purpose of rulings clarifying the 4^th Amendment.

This is why so many Americans, some far less politically extreme than myself, are ready for an armed rebellion against the tyranny of our government.  But I say, why bother?  All three branches of government are working toward the elimination of the Constitution, and it seems that today’s generation of American patriots are on the fast-track to becoming the next breed of defeated Confederates.

In the civil war on our founding document, surrender will not be done with a white flag.  It will be done will a judicial pen, striking through the Constitution one line at a time.

 If called out at a town hall meeting by the very people who stupidly elected them, they’ll shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, government is a very complicated process full of compromise” – or some such BS … and usually we then shrug our shoulders and vote them in – again and again.

Other than a very few exceptions, there are no true conservatives, or liberty-minded politicians left in the system. We’re stuck with career hacks, and they’re only in it for themselves and those who can line their pockets the best.

The last mid-term election saw a few true liberty-minded people get elected. People who understand the LIMITATIONS of the Federal Government, but alas, a few of those have already journeyed over to the “dark side.” Spending continues at maddening rates. Stupid and onerous laws continue to be passed, while none are being called to be repealed.

So I’m agreeing with those who say the 2012 election will indeed be the most important election of most of our lives. Because if “We, the People” don’t take back our government and force these clowns into the mindset of doing what’s fiscally responsible and leaving us the hell alone when it comes to our personal lives, there very well may be NO 2014 mid-term election, or 2016 general election.

We have to WAKE UP, and quit voting for the “coolest” guy, or the snazziest dresser, or the one who has the prettiest wife (present POTUS excluded), or the most glib tongue – in Texas, we have a term for politicians like that: “ALL HAT – NO CATTLE.”

We need to pay close attention to what they plan to do – reject platitudes and demand real plans of action and solutions to fix our broken federal government. We can do this – I promise. But we ALL have to do it together, and start treating the elections like job interviews instead of “American Idol.”

Let’s put our serious hurt into perspective:

If the Federal government were scaled down to the size of the average US household, here’s what its finances would look like:

The Federal government would earn $50,000 a year in tax revenue (the same as the average US household). It would be $325,000 in debt. It would pay almost $10,000 a year in interest on that debt. Last year, it would have spent $79,000. This year, it is hoping to spend $86,000 ($36,000 more than it takes in).

The $100 billion in spending cuts touted by some and demonized by others would be equivalent to the household cutting its $86,000 in planned spending down to a mere $83,700. Not a bad start, but the household has another $33,700 to go before it balances its budget, huh?

Let’s put a bit more perspective on this:

Germany’s GDP is $3.5 Trillion. China’s GDP is $4.99 Trillion. Japan’s GDP is $5.07 Trillion. Debt held by the public is around $9.46 Trillion. However, U.S. GDP is a whopping $14.26 Trillion, while we add $1.65 trillion to the deficit A YEAR.

Our unfunded Social Security Obligations are $15 Trillion, and our unfunded Medicare Obligations total about $35 Trillion. Unfunded means there’s no money to pay these obligations, in case your brain fogged over.

So – do we turn our next POTUS election into nothing more than a Prom Queen election (again), or do we PAY ATTENTION to the candidates and vote ONLY for the ones who have real answers and plans of attack to fix this cancerous growth called government??

We KNOW who the Democrat candidate will be (unless something really freaky happens and Hillary is drafted).  And we know how all that “hope and change” has worked for us, don’t we?

So let’s take a brief look at the mostly dismal roster of Republicans who have indicated they are riding for the “brass ring” thus far:

Herman Cain is the poster boy for the Republican Party (at this time), because he talks a good game, and by the way – he’s a Black successful businessman! But Mr. Cain also sat on the Federal Reserve, and has stated that there’s no need to audit that behemoth that caused much of our financial woes. Mr. Cain would be a stalwart of the establishment Republicans. But did I mention he was a successful Black businessman? Most of the Neo-Cons at FoxNews (like Hannity) get giddy over him, too – and that alone is somewhat suspect and troubling.

Mitt Romney is a Massachusetts Republican, otherwise known as a RINO (republican in name only). The words Massachusetts” and “Republican” tied together to NOT mean the same as they do in most other parts of the country. In regards to gun rights, health care, and immigration laws, Mitt Romney seems to exhibit some socialist tendencies.  And did I mention he’s a “republican” from Massachusetts (think Scott Brown…). “Nuff said.

Newt Gingrich is a brilliant historian, and might make some administration an outstanding Secretary of State (or something), but he’s got Neo-Con tattooed across his forehead. The man who broke his own “Contract with America” is attempting to fool the masses once more by announcing his run for the roses. Many of his views, votes, and actions are by definition socialist or communist. Here are but a few examples:

• In the 1970s, Newt Gingrich voted for the creation of the Department of Education, which is a department that Ronald Reagan wanted to eliminate. A Department of Education was also heavily supported by several early socialists and Jimmy Carter. With programs like No Child Left Behind, it has led to a large decrease in the educational standards in public schools in the United States.
• Again in the 1970s, Gingrich voted to give communist China “Most Favored Nation” status. China, a leader in human rights abuses, now owns over $800 billion in United States debt according to a Department of Treasury Report in the 1st fiscal Quarter of 2009. How’s that workin’ out for us?
• In 1994, Newt Gingrich voted to give $166 million of taxpayer money to a bureaucracy whose job it is to steal taxpayer money: The IRS. Funny how a guy who claims to want to shrink government expands it and supports the progressive income tax, which is another one of the planks listed in the Communist Manifesto.
• Gingrich voted to give $13 billion and $31.8 billion in foreign aid in 1994 and 1995 respectively. What’s with the spreading of the wealth, Newt? Is it only socialism when it is domestic aid like welfare?
• Newt Gingrich was the driving force behind the passage of NAFTA and GATT in the 1990s. Under a lame-duck session of Congress, Newt pushed for the unconstitutional North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, both of which removed power from the people and handed it over to an unelected panel which mostly consisted of non-US members.

The truth is, Newt Gingrich has trampled upon the Constitution almost as much as Obama

 Tim Pawlenty is yet another Big Government, liberal, establishment “Republican” trying to pass himself off as a principled Conservative. Not only did Pawlenty fall for the global warming hoax, he fully supported the nonsensical and highly corrupt concept of a cap and tax system. Big Government Statist  - little known former governor of Minnesota. Not my idea of someone who can win us all over and take us in the direction we need to go.

Rick Santorum (NEO-CON ALERT) represents everything that is wrong with the Republican Party. If dismantling big government is now a primary concern, Santorum has spent a career promoting big government. If stopping massive spending is now a top priority, Santorum has a lifelong record of championing massive spending. If our debt is now considered the greatest threat to our national security, Santorum has always considered everything but the debt a greater threat.

Indeed, if conservatism means limiting government, the many ways in which Santorum has been the consistent enemy of conservatism are virtually unlimited.

Sarah Palin is a woman every woman should admire. She’s accomplished a great deal with her life so far, and has over come adversity most men would crumble before. But she is too polarizing to even be a serious consideration.  She hasn’t announced as of this writing, and I really hope she stays out. I just wish women, of all people, would stop and take a long non-partisan look at Palin and recognize her as the role model she is for the female persuasion. But not as potential Presidential material. Because she’s a Neo-Con.

Michelle Bachmann (has not as of yet announced) is a bigger Neo-Con than Palin and has been for a longer period of time. Most Neo-Cons are social conservatives, and at this juncture in our history, we have far more important and pressing issues to be concerned with than whether or not Johnny wants to marry Billy, for instance. A true “Conservative” would allow Johnny and Billy the chance to make up their own minds as to how they wanted to live their lives – and keep the government out of it.

I agree with about 95% of what Ron Paul stands for. But he comes across as a poor man’s Ross Perot (whom I voted for) on so many levels, and he’s at the age where the stress of the coming challenges just might prove to be too much for him. If Ron Paul should get the Republican nomination (pigs will fly and they’ll throw snowballs in hell), I’d probably vote for him.

I have personal experience with Gary Johnson, so I’m biased on this one. I lived in New Mexico when he was Governor. During his term-limited two terms (in a heavily Democratic state no less), he vetoed over 750 pieces of legislation sponsored from both sides of the aisle.  He told the state legislature that if they couldn’t balance the budget, go ahead and send it to him and he’d do it for them. And he did. He left office and left New Mexico with a healthy budget surplus that Bill Richardson took no time to piss away. Prior to becoming Governor, Johnson built a successful construction company from the ground up so he understands the business mentality needed to turn the corner on our runaway spending. When he ran for office, he never mentioned his opponent in his ads. Ever.

 I worked with his administration on a number of issues – including school choice, Indian gaming (he had no choice but to sign the gaming compacts with the tribes), and marijuana legalization. It’s an adventure keeping up with Johnson, having climbed Mt. Everest, participated in numerous Ironman competitions, the bicycle ride across Iowa (RAGBRAI), and then add kyaking, hang gliding, and snow skiing to his list of things to do on the weekend, and you have the complex man known as Gary Johnson. He has openly admitted to trying pot and cocaine as a young man (and “medicinal” pot again as recently as a few years ago while recovering from an extreme sporting accident of some kind or another); but thinks alcohol and drugs are bad for you and hadn’t had a drink or a joint in decades prior to that accident, as he didn’t want to risk addiction to high doses of prescription painkillers. He doesn’t however, feel the government as the right to tell you to not use drugs, if you’re so inclined. He also has some very common sense based ideas on how to fix the problems in our government. It’s called “COST ANALYSIS” – what a concept! And he’s convinced almost everything the federal government spends money on can be cut by over 40%. I’d follow this man to the hubs of hell and back. But he needs to get some real traction real soon to be considered a real candidate.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels talked about “change” before “change” was cool. When first elected in 2003, he inherited a dysfunctional state government, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. Since taking office, he has had only balanced budgets, the biggest tax cut in state history, telecom reform, ethics reform, and millions of dollars have been paid back to schools and local governments. Indiana is now the only state in the nation to have a fully-funded ten-year transportation plan with no debt or tax increase. Daniels also has federal government experience, serving as “Bush the Younger’s” Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which gave him a fine overview of the federal budget and government operations.

If Johnson can’t get any wind in his sails, and Daniels jumps into the race, I’m inclined to call him “my man Mitch” just as Bush did when Daniels ran for Governor and received more votes than anyone who has ever run for office in Indiana (over 1.5 million). A Daniels / Johnson ticket (in any order) would be the best thing to happen to America. Period.

If Huckabee jumps into the race, it’ll be SOLELY for the ego aspect – he’s making millions of dollars with his feel good FoxNews show, and just moved to Florida. So Mike – stay out and enjoy life, you fuzzy wuzzy Neo-Con, you. You can’t win anyway.

There are other names being mentioned – Chris Christie, Allen West, and Paul Rubio come to mind. But these are names for another time in the future. Let’s see how they do in their fairly new positions first.

Now here’s the hard part – the “anyone but Obama” mentality has to stop. NOW. The next President of the USA will have to be EPIC  – or it won’t matter WHO gets elected, y’all. I sincerely hope we “get it,” or I’ll be voting for the Consitutional Party candidate again this go-around and packing my bags and cashing in to move to the most remote area I can find.

 I refuse to vote AGAINST anyone. I will ONLY vote FOR someone – who best represents my philosophies and principles, regardless of their so-called electability. If enough of us do this, we’ll see some real change and start taking the steps to fix the axles on this wagon. And we’ll get a President who understand REAL hope and change isn’t all warm and fuzzy, but absolutely necessary.

If you don’t understand that concept, please stay home on Election Day.

Anyhow, America was finally going to Get Serious About Terrorism ™ and the Patriot Act seemed as good a place as any for a jumping-off point from which to decide upon an appropriate long-term solution.  Like many others, I was oblivious that the Patriot Act was the “solution”; an end rather than a means. 

I usually send back my RSVP cards to the Alex Jones & Ron Paul co-hosted dinner parties with the “thanks, but no thanks” box checked, but this time I’ll be attending.  And no, it’s not just because their bartender has the recipe for Greg Gutfeld’s Bin Laden cocktails (two shots and a splash of water). 

I’m highly skeptical of the official story about when/how/if ObL was killed, but that’s not due to any 9/11 truther-esque loathing distrust of the government (I loathe and distrust our government in my own completely unique and original way, thankyouverymuch). I’m not necessarily in the “ObL is still alive” camp, or the “OBL has already been dead for years” one, either.  My biggest problem with the official government story about how Osama bin Laden died is that there doesn’t seem to be one.
Newscasters had already broken the story by the time Obama took stage Sunday night and already there was plenty of fuel for conspiracy theories.  Skipping over the one about how the Campaigner in Chief delayed his speech to interrupt Celebrity Apprentice (the pettiness that would require is really right up Obama’s alley, but not for the announcement of his presidency), first there was the talk about why he would let anything hold him up from being the one from whose lips America would first hear the news.

If everyone had continued to bite their nails wondering what could possibly mandate a late-Sunday announcement and had then heard from the Leader of the Free World that he had taken out the face of modern terrorism, it would have been a turning point in his presidency.  I have to admit, it would have been really easy to have gotten swept up in the moment, maybe even raised a glass to cheer the president I so often criticize, and drunkenly belt out the theme song to Team America: World Police.

It would have been a powerful announcement and, from a propaganda standpoint, could have actually inspired a dramatic spike in the polls for him rather than the pretty unexpected flat-line that both conservative-tilt and left-leaning pollsters measured after the news.

But he opted against that. The go-to assumption when a scripted announcement is late is that the script-writers were busy with revisions—though listening to his speech (well, actually, “reading through”, since I greatly prefer waiting for transcripts to become available) there’s not much that seems so detailed or spectacular that it would have warranted a 45-minute wait.

On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together.  We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood.  We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.  On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.

We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice.  We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda — an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe.  And so we went to war against al Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends, and our allies.

Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort.  We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense.  In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government, which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.  And around the globe, we worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.

Yet Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan.  Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world.

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network.

Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.  It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.  I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan.  And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.  No Americans were harmed.  They took care to avoid civilian casualties.  After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.

Note the use of the collective narrative voice in reference to the lessons of 9/11—what “we” learned, what “we” did in cooperation with our allies.  Yet, when he moves on to talk about the task of catching ObL, he speaks as though it were his idea to make it the objective of the war in Afghanistan, and his decision to take him out. 

The “me, me, ME” isn’t out of character but I did find it queer that he didn’t maintain that kind of consistency throughout by offering anecdotal stories about where he was when he’d heard of the 9/11 attacks and how it had affected him personally.  As with the political benefit of being the one to reveal ObL’s death to America, it would have given a chance to help viewers attach the concept of some sort of victory over terrorism to him and his presidency.

My guess would be that this is why there was such a long delay—that there were these types of anecdotes in the original speech, and he had the writers do a thorough edit to eliminate them and to make only collective allusions to any beliefs about what happened on 9/11.  Conspiracy #1: Obama doesn’t believe the official story of how and why the events of 9/11 occurred.

Obama’s speech Thursday at Ground Zero included even more vague references than the announcement speech– “This is a symbolic site of the extraordinary sacrifice that was made on that terrible day,” (Whose sacrafices?) and absent as well were any direct statements that ObL was killed because he was the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  

A large portion of the anti-Israel ideology (in which Obama’s foreign policy is rooted) is based upon the idea that ObL was a scapegoat of a long-standing Zionist plot to cast Islam in a negative light.  Not that they need the eeeeeevil Jews for that. 

With Osama’s death came an easy opportunity to help erase some of the doubts that our president is really “one of us”, so you’d think that he’d be eager to use Ground Zero as a soundstage from which to shout that he took out the man responsible for our pain.  He didn’t.

Also strange about Obama’s announcement speech is the timing he mentions of the mission.  He speaks of his decision “today” to pounce, but newscasters on both CNN and FNC spoke about it having happened a week earlier, and saying that the reason the announcement had been delayed was that the DNA testing had taken a while. 

It’s entirely possible that the DNA testing was done the same day, since it can be done in a matter of hours even with civilian laboratories that have other cases of equal priority.  That doesn’t explain why journalists who seemed to know every other detail included in the speech but got that particular one wrong—and got it wrong on multiple channels. 

Conspiracy #2: the information on ObL’s location was solid much earlier than Obama is claiming, maybe even years earlier, and he chose this time because it was politically advantageous; the difference between when the media thought the kill had occurred and when the speech claimed it did were due to additional last-minute edits, while Obama was having speechwriters eliminate the other portions he found objectionable.

A “White House insider” is backing up the claims that it was actually CIA director Leon Panetta who made the call to finally take out ObL, and that Obama’s stalling had lasted weeks or even months.  Lending some credibility to the ambiguous trustworthiness of anonymous sources, they claim that the early beginning of the Campaigner in Chief’s reelection campaign kickoff was actually a way of putting it off as long as possible.  It’s possible that Obama or his advisers wanted any potential delays in informing the public eliminated from the announcement speech so that the timing of the ObL takeout could not be questioned.

Ace, the namesake of the ordinarily totally kick-ass Ace of Spades blog, epitomized those with an irrational hate for conspiracies when addressing what he called “the ‘I question the timing’” conspiracy theory”.  He claimed that there is no possible time where Osama bin Laden’s death would not have some sort of political benefit, and challenged readers to come up with any reason why this particular timing would be better than an October Surprise. 

Well, yeah, the first part is true… it’s always going to benefit the president to catch the Annual World Hide-and-Seek Champion for years 1993-2011.  But in terms of the timing, there’s a pretty obvious reason why he would choose now (or allow now to be chosen).  Conspiracy #3: the timing was chosen to create the political distraction that the release of the “real, official” long-form birth certificate failed to.

In spite of his claims that he released it so America would cease to have “sideshows” keeping us from economic recovery (Even The Donald’s hairpiece is less ridiculous than that suggestion.), it wasn’t until even his minions over at MSNBC started demanding the long-form that he finally showed it. 

Many of those with questions about Obama’s birth place have sought out information to disprove the conspiracies, turning to books like Deconstructing Obama by Jack Cashill.  Those who have, discovered that in the ‘60s, one could mail in a form claiming to have delivered a baby at home, which would result in a Hawaiian birth certificate and an automatic announcement in the local newspaper—which means that the existance of a legitimate birth certificate would still prove nothing.   Only those with a superficial understanding of the topic were swayed from their beliefs and, as a result, while the number of people with questions about Obama’s place of birth did have a marked decrease from 52% to 30%,  Obama’s poll numbers didn’t see a bounce.  The birthers who saw the certificate either weren’t convinced, or didn’t care.

My point (I do have one, stay with me) is that the much-anticipated birth certificate release didn’t succeed in making people forget about the dollar hitting a three-year-low, one in seven Americans on food stamps, food inflation rising even faster than gas prices, or the treasury suggesting a $2T debt ceiling increase.  Things are reaching critical mass, and although it might be believable that this is an insufficient reason to play the trump card and take out ObL, it’s hard to ignore that it was done immediately after pollsters were able to report back the nation’s reaction to the birth certificate.

Given that it took nearly four years for a long-form to turn up and supposedly prove Obama’s birth, how many years can we expect to wait before we’ll see documented proof of ObL’s death?

Initially, Leon Panetta said that he was almost certain that ObL death photos would be released, but after a lot of hand-wringing, Obama told 60 Minutes that the photos will not be made public.  As substitute for actual evidence other than the fact that Al Qaeda is mad at us, he assured the interviewer that “You will not see Osama bin Laden walking the Earth again”. 

I know this is no surprise coming from someone who would write at length about conspiracy theories but I am not convinced.

Saying that we should accept that ObL is dead— even though the story keeps changing and the body was supposedly buried at sea the same day of the raid out of respect to Islam—would be like if you caught your teenaged child climbing through their window at dawn and they said you could trust that they learned their lesson and because you’d never see them sneaking out it again. 

Conspiracy #4: the Obama administration refuses to release the photos because they want them to be leaked later on.

Everyone from the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to the Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers is claiming that all the photos would do is inflame Middle Eastern sentiments and provoke further terrorist attacks.  The former had the audacity to say that if the photos were released, that conspiracy theorists would just claim they were photoshopped.  In addition to being a pretty condescending answer, he also single-handedly fueled the whole “Democrats and Republicans are the exact same” schtick for at least another month’s worth of material.  Thanks a lot, Mike.

Of course photo evidence of the Osama bin Laden’s death would cause anger in Islamic nations.  Telling the world that we killed him already did that, so we’d might as well do it all at once like ripping off a band-aid.   If countries like Iran that have been promising to take out America and Israel for decades are going to attack us for killing ObL, then I’m confident that our intelligence agencies were well aware of that threat before the decision was made. 

They’re either going to or they aren’t, and it seems to me that the decision not to release the photos because of the risk of retaliation—and then refusing to lessen the unconstitutional authority of “protection agencies” like the TSA because of a threat that is supposedly being neutralized by refusing to release the photos—makes no sense. Until, of course, you see the TSA’s reaction to the news that their reason for existence is over.

I had half expected the believable claim that there would be a period of heightened alert while we braced ourselves for retaliatory attacks, and that afterwards things would start to mellow back out.  There had been plane hijackings before 9/11 and they didn’t require the existence of a TSA (Remember meeting people at the gate and watching them get off the plane?), so all back to normal, right?  Not quite.

“We remain at a heightened state of vigilance, but the Department of Homeland Security does not intend to issue an NTAS alert at this time,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in a statement. “However, our security posture, which always includes a number of measures both seen and unseen, will continue to respond appropriately to protect the American people from an evolving threat picture both in the coming days and beyond.”

I know the TSA is really proud of their clever new “Gate Rape is the new Date Rape” recruitment slogan, but this was supposed to be the end.  The whole point was that it was going to find super innovative ways to foil all the clever plots that OBL masterminded (hiring convicted sex offenders for a job where protocol allows for the molestation six-year-old girls is certainly a security tactic that had never been used before, so kudos TSA on your innovation) and that’s not a problem anymore, so what’s the hold up?

I remember when I was old enough to stop worrying about the boogeyman hiding in my closet and started deliberately opening the closet door before I went to bed.  It wasn’t that I was too old to believe in him, because in the back of my mind I still kind of did.  It was just that I had gotten to a point where no matter how scary he might have been, he wasn’t worth letting myself feel afraid to exist. 

It would be so great if, at least in time, this final chapter in the Osama bin Laden saga could give America a similar chance to let go and move on.  The problem is that the government doesn’t want that to be what Osama bin Laden’s death means for us.  For the last several years—how many years exactly depends on who you ask—the leadership responsible for our safety has been more than eager to help us get over our fears of the boogeyman by way of showing us that the creepiest monsters are the ones hiding behind their .gov email addresses. 

The circular logic and deliberate vagueness of our government surrounding the news of Osama bin Laden’s death might be due to any number of these conspiracies being true, or they might all be coincidences.  What seems clear even aside from these theories is that if there are any retaliatory acts against America, it will reinforce the government’s authority to maintain its assaults on our freedom forever. 

Any act of terrorism that could be construed as a response to ObL’s death will be grounds to remove any guise of temporariness surrounding the government actions that were supposed to only last until we caught him.

Perhaps the greatest conspiracy theory of them all to consider is whether that was the plan all along.