Category: Politics

CNN’s Tea Party Republican Debate Summary

Last night’s debate was more pointless than the one previous. What follows is a summary of what I took away from the debate:

Perry seems to be the chosen one as far as the Republican party is concerned. Although his record is stained with more statist agendas than some socialists he seems to have read Ron Paul’s books and is trying to make himself sound like the good doctor. He’s a typical neocon, promising small government and liberty but will provide none of it.

Romney is the other “front runner” according to the mass media. He’s so statist that he was able to get elected governor of Massachusetts which I believe is all that needs to be said about him.

Bachmann knowns here ratings are slipping and is acting like an injured animal. She’s thrashing about and lashing out at anybody and everybody who attempts to move in to finish her off. It makes for entertaining debates.

Santorum wants to become president to move his holy crusade against the enemies of Israel forward. If were up to him we’d turn the entirety of the Middle East (excluding Israel) into a giant glass bowl. Thankfully he doesn’t have a chance at this point.

Huntsman is also a neocon piece of shit. I really don’t know what else to say about him as he’s so trivial as to be non existant.

Cain is the former head of the Kansas Federal Reserver. Although he says many of the right things his past association with the Fed made him an absolute no-go in my book.

Gingrich is the prototypical neocon. He talks about small government and liberty but his past voting record shows the exact opposite. Like most politicians this man can’t be truest any further than he can be thrown.

Paul is the one guy in the race that makes sense. His record demonstrates a strong support of liberty and he’s got enough balls to say things during the debate that no other candidate will even whisper.

Johnson wasn’t even invited. I think it’s because the major media networks are afraid of having two libertarian candidates on stage.

And that’s that. I would like to congratulate CNN on being extremely large dicks. A question about the Federal Reserve came up and, I shit you not, every candidate on stage except Ron Paul was allowed to answer. The man who literally wrote a book on the subject wasn’t asked about the Federal Reserve. What the fuck?

Republican Candidate Debate Roundup

Last night I had the… opportunity… to partake in watching the Republican Presidential Debate with a surprisingly large group of awesome people. First of all let me sum up the debate in one sentence: everybody on the stage besides Ron Paul was a fucking idiot.

Now that my bias is out there for all to see let me talk briefly about the debate. First of all as per the usual Ron Paul was mostly ignored during the debate. He was asked something around four questions, none of which were asked of other candidates and all of which were loaded. For example the inquisitors guys with the questions asked all the candidates if they would keep Ben Bernanke as the head of the Federal Reserve then they asked Ron Paul why he hated children (technically they worded the question around welfare to which Dr. Paul answered that such things were the responsibility of each individual state because he actually read the Constitution).

General consensus of my group was that Michelle Bachmann looked like a vampire. I believe bets were taken at some point on whether or not she would turn into a bat and fly away at the conclusion of the debate.

Gary Johnson performed admirably… wait he wasn’t invited because he’s one of the very few people who the media hate more than Ron Paul (or Ron Paul is simply too popular and the media knows there is no way to silence him completely at this point).

Romney was on the war path yet again. If he had his way we’d storm over to the Middle East and kill every man, woman, and child there which would then be followed by the construction of a huge palace as a testament to the greatness of the American war machine and as a warning to the rest of the world to submit or die.

I have no idea why Huntsman was there considering the percentage of votes he’s not been receiving in recent straw polls. The same can also be said of Herman Cain but at least he’s kind of entertaining on stage. Santorum was there but for the life of me I can’t remember anything memorable that he did.

Finally we have Rick Perry. Perry was an interesting person to watch in last night’s debate because I’m pretty sure he just had Ron Paul’s books sitting up on his podium for his notes. It’s amazing that a man who issued an executive order to force 12 year-old girls to be injected with Gardasil after being lobbied by large pharmaceutical companies all of the sudden has a message of liberty.

The debate was concluded by asking each candidate (except Gary Johnson of course, because he’s not cool enough to be invited to the party) what they would do about illegal immigration which is where Ron Paul made the most memorable statement of the night. With the exception of Ron Paul I think each candidate supported building a giant demilitarized zone fence between the United States and Mexico. Ron Paul was the only candidate to bring up the fact that a fence used to keep people out can also be used to keep people in. That was a brilliant observation considering the tyrannical direction this country keeps continuing towards. My biggest problem with the idea of building a fence between American and any other country is the fact that it could be used in the same manner as the Berlin Wall.

On a final note I think a new debate rule should be put into place for future Republican debates. From here on out each candidate should only be allowed to play the Reagan card three times during a debate. Seriously, after last night I’m thoroughly convinced that a great number of Republicans believe Reagan died on the cross of our sins. Once again Ron Paul was the only person that had enough balls to say Reagan’s message was good but the results of his presidency were not (massive deficit spending after preaching fiscal conservatism for instance).

Meta Censorship

South Korea seems to be a bastion of free speech these days:

In South Korea, even the censors are being censored. Professor K.S. Park, who sits on South Korea’s nine-member Internet content regulatory board, has found his own blog under threat of censorship when he used it as platform to speak out for transparency and free expression.

Did you get that? Even the censors are being censored. That’s about a meta as you can get without being censored in South Koera.

If anybody can read this blog in South Korea let me know because I’ll have to step up efforts to get on their censor list. It’s not because I don’t want people from South Korea reading my blog, it’s because I want to get on as many government lists as possible around the world.

The Graphics Suck

Jay shows us a very classy new video game called Tea Party Zombies Must Die. The objective of the game is to walk around and kill zombified versions of… I guess supposed tea party members although I’m not sure when Bill O’Reilly started being considered a member of the tea party.

I have to say the effort put into this game is so half-assed that it’s depressing. Here’s some advice for those out there who want to make a game around a political message, just write a mod for a popular existing game. Tea Party Zombies Must Die has shitty graphics and the gameplay is more repetitive than an infinite loop. The creators of this game could have made something awesome (in other words fun to play) by writing a Left 4 Dead mod or something along those lines. Instead they put out a shitty Flash game with no replay value.

I Wouldn’t Put it Past the IRS

I think I’ll present this with very little comment:

Imagine this scenario: The IRS may soon just do your taxes for you — and send you the bill.

If this sounds farfetched, it’s not.

With a new congressional “super committee” tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in cuts by November, creative ways to find additional revenue are in high demand. And allowing the IRS to prepare you taxes could be one solution.

The idea has been around for a while, but has been picking up steam in recent years. In 2006, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) argued it would close a $345 billion annual difference between what the government believes taxpayers owe them and what the IRS actually collects, which he calls the “tax gap.”

No possibility of a conflict of interest there. That was sarcasm in case it was missed.

If Your Right Requires the Labor of Another It’s Not a Right

Everybody repeat after me, “If the labor of another is required to provide your right then it’s not a right.” California is looking once again to prove itself as the looniest state in the Union by making home ownership a protected right:

California could ban lender-initiated home foreclosures, under a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would make home ownership a fundamental right.

Initiative 11-0014 could appear on the ballot in November 2012, if supporters submit more than 800,000 voter signatures necessary to qualify the measure.

You can read the text of initiative 11-0014 but I think the following piece sums it up:

Makes home ownership fundamental right. Prohibits lenders from foreclosing
on California citizen’s personal home. Requires lenders to assist California borrowers not paying on home loans due to financial hardship or illness. Requires lenders to reduce home loan principal to reflect drop in local property value i fmore than 10 percent, and to reschedule payments, reduce interest rates, and/or refinance without new credit review. Requires lenders to refinance home loans a t minimum cost within 45 days of request i f loan has been maintained for three years. Provides back property tax assistance to homeowners.

First of all you can’t infringe on a right to own property if you don’t, you know, own the property. What is proposed is so full of cognitive dissonance that it would make the head of a logical person literally explode if they attempt to make sense of it. First of all if you have a loan on your home then it’s not your home. Let’s look at what a mortgage is, it’s a loan that is backed by real physical property. That is to say you give the title of some property to a person giving out loans and they take it as collateral. When you take out a mortgage you are saying, “I promise to pay back my loan and if I fail to do so I relinquish the ownership of my property to you.”

Until you pay back the loan you are not the owner of that property. A mortgage is an exchange of ownerships rights; the entity giving the loan exchanges the right of ownership of a sum of money for the right of ownership of the collateral. Until the loan is paid back with any contractually agreed to interest the entity who gave the loan is the owner of the property. Thus what this initiative proposes is impossible because it’s claiming to protect the “right of home ownership” by pissing all over the right of ownership.

That’s just one glaring problem with this initiative. The other glaring problem is the fact that it is trying to declare something a right that requires the labor of another to provide. A right to property means you have a right to ownership over legitimately obtained property not a right to be provided property by another. The difference between the two is huge. For instance I can’t have a right to own a home unless I can build the entire home myself of materials I can entirely produce myself. If my “right” requires action from another either that right isn’t a right or I get to declare select people as slaves. The same logic applies to healthcare, unless you can provide your own healthcare you can’t claim a right to it.

If I can homestead or purchase a property, extract the raw resources needed to build a home form that homesteaded of purchased property, refine those materials into a state usable to build a home, and then build a home entirely of those materials by myself then I can claim a right to it. On the other hand a failure to perform any of the following procedures means that I must rely on another to provide a link in the chain of home ownership and thus can declare no right to owning that type of property.

You have no right to owning a home but you do have a right to the ownership of your labor because you are a self-owner. That means you can exchange your labor for a home but you can’t demand somebody provide you a home outside of a voluntarily agreed to (by both parties) exchange. That’s why a right to ownership of your labor doesn’t translate into a right to own specific types of property.

I’m not sure how so much stupid was written on paper. It baffles me that somebody unable to see the cognitive dissonance in this bill is able to read or write.

Because His Previous Plans Worked so Well

Obama is on the campaign path (and we’re footing the bill) and this time he hit up Detroit in the hope of gaining some votes by promising the world and delivering nothing. Now he has a plan to create jobs but he needs the big bad old meanies in Congress to support him:

“We just need to get Congress on board,” he told supporters in Detroit, Michigan, saying labour and business were already behind his plans.

On Thursday, Mr Obama will use an address to a joint session of Congress to set out job-growth strategy.

Wow businesses and labor are already on board with this plan that has yet to be unveiled? When you put it that way sign me right the fuck up! I love signing onto plans that have yet to be revealed.

Seriously what an arrogant asshole. He’s claiming everybody except Congress is already on board with this plan but he hasn’t actually told anybody what the plan is. Will it be as successful as the stimulus packages? I’m sure this plan will be as well orchestrated as the Health Insurance Company Enrichment Act (better known by many as Obamacare). Who knows. I guess we’ll just have to wait until Thursday to hear Obama’s next promise that he’s not going to deliver on.

Then again his plan could be to finally eliminate government interference in the market which would actually allow for a correction. If I see a rainbow farting unicorn in my backyard Thursday morning I’ll take it as a sign that Obama’s finally pulled his head out of his ass and implemented an actual fix to our economic woes.

So Much for Obama’s Promise of Government Transparency

Although Obama’s promise of making a more transparent government were broken long ago it still entertains me to bring it up from time to time less people forget. Remember the legal documents produced by John Yoo that basically justified the president’s power to spy on American citizens without any need for a warrant or knowledge of the person being spied on? You probably don’t because those documents were classified and Obama isn’t showing any sign of declassifying them:

The Obama administration has refused to declassify a secret memo from the George W. Bush presidency that justified the warrantless spying conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Matthew Aid, a writer who’s covered the NSA and surveillance policy, requested a copy of a 2001 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion by John Yoo that discussed the legal grounds for electronic spying without permission from a special federal court. The Department of Justice mostly denied Aid’s Freedom of Information Act request, saying the redacted information in the OLC opinion was “classified, covered by non-disclosure provisions contained in other federal statutes, and is protected by the deliberative process privilege.”

The government is so transparent now that you could make privacy glass out of it. The privacy feature is for the government though, not you though.

The Sacrificial Lamb Has Been Found

The government has finally found its sacrificial lamb in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Fast and Furious fiasco, acting ATF director Melson. In fine government tradition of dealing with corruption not only was a single sacrificial lamb found but the lamb wasn’t actually sacrificed, instead it was simply moved somewhere else in the Leviathan:

The embattled head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is being replaced in the aftermath of a botched sting operation that allowed guns to knowingly fall into the hands of violent criminals in Mexico.

Kenneth Melson will be replaced as acting ATF director by U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota B. Todd Jones, the Justice Department announced on Tuesday. Jones is expected to assume the new position on Wednesday. Melson is being reassigned as a senior adviser on forensic science in the Office of Legal Policy, the department said.

Your government at work.