...According to Slublog:

WKIT-FM 100.3 here in Bangor is having a "Pay for Play" day to benefit the American Red Cross. If you're in WKIT listening area, call the radio station at 1-800-287-1003 or 990-3100 and request a song with a minimum pledge of $10.

Station owners Stephen and Tabitha King are matching, dollar for dollar, every donation.

Now I can finally forgive him for having his lawyers step on me like a piece of shit when I tried to send him my script of The Gunslinger that I wrote for a television series (it was fugging good, too!)

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin

Is this what it has come to? Have we racialized everything to the point where even revolution has become a divisive palette? When you start talking about the fact that black people are usually the ones caught on camera looting while white people in board rooms who loot while there are no cameras on are largely ignored by the media who shapes our viewpoints there are many factors to that argument which go far beyond race.

You're talking about economics, legal umbrellas, cultural identities and, ultimately, you are talking about individual morality and the choices we make.

See, I had a brilliant professor in college who did his PhD thesis on revolution versus rebellion and the thesis statement basically ran like this: A rebellion is a violent backlash against the dominant paradigm and culture that spring from it while a revolution is a complete overthrow of that paradigm followed by a replacement of it with a new paradigm.

So, the LA riots and the '68 country-wide riots following the assasination of Dr. King were rebellions and what happened on the middle East Coast of the North American continent in 1776, France in 1789, and Moscow in 1917 were revolutions.

It's no accident that the rebellions described above began and were largely carried out by people of color and that the revolutions began, middled, and ended with the alabaster bastards as they are referred to in most college universities (except of course the Bolsheviks--they were right according to many college professors despite the fact that well over 100 million have died through war, torture, and starvation from communism).

Let's put on our BDP hats, dark gangster shades, and make our best KRS-One face as we say, "Why is that?"

According to the popular history of today, it's because white people created the dominant culture, seized control of the world's natural resources, and therefore had the access to change the paradigm that governed the system of theft and brutality called private property; while people of color, except the Muslim civilization before the crusades destroyed their culture of "peace and enlightenment," were lords of savage kingdoms. This means they didn't live according to Western Aristotelian standards (A is not Not A) and didn't necessarily see the earth divided into plot squares on a map.

According to this version of history, following the invention of agriculture, white people were the first to claim land under individual ownership and this one act set a history in motion that ultimately led to the subjugation of peoples of color under the thumb of European white males whose lower classes migrated to the New World and eventually overthrew the shackles of their white masters (through revolution) and continued a social structure that maintained the subjugation of people of color without whom it would not have been possible to maintain.

But two words and one bold Republican changed all that. The words were All Men (meaning humans) and the bold Republican was Abraham Lincoln who sent troops into battle to preserve the Federal union just as it was, slavery and all, but who eventually realized that the war could not be won until it became based on the complete human freedom those two little words promised.

Hence Republicans became liberators of one particular group of people of color. But honky Democrats revolted against the loss of their culture and their former subjugated property by instituting laws that kept them sub-human even though they were now free to own property and choose their own last names. It took a hundred years and more honky Democrats turning fire hoses and sicking German Shepherds on people of color before a Republican President sent the National Guard in to secure equal access to the opportunity of people of color to pursue their own happiness because they were human beings and not chattel.

But one ignorant Republican didn't respond to one person of color's letter from a Birmingham jail while his young and handsome Democratic opponent did and suddenly the tables were turned on who did what for whom.

But tragically, equal access wasn't enough. There had to be reparations or shit was gonna burn. And so it did...

And this brings us to the crux of the matter--people of color being indoctrinated to think of their race before they think of their individuality; to define themselves in terms of the historical crimes committed against their ancestors before they consider what makes them happy as individuals and how their talents, skills, and desires could make the human beings around them happier and raise the living standard of the rest of the world. Through half-witted revisionist history and feel-good political correctness backed up with finger-pointing blame, they are taught the politics of hate before they are shown the spirit of brotherly love.

They are taught to hate any Republican who needs sunblock that even dares to enter the oval office despite the fact that it was Republicans who opened the doors of access to people of color every historical step of the way from slaves to soldiers to protestors to looters to full and proud citizens of this United States that would never have made it for two hundred and twenty-nine years without their direct help in building and steering away from the most jagged of rocks.

This is the world we have created together and some of our ancestors were the Queen of Diamonds and some were the two of spades but every card was played to get us to the hand we've each been dealt today.

But the game of racial Euchre must ultimately end and it won't until every human being realizes that they are but one suit in the full deck of cards and that there are no real trump cards before the eyes of the judge of men's souls. And that no amount of suffering dignifies one human being over another because at the finale of it all, when the heart is weighed in the balance against the feather, if the scale tips toward the heart--the crocodile's jaws will snap and eat your everloving soul (read up on your Egyptian mythology if this sounds a bit queer).

In conclusion, history has proven that people who spent many evolutionary cycles in the sunshine of sun-soaked continents and developed the melanocytes to survive have historically been in a cultural position only to smash shit and destroy when they react against tyranny but have always fallen right back into the old paradigm waiting for the next chance to pick up bigger bricks.

While people who spent too much time in the snowy caves of the northern hemisphere and who staked their claims by divine right and who invaded the lands of and enslaved the melanocyte hoarders, traditionally have had the access, the knowledge, and the ability to completely overthrow the paradigms of tyrannies to replace them with better working tyrannies.

And while the cameras are there more often to catch the people of color looting and not there to catch the ones who catch skin cancer easier, the fact is that each of these individuals who picked up a brick or short-funded a pension plan did so as a personal choice and should be held accountable on that basis and on that basis alone.

We are each responsible for the feelings we feel, the thoughts we think, the conclusions we make, and the actions we take. And the looters who stayed behind to rob and pillage, only to find their lungs filling with filthy hurricane water, deserved to drown and we're better off in their absence, whatever color they were. Too many good and innocent people died trying to save their families and neighbors to waste any more time talking about the dredge of society who have thankfully been removed from the gene pool as a result of their greed and ignorance.

Weep for those who made choices from the heart to save others, not for those who were wronged my mislabeling.

We will never move to the next phase of social evolution until both sides are willing to finally lay down their cultural identities to embrace the identity of the future--which is humanity exploring the mysteries of space, both inner and outer, together in relative harmony.

Of course...don't try to take my piece of pie or you might catch a steel jacket thank you for your trouble.

Update: The AFP writer who started the whole Racism in Looting debacle defends his white people "finding food" caption. Hat tip to Fark.

Trackbacks: Lone Ranger, Michelle Malkin, Tony Pierce

According to this MSNBC article:

In a stunning example of how desperate the situation has become, 25 babies who had been in a makeshift neonatal intensive care unit at New Orleans’ Ochsner Clinic were airlifted Wednesday to hospitals in Houston, Baton Rouge, La., and Birmingham, Ala. Many were hooked up to battery-operated breathing machines keeping them alive. Their parents had been forced to evacuate and leave the infants behind...

What can you possibly say as you watch one of the nation's oldest and most culturally rich cities sink possibly forever into a murky wasteland swamp where hundreds and thousands of dead bodies, some centuries old, now float and decompose in sitting water.

I believe this is the worst natural disaster our country has yet faced and will be forever remembered as a day of Infamy right next to December 7, 1941; September 11, 2001; and the day that Islamist Fascist terrorists detonate a nuclear bomb in a densely populated American city.

It's too terrible to think about...and just sad.

Most people who claim to be political experts have no core values. By that I mean that they don’t have statements of purpose that they live by, sentences of honor that could be written on the back of a business card and yawped from the rooftops of the world. Here is my core value:

Every human being is born with the inherent right to pursue their own happiness provided that their pursuit does not infringe upon the safety or property of another citizen.

This the maxim by which I weigh every political and spiritual conundrum that I come across in life and is the impetus and inspiration behind every word I write.

And by extension, here are my feelings about the burning issues of our time:

• Race: There will be no social equality until we move past the issue of race. Unfortunately the sacrifice to be made in order for this to happen lies on the shoulders of those who have been historically wronged. Those in power in America know full well the weight of the crimes of their ancestors and have done everything possible short of committing cultural suicide to make it right; that won't happen. So those who feel they are owed something need to put that victim shit aside and get on to being productive citizens willing to call bullshit if the old ways rear their ugly heads again. If they do, I'm in your corner. Until then, shut your mouth, get to work, and raise your kids to be fiscally, morally, and socially responsible to those around them. No one gets a handout in life; I don't care who your grandparents were--I care about what kind of grandparent you're going to be to your offspring.
  

• Abortion: Until there is an amendment brought forth, voted on, and passed in Congress then signed by the President, this is a state's rights issue and Roe vs. Wade was a travesty of judicial activism that has sadly been distorted into a woman's rights issue. The bottom line is that our law was never meant to be based upon judicial precedence but rather by congressional acts and the Ninth Amendment specifically delegates all rights not mentioned in the Constitution to the states or the people respectively. This is unequivocable and Roe vs. Wade should be overturned immediately and delegated to the states to legislate. Personally, I would never agree with a woman having an abortion of a child that was partly mine. Beyond that, every woman I've ever talked to who was once Pro-Choice and went on to have a child, said that they could absolutely feel that there was a life growing inside them from the beginning and that they would never get an abortion themselves or recommend it to anyone else. Additionally, the psychological damage that having an abortion has on young mothers has been well documented. I believe that the abortion issue is primarily one of economics and if you're too poor to raise them, then stay home and masturbate--do yourself and the world a favor.
  

• Gay Marriage: See the abortion answer. If you're gay and you want the state tax breaks, move to a state that votes same sex marriage legal. If you want a federal tax break, tell your elected representatives to vote YES on H.R. 25 and S.25 (The FairTax Bill). Other than that, count yourself lucky you live in a country where people just make fun of you behind your back and on TV instead of dragging you out to the public square and chopping your extremities off.
  

• The Second Amendment: Every citizen should have the civic duty of owning a firearm and knowing how to handle it, secure it, and shoot it. Militias formed of free men are the primary defense against a tyrannical government and the first act of any despotic government with a lick of sense is to seize privately-owned firearms and prevent their further distribution. Guns should be used in defense of life and private property as well as for hunting in order to keep the game populations in check and for food. And finally, Conceal to Carry laws should be passed in every state and city. It's time that gun control laws ceased to expose law abiding citizens to criminal acts by those who don't obey laws by nature of their morality and the individual choices they make.
  

• Taxes/Social Security: The principle organizing power of government is not the power to wage war (as Oliver Stone preaches) but rather its ability to tax its citizens through threat of force. The Sixteenth Amendment was "passed" as a measure of class warfare (although it started off as a political ploy and just happened to pass by a fluke) and has been exploited by ruthless politicians and various industry lobbyist groups for almost a hundred years now. The time has come to slam the door on these parasitic pricks and the only answer is to pass The Fair Tax Bill (H.R.25 and S.25). Taxes should be used to fund civic projects, civil defense, and to pay a REASONABLE SALARY to our elected public servants. The exact limits and definitions of these three responsibilities should be determined by dispassionate elected officials (see Term Limits bullet below)
  

• Healthcare/Medicare: I have spent five years working for one of the nation's two largest health insurers. For two of these years, I served as Business Systems Analyst reporting directly to an Executive Director and I've seen enough to know that the system is completely FUBAR! You have a system where the consumers of the product have no market leverage to affect the quality of what they are purchasing. In fact, health insurance companies don't even see patients as their customers; they see the corporations who employ the patients as their customers. Patients want cheap or outright free healthcare because they have no concept of the cost and value of quality healthcare. Doctors want to be paid far more than the insurance companies are offering. Employers want the cheapest healthcare possible and don't give a hoot about the quality. The answer to this crisis is: HSAs; tort reform to protect doctors and hospitals from douche bag predatory trial lawyers after reporting vital error statistics needed to improve operational processes which will boost the quality of care; the establishment of a universal risk pool to leverage the stop loss costs of healthcare for the poor and indigent (this is about as close to welfare as I will support); and the reformation of ERISA laws to apply to individuals and small businesses and not just large corporations (thereby castrating the corporate leverage as the medium through which patients have primary access to healthcare).
  

• Immigration: I believe that open borders and inpouring cultures have made America the powerhouse it has come to be. And while I realize that without slave-wage migrant labor our economy would undergo dramatic changes, I believe the threat from insurgent terrorist agents living among us is a far greater threat to the safety of our nation. Therefore, I support amnesty for illegal aliens who register for citizenship and learn the English language and what it means to be a free individual living in a civic society. Those who don't register should be shipped the hell out of this country immediately, possibly to Gitmo if they fit the bill as a terrorist intending to do our country harm. I also support the construction of a large razor wire border running across the southern border of Mexico and the northern border of Canada (wherever possible) as well as a swell of border patrol agents authorized to shoot to kill if necessary. I am more supportive of sending troops to secure our own border than I am in sending soldiers overseas to invade foreign countries and secure oil fields (which is totally necessary given our dependence on oil to operate, feed, and finance the rest of the world).
  

• Civil Defense: This is the most important function of government. Before we went to war in Iraq, we should have completely funded our civil infrastructure including local bomb shelters being built all over the country which were able to house and care for every citizen when the invetable nuclear or biological attack finally happens. We should be working to secure the borders rather than spending billions on a ridiculous missile defense shield when any terrorist with an American Express card and a hooptie can drive a small arms nuclear weapon across the border with minimal obstruction.
  

• Global War on Terror (including the War in Iraq): We are at war with an enemy who will never sign any treaties of peace; who will never stop until our entire culture and country is broken in two, the Constitution burned, and the resources of the world under fascist Islamist control. Historical mistakes combined with a defunct United Nations that has harbored gangsters and villains redistributing American funds into terrorist activities have led us into a situation where it is annihilate or be annihilated. There are times when we must take the war to the enemy and the dismantling of the Taliban and securing of Afghanistan was a primary battle in this war. But securing our civil defense should have been the next step taken, followed by the invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam's regime. Unfortunately, in retrospect, things didn't work out that way and I fully supported the invasion of Iraq when it began and continue to support it today. But I feel that once the Iraqi Constitution has been finalized and secured by vote, American troops should be withdrawn back to our country immediately to help secure the nation by building the infrastructure for civil defense and securing the US borders. And the only thing that bothers me about the fact that no biological or chemical weapons were found is that we know they were there and that the country used them on its own people--so where the fug are they? That's the question we should be asking, not why did we go to war when they weren't there--they were there--get over it and support our troops in finding out what the hell happened to them.
  

• The Proper Use of Law: The Law is the social extension of an individual's right to protect their life and property from infringement by other human beings. Civilized human beings defer this right of defense to a legislature, executive, and judicial system that is charged with securing these rights universally for all citizens, all the while retaining the inherent right to recall that delegated authority to protect themselves, their family, or their property (refer to the Second Amendment). Once the law goes beyond this barrier of protecting individual lives and property from being infringed upon by others, it has become tyrannical and must be dissolved back into the individually delegated rights from which it springs. The confiscation of private property (taxes robbed from paychecks prior to even being paid out along with eminent domain seizures and every other egregious action by a do-good government) is an abhorrence to the spiritual freedom of the individual and whose absolute prevention should be the primary concern of any half-intelligent citizen who dares to call themselves a patriot.
  

• The Quest for Oil: Our civilization runs on oil and the intelligent action to take is to encourage and promote scientific endeavors to remove our dependency from this static natural resource immediately, like yesterday. We should all be driving electric hyrbids in three years and full electric/hydrogen cars in five to ten years. Fuck the Saudi Arabians and fuck the Bush family for getting into bed with these demonic bastards who used our money to fund the 9/11 terrorists and still suspiciously remain off the Axis of Evil list. Every resource and every intelligent mind should be bent on breaking the dependence on oil as a means to move the global economy; doing so would remove enormous access to capital from the pocketbooks of global terorism, much more so than the ridiculous and hypocritical drug war.
  

• Why I Voted for George W. Bush Twice: Because he wasn't Al Gore or John Kerry. The entire Democratic Party is the pride of the ghosts of the fifties communists. The entire party has pretty much been exposed as socialists and won't regain any sort of respectable power for at least a generation--and thank God for that. Al Gore was a fake motherfugger from the beginning, a quasi-conservative who reinvented himself to go for the liberal win in a white house bid (remember when his wife was head of the PMRC going after Ice-T and 2 Live Crew?). John Kerry was an absolute idiot and I'm convinced that the GOP and Carl Rove engineered the nominational defeat of Howard Dean so that they would be up against a candidate easy to defeat on the basis of his past as a weak-spined, plastic-haired, socialist puke. The Carter and Clinton administrations weakened our ability to defend ourselves and gather vital intelligence outside of our borders and I knew a Republican Bush presidency would be a step in the right direction--a strengthening of the national security infrastructure, a rearming and further modernization of the military, and massive tax breaks for the achievers of society. That being said, it is time for Bush to go after this term. The beautiful thing is that the Democratic Party has been totally marginalized from being taken seriously in American politics for many years. In my mind, the Republican party is next to be marginalized and this will usher in a new age where the two party system is broken completely in favor of voting for individuals on the basis of their core values and how they have historically stuck to them and acted from them. BLOGGERS WITH HEART FOR PRESIDENT 2012!!!
  

• Congressional Term Limits: Four terms for congressman and two for senators. Period. End of story. Political office should be a rewarding burden and not a career. The fact that it has become a viable career option for used car salesmen and viscious trial laywers is a major problem in American life. Citizens of this country instituting Congressional term limits is the same as farmers putting up barb wire to keep foxes out of their chicken coops and pulling out the shotgun and tar and feathers when necessary. Make no mistake, embedded politicians are the enemies of the people and that's why they weren't the ones given the ultimate power by the Consitution.
  

• The War on Drugs: This is the most tyrannical and hypocritical action ever undertaken by a succession of US Presidents and their Congressional counterparts. There are instances where being under the influence of drugs classified as mind-altering or reaction-limiting should be illegal (operating any vehicle in public or inciting violence, etc.) but the government has no right stepping into our homes and dictating what we can or cannot put into our bodies given that this action does not infringe upon the life or property of any other citizen. Marijuana should be legalized, standardized to a proper cultivation, and taxed heavily to support the strengthening of our civil defense structures and operational processes. Political leaders who don't agree with this should be nailed screaming into a pine coffin and pushed out to sea.
  

• The Death Penalty: In my youth, I was much more zealous in meting out terminal punishments for the unforgiveable crimes of murder, rape, child molestations, etc. But as I've gotten older, I realize that it would be much more prudent to use these individuals to better society in some way. That could be hard labor, but I'm also thinking that you could teach them a trade and give them an entire lifetime to master the trade and learn new ways of innovation towards improving the processes and productions of society. Their penalty is losing their liberty (which is similar to losing their life). They should be given the option the entire time of taking their own life if they are too unhappy to live.
  

• Celebrities Speaking Out Against the War: I have no problem with citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to speak their minds and hearts. But the First Amendment only gives us the right to speak; it does not guarantee us an audience to hear us out. I do think that when an actor of musician bares their minds to us on a stage we payed for them to act or play music on that it does cross the line into the inappropriate--but even that I am willing to forgive. I just don't see why anyone would cut their audience in half with divisive statements when they are in the position of marketing their creative work to an audience who supports their passions and lifestyles. There are always reprecussions when they do this--sometimes it's not so bad and sometimes it's a career breaker. Proceed at your own risk. The exception to this, in my mind, is when one of these stars takes the time to publish an article or start a blog--because then, they are engaging us on an intellectual level that has little to do with their artistic platform. I actually admire it when a Sean Penn or someone else takes the time to put their thoughts on the page and takes the heat from it. That's the way it should go down.
  
  

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is questioning even rebuilding the city at all following the rescue efforts.

I'm sorry but I agree. First of all, the first Frenchman Creole who built their house on the swampy peninsula was eating retard sandwiches. And the dipshits who followed after him were even dumber.

"Hmm, let's see--I'll build my house on the sea bed--that sounds like a good idea!"

It's about as intelligent as these friggin' dolts in California who build their houses on stilts on the side of cliffs and then are shocked and dismayed [Tom Daschle voice] when mudslides knock their shit into the ocean and force the rest of us to pay for it through our insurance premiums once their stop loss gets hit and the government picks up the rest of the tab (with our tax dollars--at least those of us who work to achieve wealth).

I say we write New Orleans off as a national tragedy, sequester some land in Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, fill a couple lakes up and throw in some crocodiles and have women parade around all day long topless throwing beads out to random strangers. Let the Indians build ten or twenty casinos and we'll call it New New Orleans. We can even name one of the casinos Mardi Gras and they can rebuild the French Quarter inside.

It's a tragedy that so many people died but can't we be honest and admit that it's amazing it didn't happen before this? To make the same mistake twice is just foolishness for the sake of tradition and I won't lend my support of tax dollar allocation to it.

We got Louis Armstrong, Anne Rice, and some great hangovers out of it all. Let's cash in our chips and walk away with the losses we've already taken--there's no need to commit Harry Carrey just to prove a point.

I don't normally copy and paste my comments on other people's blogs onto my own but I was really moved while writing this response to Tony's post tonight.

Here's the foreground breakdown: I said that I agreed with Speaker of the House that New Orleans was a lost cause and shouldn't be rebuilt; Tony said that didn't surprise him since Republicans had been making major mistakes for five years; I said that may be true but that I felt in my heart and mind that Democrats would have made many many more; he responded by telling me not to call him "T." And I responded with this:

Tony,
Sorry about calling you "T." I meant no disrespect. I've re-watched four seasons of The Sopranos in the past week and it must have sunk in through osmosis.

The fact remains that if Gore were President during 9/11, he would have most likely followed the pathetic Clinton policy of taking terrorists to court supported by a United Nations thugged up with terrorist sympathizers who have been stealing and robbing from hard-working Americans whose tax dollars have been sent under the auspices of feeding, clothing, and caring for the Third World but actually went to fund who knows what the fuck--ask Kofi and his kin.

Beyond that, Able Danger has all but proven to the sensible American that Clinton was well aware of the growing Al Qaeda threat but did nothing and that Bush inherited a ticking bomb and reacted swiftly and appropriately (at least in my mind and you won't convince me otherwise so don't bother trying).

And now that intelligence agencies are fairly sure that Al Qaeda has allied themselves with the MS-13 street gang and has already smuggled nuclear weapons into the United States and are just waiting for the right time to use them, there's a big chance that your city is a major target. And what exactly do you think a Clinton/Gore/Kerry presidency would have done to prevent that from happening besides smiling a lot in front of the camera and bending over a little further for the UN and domestic terrorist cells to stick it in a little deeper?

We are talking about the future of our civilization here and you and Matt Good can talk about peace being the most important thing all you want, but the fact remains that peace without strength means less than shit and that further means that people have to go and die to secure that peace and provide you and I with the opportunity to hold virtual debates that don't end in beheadings and castrations.

Wars suck.

Hurricanes suck.

Schoepenhauer said Life is something that should not have been. But the fact remains that Life is and our entire civilization dictates that wars must be fought in order to secure peace, especially with an enemy who will grant no quarter and sign no treaty, who will not stop coming after us until their hearts stop beating.

And the fact that he was willing stand up and do something about it is exactly why I continue to support this President.

How pissed do you think MoveOn.Org and Cindy Sheehan are since the hurricane and its disatrous aftermath has taken virtually all media attention away from their collective whining session outside the President's Texas ranch?

Of course, those far left of center in the country aren't satisfied with organizing relief efforts or with the rescue of the victims. They feel it prudent to transpose their rage about Iraq from Cindy Sheehan to the Katrina victims, all the while keeping the President in the crosshairs as the Nicholae Carpathia of real life.

You want to talk about the horrors of the devastation in the Gulf Coast and how tragic it is, I'm with you. You want to talk about racism in the media and how it affects our social outlook, you'll bore me because I'm white and affluent and interested in individuals for the content of their character and not the color of their skin. It's not my fault other people are too stupid to practice critical thought; I've got enough on my plate keeping my own brain sharp and my own relationships fruitful and strong.

Black cops in New Orleans "Find" DVDs and Electronics at Wal-Mart

But if you want to tie the whole thing back to the Iraq War, I'm going to tell you that you're nuts and you're probably still stinging from the '04 election and I'll smile even bigger because I'm one of the Ohio voters who put the man back in office for a second term which means my vote was worth twice yours and you should acclimate to it because Ohio's star is on the rise.

But getting back to Iraq; if any mistake was made by this administration, it was invading Iraq prior to strengthening US civil defense measures including bomb shelters and the operational and human resources needed to respond immediately to disasters of this magnitude.

But all this is really beside the point because the fact remains that there is a global army of embedded Islamist Fascists who have been trained to slit your throat regardless of who you voted for in the last election and carefree of how much you disagree with the war in Iraq.

It's even more ironic that the majority of those opposed to the war happen to live in the two cities that are the biggest targets for decimation by Al Qaeda and yet they still remain adamantly opposed to the only course which will prevent their certain demise.

The only thing that will prevent a massive strike yielding hundreds of thousands dead is strength through armed force and persistence of core values. And all the Anti-Bush blog posts and media sponsored cookouts outside Presidential residences won't save you when terrorist cells detonate a nuclear explosion in your city, turning your buildings into shadows, your picket signs into deflated toothpicks, and your domain names into virtual tombstones.

My advice is to focus on what matters before it's too late. Only the fool sits and complains about how dirty the windows are when the house is on fire.

I was called a "right wing fascist" the other day in Tony Pierce's comment section and that hasn't happened in a while so it prompted me to do a little public service announcement...you can believe it, or you can doubt it.

This is the political spectrum (click to see blow up):First of all, it must be understood that the political spectrum has much more to do with economics than it does with social aspirations. Here are some further definitions:

• COMMUNISM: A system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people and advocates the overthrow of capitalism by the revolution of the proletariat. This system represents the complete destruction of the individual in favor of the group identity.
  
• SOCIALISM: An intermediate period between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved. Socialists are Communists in transition and, again, a heavy emphasis is placed on driving out individual identity in favor of a group identity.
  
• FASCISM: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. This system allows for private ownership of property but insists on government control of production and the option for seizure of private property at any time for the good of the state. This system also advocates the strict control of private firearm ownership as well as radical social manipulation through laws used as incentives and barriers (HINT: this is the modern Democratic Party in action except that the belligerent nationalism and racism has turned into anti-nationalism and political-correctness--but both are effective weapons for marginalizing social enemies)
  
• MODERATE LIBERAL: This is the individual who votes the fascists and socialists into power and is the prime medium by which a capitalist state reverts to Communism. This is the pressure point to attack in order to prevent the destruction of individual freedom by the tyrants of the left.
  
• UNDECIDED: These are the brain dead worthless among us, the automatons who go to work, reproduce, pay their taxes, grow old, and die like good worker bees without having made a peep one way or the other in life.
  
• MODERATE CONSERVATIVE: Another pressure point to target in order to prevent Leftist tyrants from destroying individual liberty. These individuals claim to be conservatives but still support wealth confiscation, redistribution, "pork" handouts to lobbyist groups, social manipulation through law, and bigger and bigger salaries for public servants with no term limits for lawmakers and judges. (HINT: This is the modern Republican Party and it is in danger of slipping totally across the undecided divide into the danger zone of the wrong side of the fence)
  
• CONSERVATISM: Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. These individuals are quick to legislate morality and constantly seek to impose their religious views into law and persecute those who fall outside their narrow definition of what is "right and acceptable." (There are also heavy elements of this type in the leadership of the GOP)
  
• LIBERTARIANISM: One who believes in free will, advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state, and believes that the individual is the only measure of freedom. The Libertarian also believes in a strict interpretation of the Constitution and that the purpose of government is to protect the lives and private property of its citizens and nothing more. They typically believe in open borders and strong civil defense. They typically do not support the invasion of foreign nations without specific and probable cause. They believe that the purpose of society is the free exchange of products, services, information and ideas with minimal interference from the government. (HINT: This is the only hope for the future of freedom for humanity.)
  
• ANARCHISM: The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished and the rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority. These people are just plain nuts!

So as you can see, there can be no such thing as a "right wing fascist" and anyone who uses that term is clearly demonstrating their political ignorance and should be ignored or dejected from any semblance of credibility when debating social theory.

Technorati Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Joshua Minton

Look Mayor Nagin, YOU are were the mayor of New Orleans and as such, you are the first line of defense and risk management for the people of New Orleans. So, while those on the left are being so quick to hand out blame to the President and Federal agencies, let's not forget that America is a country whose politics and resources marshall from the ground up.

And you sir, have just admitted your absolute incompetence to the entire world, passing the blame for your city's disaster recovery and response plans to the governor, Federal agencies, and indeed, the President himself.

You should have been marshalling greyhound buses for the poor a week before when everyone knew the storm was coming. You should have been organzing food and shelter relief efforts months before. You should have been educating your citizens on how to keep calm in such a crisis and how much of a bad idea it is to go into your attic to keep safe from a rising flood.

You should have done these things and so much more so that you didn't end up standing in a flood tide, looking like an outrageous fool, blaming the rest of the world for your incompetence as a leader.

UPDATE: And, from Antimedia...

....then let's get the facts straight. President Bush had to beg the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana to evacuate the city? And they're blaming the feds for the poor response? The New Orleans disaster plan included using buses to evacuate the poor, but the Mayor never initiated the plan? And they want to blame the feds and the President for the failures?

And where is the media reporting on this? Non-existent as usual. Folks, we are getting the results we've been voting for — politicians who'd rather CYA than get the job done. And people are dying. Does voting seem serious enough now?

UPDATE: Check out this comment posted to Tony Pierce's blog today:

My name is Steve, I live (or at least used to) in New Orleans, Louisiana. My house is currently under 20 feet of water. I got out before the storm with my car, dog, and the clothes on my back. All else is lost. I am a refugee and yes, I AM WHITE. While you jackasses sit around and discuss the racial implications of a storm and flood, down here in Louisiana, we are all suffering together, black, white, asian, etc. This is a natural disaster that we in Louisiana have been warned about for years. The city, state and federal government all share some blame in this, but particularly the city for not having a plan for getting the poorer elements of the city a way out BEFORE the storm hit and the levees broke. Our city govt. has a history (particulalrly recently) of extreme corruption and inneffectiveness(?). Getting people out before a storm by buses, trains, planes, however, was the job and responsibility of the New Orleans city government, not the feds, not Bush, but the city and it failed and left its own people (and by "own people" I mean it in any and every way you can read into it) behind. Where I am here in Baton Rouge, we are trying to help, the finger pointing and race baiting can wait.

You're exactly right about the responsibility here, Steve. All my prayers are with you. Please send Steve an e-mail to let him know he's in your thoughts with the rest of the victims.

I watched the interview with Mayor Nagin that was rebroadcast on ABC around 11:30 PM EST on Sunday September 4th, 2005 and in it he recalled the events of the Katrina refugees being turn back at the county line when they tried to leave the Superdome using the one remaining bridge and highway.

Apparantly, a looter got into a mall across the county line and stole and/or caused some property damage. So, the marching group of refugees were met with dogs and machine guns and told that they were to turn back immediately, that they would not be let across the county line.

Mayor Nagin's response to this was that it simply a matter of people valuing property over human life and that he was sure it was a class issue.

But I wouldn't want an angry bloodthirsty mob marching down my street either and I would expect my law enforcement officers to protect my life and property in the same situation. I mean, these were people who had just been through the worst natural disaster in American history and had spent the last few days degraded to the base level of animals reacting out of mere survival instinct. Would you want an angry mob who the media had been showing looting for the past few days marching through your neighborhood?

But the crucial point of contention here is the argument the mayor makes that property rights were being heralded above human rights, because Mayor Nagin is dead wrong. Let's consider the words of former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court George Sutherland:

It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual--the man--has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, and the right to his property...The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take away from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty, is to still leave him a slave.

There are no rights except human rights and property rights are actually the rights of people to own and protect their property (which is the product of their liberty applied to their efforts to achieve a happiness that in turn does not infringe upon the safety or property of other citizens).

When the unscrupulous or outright ignorant among us start making this distinction between human rights and property rights, they are denying one of the oldest and most basic tenets of Liberty--the privilege of private ownership as an extension of one's life and liberty along with the inherent right to defend that property from infringement by other citizens the same as they would if their own lives were being threatened.

What happened in New Orleans was tragic, but the decision to turn those people back at the county line was an appropriate protection measure for the property and safety (which are the same right) of the citizens in the northern counties.

It is far easier to attack the decision as inhuman, as racist, and as classist but the level-headed among us will realize that they would expect their safety and property defended in the same manner were the situations applied to them under equal measure.

The Blogfather and the Canadian rocker are excellent bloggers, good at stirring up the shit storm, but neither one seems to have the firm grasp of the basic economic principles of liberty that are ultimately needed to rise above the fluff, the name calling, and the general pessimistic ranting that is indicative of any member of the leftist press today (and yes, bloggers should be considered members of the press because they are opinion molders and fact purveyors).

In their podcast discussion on September 2nd, 2005; Matthew Good told Tony that if he were to ever run for office, he would raise corporate taxes significantly.

Corporations are a common target of the left because of the enormous influence that they wield in the political (and therefore social) arena; and the fact that they are generally owned and controlled by stuffy white dudes in suits doesn't hurt the message with their target demographic either. But beyond that, corporations are easy targets because they get pork stuffed into Congressional bills that benefit a certain segment of the population (generally at the taxpayer's expense) and they lobby for bills to be passed that protect certain "victims," usually at the expense of intrusion upon the free market exchange of goods and services.

But when it comes to raising taxes on corporations, what is often not understood by the more emotional of the left, is that corporations are owned by individuals (either publicly traded as IPOs or as private companies, like my own).

Any tax increase is therefore passed on to the individual shareholders in the form of decreased funds available for paying out dividends and salaries (which never happens and usually results in increases in pricing for the goods and services the companies produce), or in decreased funds available for reinvesting into the company in terms of research and development.

Private entrepreneurship is the prime mover of raising the living standard for everyone across the world. Granted, it takes many decades to trickle down sometimes but there are now some people in Bangladesh finally plugging in personal PCs as a result of Bill Gates taking technology someone else developed and producing and marketing it so that we are all connected and you are reading these electronic words right now.

What you are really talking about when you say "raise corporate taxes" is that you want to overtax the rich to compensate for the living standards of the poor. Unfortunately, it never works out that way because the more taxes you leverage, the bigger the bureaucracy grows to administer those taxes and it is this ever-growing system of taxation administration, this cancerous plethora of leeches and succubi with its endless lawyers, piled up codes that no one can make sense of, greasy fingered special interest lobbyists pilfering off the public dime, and the inevitable legal loophole parades that allow the rich to keep their money anyway which is to blame for the waste and inefficiency (which ultimately leads to poverty and death) that is choking our economy right now.

Raising corporate taxes (or any taxes) always depresses the economy and therefore the living standard and opportunities for everyone because you are taking money out of private hands (because all corporations are ultimately owned by individuals) and putting it into a sausage factory bureaucracy of waste, incompetence, and inefficiency (like the half billion dollars completely unaccounted for by the US Department of Education). This is money that could have been used to develop the next cancer drug, hire fifteen new Full Time Employees, or used to develop the next affordable hydrogen-powered automobile.

Leveraging taxes against the innovators and the investors of the world is just chopping away at the incentive to achieve and take risks and this is really slitting the throat of the future to placate the needs of the moment, something all politicians (especially those on the left) are excellent at doing.

So, the next time you hear a journalist, blogger, or rock star spout off about raising corporate taxes, you can be sure that they are just trying to get you in the gut. Don't let them. Arm yourselves by reading this book and this book (both written by the most brilliant black man alive today) and call them out on their shit. Just because they're talented writers and musicians doesn't mean that they're not dead wrong about some things.

I can't believe the ferocity with which so many bloggers on the far left are going after the President in terms of his culpability for the Katrina response disaster which is so clearly a systemic issue and not a personable one.

Just perusing the disaster recovery plans for the city of New Orleans clearly demonstrates that they didn't follow one letter of the plan despite being warned by the government days ahead.

Bloggers like Tony Pierce have staked their entire credibility on the President's guilt in this matter. Consider this statement from his blog post today:

its youre fault. you voted for Bush. twice!...if you have a Bush/Cheeney sticker on your SUV, the blood of New Orleans is on your hands. straight up.

That statement is not only ignorant and wrong, it would be totally offensive to me if I had core values that could be moved by pathetic and inciteful statements like this. Tony, if you descend from upon your virtual throne to ever read this post--you have a short window of opportunity to apologize to your readers for that statement and my advice is that you take advantage of it.

I just can't believe that these people are willing to lay their credibility on the line to push the President's blame on the disastrous local response to a category 5 storm that the state and the city were warned about days prior to and refused to enact their disaster recovery and evacuation plans against. It defies all logic but then the those on the left have never been known for their strong grasp of logic. I'm not sure I can even bother with Tony any more--I respect his talent but there seems to be nothing affirming or optimistic in what he's been saying and I don't have time to waste on people who's viewpoints don't enlighten or advance in some way. I hope I'm wrong and I'm willing to be more patient before I delete his RSS feed the same way I did Wil Wheaton's today.

One of my readers said this:

Fuck Tony Pierce. That guy wouldn't know logic if it was skull fucking him and wearing a name tag.... To argue with him is to argue with an idiot.

I would never take it that far but it truly does seem to be a brick wall between those on the left and those on the right.

If you've read my piece on The Political Spectrum, you know that many of those on the left are arguing from political, social, and economic points of view that are largely fascist if not outright socialist and communistic. And if they have any firm grasp of history, they should know that Americans, as a culture, are inherently suspicious of these political points of view despite any accolades they may receive in the offices of the ACLU.

No one is saying that the President is innocent in this whole mess. It's just that those on the left are hinging their entire six year war against this man into his response for disaster recovery after a brutal act of nature. Surely they can't think that people are stupid enough to follow this pide piper's call of lunacy. But this is nothing new because they take a swing at every opportunity they think they have and they lose a little more credibility every time.

Tony has been known to say that his Busblog cannot be discredited and I am certainly not trying to do that here. But I would like to point out that Dan Rather once thought he'd never be fired and Jayson Blair once thought he'd never get caught either. Tony's credibility will probably be OK with the majority of his readers but if he ever wants to branch out beyond that, to actually move ahead into the bright future he has the opportunity to pursue, then he needs to learn the art of compromise and know when to backtrack and apologize for outright viscious statements that alienate a good portion of his country. But then again, he probably doesn't care what I think in which case I don't know why I should care what he says.

Things change on a dime online and we as bloggers must do everything to protect our credibility. Tony once gave me the advice to apologize for an indiscretion I had commmitted. I took his advice.

I hope he takes mine in turn and apologizes for that insane statement of blame.

And by the way, if you want to know what inspires people, check out this story about a six-year old kid who was found walking down a Baton Rouge highway with a five-year old infant in his arms, surround by five toddlers...amazing that a child has shown more leadership in action that the entire operations of his government.

I'm not one for trusting the results of polls too much, but many of those on the left are quick to use these polls to point out that President Bush has the lowest approval rating since Nixon during Watergate.

So, before they gear up for another round of ridiculous attacks on the President as the scapegoat for a class-5 hurricane, let me point out that according to the most recent ABC poll, 55% do not blame the President but 75% do blame the incompetent state and local governments of Louisiana, as appropriate since disaster recovery has always flowed from the local to the state to the Federal government (despite the copy/paste from the FEMA website that the Leftist bloggers have been burning out their Control-Cs and Control-Vs on their keyboards over).

If that's not enough, this CNN/USA/Gallup poll from today has a measly 13% of those polled blaming President Bush for the debacle following Katrina.

Those numbers should instantly deflate any momentum the far left bloggers like Tony Pierce, Matthew Good, and throw a dart for another because they all sound the same. Beyond that, they happen to be dead wrong and completely out of step with the majority of Americans who realize that this was a systemic problem that resulted in the deaths of thousands and the loss of billions of dollars.

Systemic problems means that we look at the incentives and handoffs within the processes in order to prevent future deaths. The left would have us believe that impeachment and replacement with a bigger beauracracy even more dependent on a centralized government is the answer--but this is because after six years of shooting bullets into a dark room that the President isn't even standing in, they haven't got anything left to do or say.

What amazes me is that these leftist bloggers amass thousands of readers daily and tens of those make the effort to comment on each blog post and somehow these bloggers convince themselves that they've become the majority just because they've gathered a little band of self-congratulatory minions around them.

But like Junior Soprano once said, Some people are so far behind in the race that they actually think they're leading.

There is a vast difference between a person who argues from a set of core values and a person who argues from a point of eternal contention. The latter becomes mere waves while the former is a solid rock that the waves break against every time, no matter how big they are or how much daily traffic they see squirting through their site.

Here is my core value: Every human being is inherently free to pursue their own happiness provided that this pursuit does not infringe upon the life or property of another citizen..

I vote for the politicians who get our society closer to this goal. If you've read my definition of the political spectrum, you realize that, almost without exception, the leftist press and the tongxue bloggers argue from a fascist, socialist, and communistic point of view all the while obfuscating their true intentions under the guise of fighting for the Bill of Rights.

But these pathetic swipes at the air are not core values--these are laughable attempts to subvert individual freedom. These are foamed up waves that look big but crash and break against the rocks of logic and liberty.

So my advice to these boogie board surfers of the ephemeral is to keep on smacking the rocks. Perhaps in a few hundred millions years they might wear a couple of inches away.

I am so done with this subject, but I am glad that I chose to wait so long to read this Whittle piece. It has been sitting in my inbox for three days now and I finally bit the bullet and read the whole thing tonight.

Wow...is all I can...wow! You must, muST, MUST read this post if you read nothing else today.

Trust me, read it now.

Hat tip to Antimedia.

...there is no other way to describe it when someone writes this:

new orleans was a fuck up from the ground up. and at some point the president needed to say ok im taking over for a minute because i am seeing that this red tape is strangling people. impeach my ass later but now im gonna show you how its done. but we dont have a leader in america although we have plenty of sheep

Let me put these words in different context: let's say on March 1st, 1933 in Berlin, the following quote appears in Der Angriff:

the [reichstag fire] was a fuck up from the ground up and at some point [president hindenberg] needed to say ok im taking over for a minute because i am seeing that this red tape is strangling people. impeach my ass later but now im gonna show you how its done. but we dont have a leader in [germany] although we have plenty of sheep

One could almost hear the wheels of ascension turning as that leader appeared seemingly from nowhere to take absolute control and bring order and safety to his people.

It's amazing how so many on the Left are quick to look at the Presidential office for blame and for security and as the Father of their Fatherland--and it's because they think like fascists. Now, I know so many of them would like to fool you into believing that fascism is a political philosophy which belongs to the right but the truth of the matter is that fascism is a leftist political viewpoint and always has been. Only idiots think otherwise.

Consider this definition from my post defining the political spectrum:

FASCISM: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. This system allows for private ownership of property but insists on government control of production and the option for seizure of private property at any time for the good of the state. This system also advocates the strict control of private firearm ownership as well as radical social manipulation through laws used as incentives and barriers (HINT: this is the modern Democratic Party in action except that the belligerent nationalism and racism has turned into anti-nationalism and political-correctness--but both are effective weapons for marginalizing social enemies)

Click photo for blow-up
It's time to finally call the left in this country out for what they are--Fascists on their way to being socialists on their way to being communists.

It is outright lunacy that they are crying racism in a situation where 85% of the residents were black, the mayor was black, and the governor was a woman in a Democratic state that should have been the pinnacle of Utopia with all of its socialized wealth redistribution programs--and they all failed in utter and complete incompetence to protect themselves or their black and white neighbors--and somehow it's the white President's fault for not assuming the role of dictator that they claim he has been since September 11, 2001.

Watching a talented writer come back to this trough of rhetoric day after day is like watching Tin Cup keep dropping his ball on the 18th hole, hoping for that hole-in-one; but unfortunately for the leader-needers in our country, this isn't the movies and that hole-in-one isn't in the future.

TT: Tony Pierce, Fascism, Katrina, New Orleans

Kanye West was booed last night during his NFL appearance because of the ridiculous remarks he made last week on a live NBC telethon that, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

I say good. I've never listened to this guy's records and I was only mildly tempted to pick one up to check it out (and still abstained).

These stars deserve exactly what they get when they make political statements--a divided audience who could have all been potential music buyers.

Stupid...stupid...stupid...

Hat tip to Zebrality

TT: Kanye West

I was willing to let the George Bush hates black people comment go as the guilty ravings of the liberal minority victimized wealthy but this is too much.

In a recent interview, West said,

I think white people are allowed to say bling. They are allowed to say old-school black slang, like hottie and homie.

Actually, I do not think that (white people) are allowed to use slang until it is at least a year old. If you say a slang word too early, it's like you're trying to be black. So as long as the slang is a little played out, you're all good.

The arrogance of this guy is astounding. What if I were to say that Kanye wasn't allowed to conjugate verbs until the white people were done doing that--you know, 'cause they invented it and all.

Eff him. I wouldn't buy one of his albums now if I needed to memorize a song off it to play on the Goonies bone piano to save my life. I'd rather fall than be indebted to this prick in any way.

He'll be in the bargain bin in two years anyway and any history books marginal enough to mention him will misspell his name and no one will care.

TT: Kanye West

The only forum that I posted on following Katrina was Tony Pierce's but I mostly did that through Trackbacks. If you have your own blog and want to respond to another blogger's post, you should be doing it through trackbacks from your own blog. Not only does this add legitimacy to your post but it puts your full online presence behind your words. I always look at the trackbacks before I read the comments on any post.

But getting back to the point...if the Bill Whittle essay Tribes didn't make the point to these liberals then perhaps something a bit shorter might help. This post pretty much sums up what is wrong with the whole "Bush didn't act because he was incompetent/didn't care" argument:

when I tell my liberal friends that the federal rescue effort (or any rescue effort) following the hurricane involves proper planning and preparation, I’m told, by people who’ve never moved anything heavier than a table lamp and never supervised anybody other than the cook and the maid, that, of course, this is nothing, that the feds should have been there as soon as the rain stopped, and that “they,” meaning more than one of my liberal correspondents, had they been in charge, would have been there and back, more than once, before our federal effort really got underway.

They would have been ready to air-drop supplies to trapped residents, I’ve been told. But air-dropping supplies involves more than the three men who fly a C-130: it involves the mechanics who keep the plane in running order, the men who fuel it, the men who maintain the runways, the men who get the supplies to be loaded out of the warehouse, the men who move the supplies from the warehouse to the plane, the men who load it on the plane, the men who figure out which supplies are needed where, the men who coordinate all of the shipments, to get the maximum use out of supplies, the men who reorder the supplies to restock the warehouse, the men who handle the paperwork and the payments, the men who get new fuel to replace what was loaded on the plane, the men who prepare the mission plan, the men who provide the aerial coordinates, and probably a few dozen others I haven’t mentioned.

Yet, when I mention these things, and note that I’m the only person they know who has any industrial management experience, I’m told that I’m just making excuses for President Bush.

They don’t get it, they don’t understand, because they don’t want to understand.

Well, it’s pretty simple: loads of Democrats, and not a few Republicans, who have never been responsible for men and equipment ever in their lives, have been telling us how badly the President (personally) has failed. My advice: unless you are reading something written by someone who does have some experience with machinery and men and inventory and transportation and logistics, when it comes to some blowhard criticizing the federal response to Katrina, just ignore it, because the vast majority (if not all) of the critics simply have no idea what they are talking about.

Hat tip to Antimedia

TT: Hurricane Katrina

...but this wasn't something unexpected. This is all part of my master plan to watch the two party corporate-controlled political system broken forever, to be replaced by the age of the Enlightened Individual.

See, I knew Bush was a company man back in 2000 and that the GOP was a company and a business miles before it was a philosophy and a set of core values. But the company securing power for the next two terms was so much more important than voting core values at that time.

Besides, in 2000, I wasn't quite sure what my core values were.

When I graduated college that Spring, I would have voted for Al Gore without even thinking twice (and that was the problem, wasn't it?).

But my brother-in-law came down to visit me and we were having drinks at the bar, waiting for our table and he asked me the question that changed everything: Why are you going to vote for Gore?

All I had was: Umm, err--the environment, uhhhh the way they treat minorities, ehhh they've been running the government pretty good for the last eight years... And then he proceeded to educate me on conservative values of governance and why they made more sense morally, ethically, politically, and financially than liberalism which was full of lofty ideals with no substance and masked a terrible usurpation of individual liberty.

I didn't come away convinced but I was definitely curious. I read this book, this book, this book, this book, this book, and this book; then I started listening to Rush Limbaugh every day at my new 9 to fiver cubicle job.

I didn't have much money then, but I knew I was going to have some someday and I wanted as much of it as possible to remain in my bank account--that wasn't going to happen with Al Gore in office.

But deep in my heart I knew that a Bush presidency would come at a price, that moving away from the Clinton era would heft an enormous fee but it was one that must be paid.

I didn't think a thing about Islamic fundamentalists and the danger they posed to my country. I had heard of Osama Bin Laden and I think I actually read his threat against the US in 1998 but it didn't mean anything more to me than the Bible's threat of damnation if I didn't toe the line and call myself a believer (which never happened).

But I voted for Bush and it was the first time I ever cast a vote for anything besides for myself as cutest boy in my fifth grade class (I won, by the way and got to date Brandy, the hottest white chick, and Shonda, the hottest black chick at the same time). So, I voted and my man won and that was all that mattered to me at the time. I was on top and for the first time in my life, felt a part of my country, a new regime that I helped usher into power--it was a sweet but short victory because that first major bill came due pretty fast and the interest was high: 3,000 lives to be exact.

I've never placed the blame for 9/11 on Bush (I firmly believe that it was Woodrow Wilson who caused 9/11 and keep watching this site over the next few days because I'll prove it to you) and I think that had he been able to retire in January 2003, he would have been the greatest President in the history of our country besides George Washington; greater than Lincoln and greater than Jefferson. Nobody was greater than Washington and I don't care that the man owned slaves or if he tortured small animals on the docks of Mt. Vernon--the man was an Emperor who laid down his power voluntarily because he knew the dangers and because he'd given up so much of his life and what he loved in order to preserve the freedom we each continue to enjoy to this day--that was a great man.

And George W. Bush is also a great man but great in the way that any American is great. He was in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.

His tax cuts for those who pay 80% of the taxes were right.


His response to 9/11 was right and he galvanized the country into a social force that moved mountains, or rather invaded mountains because his invasion of Afghanistan and dismantling of the Taliban was also right.

But he was still a company man and that leash was bound to get yanked at some point and it did. Someone still had a stick up their ass when it came to Iraq. Now, I'll be the first to admit that it was in our country's best interest to invade Iraq, remove Saddam from power, and secure the country as a democratic ally in the Middle East from which to launch an idealistic invasion that would eclipse that of the cold war between capitalism and communism. But we should have prioritized better because Iraq was about third or fourth on a very short list of things to get done before we took on the Islamic fundamentalists which really meant taking on Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Syria in that order.

We should have secured our oceans and land borders first.

We should have strengthened our civil defense measures in the heartland (meaning bomb shelters for every neighborhood and a firearm in every home with people trained to use it along with HAM radio teams that network across the entire country to provide armed defense that is structured and unbreakable even should one region go down the others would move in to secure the infrastructure).

We should have applied Six Sigma to the disaster response and recovery (including healthcare) for a massive strike. The aftermath of Katrina clearly demonstrates that the administration has been jerking off on this matter for the past four years.

We should have already rebuilt the World Trade Centers exactly as they were or something very similar, right on Mohammed Atta's grave. And right out front of the towers, in a lovely little butterfly garden with a fountain should be a hundred foot spike with Osama Bin Laden's shriveled head being burned in an eternal flame.

But none of that happened. Instead, we got Go back to work and keep charging up those credit card bills and that should have been the first clue as to what this administration was going to end up being about.

And then came the invasion of Iraq. And I'll admit that it felt pretty frigging good to see the American might roll into the deserts of Iraq on cable television. I taped about ten hours of the invasion and it is in a vacuum sealed bag in my basement inside a box labeled WAR BOX because I want my kids to watch a war unfold as it did before my eyes in real time. I want them to know that their father was watching for the first time in history that a civilian could sit at home and watch the invasion of another country live on television.

And it felt damn good to watch that statue of Saddam topple to the ground. But that was the last time I felt really good about Iraq because I knew the sensational stuff was done and that the really hard work was about to begin. It took years to secure Berlin from the Russians and they were civilized compared to Fascist Islamists. It's going to take decades to secure a peaceful state of government in Iraq and these are years and resources we don't have to allocate to those ends which is a Global War on Terrorism that is going to last at least 50-70 years (since we're being honest here).

I'm all about removing dictators from power and letting the people handle their own business but we need to be expedient about it and get on with it and if a terrorist state should rise up in Iraq in our absence, that's when we send one plane back armed with a full blown nuclear warhead and turn their sand castles into the biggest glass mirror on the planet, something that could be seen from the surface of Mars.

And to be honest with you, I was with the President even up until Katrina hit. I was willing to say let's stay the course, go the distance, hit the nail on the head, and whatever other cliche you wanted to use about Iraq. But after his response, or lack thereof, to hurricane Katrina I'm feeling the passion that I once defended him with and with which I proudly displayed my B/C '04 sticker on my SUV until August of this year start to dissipate and I'm finding myself anxious for November 2008 to roll around quickly so that the next phase in the plan for individual freedom can be enacted.

Because time is running short and the smallest actions are going to have the biggest long term impacts.

The President's response to the Katrina devastation was the same as his stump speech for Social Security reform--a party mantra, a company statement, something slick and polished and adequately (but rarely eloquent, let's be honest) delivered. There is no spark left in this man that I can see. What I'm seeing, hearing, and feeling are a bunch of lawyers and men in suits pointing their fingers at a field, imagining construction crews rolling in and clear-cutting to build, build, build, and make the same old shit all seem new.

But what I'm beginning to see, hear, and feel from the President is what I heard from that prick in Poltergeist who put up a housing development over the cemetery and I'm afraid that we won't survive three more years of milk toast company mission statements being passed off as social direction and core values.

I want the man with the bullhorn back. I want the Bush doctrine acted from. I want to see the first priority be Americans again and damn the rest of the world--they come second and we come first. I want the man I voted for back, not the man the board voted for to best represent their corporate interests.

I want America the country not America, Inc.

But like I said in the beginning, this was all part of the plan. See, the Democrats have been completely marginalized from all legitimate power. They've had their balls cut off and a sock shoved in their mouth and this is a good thing for America. They will have no candidates to run besides Hillary and Obama and they will be defeated by a margin unseen before in the voting behaviors of this country's citizens. It is plain that those two are not what is good for America.

But the company is no longer good for America either and must be marginalized in the same fashion. The age of the individual is about to descend upon this world with a social evolutionary force unseen since the Industrial Revolution ripped farming away as the tensile web that connected all of mankind.

Never before have individuals had the power and reach to effect long-term and short-term changes in their world on a global scale.

The next Presidential race is going to hinge on ideas, ideals, core values and how well the individual can hold up to them in the burning light of public scrutiny.

The next President must have his or her own blog and the comments and trackbacks had better be turned on and pumping.

The next President must have their own podcast and put out a daily five minute monologue about why their vision is better, not why the other guy sucks because that is so played out. Every speech and every news report should be indexed on their website.

I'm talking FULL DISCLOSURE here, something unheard of in American politics but it's the only thing that will work in the future of American elections.

One good thing about the Internet is that it has sharpened the bullshit detector in a lot of the citizenry and future politicians need to take that into account or suffer the wrath.

Here's a rule of thumb: Party people don't do well when it's a race of individuals and this is exactly what the future of global politics will become.

In the next ten years, our species will either fall together or fall apart but one thing is for sure--the next few years aren't going to be boring.

TT: George W. Bush, Libertarian, Politics, Republicans, Democrats, Blogging, Podcasts, Hurricane War, Iraq War, War on Terror, Al Queda, Osama Bin Laden

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21. The Chasm of Discrepancy...
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After reading recent posts from Supafine about how terrible it is that contractors in the wake of Katrina don't have to submit to minimum wage laws or affirmative action laws, combined with Tony Pierce's recent post about why he only buys certain tennis shoes because of most shoe companies' exploitation of Third World labor--I am just astounded at the ignorance of many intelligent people when it comes to the economics of how things work.

So, I thought I'd help out my fellow man by putting this whole thing into perspective.

As discussed in the Joshua Minton Podcast from 9/15/2005, in the essay "I Have a Right" by Charles W. Baird, every human being has the right to take goods and services to market and offer a price in exchange for them. But they have no right to force others to meet that price--in fact it is the difference between the price I am offering and the price they are willing to pay where the economics of the world's markets take place.

In our country, higher-paying jobs usually correspond with greater productivity or how much value the worker adds to the company or the service or product being sold at market. This is known as a Meritocracy and this is a good thing because it keeps incentives in place for individuals to achieve, which always results in raising the living standards of the society as a whole.

So employers should have every right to seek out employees who bring the most added-value to their company and their product or service.

But when a governing body or union interfere with this process of negotiating work in exchange for a fair wage (determined by the worker and the employer only), the economy and therefore the living standards of the whole suffers.

This interference can take many forms (occupational licensing, minimum wage laws, racial quotas, child labor restrictions, etc.)

But what is being forgotten in this little do-gooder equation, and as Thomas Sowell argues, is that what is being called labor here is actually capital.

Each of us are capital investments.

We are walking repositories of education, skill training, talents, strengths and each of these are investments that companies and other people make in us when they hire us for our services.

Consider that people in the top percentage of earners produce more social worth per hour of effort that those in the bottom percentage.

What this means is that the top dog's hour of work results in a greater value to their fellow citizens than the guy flipping burgers at Wendy's and this is because of their individual capital. This isn't to say that the burger flipper can't build up his capital to one day equal that of the CEO; but this usually this takes a will and determination which is void in the minds and hearts at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Sowell bring up this vital point:

While almost all jobs today provide both pay and experience, at one time it was common for inexperienced and uneducated young people to take jobs that paid them nothing. This was obviously an investment of their time and labor for the sake of acquiring human capital.

This system, which would be called exploitation today, was an invaluable resource to acquiring experience and opportunity for much greater wealth and success in later life. But this way of life and opportunity for those with little to offer besides talent and drive, has been all but eradicated by minimum wage laws and other labor restrictions.

Sowell references the results of a study conducted by an international consulting firm which determined:

the average labor productivity in the modern sectors in India is 15 percent that of the United States. In other words, if you hired an average Indian worker and paid him one-fifth of what you paid an average American worker, it would cost you more to get a given amount of work done in India than in the United States.

He goes on to explain that this discrepancy isn't necessarily limited to the workers themselves because you have to factor in the quality of the equipment, the validity of the business processes, and the quality of leadership. He also brings up the notion of the quality of roads and transportation and local corruption because if it costs more to ship or bribe local officials, then the value of those goods (and the employees who produced them) are reduced as well.

Demanding that big corporations raise the wages they pay to Third World workers may sound like wisdom and compassion coming from the economically ignorant do-gooders of the world, but it demonstrates the same fallacy with which they vote--only from the heart and not from the head. The actual outcome of forcing wage rates to be higher than the market would have naturally allowed them is that these companies stop hiring these workers altogether.

So not only have these do-gooder idiots now forced these workers out of a good paying job (relative to their local economy), they have also robbed them of the capital they would be earning toward future success opportunities as their worth improved in terms of time, experience, skill sets, and education.

And this leads us right back into the horror of minimum wage laws. These abhorrances to freedom were originally instituted in the Jim Crow south to drive poor blacks out of job opportunities and forced the great black migration to the North following the Civil War. But yet today they are heralded as basic civil rights for poor minorities--perhaps Trent Reznor was right when he claimed there was happiness in slavery and so was Kaiser Soze when he said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

When you impose an unnatural market wage for a given service, you have effectively barred individuals who are less educated, less experienced, and less skilled from gaining the opportunity to begin building up their capital.

Good job, liberal idiots--you've just taken the bread out of someone's mouth to make yourselves feel better.

Until the citizens of this country begin thinking beyond the petty feelings and tin man rhetoric passed around the halls of academia, they will forever be slaves to the inevitable economic forces which govern exchange between human beings.

Economics, Exploitation, Minimum Wage Laws, Thomas Sowell, Supafine, Tony Pierce