Grand Theft Election - Senator-select Al Franken

The Wall Street Journal pretty much sums it up in the subtitle of their piece in todays edition: Franken wins by changing the rules.

In good journalistic fashion, the first and last paragraphs of the piece provide a good summary of the debacle (emphasis mine):

The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year's disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.

                                          :

                                          :

Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.

Although there is nothing we can do about the wormy little guy the DFL controlled power structure selected to embarrass us as our senator (as if our other one isn't embarrassing enough), we on the Right need to learn from this debacle. Norm Coleman's RINOism and unfaithfulness to his base allowed the election to be close enough to be stolen. He needs to quietly fade away and not even think of running for governor.

"Selected, not Elected" - it does has a familiar and catchy ring to it.

The Ideal Republican Candidates for 2012

Call me crazy but the ideal ticket for Republicans in 2012 would be Chuck Norris for President and Bill Cosby, Vice-President.

First of all, Republicans are going to need celebrity because no politician on the horizon is popular enough or communicates well enough to win even if Obama falters in popularity. Norris and Cosby are likable and well-spoken. If I’m a good judge of character, there’s not a lie in them, and not a hidden agenda they would agree to.

I’m not sure these two have even met. I’m not sure of Cosby’s political leanings or even if he would consider politics. Still, a Norris-Cosby ticket would be ideal.

The public is looking for someone who will talk to them honestly. These guys will.

Mike Steele, get on the phone with Chuck Norris and Bill Cosby right now!

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

I’ve often thought that humor might bring Middle East peace rather than traditional diplomacy. Could you imagine Bill Cosby with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the same room. He’d have those guys in stitches, laughing hard enough to forget old wounds.

All he’d have to do is tell them about himself, when he was growing up in the Philadelphia projects. Here’s just one of his jokes:

“When I was growing up my family was broke. There’s a big difference between being broke and being poor. When you’re poor you still have something!”

A Mysterious County Appointment

Bob Benke has been appointed to the Ramsey County Charter Commission.

Just what is his motivation for this? Why would he want it?

Bob Benke is the past Mayor of New Brighton. He's a friend and adviser to the current Mayor. He was co-chair of the re-election committee for County Commissioner Jan Parker.

Benke has a MN-DOT background. He fancies himself a traffic "expert." His firm did an early study on light rail if I'm not mistaken. Basically, Benke has lived and breathed government -- and has profited from government -- his whole life.

But I think the key is Jan Parker. Just my opinion, but I think he's on the commission by request to watch out for her interests. Her outlandish salary, her regal benefits. (The commissioners raised their own salary 20% in 2003 and again by 25% in 2007.) Just so happens the Charter Commission is discussing salary limits on the commissioners. I wonder what position Benke will take on this. One guess allowed.

Change the World--Irritate Government Workers

As government at all levels moves toward total world takeover, I propose that one piece of the strategy to Starve the Beast is to make it no fun to work for the government. The people who work for the government should have to deal with cranky, non-compliant, detail-stickling, skeptical, slow-paying, end-run-arounder, playing-dumb types all day, every day, until the pool of people willing to occupy those positions shrinks to about 3 in every county.

Suggested ways to annoy government workers:
1. Give the toll-workers pennies. In fact, pay all bills to the government in pennies, to the extent possible. Visit your city's utility office, for example, with a nice big bag of pennies, smile peaceably and say, when they protest, "It says, Legal tender for all debts public and private. Would you like me to wait while you count it?"
2. Pay your taxes as late as possible. If never works for you, it works for me.
3. File Freedom of Information requests. I've always wanted to know the average length of CIA agents' shoestrings, for example. More constructive, perhaps, would be demanding the data sets of NASA's "climate change" researchers.
4. Go to city and county council meetings and play the fool. Ask questions out of turn, insist on answers, rustle candy wrappers, whisper to your neighbor, anything short of getting yourself thrown out (which might be fun, but defeats the purpose of being a thorn in the side).
5. Don't buy things. The less you buy in consumer goods, the lower the sales tax revenue. If you don't buy a house, property values continue to slide and local governments are forced to shake hands with reality (so are you, but that's all good; reality is our friend). If you don't buy a car, the sham "reorganizations" in the auto industry get exposed sooner. The less you buy in general, the less likely you're in debt, the more likely you have savings, and you are overall more independent. The government needs people to spend so that China and Japan have continuing motivation to buy our debt at low interest rates. Furthermore, the government wants people in slavery to debt in many forms, so that its devaluation of the currency doesn't hurt the people at the bottom so badly. Delays the riots, you know. So speed up the riots and the default by the Feds--clean out the wound--don't buy things. When you're not afraid to live with less, you can tell the mayor, the Congressman, the city inspector and the city councilwoman to get off their cans and get real jobs, because you don't need them.
6. Lower your income. Moms, now's a great time to slash your household budget and legitimately declare lots less income, meanwhile strengthening family bonds by quitting your job. The government at all levels wants access to children and wants families to feel chained to their lifestyle. Cut the strings and train up your kids yourself. Your life will be simpler and you will be helping to Starve the Beast. And government workers may (okay, maybe this is wishful thinking) be forced to give up some pension and health benefits, in light of plummeting revenues.
7. Do NOT do what you're told. Smile, nod, and then drag your feet. Are they telling you you can't have a sign in your yard? Are they telling you you must cut your grass? Are they telling you where to put your trash can, that you must submit to inspections, that you can't have 8 vehicles on your property? Smile, nod, and then wait until they're an inch from fining you before you do anything. If they complain, play dumb. "I didn't get any letter. That darn postal service--raising rates all the time, and this is the service we get!?" "Watering on the wrong day? Must have been my kids. I'll talk to them." "Really? I can't keep my garbage cans here? I never knew that!"
8. COMPLAIN. Whenever justified at all, complain bitterly. Remind government workers that you pay their salaries, and you expect SERVICE. I was recently told, for example, that the sending of license tag renewal notices is "just a courtesy" and the DMV is not actually at fault, even if it can't prove you were sent a notice, if you are ticketed for late tag renewal. By the time I left the DMV office, you can be sure the workers there wished they worked somewhere else.
9. Tell stupid government worker jokes. Preferably to or in the presence of government workers.
10. Read the law. Insist your local representative, city council member, mayor, county council member, and so on hear about how they're failing to follow the local ordinances. If you possibly can, file lawsuits protesting your city or county ordinances as vague, unconstitutional, or whatever other theory fits the case.

Join the campaign. Spread the word ... we're Starving the Beast, and that includes its supply of workers.

Obama is the Appeasement President

President Obama has quietly reduced the number of US warships in the Persian Gulf to its lowest level in two years. What’s more, no US aircraft carriers are anywhere near the Gulf region.

Meanwhile, Russian warships made their first appearance in the Bahrain port of Manama, seat of the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf. (No such thing occurred under Bush.)

Why is Obama allowing all this? He wants Iran to feel at ease in preparation for upcoming talks.

Obama is a weak President who will bow deeply to tyrants. The tyrants know this and are taking advantage.

History Lesson – WWII was avoidable if England showed strength, determination and preparedness. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did not show strength, but did everything to appease Hitler. Result, 400,000 died before it was all over.

Under the appeasement President, count on an ever-building tragedy as a result of U.S. weakness.

Beware The American Community Survey

The recent article on the American Community Survey below reminds me of my own experience two years ago.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05262009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/uncle_sams_way_too_nosy_survey_170972.htm

I remember my wife was furious at the intrusiveness of the questions and so was I. In order to comply minimally with the law, we answered some basic questions but left most items blank.

We thought that was the end of it, but no. Then the phone calls started coming, in the evening along with the usual junk phone calls. Believe me it tried my patience. They kept pressing for more information. I told them I did not agree with the survey. Finally, about the third phone call, I answered a few more questions over the phone.

Eventually the caller asked “How many rooms do you have in your house?” A scene from Dr. Zhivago immediately popped into my head.

That was the last straw. I said that’s enough, and hung up.

I recommend complaining to your elected federal representatives about the American Community Survey. It is Orwellian, intrusive and almost surely will be used in ways adverse to you. Remember that socialism is the equal distribution of misery and that is what this survey is really about.

Dead Austrian's Prophecies Trump Gitmo Controversy

Ludwig von Mises:
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."

Vice President Cheney is obviously a more competent person than the blabbermouth non-entity currently occupying that office. Heck, he's far more competent than the Teflon Liar occupying the seat of the Boss of the Civilized World. Unfortunately, under the best light, he has not been competent enough to deal with the foremost threat to our security, which is not attacks by deranged Islamofascists, dire as that threat is, but the deliberate, massive expansion of credit by our Treasury and central bank, which reached startling new dimensions during the administration in which he last served.

It's possible he just doesn't understand it--that's the most charitable position to take regarding the Bush administration's failure to rein in the Fed. More likely, Cheney and Bush either profited or were pressured into silence. Tells you something about the power of the Federal Reserve that a man with the clarity of mind Cheney possesses can be bought or bullied by it.

The Republicans should confess past sins and gain the position of leaders by ignoring the Teflon Liar's posturing on Gitmo. If he gets ready to take real action, oppose him then. Until then, they should be positioning themselves as the party that saw the future and took steps to change it before it jelled into the present. Don't spend energy arguing over what happened when, though the lying from the left be never so exasperating, and the failures of the journalists to expose it be never so weasely; that's the politics of the past, and the Republicans lose that game every time.

Starve the Beast, End the Fed.

Cheney Sets the Record Straight on GITMO and GWOT

After listening to the self-serving propaganda of the Obama Administration regarding GITMO and the Bush Administration policies in the Global War on Terror, see the non-fiction version here as presented by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Remember when we had a real (not to mention competent) Vice President?

Bush and Obama, Fulfillment of Prescient Beach Boys' Lyrics

"You know, I hate to be a downer,
but I'm the guy she left before you found her;
Oh, I'm not sayin' you won't have a good love with her,
But I keep on rememberin' things like they were ..."

So sang the Beach Boys 50-odd years ago. As I look at the headlines forwarded to me by Cisco (that's Sr. d'Anconia to you who are still not hip to Rand's fictional sermons), Mike Love's peerless voice pops into my head, the weird foreshadowing of our dalliance with the tired, failed mistress of Cuba, Eastern Europe and Russia, North Korea, and a dozen other failed and failing States. Socialism, dressed up and embodied in its male figures, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, animates our entire public life. I hate to be a downer, but in case you've been feeling too sanguine lately:

1. On reasons to believe things are really, really headed to the sewer:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aKOzWiTDseUE&refer=home
Quick excerpt if you don't have time for the whole thing:

"Several policy missteps suggest that investors should stop trusting -- and lending to -- the U.S. government. These include the state’s pressure on Bank of America Corp. to buy Merrill Lynch & Co.; the priority given to Chrysler LLC’s unions over the automaker’s secured creditors; and the freedom that some banks will regain to supersize executive bonuses by giving back part of the government money bolstering their balance sheets.

Currency markets have been in a weird state of what looks almost like equilibrium for the past couple of months. What’s really going on is something akin to an evenly matched tug of war that fails to move the ribbon tied around the center of the rope, giving the impression of harmony while powerful forces do silent battle until someone slips.

“All currencies are being debased dramatically by their central banks at extraordinary speeds and so in relative terms it appears there is no currency problem,” Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QB Asset Management said in a research note earlier this month. “In reality, however, paper money is highly vulnerable to a public catalyst that serves to acknowledge it is all merely vapor money.”"

Vapor money. Yes, indeedy.

2. For a profoundly sad description of the real-life consequences involved in the utter demise of the rule of law, especially contracts, in America, read George C. Joseph's letter to the editor, reprinted on this blog:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/05/letter_from_a_dodge_dealer.html

I called the dealership and confirmed: the authorship is authentic and the story is all true.

3. A very slightly more subtle means of killing the rule of law is described in another Bloomberg article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aApnVJt5uKQg&refer=home
All you people (and that means you, especially, Mr. (Self-Proclaimed) Libertarian Jason Lewis) who think the rule of law is possible in a country with a central bank, read it and weep. Since 1913, these days were inevitable. There is no way to limit the power of a central bank effectively. He who holds the power to make dollars magically appear on balance sheets holds the power to make contracts meaningless, and that power is inexorably tempting; whether it takes 10 years or a 100 years, eventually he will print away his debts.

4. And here's the illustration of what happens when people get wise to the deliberate devaluation of fiat currency. Cisco writes:

"The Fed had another reverse auction today:

Treasury yields hit highest level since November

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/treasurys-up-as-investor-sentiment-darkens?pagenumber=1

"The Fed bought $7.398 billion in Treasurys on Thursday....Dealers submitted $45.694 billion in debt maturing from 2013 to 2016 to be bought"

That's a tender-to-bid ratio of SIX TIMES. That's the worst yet. What does it mean? It means that demand for Treasury debt is well below issuance, and if the Fed insists on offering above-market prices for U.S. Treasury debt, they will end up OWNING IT ALL. The Fed can't support Treasury prices in this insane mode---unless they're prepared to buy $7 trillion in U.S. bonds. They bought a piddling $7 billion, and instead of going up, Treasury prices fell. Unless they buy all the tendered bonds, it only serves to undescore that there's way too much supply, and the Fed is NOT prepared to sop it all up."

5. Finally, also from Cisco, a list of people to whom you ought to be paying attention, who know what's going on and all make one prediction in common:
"We're not even half way through this, if you can believe Peter Schiff, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Antal Fekete, Mike Morgan, Karl Denninger, Joseph Stiglitz, Rick Sharga of RealtyTRAC, MDA Dataquick, Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, plus a few hundred other shrewd observers."

Cuba, North Korea, Sweden et. al. have not even had the grace to give us verbal warning. They're still in denial that Socialism is damaged goods, and stand merely as mute pictures of where we're headed. The Beach Boys at least tried to tell the sucker who thought the girl "was perfection,"
"She made me feel so bad,
She made my heart feel sad,
She made my days go wrong,
And my nights so long ...
You've got to keep in mind
Love is here today
And it's gone
Tomorrow
It's here and gone so fast."

We may break off our affair with the current Socialist fling, Obama, fairly soon, but we're going to be singing the blues a long, long time whether we do or not.

Jesse Jackson's Worst Nightmare

He's hip and he gets it!

HT: Macho Sauce Productions, where you can find more of this:




or this:

Hail Pawlenty, the Conquering Hero

Tim Pawlenty sometimes surprises me. His announcement that he will use the full powers of his office to single-handedly balance the budget if the DFL-controlled legislature won't seems to have pulled the rug out from under the DFL, who are now whining about "bullying" and "monarchy," having, as the Pioneer Press puts it in today's article, "slouched" toward the end of the session believing they were going to be allowed to grandstand yet further in favor of higher taxes in a special session.

You should all call Gov. Pawlenty's office and pass on your congratulations on his discovery of a political spine and your agreement with his determined stand against higher taxes.

Spending cuts forever! Starve the Beast!

Outrageous Bailout Proposal For Teachers

Education Minnesota and the Democrats are planning another kick in the stomach to ordinary taxpayers.

It seems their pension plan is down -- and they want tapayers to bring it back up to "fully funded" level. To the tune of millions upon millions of dollars of course.

Well, I got news. Lots of pension plans and 401ks and 403bs are down. There's no bailout for those people. Yet Education Minnesota expects those same people to bail the teachers out because they are special. How about this: live with less the way working folks must do.

Some teachers will retire early and receive the princely sum of $4,000 a month or more from their pensions. Sorry, but any sympathy for you guys just drained away.

Has anyone noticed how for-profit companies have phased out their pensions, yet public employees keep rolling merrily along on the strength of the hard-working people who have no pension. How long can this go on unchecked?

Wells Fargo, BoA, Citi Lie to Us with Help From the Fed

Sr. d'Anconia sent me the following infuriating tip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yut91Y1pxh0&feature=player_embedded

Meredith Whitney is famous because she was the first to call the downgrade of Citibank's dividend cut long before anyone else could believe the financials were going down. She continues very bearish, to use Wall Street lingo.

Here's Cisco's sage summary:
"Whitney explains part of the banks' big Earnings Miracle: they set up a scheme with the Fed, where the Fed preannounces large purchases of agency debt: "Pssst. We're gonna need a bunch of Fannie/Freddie bonds" and the banksters rush out and frontrun the Fed purchases by buying up all the agency debt they can leverage. Then the auction begins and the banks sell the Fannie Mac paper to the Fed at inflated prices. It's a win-win: the banks make a killing, and the Feds take a bunch of unwanted agency paper off the market while recapitalizing the worst banks in the world. Only the taxpayer loses. I'm not paying for this."

To tie this back to politics: It is farcically ridiculous that our historic president, a Teflon Liar, trumpets his commitment to saving money to the tune of $100 million, while handing over trillions, through the Federal Reserve Bank system, to the criminally credit-impaired biggest and most powerful global banks. It is wickedly wrong that our so-called journalists allow him to get away with pretending to be for hope and change for the little guy while stacking his cabinet and bureaucracy full of ex-Goldman Sachs con-men. And may God reserve a special place in hell for the people who continue to load debt onto future generations and current elderly and foreign buyers of our Treasuries, who think they're getting a safe investment, while pretending to be worried about homelessness and the trouble Joe Six-Pack is having buying his groceries. Do all in your power to hold the feet of any pol who supports the evil transfer of taxpayer dollars to rich and powerful bankers to the political fire.

If you're a conservative who's been reading my posts and thinking, "What does all this financial gobbledygook mean?" my reply is, get busy with your homework. If conservatives want to have any influence in the next two decades, they're going to have to expand their repertoire to include not only decrying the social illnesses we face, but the ability to explain what's happening in the world of finance and how it links back to our cultural demise, and how the government is deeply implicated in the causes of both. Start paying attention to financial and monetary policy above all else, because the numbers are so big that right now, in relative terms, nothing else matters. Study it until you can explain the gist to your neighbors and friends and family, and then hammer away at their thick skulls until they, too, can understand how the Federal Reserve system, Congress through the Community Reinvestment Act and other meddling in the markets, and all the financial regulatory agencies practically conspired to defraud the taxpayers, with the eager help of the greedy banksters.

Francisco d'Anconia advises you, with me: Starve the Beast. Find whatever ways sit comfortably with your conscience to pay as little as possible in taxes in any form. Preferably none, particularly to the Feds. The sooner they can no longer convince anyone to buy debt from us, because the revenue stream has slowed to such a trickle that noone can pretend we're a safe investment anymore, the better. The sooner this perverse Ponzi scheme that we've called capitalism, though it isn't, crashes, so that we can start over with real capitalism, the better.

Starve the Beast, End the Fed.

Coleman Helped Justify Obama's Threat of Prosecution for Bush Admin. Lawyers

A couple of years ago, I sent an e-mail to Sen. Norm Coleman's office expressing my disgust at his decision to vote in favor of expanding the federal government's role in prosecuting crimes, to include stepping in where certain classes of "hate" crime had been committed. The new special victims entitled to greater protection through the threat of heavier punishment for their harm included those selected due to the perpetrators' supposed hatred of the victim's transgendered state or homosexuality. The provision, which had been attached to a defense spending bill, died during negotiations to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions.

Sen. Coleman's reply was lame. He said that as a Jewish person, he understood what it was like to be in the minority, targeted for hatred and violence. In other words, Jews and gays are the same--we can ignore all the issues surrounding choice and behavior versus blood lineage and status. And we should also ignore the total lack of evidence for any need of the federal government to meddle in the entirely adequate State prosecution of violent crime, and the fact that 45 or 46 States already have hate crimes legislation. And we should also overlook the Republican Party's long-standing and entirely reasonable opposition to eroding the even more long-standing tradition that we only punish people for actions, and not for their thoughts, ideas, opinions, or beliefs.

Wherein we reach the current day. First off, John Conyers has introduced a sweeping new version of the defeated federal hate crimes legislation that is predicted to work its way through committee rapidly. It would be well, though perhaps fruitless if you live in my State of Minnesota, to call your Reps and Senators and urge them not to vote for any hate crimes legislation, and especially not John Conyers's HR1913.

Even more ominous, however, is that our historic president today indicated his willingness to entertain the possibility of considering prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who prepared the interrogation memos, finding some torture techniques to be legal. Now, this is unlikely to come to anything. The Teflon Liar, as usual, leaves his statements fat with uncertainty: whether to bring charges "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," and "there are a host of very complicated issues involved." These statements are a lame attempt to placate the slavering far Left, but I suspect they are also intended as a sinister warning to those on the Right.

The link to Norm Coleman is this: instead of defending the only sane policy of prosecuting people only for actions, he helped move us to this day, when we see the President of the United States deliberately planting the possibility in people's minds that they could be held criminally responsible for their professional legal opinions, and by extension, that non-lawyers could be prosecuted for their beliefs or opinions expressed in other areas of life. This is intended as a shot across the bow, a very oblique way of letting conservatives know that they'd better not get involved in public life; their opinions are so objectionable as to merit criminal prosecution.

So it's hard to mourn Coleman's likely ultimate loss of the Senate seat, except to the degree that it indicates that something very close to half the Minnesota electorate thought Al Franken a suitable person to hold that seat instead. Coleman was a symptom of the disease that's debilitating the Republican Party; all we can do is vigorously oppose the tyranny sought by our historic president (and his party) and dose the GOP with real conservatism, hoping it's enough to save the body politic.

Ho Ho Ho, Chris Dodd Must Go

... but so must Richard Shelby. See this piece from Forbes.

When I saw the headline, I hoped I could write a post about how it's really the Dems who're raking in the dough from the banking oligarchy, but sadly, not so. The blame among the top 5 recipients is nearly equally shared between Democrats and Republicans.

Starve the beast: feed all these guys who are in the pockets of the banksters to the political wolves.