ELVISNIXON.COM

Another Victim of Obama's "Justice"

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-29T15:35:00Z

While our President is on a sangria binge in Spain (with your tax dollars) his "Justice" Department, under crony Eric Holder, is persecuting the people of Arizona for seeking to protect themselves from the invasion of illegal alien criminals.

While precious tax dollars are being needlessly squandered on this political publicity stunt, average Americans keep falling prey to violent criminals, while our corporate managed media conveniently looks the other way.

Ask yourself why the Los Angeles Times features a front page headline and full color photo of 9 people "marching on" Phoenix, AZ while they ignore racially motivated hate crimes against Americans? Just take the latest example:

"Stephen Pitcairn, a promising young researcher at Johns Hopkins University, killed by black career criminals Lavelva Merritt & John Alexander Wagner when they robbed him of his cash and iPhone Sunday night.

From all accounts Stephen Pitcairn was a promising young researcher . At Johns Hopkins University, he assisted with breast cancer studies and was about to enroll in medical school. His life was cut short by a bunch of career criminals. According to the Baltimore Sun, he was four blocks from his apartment Sunday night when two robbers, Lavelva Merritt ( a female) ..."

Somehow THAT sordid tale went down the “memory hole” along with the RICHMOND GANG RAPE case from Richmond, CA where a bunch of ILLEGAL ALIENS gang raped a white girl and videotaped it on their cell phones. The Mexicans laughed and chattered in Spanish as they raped her on public school grounds at a high school function.

Eric Holder's response?

“At least they were not praying.”

Principles of Political War (Part 2) by Wes Riddle

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-28T21:33:00Z

Progressives connect emotionally with people at the level of their fears and anxiety. The metaphysical reason for this is that liberals don’t really want men and women to stand very tall on their own. They want mankind always dependent on something, most usually on the state or fellow human beings. They themselves fear a self-confident, self-reliant freeman or freewoman. They fear a venturesome spirit and would much rather return to the hole or crawl up under a rock, and have everybody else do the same. Now one may put a better face on government coercion and just say that the liberal and progressive appeal is based on helping underdogs and defending bona fide victims. This resonates well with Americans, who are basically a fair-minded people.

Regardless of the motive or psychology you ascribe to a fantastic error, conservatives are nonetheless usually busy defending the real America—its record of success now and in history. The real America is as a land of opportunity and freedom. Almost nobody is properly called oppressed or “an oppressed class.” No group has ever flocked as it were to get out of America except arguably chattel slaves and the Old South, but all sorts of people still clamor to get in.

The truth is that no one alive, nor indeed their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents either, were alive during slave times! It has been 47 years since Rev. Martin Luther King, Junior’s great “I Have a Dream” speech. We have a black president for crying out loud. The institutions are dead that gave us slavery and Jim Crow. The Constitution and laws changed long ago, and the social norms and mores of a majority that once sustained socio-economic prejudice against minorities are overwhelmingly different. One is hard-pressed anymore to find a majority. White means nothing in modern day America. The vestige of slavery is reduced to prejudice in its mildest form; and racism is no longer properly attributable to an inheritance per se, but rather to subjective individual experience in present day context.

Received memory is received media, hardly a matter of real history. At this juncture in history, misguided efforts to whip up the issues of race in order to kill the last spectral existence of racism are far more likely to intensify aural projections and lead to something else reactive, unintended and substantial. If that happens, it will be the product of modern and gross political folly on the left and not the product of historical inertia, vast right-wing conspiracy, or of majority opinions extant today.

Indeed further attempts to kill the specter can only result in the strangulation death of freedom itself. That is because free people may and should be able to agree or disagree, to associate or disassociate, and even to seek or not seek their own. They may politically congregate and rally too or choose not to, because freedom requires the existence of choice and the ability to choose in every respect. If I don’t like blue jeans, then I don’t have to wear them. Or maybe I like them, say, in one context or liked them just fine yesterday, but now I prefer something else at church or going to the opera. Quite frankly I’ve got no idea whatsoever what I’ll put on tomorrow. People aren’t blue jeans or horses, but the point is valid in terms of selection and the dynamism and free flow of opinions.

Freed of historical legacy, we are all individuals again. Therefore we really ought to be appealing to people now on the basis of individuality, their character and the ideas they hold, not on the basis of their racial groupings. The divisive and racially charged rhetoric from the national NAACP of late is unhelpful in this regard. The unsubstantiated attack by liberal politicians and community leaders, and bold innuendo from the left-leaning press against Tea Parties labeling them as racist, is also unhelpful and could backfire in November.

But politics isn’t just about reality. If it were, according to David Horowitz, “good principles and good policies would win every time.” Rather, in terms of political war, the contest is “about images and symbols and the emotions they evoke, [and] this is a battle that conservatives generally lose. In the romance of the victim as progressives stage it, Republicans and conservatives are always on the side of the bad guys—the powerful, the male, the white and the wealthy…. Defending America is readily misrepresented…. The left relishes the opportunity to smear patriots as members of the selfish party instead of as defenders of individual freedom.” Ann Coulter describes the motto of the left as “Speak loudly and carry a small victim.”

For Democrats, the romance of the victim stirs supporters and energizes their base. Conservatives are the targeted victimizers. Leftists become champions of the so-called oppressed. Sure hate to say it, but news from the front so far is that the Battle of the Bulge is going to the Nazis! Learning how to confront the left’s strategy, however, will turn the political war around. It requires that Americans become a little more clear-headed and informed, and less crybaby when leftists sing their predictable tearjerkers and blues. Fortunately, as Horowitz explains, “conservatives can use the left-wing attack against them. Contrary to the left’s view, America is not a land of victims. It is a highly mobile society, with a citizenry that aspires upwards through the system, not against it.… [The] most powerful forces obstructing opportunity for poor and minority Americans, the most powerful forces oppressing them, are progressives, the Democratic Party, and their political creation—the welfare state.”

Welfare state programs are demonstrably obstacles to the production of wealth and barriers to private opportunity. What is necessary is for conservatives to connect the dots so to speak, to connect their analysis to a political strategy that gives them a decisive edge in battle against the left’s propaganda—or if you prefer, the left’s purely innocent though misguided interpretation of events. In this way, Horowitz believes we can “neutralize the class, race and gender warfare attacks of the political left” and hopefully rise above such petty, counterproductive and polarizing politics.

_____________________

Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. He is currently Chairperson of the Central Texas Tea Party. Article loosely based on an essay by David Horowitz. Email Wes@WesRiddle.com or call (254) 939-5597.

Terrorist Freed: Obama Applauds

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-25T23:50:00Z

ELVISNIXON is a great fan of the blogs that seem to regularly scoop the managed corporate media. With little (or no) resources these stalwarts call to our attention all the news that the liberals do not want you to hear about.

Often these news items do not fit the leftist narrative. Things such as the overwhelming support of California's African American community in passing the defense of heterosexual marriage with Proposition 8 was literally censored from our media.

The release of racist "New Black Panther Party" members by Eric Holder and Obama was tanked ( we can all imagine the response had the defendants been white Evangelicals).

The latest news has been broken by Tree Of Liberty, Angry White Dude and IM Kane:

While the Soros media has been spreading the slander that the Tea Party is a bunch of racists it seems Obama promoted the release of the Lockerbie Terrorist!

IMKane reports:

US Government Advised Release of Lockerbie Bomber

Brother O and the Bread and Circuses administration secretly advised Scottish ministers to free the Lockerbie bomber rather than lock him up in a Libyan prison.

"[I]f Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that [Abdel Baset al-] Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose."—Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, in an August 12, 2009, letter to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and justice officials

Members of the Bread and Circuses administration refused to grant Scottish authorities permission to publish the letter saying it would prevent future "frank and open communications" with other governments.

"The (LeBaron) letter is embarrassing for the US because it shows they were much less opposed to compassionate release than prisoner transfer."—Anonymous source close to the Senate inquiry

White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi

By Jason Allardyce and Tony Allen-Mills

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.....The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future "frank and open communications" with other governments.... "

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny?

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-23T18:50:00Z

A few years ago, former NCSE [National Council for Science and the Environment] spokesman Nick Matzke called complaints over the use of Haeckel's embryo drawings in textbooks a "manufactured scandal." However, a variety of leading scientific authorities -- proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution--have also complained about the use of these drawings and the way that embryology is used to support evolution in biology textbooks. Are these authorities in on the big conspiracy to "manufacture" this "scandal" too? Here's where things stand today:

Despite the fact that (in 2010 at least) out-dated concepts like "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" have been almost completely removed from new textbooks and that many (though not all) new textbooks use embryo photographs instead of fudged drawings, an examination of both recent textbooks and complaints from authorities within the scientific community show that there are still severe problems about how embryology is used to support evolution in biology textbooks. It's worth noting that many of the positive textbook corrections in this area came because Darwin-doubting scientists like Jonathan Wells exposed inaccuracies in textbooks.

In August 2008, The New York Times reprinted material from the NCSE claiming that the 19th century embryologist Ernst Haeckel's "longdiscredited drawings" of vertebrate embryos have not been used in textbooks since "20 years ago" (10 Questions and Answers about Evolution, New York Times, August 23, 2008). That Haeckel's drawings were fraudulent and have been used in textbooks is essentially beyond dispute, but the reality is that multiple biology textbooks have been used within the past 20 years that still Haeckel's drawings to promote evolution (See Casey Luskin, What Do Modern Textbooks Really Say About Haeckel's Embryos?, Mar. 27, 2007, citing several examples).

In a 2000 article in Natural History, Stephen Jay Gould recognized that Haeckel's drawings not only fraudulently obscured the differences between the early stages of vertebrate embryos, but that they were used inappropriately in textbooks: "Haeckel had exaggerated the similarities by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases--in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent--simply copied the same figure over and over again. At certain stages in early development, vertebrate embryos do look more alike, at least in gross anatomical features easily observed with the human eye, than do the adult tortoises, chickens, cows, and humans that will develop from them. But these early embryos also differ far more substantially, one from the other, than Haeckel's figures show. Moreover, Haeckel's drawings never fooled expert embryologists, who recognized his fudging right from the start.

"At this point, a relatively straightforward factual story, blessed with a simple moral story as well, becomes considerably more complex, given the foils and practices of the oddest primate of all. Haeckel's drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the most impenetrable and permanent of all quasi-scientific literatures: standard student textbooks of biology. . . .We should therefore not be surprised that Haeckel's drawings entered nineteenth-century textbooks. But we do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks!" (Stephen Jay Gould, Abscheulich! (Atrocious!), NATURAL HISTORY, Mar. 2000, at 42, 44-45).

Gould also quotes embryologist Michael K. Richardson, acknowledging the widespread use of Haeckel's drawings in textbooks: "If so many historians knew about the old controversy [over Haeckel's falsified drawings], then why did they not communicate this information to numerous contemporary authors who use the Haeckel drawings in their books? I know of at least fifty recent biology textbooks which use the drawings uncritically. I think this is the most important question to come out of the whole story" (Ibid. at 45).

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/06/revisiting_those_pesky_embryo035741.html

Told You So! RINO Meg Betrays Americans in CA

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-21T15:04:00Z

Back in June ELVISNIXON predicted that RINO Meg Whitman would BETRAY Americans and sell-out to the treason lobby and the "Tan Klan" (Mexican Lobby):

We are often told by our state/corporate media that we are "wasting our vote" if we do not vote for the front runner.

Why?

The reason that someone is the front runner is because someone claims that they are voting for that candidate. Where is this information coming from? It comes from the same vested interests who tell you not to waste your vote.

If Californians fail to nominate Steve Poizner and Chuck DeVore this June 6th, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If, after Scott Brown defeated the Kennedy drones, after Dee Dee Scozafava in New York, and after all the tea Parties, we still believe the liberal media, we are fools.

Looking down what doctors call the retrospectoscope, one can surmise that it is not too far of a leap to believe that the late Gary Coleman would have been a better Governor than Arnorld RINO Schwarzenegger. Certainly, stalwart conservative Tom McClintock would have stood up to the entrenched teachers unions and public employees unions.

Why did we not elect McClintock? Arnold was better known.

"Better known" comes via celebrity or money. Arnold had the former, and Meg Whitman has the latter.

The idea that wealthy Meg Whitman will do a good job, where Arnold failed, because of her experience in business is foolish. Politics is not dealing with people beholden to you for their income. Politics is about compromise and taking unpopular stands and knowing when and where to do which.

Steve Poizner is standing up to the left and the illegal-immigrant treason lobby. He deserves your vote.

Don't believe the liberal media. Go ahead "waste" your vote on the non RINO.

Money Meltdown by Wes Riddle

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-20T22:21:00Z

The United States has been in official recession since late 2007, and it is widely agreed that trouble began (or was at least exposed) with a precipitous housing downturn. By the end of 2008, we were experiencing a full-fledged increasingly global meltdown. Stocks now are down by more than a third—which is a nice way of saying that millions of people lost their shirts, as years of savings for retirement or investment have vanished. Over three hundred metropolitan areas in the United States are depressed economically. Texas is the biggest notable exception. The national unemployment average is almost ten percent, but because government has played fast and loose with statistics in order to hide information from the American people, you may be interested in knowing unemployment is really over 16 percent the way it used to be calculated as late as the 1970s.

The economic crisis has exposed some structural problems in the financial system worldwide. Banks in Europe proved no more resilient than in America. China turned out to be dependent on the west, at least for now—and fortunately foreign capital did flood back into the U.S. as the best safe haven available for uncertain times. We can describe it, but the question is what to do. The Great Depression happened too and despite shallow consensus on a few points, historians and economists argue vigorously over why it came about and whether New Deal policies and/or World War II pulled us out—even if they are never quite sure how. Some writers are dubbing the current crisis as the Great Recession. Others compare it to a so-called Long Depression affecting some areas from 1873 to 1896. The irony is that it is hard to expect things to improve unless we have some clue about how we got into the predicament. Unfortunately, there are a lot of very smart people who never did have a clue, giving the government advice and calling shots. Stupid is as stupid does.

Most government solutions tried so far or being contemplated are in fact interventions into the economy based upon a false premise that the free market economy failed. It may be countered, however, that it is government intervention that has messed things up so badly in the first instance, namely the Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the money supply and interest rates. The architects of the debacle are planning our recovery, while the competing voice of reason is largely gone missing from argument. Not only is the Fed ignored as a source of trouble by mainstream media, there is also strangely a veritable range of subjects excluded from national dialogue—the Fed and money to name two. Politicians aren’t going to save us this time, if they ever did, and one of the most important concepts the sovereign people better learn these days is called the “Austrian” business cycle theory. Austrian refers to the school of economics—and it was the only school to accurately predict the onset of our current crisis.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., an academic of Austrian economic persuasion argues convincingly in his book, Meltdown that the financial crisis was not caused by the free market but by government’s intervention in the market. Moreover, the greatest intervention into the economy is America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve System. If this is true, the Fed must be looked at. Clearly we need to stop further government interventions likely to aggravate the problem or precipitate economic catastrophe. The government’s failure in this regard is being passed off and blamed on everything and everybody else except the government; worse, it is used to justify further increases in government power. Ask yourself where all the excess risk, leverage, debt and housing bubble came from. The answers that one gets like excessive risk-taking or greed beg the question. Liberals (who now prefer to be called Progressives) are not only continuing their attack on the foundations of the Republic by denying the Constitution, they are like termites eating away at the foundations of free market economy, about to take us with them to the basement. They are blaming “unregulated markets” for the financial crisis, having manufactured the crisis through very different means.

More bailouts, regulation and government will only make matters much worse and prolong depressed economic conditions around the country. In November 2008 German chancellor Angela Merkel warned correctly, if Washington’s policies create more money and encourage more borrowing, they sow “the seeds of a similar crisis.” Nonetheless, by the end of 2008 and thanks to the congressional bailout package, the American people were on the hook for 7.7 trillion dollars more. Then President Obama came into office riding the horse of more bailout, more spending, more debt, and more government regulation to stimulate the economy. He inherited a mess, but he feels duty bound to make it worse. Meanwhile nobody wants to talk about that large furry creature in the living room, whose name is the Fed and which for all intents and purposes is an arm of the federal government.

Now and again it crosses my mind, how in the world our representative government can be so silent and so inept. Then again, according to the Center for Responsive Politics the securities and investment industry contributed $53 million to congressional and presidential candidates in the 2008 cycle. That places the industry second behind lawyers. Congressmen who voted for the bailout one year ago happened to receive 54% more in campaign contributions from the banks and securities firms than those who didn’t. Americans have notoriously bad memories, and that really is a shame. Of all the things President Obama said he expects of school-aged children in his address to them, critical thinking and historical memory got short shrift. They aren’t as important as the many technical and lab problems that need solving. Just so long as the little precious stays patriotic and doesn’t drop out, and drinks the stuff the state serves up. Some things are settled, like evolution and money laundering on a grand scale.

The government was going to buy all those bad (“toxic”) assets from banks, remember? Well, the approach was abandoned entirely, and a few months later the government said it had to prop up consumer debt, since millions of Americans faced rising credit card rates and reduced access to the credit they needed (for everyday purchases!). Not sure where cash for clunkers fit into the overall economic picture. It may have encouraged a few more green cars on the road, our big transition to technology to save the planet. Most the money went to overseas car producers, however. Now health care reform is the rage, and is sold to us not only as a cure for what ails you but also for ballooning deficits! Meanwhile that large furry creature next to Pelosi, whose name is the Fed, claps loudest of all at Obama’s speeches.

The Federal Reserve System, a.k.a. the Fed was created by an act of Congress. Its chairman is chosen by government appointment. The organization is endowed with monopoly privilege and is dedicated to the most far-reaching form of centralized economic planning. Instead of planning steel and concrete production quotas, say, as in the old Soviet Union, the Fed plans the money and interest rates. The consequences necessarily reverberate throughout the whole economy. We don’t talk about it, because it was the Fed’s policy of intervening in the economy to push interest rates lower than the market would set that was the single biggest contributor to the financial crisis. Making cheap credit available encouraged the excessive leverage, speculation, and indebtedness the government now blames on the free market. Manipulating interest rates misled investors about real economic conditions, misdirected capital into unsustainable lines of production, and desynchronized the entire market. The Fed’s intervention into the economy gave rise (as it has before) to a boom-bust cycle making us all feel rosy pink and prosperous until the inevitable crash—which of course the free market gets blamed for.

In terms of stakes, however, they couldn’t be any higher. As Peer Steinbrück, German finance minister said, as a result of the current crisis America stands to “lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system.” Indeed, a lot of people welcome that development, while others don’t hope for it but point out the fundamentals are not sound for a debt-ridden, over-consuming, under-producing American empire—the fall of which is not inconceivable. International economic crises have a way of upending the geopolitical order, hastening the fall of established powers and the rise of new ones. In The Post-American World (2008), Fareed Zakaria argues that modern history’s third great power shift is upon us. The rise of the West in the 15th century and the rise of America in the 19^th were the previous two. Zakaria says the transition now has less to do with American decline and more to do with “the rise of the rest.” That may be so, but America’s leadership seems intent on hastening the day.

For far too long American leaders have been anything but representative, and not at all consultative with the American people concerning their doom. One wonders what the government will do when the entitlement crisis hits and the federal government is put on the hook for tens of trillions of more dollars, as millions of baby boomers retire with high expectations. The President says he’ll tackle that looming crisis once health care is overhauled. In other words, spend now and then spend again later. The problem is that government lacks all understanding and a modicum of imagination. When they try to print their way out of the gargantuan levels of debt afflicting us over the next decade, they will have debased the U.S. Dollar forever.

The financial crisis began when mortgage defaults increased substantially, triggering a chain reaction throughout the financial sector. The standard account explains the mechanics well but not the causes. Housing prices started to fall in the third quarter of 2006. People having trouble making their mortgage could no longer simply sell or refinance. Meanwhile the banks had sold many of their mortgages to other institutions like Fannie Mae, which in turn bundled them together into mortgage-backed securities. The financial system was heavily invested in these mortgage-backed securities, so default on home mortgage loans suddenly threatened a much wider field. One of the associated scandals in all this is that ratings agencies consistently gave AAA ratings to the securities. Institutions and people who thought they were investing prudently, even conservatively, were misled by ratings that had little bearing on actual risk exposure. At least six culprits in terms of causes of the housing crash can be identified.

The first is the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). These large corporations officially known as government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) buy loans from banks on the secondary market. Fannie and Freddie receive the stream of monthly payments associated but also bear the risk of default. The originating bank has funds to go back into the mortgage market and make new loans. The process spurs mortgage lending and inflates home prices. The process is also artificial, i.e., not market based, because of special privileges and the implicit guarantee of solvency granted by government to Fannie and Freddie. Even so, their role in the economy was small until the 1990s, so the economic distortion was relatively low. By the time the housing bubble burst, however, those agencies had a hand in half of all home mortgages—three-quarters of newer ones. This was caused by the Clinton Administration pressuring these agencies to take on risky loans, in order to increase home ownership among poor and minorities despite bad credit ratings.

Second the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) also received new life by the Clinton administration. It was a Carter-era law that opened banks up to discrimination suits if they did not lend to minorities in sufficient numbers to suit bureaucrats. The political establishment in the 1990s pressed for lower lending standards, such that, the old credit score frameworks were cast aside. Government used one of the twelve regional Federal Reserve banks, the Boston Fed to spread easy lending criteria by means of a so-called discrimination study. It mattered more that one was minority, than whether one could afford the house. Left-wing groups like ACORN helped to “enforce” the policy. Political pressure caused subprime and adjustable-rate mortgage loans to increase.

The third culprit of the crisis is government’s overall stimulus to speculation. Government through the Fed made banks so flush with reserves to lend, that lending innovations like no down payments proliferated. Underwriting standards in general declined, even for high-income borrowers and speculators. Many more people bought houses on a speculative basis than before, betting that prices would continue to rise. Speculative home buying accounted for one-quarter of home purchases at the time the housing bubble popped. When foreclosures skyrocketed, it initially involved this speculative group who had used the flexible, no-money-down mortgages hoping for a quick profitable resell. No money down made walking away easy.

Number four is the tax code, which government blatantly uses for social engineering schemes and incentivizing certain behavior. Hundreds of little programs affecting consumers and developers encouraged people to build and buy homes, channeling artificial demand into the housing sector. The federal government takes 35 percent of the average worker’s income in taxes but gives it back if one engages in certain activities. It’s sort of a public twist on trickle down economic theory. For instance, invest in the stock market through an IRA or 401(k) and shield some money from the taxman. Pay premiums to a health insurance company through an employer and you can deduct it. The biggest deduction by far for most families is the home mortgage interest deduction. Government thereby introduces strong incentive to buy rather than rent, as well as to borrow in order to buy.

Fifth is the Federal Reserve and artificially cheap credit. This had the biggest impact simply because it is so pervasive in its distortion to the economy. An increase in the supply of money and credit starts the economy off on an unsustainable boom. Pushing down interest rates by increasing money supply, the Fed encourages production of longer-term projects, such as construction. This is quite a bit different than stimulus provided by real consumer demand. More and different projects are started than the economy can sustain. When not enough people can afford McMansions, the price each one fetches is far less than anticipated and a bust comes to the real estate market. The Fed started the boom that gave rise to this latest bust, by increasing the money supply through the banking system. In the wake of September 11^th and just over a year after the dot-com bust, the Fed sought to reinvigorate the economy through a series of rate cuts culminating in a target federal funds rate of just one percent for a year (June 2003 to June 2004). The supply of money increased dramatically, such that, more dollars were created between 2000 and 2007 than in all the rest of our country’s history! The money and credit found its way to the housing market, where lax lending standards made excessive home purchases and speculation in homes seem like smart financial moves. The quasi-government agencies Fannie and Freddie channeled money the Fed was creating into the housing market.

Finally a “too Big to Fail” mentality deserves some blame, as certain actors in financial markets operated in the confidence and even assurance, that they would not be allowed to fail and that the American people would absorb their losses if they got into trouble. Letting major firms in or out of the financial sector go bankrupt, would do more quickly to jolt the financial sector into being prudent, than all the regulatory tinkering and bailout money in the world. It wasn’t unregulated markets that caused the current crisis.

Economic news of late has been pretty good or at least encouraging. Stocks are going back up, and first time jobless claims are down from what was expected. There are always little rallies in the midst of bear markets. The Dow rebounded to historic highs during the early period of the Great Depression. Don’t be fooled by the rim of a precipice. The bailouts didn’t save the economy. They may have made things worse, even if they staved off a day of reckoning. The problem we’re in is systemic and no longer a matter of pumping in sufficient stimulus. The Treasury Department formed a new office called the Office of Financial Stability. Legitimized and armed by its Orwellian title, the charter has the federal government seeking ownership in banks. The Federal Reserve System combined private banks with government regulation at its start in 1913, but now we are nationalizing the private banks. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, reportedly said “Bush is to the left of me now… Comrade Bush announced he [is buying] shares in private banks!”

Of course this government ownership does not mean any more responsible approach to anything, and it won’t reduce risk taking any more than it can stop a mistake. Rather, according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, “Government ownership means that political forces will determine who wins and who loses in the banking sector. The government, for example, will push banks to aid borrowers with poor credit histories, to subsidize politically connected industries, and to lend in the districts of powerful members of Congress.” It is more of the same that put us into this financial crisis, only an order of magnitude worse. Unchecked, it will lead to destruction of Middle America. The bailouts thus far have slowed recovery by delaying the de-leveraging process at banks and removing a sense of urgency from financial firms. Other industries have lined up at the door for money and gotten some. The profit and loss system in some respects has been jettisoned for a system of guaranteed profit for business and loss for wage earners. Mismanagement is rewarded with taxpayer funding, and bad managers still get their bonuses.

Government loans to failing financial firms, is terribly ill advised. If one peels away the onion, the government is trying so desperately to keep things expensive! It wants to prop up asset values and keep both stocks and home prices high—as if this will help the holders of those assets. The fall of prices is not the cause of economic problems but rather, a symptom that reflects conditions in the economy. Bubbles need to burst. Instead, the government is intent on propping up bubble prices above what the market will support, and guaranteeing the difference with taxpayer finance. The way an aspiring homeowner must do these days is to drive further into debt for his American dream home, instead of being allowed to pay the low market price it is worth. It is as if the government wants citizens enthralled and burdened with debt just so it can bail them out.

Falling prices, no less than prices rising under normal healthy economic conditions, are simply the market’s way of rationally valuing assets, correcting for economic distortions created from whatever source, including the government’s past intervention and the rapid expansion of the money supply emanating from the Federal Reserve since 2000. Unfortunately, the government’s effort to pour funds into the economy and keep prices artificially high will touch off a round of inflation. There is likely to be an explosion in consumer prices because of the bailouts. Since late 2008, the Fed created 3 trillion new dollars and added the money to its balance sheet, but this acts as a base for banks to create ten times that much based on the multiplier. In order to avoid the predictable outcome, the Fed may try to contract the money supply but this will give rise to more instability. With the entitlement collapse coming and with it, the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, the same process will likely play out to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars more. Things will then get much worse.

The sooner we allow the market to coordinate production and consumption, the quicker this economy will be allowed to heal. The sooner the government begins to control its appetite for spending and start to reduce budget deficits, as well as the national debt over time, the freer and more prosperous the American people will become. America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, set this particular boom-bust cycle into motion—and it is bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. Since there is no known shortcut for creating real wealth through government edict, what went up is definitely coming down—one way or another.

The U.S. Federal Reserve failed to let the recession of 2000 take its course and decided to create trillions of dollars out of thin air. The recession that year is the only one on record that did not see housing starts decline. The Fed’s monetary policy led directly to the housing bubble and onset of our current crisis. The Fed intervened and postponed what it was trying to avoid, making the crash worse when it came. There’s a developed country in Asia we ought to pay more attention to, in terms of what works and what doesn’t economically. Its people have great work ethic and are highly educated, yet it is mired in economic difficulty and indeed has been for more than a decade and a half. Lesson learned: it matters what the government will or will not do in this type of financial crisis that we are facing. Some policy measures will absolutely prolong a bad economy. Japan empirically proves the free market case and cautions us to stop clowning around.

Historian Thomas Woods, Jr., relates how Japan fed its economic boom during the 1980s with inflationary credit expansion—increasing the money supply through the central banking system while at the same time keeping interest rates artificially low. Japan actually pushed interest rates to zero, thereby obstructing market correction of the malinvestments. When the bust came, it came hard. Then it lasted so long because of what the Japanese government did after that. Namely, the Japanese government resorted to interventionist tools in order to “kick start” their economy and do better than what the market supposedly could. During the 1990s it launched at least ten fiscal stimulus packages worth more than 100 trillion yen, and this ballooned their national debt—exactly what we are doing today to fix our own mess.

To get banks lending again, Japan pumped money into the banking system at the rate of nearly 300% per year for three years, but this led to a 4.5% decrease every year in bank loans. Public works programs were extensive but did not broadly stimulate the economy. Ironically, we are following a very bad example of what not to do and pursuing failed Keynesian interventionist policies, instead of recurring to American experience and best American instinct. In 1920-21 the U.S. and Japan both faced recession too. Japan opted to intervene and suffered seven years of industrial stagnation because of it. Meanwhile the United States allowed its economy to readjust by keeping government spending and taxation low and reducing public debt. The result was recovery. Unfortunately the Fed began to pursue an inflationary policy for the rest of the decade, thus setting up another boom-bust cycle—that one resulting in the Great Depression. Instead of a quick liquidation and return to prosperity, Presidents Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt pursued policies to prop up prices and wages.

A lot of people attribute World War II to the eventual recovery, but the U.S. recovery coincided with abandonment of New Deal programs in the 1940s. A new, New Deal these days is certain to prolong economic difficulties. If war and spending on munitions really makes a country wealthy, the U.S. and Japan can do the following to help each other out. Have their respective fleets meet in the Pacific and evacuate naval personnel (to avoid the loss of life normally incident to war). Then sink the two fleets plain and simple. Both countries can celebrate how much wealthier they’ve become by devoting labor, steel and a million other diverted inputs to the production of things that get destroyed, things civilians can’t use, and things that lay at the bottom of the ocean. Then just repeat the process. Although facetious, the example points to a central fallacy entertained by the current U.S. administration: the idea that spending alone, regardless of what for, gives rise to prosperity.

Neither does consumer spending drive an economy, if the spending doesn’t make any sense. And that’s what we’re talking about: economic nonsense made out of distortions to the economy fueled by reckless credit expansion in which profit, loss and value become virtually impossible to judge. Distortions result because the government acquires its resources through seizure, unlike the private sector, which acquires them through voluntary means. Even when the government gives one something, it is akin to an assault because the action still lacks voluntary means, as well as market feedback. If it is money, the government had to have taken it from someone else directly, or else from everyone indirectly by printing it and devaluing people’s assets. The purpose of production in the free market is to satisfy real consumer demands, but politically motivated or arbitrary diversions of resources cannot accomplish that purpose.

Investment adviser Peter Schiff compares an artificial boom in the economy to a circus coming to town. Say the circus arrives and its employees and the public, who come to visit the circus, begin to patronize the restaurant across the street. This may go on day after day, night after night for weeks. The restaurant owner may conclude the situation is permanent. If he adds on an addition, doubles his kitchen staff or opens up another location entirely, he will have tragically miscalculated when the big tent folds. Extending cheap credit to him afterwards misses the point and makes matters worse. His expanded restaurant will become a bubble activity that works only under the most phony of conditions. Moreover in an artificial boom created by the Fed, you may as well send in the clowns and watch them do the kabuki—because all firms and businesses, and the whole economy are affected.

It is time we address some fundamental issues about money. First, money didn’t originate with government. It originated amongst people who needed a way to exchange their goods indirectly, instead of through direct barter all the time. One could make a hat and want a basketball, and trading a hat for a basketball might even work, but one quickly finds that having a practical medium will make the myriad of exchanges so much easier. So money is that medium of exchange that gives rise to complex economies. Historically it has been many things, including seashells, berries, gold and silver. Interestingly, only with a pre-existing or inherited array of barter prices (relative sense of assessed value unique to the given society) are people able to substitute money for barter. Money moreover is a useful commodity in its own right and must be, to function effectively as a medium. While paper per se might be close to worthless, the paper money replaces or substitutes for a preexisting commodity money through government fiat and legal tender laws. In our case, Federal Reserve Notes replaced gold and silver, but even then the paper money was redeemable for a given weight of the actual commodity for most of our history. Indeed, a successful paper system will always insist on the paper money being redeemable in its commodity version. Only in this way can the money retain its assessed value and confidence be assured.

Secondly, precious metals work well as money because they are durable, inherently valuable, and easily divisible. Gold is so valuable that most daily transactions people make would be in silver coins—copper for smaller transactions. Private bank notes or checks would represent the same thing. That is, if our paper were tied to its original commodity version! The U.S. government, however, severed that connection, not surprisingly because it favors the ability to increase money without restraint. In so doing, the dollar has lost 95% of its value. Under a commodity standard, if the government needs money it would have to resort to borrowing or taxation. These are obvious and transparent to the people. By de-linking the paper money supply from gold and silver, the government prints money and so skirts political and fiscal accountability through the means of inflation.

Third, as the great economist Joseph Schumpeter said, only the gold standard is compatible with freedom precisely because it places restriction on the government’s ability to expand credit unabated and hence, places natural limit on the government’s ability to seize power. Schumpeter considered gold to be a kind of economic check and balance, more effective than the political sort, because he knew if we lost having our paper currency tied to the commodity then government would be able to deceive all political checks and balances. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was special interest legislation at its worst, conceived to favor the class of bankers and politicians. This favoritism comes at the direct expense of the people. The Fed controls the money supply and also moves interest rates up or down. It operates as a lender too (nice when you control interest rates), and it can purchase literally any kind of asset it wants; albeit, the Fed normally buys up government bonds—hence underwriting the government’s design on unrestricted power, indeed with a profit motive to do so!

Fourth it is the Federal Reserve System, which is exclusively responsible for price inflation—by definition this is true, because only the Fed can increase the money supply. Moreover, inflation is the Fed’s great game not only giving rise to boom and bust, but also producing profits for a favored few by exploiting the broader society. When the government inflates the money supply, new money enters the economy at discrete points. The earliest recipients include politically favored constituencies, i.e., banks and firms with government contracts—actually, wherever the government spends its money. These parties receive the money before inflation pushes prices upward. In effect the economy doesn’t know how much the money supply has been increased, so prices haven’t yet adjusted. Of course, by the time the new money makes its way through the economy, prices will have risen—but not until the privileged firms make purchases at the previously existing price level and silently loot those they buy from. When the average person gets his new money, through higher wages or lower borrowing costs, the prices have already risen. The value of his money was diluted before it reached him.

To continue along these same lines, consider that the money in your possession is actually compensation for a good or service you provided. If you buy a dozen apples, you do so with proceeds from a good or service you provided in the past. Indeed, you can only buy apples or anything else, because you provided someone else something they needed. However, in the case of a privileged business firm or bank with new money courtesy of the Fed, it comes out of thin air and not from the sale of a previous good or service. So when they spend new money, they actually take from the existing stock of goods without providing anything in exchange. They are benefited as it were, at the expense of the rest of society. As economic historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., puts it, “The analogous case under a system of barter would be one in which, instead of trading my bread for your orange juice, I just take your orange juice!”

_____________________

Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. Article is loosely based on the book by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Meltdown (2009). Email: wes@wesriddle.com.

Principles of Political War by Wes Riddle

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-19T06:05:00Z

The people are rising up. Americans are waking up at last to the threat: a leftist elite, bent on fundamentally changing America and making every citizen entirely dependent on the state. The Obama machine driven by a socialist agenda is spending trillions of tax-payer dollars to finance takeover of the American workplace and to stifle personal initiative and community awareness and self-determination. America is built of better stuff, however, namely the principles of private property and individual freedom, and the Resistance has begun.

In May 2009 Californians launched a tax revolt, indeed at a time when their state government’s deficit was larger than the budgets of most other states and many countries. State law according to its “Initiative” process required legislators to win a two-thirds referendum of the people before they could raise taxes. Forced to hold special election with multiple ballot Initiatives to raise taxes, California citizens shocked legislators by sending an unmistakable message by margins of 60 percent even in San Francisco: Taxed Enough Already! No more taxes!

The “TEA” Party movement quickly spread, gaining steam across the entire nation. David Horowitz calls it “the most innovative, exciting and powerful grassroots force in the history of American conservatism.” Today and through the election cycles of 2010 and 2012 it is not only vital to the health of the country, but essential to the survival of America. Consider that on the eve of the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama proclaimed, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming America!” Tea Partiers threw themselves into the political breach, so to speak, saying unequivocally “No” to Obama’s plans to fundamentally alter the federal constitutional Republic and turn it into a socialist state.

The breach is one thing, but politics is really more about sustained effort and long-term commitment to ideas. A particular movement without an effective plan or strategy will not succeed. Therefore it is critical to reacquaint ourselves with some principles of political war. Many political philosophers have characterized politics as warfare by other, presumably peaceful means. Nixon described politics as being part and parcel of an overall spectrum of conflict. Most Americans are naïve politically and unfamiliar with what philosophers and political operatives know about the electoral game played every two to four years. Americans think about politics as some kind of spectator sport or movie show, a passive distraction that doesn’t require any of their personal involvement. They mistake the huge personal consequences while sitting in the bleachers or back row of a dark auditorium. They might bemoan results of an election at tax time, but then they turn again to something else entertaining or pressing.

Liberals are morally bankrupt and clueless about policy, but they still win elections because they understand American politics is driven by a dime novel Hollywood romance, with Americans sitting idly by as, you guessed it,spectators. According to Horowitz, the story they love to watch is about an underdog—you know, the little guy who goes up against the system and triumphs in the end. It is a story about opportunity and fairness too, and to win the flitting hearts and minds of American voters, you have to tap into emotions evoked by the underdog. America’s heroes are cut to a common mold: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Robinson, Ronald Reagan or Colin Powell, etc., etc. Always it is about the common man who rises against the odds. Yep, Mr. Smith goes to Washington and make things right! Luke Skywalker saves the planet! Horowitz isn’t as cynical perhaps about the narrative. Truth is, practically everyone in America thinks of him or herself as the underdog and aspires to be a hero. The romance in fact resonates with our deepest convictions, as well as faith in freedom and the ability to overcome adversity or to challenge and win against unjust power arrayed against you. It is the American Dream and largely her story—rising to the top through hard work in spite of humble origin.

Until the Tea Parties showed up, the political left wielded this romantic narrative as a political weapon virtually unopposed at election time. In positioning themselves as champions of the underrepresented, neglected and oppressed, leftists manufactured a version of the American story and spread it far and wide through the media and academe. According to Horowitz, the left successfully transformed America’s story from “an epic of freedom into a tale of racism, exploitation and domination. In their telling, American history is no longer a narrative of expanding opportunity, of men and women succeeding against the odds. Instead, it is a Marxist Morality Play about the powerful and their victims.” Elections have become staged political dramas too, as progressives invariably speak in the name of America’s alleged victims—women, children, minorities and the poor.

Conservatives play into the trap, approaching politics like management on every issue, as a mere practical problem that needs to be solved—emphasizing, say, utility of the tax cut, efficiency of a certain program, the optimal method to approach this or that. They talk like businessmen in other words, and while there is nothing wrong with instituting good policies and running things efficiently or turning profit, progressives label them as servants of the rich, oppressors of the weak, defenders of the strong and privileged. Conservatives become the enemies of the people, in the liberal parlance of political warfare. Witness Mario Cuomo at the Democrats’ 1996 National Convention: “We need to work as we have never done before between now and November…to take the Congress back from Newt Gingrich and the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.” Ooh, such good spectator sport. Only now it won’t wash.

_____________________

Michelle Obama Shows Ravages of First Lady Role

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-15T20:28:00Z

Obama's Goal: Mexicanization of USA

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-13T07:08:00Z

An arrogant billboard exploded on the Los Angeles skyline a few years ago by a local TV station: “Los Angeles, Mexico: Your Town, Your Community.”

It was spelled out in Spanish. CA was crossed out with a red X and replaced by the word ‘MEXICO’. Two smiling Latinos representing over two million illegal aliens in the City of Angels smiled from their anchor desks. Behind them stood the LA skyline replete with skyscrapers. Most disconcerting was a statue, also in the billboard picture, that stands in the middle of Mexico City.

The Mexicanization of America, races, with total support from Barack Obama and his Congress, full speed across our country. La Raza, the most racist organization in the world, licks its chops as sheer numbers of illegal aliens have taken over Los Angeles. They’ve run Americans out of countless cities and communities. They’ve trashed school systems and bankrupted 86 hospitals. They’ve thrown trash throughout the park systems. They defy laws by not carrying car insurance, driver’s licenses, work off the books paying no taxes, brutalize our schools with their language, spread drugs, and more terrifying are the thousands of cases of TB and hepatitis they spread into Los Angeles. In other words, they’re bringing their Third World into our world.

La Raza’s motto is, “For the Latino race, everything; for anyone outside the race, nothing!” What is their prime directive? It is the ‘Reconquista of Aztlan’ or the retaking of our four border states back into the umbrella of Mexico.

Recently, this journalist testified at the Colorado Capitol. Six liberal legislators had a chance to pass a bill denying benefits to illegal aliens and add an amendment to go after employers who hire them. Representatives Carroll, Todd, Weismann, Ragsdale, Gallegos and Todd heard 28 speakers to five in favor of the amendment, but voted it down.

It doesn’t end there. David Marsh, a cop from LA, was killed five years ago by an illegal that still enjoys freedom in Mexico. Eight women in Boulder, Colorado were raped by eight illegals five years ago and all rapists save one fled to Mexico. A New York woman was attacked and killed by an illegal. These stories multiply by the week.

The Mexicanization of America races unimpeded by our own elected officials. In the last election, Obama won and Americans lost.

How many Mexicans? Over 20 million illegal Mexicans overwhelm us, kills us, rape us, rape our welfare and hospitals, steal jobs from our poorest Americans and destroy our schools with their language which they refuse to relinquish. Even while they detest us, break our laws and invade our country—they send $24 billion in cash back to their broken down, corrupt country each year. Thousands of Mexicans in LA feature a bumper sticker that reads, “F*** YOU! THIS IS MEXICO.” Isn’t that a wonderful welcome to the City of Angels?

More insulting stems from the 56 Mexican consulates built in major cities across our country. Do you get the feeling we’re being colonized by a failed Third World country like Mexico? You would be correct. President Calderon refuses to employ and create opportunity for his own citizens. He represents what all Third World leaders stand for—the high, privileged classes and the poor are damned.

Do you want to talk about crime in Mexico? The entire political system is super corrupt. Army generals run drugs. Mail carriers bribe patrons or won’t deliver their mail. It’s coming to America with a vengeance. About 60 percent of the 20,000 members of the “18th Street Drug Distribution Gang” in Los Angeles is composed of illegal aliens from Mexico. In the latest report, 95 percent of all felony warrants are made out to illegal aliens. Hundreds of thousands of illegals drive without licenses or insurance. They run from accident scenes. An officer in Denver, Colorado on the Mike Rosen Show, May 11, 2005, said that eight out of 10 traffic stops include illegal aliens. They drive drunk and virtually ignore red lights.

How do we stop America from becoming a failed country like Mexico? Join www.numbersusa.com for starters.

Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Wednesdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.themicroeffect.com at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

On Political Debate and Political Action by Wes Riddle

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-12T06:49:00Z

Sometimes it just isn’t worth the effort. Oh one can try to convince the other side, assuming they haven’t clam-shut their minds entirely. At best it will be a lot of work, but increasingly two sides in American politics seem to be from different cultures entirely—if not from different planets. They mostly talk past each other, not really to one another. No one strives for consensus, because consensus no longer involves statesmanlike compromise over details or method, but rather fundamental matters of conviction and principle. Glenn Beck tried to reach out (sort of) through his book, Arguing with Idiots (2009). Mark Olsen and Thomas Rexroth do perhaps the best job possible trying to convert nincompoops out there with a new fiction book called Animal Colony (2010), a modern rendition of George Orwell’s classic. Reading it, grade school students certainly and quite possibly a few indoctrinated adults, may come to understand why socialism is a terrible idea. And while outreach programs and community education initiatives are fine, all that has to wait until after the election November 2^nd. If Republicans are handing out Abe Lincoln pamphlets now to the African-American community, well, they’re idiots and need more than just a couple good reads.

The political class has failed the American people—both parties. Many Christians are indeed hypocrites, or apathetic, or both these days. Those who do get theirs, so to speak, forget the struggle of their own climb, as well as whom actually enabled their ascent. Main Street supports Wall Street; and people raised the government in Washington, D.C., albeit the American people are always searching for a mechanistic device to replace the eternal vigilance required. Every election is theoretically a “term limit” after all, and some of the same people at rallies won’t even bother to vote, much less get involved in politics this campaign season—now just over three months left, with the U.S. Congress and the Texas House at stake, and indeed our country.

Although progressives refuse to believe it, many conservatives were highly critical of George W. Bush and did not save their caustic ammo just for Obama Days. The establishment GOP, however, was hijacked by the so-called neoconservative faction. So while vocal critics of President Obama were arguably more passive when Bush was in office, their voices are not now as silenced by a Republican machine or incumbent Republican administration. Unfortunately the battle for the GOP is not quite over, and neoconservatives still hold sway—which is why so much (though not all) of the Tea Party movement is fueled by disaffected conservative Republicans.

Things are not inevitable. No History is. It depends on what you do. In politics action counts for more than debate at election time (and if you hadn’t taken notice yet, election time is upon us). The rationalist deterministic mantra that defines modernity in only a certain way is a total crock. The complexity of our society does not justify violation of the Bill of Rights, or violation of States rights and federalism, or indeed the general loss of freedom we are experiencing. Moreover, ours is not the mental calculus of most Europeans—i.e., what do I get for my tax money? In some instances, Europeans see trade-offs in terms of money for services and they conclude it isn’t that bad. It might not be so far removed from crony capitalism either. Of course, Americans aren’t supposed to trade their taxes and hence their freedom, for a bunch of cradle-to-grave social services, at least not according to Original Intent or the enumerated powers in the Constitution. Americans are not supposed to be “socialist” in other words; albeit, they have been trending that way ever since the Progressive Era and New Deal.

The modern and somewhat resurgent progressive impulse has placed Obama in power, but only after a perceived failed, neoconservative administration. We do need problem solvers and competent people in government to tackle the hard problems. Only they ought to be restricted to constitutional activities! One of the reasons the government is so inept at crisis management, is that it is doing everything else but. The world is not a rosy picture, never was and probably never will be. Someone’s particular problem or special need does not place a government coerced responsibility or legal obligation on a freeman or freewoman to go fix and solve it. One shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s stupidity, mistakes or bad luck either. We can talk moral suasion, and I’m all for family, church and charitable assistance. I also believe in the power of free enterprise and of mutually beneficial exchanges to make things better over time for most people. My acknowledgment of the real world we live in, in other words, does not lead me to the conclusion that freedom is ever a wrongheaded idea or that it should take a back seat to many things.

In a recent speech, the Chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, Tom Pauken addressed a 2010 high school graduating class: “Our nation is desperately in need of good leaders. America faces a more serious set of challenges than any time in my life, including our most serious national recession since the Great Depression…. This is a time of high levels of unemployment and the hollowing out of our U.S. manufacturing base. (Even here in Texas, where we have lower unemployment than any other large labor market state in the nation, we too have been hard hit by this nasty national recession). Your generation will be the most adversely affected if we don’t put in place policies to get our economy moving again. It is not inevitable that unemployment remains persistently high, or that our U.S. manufacturing base continues to deteriorate. Americans – and Texans, in particular – have always risen to the occasion whenever our nation faced serious challenges before; and we can do so again if we have the political will and civic courage to make bold decisions for the long term good of the country.”

Now here’s what I think too: that ours could be—I said could be, the next ‘greatest generation.’ But don’t underestimate the degree of effort required. The good Lord rarely sets up His victory along a primrose path. Freedom has never been free—no, not for Israelites and certainly not for us Americans. The road ahead the next few years is arduous, even risky, but we have every talent we’ll need to win, survive and prosper and to pull this country through, on Election Day and beyond.

_____________________

United State of America

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-10T17:52:00Z

"Hate Speech" or Truth?

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-09T19:00:00Z

In light of our President and his campaign of hatred and intolerance toward Christianity, Western Culture and Americans, it is vital to recall just how intolerant he and his Islamic allies are towards any criticism leveled at them.

It has recently come to light that a Michigan State Professor wrote an email expressing his concerns to the Moslem Student Association. Of course the usual suspects immediately called for his dismissal on the grounds of "hate" speech and "intolerance."

Where are their shrill voices on behalf of the citizens of Arizona? Where is Obama's denunciations of the Illegal aliens who gang raped a young girl in Richmond,CA and took videos of the act while they laughed and chattered in Spanish?

The Professor, in his e-mail, said the following:

Dear Moslem Association,

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU

I intend to protest your protest.

I am offended not by cartoons,

but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians,

cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders,

murders of Catholic priests

(the latest in Turkey ),

burnings of Christian churches,

the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt ,

the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims,

the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women

(called 'whores' in your culture),

the murder of film directors in Holland ,

and the rioting and looting in Paris France .

This is what offends me,

a soft-spoken person and academic,

and many, many of my colleagues.

I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal,

and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems

to be very aware of this as you proceed

with your infantile 'protests.'

If you do not like the values of the West

- see the 1st Amendment -

you are free to leave.

I hope for God's sake

that most of you choose that option .

Please return to your ancestral homelands

and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

Cordially,

I. S. Wichman

Professor of Mechanical Engineering

=============================
As you can imagine,the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well.
They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty
and mandate a seminar on "hate" and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray. CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.

A special thanks to loyal ELVISNIXON reader Jacklyn F. for alerting us to this matter

Obama's War

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-08T15:31:00Z

Bill Kristol is an idiot.

Yes, I said an Idiot.

Democrats are smarter than the GOP. The GOP needs to brand the failure of the Obama strategy in the global War on Terror as the Obama failure.

Democrats had no problem labeling their war, LBJ's war, as "Nixon's War."

Now that GOP Chair Michael Steele has done so, Bill Kristol is calling for his dismissal. Why?

Ann Coulter points out the facts:

"At this point, Afghanistan is every bit as much Obama's war as Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's war. True, President Kennedy was the first to send troops to Vietnam. We had 16,000 troops in Vietnam when JFK was assassinated. Within four years, LBJ had sent 400,000 troops there.

In the entire seven-year course of the Afghanistan war under Bush, from October 2001 to January 2009, 625 American soldiers were killed. In 18 short months, Obama has nearly doubled that number to 1,124 Americans killed"

This is clearly the fault of Obama and his idiotic policy of embracing the enemy, setting timetables, giving medals for not shooting at the enemy and snubbing Israel.

Steele is right. Kristol is wrong.

Obama Attacks AZ: Justice For Whom?

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-07T00:45:00Z

William L. Houston, writing for Youth For Western Civilization points out that :

"..The Justice Department has deemed that the "human rights" of drug traffickers and human smugglers should take precedence over the safety and security of American citizens.

The federal government refuses to do its own job. It doesn't enforce its own laws. It refuses to protect the states from invasion. Now it gets even worse: the federal government actively assists the invaders, denounces natives in solidarity with the President of Mexico, and uses the court system to deny a sovereign state the right of self government.

If I was an Arizonan, I would be wondering why I should respect a federal court order. If federal statutes can be violated by foreigners who invade our country, why should citizens respect a federal court order? The law can't be a dead letter in one case and still have authority in the other.

Why shouldn't Arizonans form an "undocumented border patrol" and secure the border that way? If "undocumented immigrants" don't have to obey the law, why can't an "undocumented border patrol" pretend to be law enforcement officials?

Let's follow the logic of lawlessness to its ultimate conclusion: if the federal government isn't willing to protect Arizona from invasion, and actively facilitates the invasion by blocking SB 1070, what is the use of the federal government? Why should Arizonans pay taxes to the federal government? Why should Arizonans fight for the federal government?

What do Arizonans get in return from Emperor Obama and his courtiers in DC in exchange for their blood, loyalty, and taxes? Economic boycotts? Lawsuits? The hatred and contempt of their rulers? Sounds like a rotten deal to me.

That's how subjects are treated, not citizens."

Calling Young Patriots

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-05T17:50:00Z

One reason that I spent time in the introduction going over my biography is so that I could draw out three points with credibility. First, leadership roles and experiences early on, i.e., in your youth—stick with you and make it easier to pick up similar and even greater roles throughout your entire life. Second, although certainly not identical, some leadership skills are transferable from political to military to business and back to political pursuit. My experience today as Chairperson of the Central Texas Tea Party is reminiscent of my Teen-Age Republican (TAR) and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) participation during the Reagan Revolution thirty years ago. Lastly, and borrowing a lesson from history, the big political waves don’t come around all that often—when they do, individuals who catch the wave are better off by far and smarter, for having taken part in something historical.

The fact is that everything builds on everything else and there is no “freebie” in life. The process involves an accumulation of study, work, experience and achievements that move or convey you, over time to higher positions and quite possibly, by the grace of God, to your dreams! Everything counts: reading, playing and behaving; studying in high school to make good grades; making good grades in high school in order to get into college; doing well in college or quite possibly at your first job, in order to get to that employment level that starts a ladder of upward mobility; and then taking one position at a time to get to the other; and finally, from one career to another—so that eventually, retirement really does resemble those mythological “Golden Years.” Everything you do becomes a vantage point to the next step, and to all else that follows.

Of course what I’m implying is that time and effort spent in youth leadership activities (say, organizing a Young Patriots group) begets other, higher positions of leadership and the skills needed for such positions. As I have stated and written before, there is definitely something going on in the country, including Texas in a reaction to President Obama’s relentless progressive agenda. More than at any time since the late 1970s, people have awoken to a sense of danger and a strong desire to do something political. Now I’m going to refrain from saying more about our president or the military’s Commander-In-Chief, other than to point out that he is indeed a civilian president elected every four years. He has command of the people’s military, but Americans have no Commander-In-Chief. The military is subordinate to civilian political leadership and civilians also do not salute their president. Sometimes political leaders forget that Americans are not supposed to take orders from Washington. Rather, Americans are supposed to be left as a free people, at liberty to do things for themselves and families in the ways they personally see fit, with money they have earned.

Historically states created the federal government, not the other way around; and the people of the several states delegated to the federal government enumerated powers but kept everything else to themselves. This past Saturday (26 June) there was a Tenth Amendment Town Hall Meeting held in Temple at which six conservative Texas State legislators, including Ralph Sheffield were present and fielded questions. It was indicative of what you already know if you follow the news carefully, and that is that many states’ Attorneys General have filed suit against the Obama health reform bill on the basis of the Tenth Amendment.

You need to read the Constitution. If words mean anything, then it is impossible to figure where the federal government discerns a power to make private individuals buy something, much less private health insurance; and then tries to enforce legislation using a taxing agency like the IRS. Every citizen of these United States needs to read and study the Constitution and refuse to let the Constitution be trampled by anyone or by any single branch of the federal government. Before it’s all over with, the politics of the tea parties and of conservative groups around the country may even involve civil disobedience—because the principles involved today are as fundamental as what Jim Crow and segregation involved in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Remember there are different kinds of enslavement and vestiges of the same, as well as tyranny in many guises. The government is not necessarily a benevolent master, and even if it were the American people will not suffer a yoke from any man or institution save Jesus Christ himself.

_____________________

Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. This article based on remarks 28 June 2010 to the Southwest Youth Leadership Conference held at Central Texas College in Killeen, Texas. Email: Wes@WesRiddle.com, ph. 254-939-5597.

Is This Still True?

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-02T18:09:00Z

Will it be true when Obama grants AMNESTY to people who HATE America and refuse to learn our language?

Obama: Race Warrior/Math Wiz

elvisnixon.com — 2010-07-01T23:20:00Z

Today the President of the United States lied consistently and enflamed racial hatred.

Mr. Obama seems to want racial tension at an all time high- his words and his goals seek to blame "the white man" for every problem in the history of the world.

Seeing that it is better to laugh than to cry ELVISNIXON humbly submits the following:

1. Teaching Math In 1950's
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit ?

2. Teaching Math In 1960's
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970's
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980's
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990's
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it's ok. )

6.. Teaching Math In 2009
Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

Principles Which Need to be Taught

elvisnixon.com — 2010-06-30T07:04:00Z

In the New England Primer, published in 1691, colonial school children learned to read through simple rhymes pointing back to Scripture:

In Adam's Fall
We Sinned all.

Thy Life to Mend
This Book Attend.

["This Book," of course, is the Bible.]

This July 4th Resolve to Save the Republic! by Wes Riddle

elvisnixon.com — 2010-06-29T07:03:00Z

The Republican Party of Texas state convention was held 11-12 June, at the Dallas Convention Center. Speakers were all quick to include Tea Party activists as part of their “conservative” Republican coalition. The mood was generally upbeat and encouraging. There was tremendous unity displayed too, in terms of rededicated effort aimed at getting out the vote and influencing the elections in November. Most of the ire was directed against “Obamacare”; for less government spending and more fiscal discipline; and for security along the U.S. and Texas borders with Mexico. The 2010 convention was nothing like the depressed atmosphere at the previous convention two years ago, when Republicans knew they were about to be trounced and held their noses to vote for McCain anyway. Republicans smell blood this time with Obama’s approval ratings so low, with so much oil in the Gulf and the government’s crisis management as incompetent as what went on during Hurricane Katrina, with the economy still in a slump. Republicans think 2010 could be a banner year, and yet there is also great angst and high anxiety. The overwhelming feeling among Republicans is that this could be the last hurrah for the U.S. Constitution or for anything resembling the old Republic. If we don’t get it right this time, there may not be a next time.

Barack Hussein Obama is the first president after all who doesn’t even like the Founders and who fervently believes that there were critical mistakes made at the very beginning of the Republic, and at the Source of Original Intent. He faults George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson for the institution of slavery and its legacy, and quite frankly bears a grudge. Good for him but I don’t have to. Nobody alive does, in fact (unless perhaps they are over 150 years old). Post-racial prejudice doesn’t have to be post-politicalpartisan, as if that meant it were a good thing. If the president’s view of his country is at all entwined with his governing philosophy and his policies (which they have to be), you can put me down as being highly partisan against them. Indeed my view is that from the president’s perspective on America, it really doesn’t matter much if he was born in Hawaii or Kenya as some allege—he isn’t American.

It has often been said that America is an idea or a complex of ideas. One indeed may come from anywhere on planet earth and some have apparently come from outer space, but to be an American one has to subscribe to the central idea of Freedom. Based on this standard, there have always been and probably always will be “foreigners” in and among us, even fellow citizens who simply do not accept the central idea of Freedom or the complex of ideas that are built up around it. Nonetheless, we should avoid electing one as president the way we have unfortunately done. President Obama is working to impose his own set of ideas and urging on the final transformation of our Republic. He is serving an explicitly progressive agenda and trying to complete transformation to a positive liberal state; whereas, the Founders emphatically chose to create and give us a negative liberal state and federal republic.

The difference is that a positive liberal state involves government mandates and coercion, in order to guarantee the people’s equal rights, opportunities and final outcome. The negative liberal model mostly removes the government and gets it out of the way, in order to leave people and their voluntary associations, i.e., individuals and society, free to compete and jockey for outcome. Results emerge over time through a process, but they are never predetermined. At the level of the individual and to large degree the community and state, one can make a mistake, even a big one, but then go back or turn in a different direction. Freedom never guarantees anything, at least no more than itself. Some people get a raw deal, while others get lucky or seem favored or blessed. Freedom, however, is the most important value involved in the schema of a negative liberal state. The positive liberal state values need above freedom. The positive liberal state is socialist or communist.

Obama believes that someone else’s healthcare need (one among many other needs) imposes the obligation on you to pay for it. Likewise, he believes that as long as one atheist objects, then no public prayer can or should be uttered. The negative liberal perspective on the other hand, is one that leaves values to local majorities and self-determination to the level at which the people live and work and determine their local environment. No one’s particular need imposes mandatory obligation on anyone else to pay for it. Churches and families used to come to the rescue practically speaking, or people did the best they could, but we’ve largely replaced these functionaries with the government already. We are probably now more like a positive liberal state than the negative liberal one the Founders gave us, albeit that final transformation to pay for it allis yet to be accomplished, i.e., the transformation from free market capitalist economy to socialist economy—exactly what Obama and the Democrat majority in Congress plan to complete by 2012, or 2016 on the outside.

Churches have their precious tax exempt status, but they are stultified from doing anything infringing on the government’s claim of social prerogative or its latest regulatory edict, or anything that bumps presumptively against domestic legislative parameters. Churches have moved their charity overseas and they do miraculous things abroad, when charity begins at home. Many mission trips carry the mistaken belief that charity at home was solely for the material benefits delivered, when it was mostly about teaching and example, and about helping American families. Families are absolved now of their responsibility, precisely because they are absolved of the necessity to care for their elderly or children. But everyone pays, and everyone is the poorer. And everyone works, so no one cares—physically or emotionally, no not for the children or the grandchildren, for grandparents, or for each other. The social worker and healthcare professional do care I know it, at a certain level and to a certain degree. But it is not so personal and never so attached as family or the extended family of the Church. We have built a health care equivalent to the way we farm our beef: arguably more efficient though not less expensive, and quite a bit more sanitized if not as sanitary.

We have watched the disintegration of the greatest Western culture that ever existed—it was right here in America. We have bridled the so-called evil white man and denigrated the breadbasket he created for all free men and women of good will to enjoy. The president invites locusts now to devour whatever remains. If you do not understand the metaphor or feel the rhetoric you just read, then it is lost. I had a particularly stupid reader once ask, ‘why do people still speak this way?’—as if we had to wipe away the ugly old reminders of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, not to mention the English used in the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution. Why not “Text it” instead? LOL. At least LOL can mean anything you want it to mean. Why get stuck on what’s right or even what’s best. It is indeed a new mode of thinking required in this postmodern post-Republic. The government will care for you from cradle to grave whether you want it to or not. Friends, it is past time for discussion or debate, and you are either so thoroughly afflicted by the palsy of political correctness and what passes for knowledge in the public schools, which of course you paid for too—or you are ready to swear allegiance to the central idea of Freedom and take your stand, even if it is your last, resolving now to save the Republic!

_____________________

Strahan To Play for Pete Carroll's Seahawks

elvisnixon.com — 2010-06-28T07:02:00Z

A former Super Bowl Champion with the New York Giants was overheard Saturday in Manhattan Beach, CA assuring former University of Southern California head Coach Pete Carroll that he would come out of retirement to play for Pete Carroll's Seahawks in the NFL in the next two years.

Strahan who has come under fire for his tasteless,sexist attempts at humor has attempted a career as a spokesman for Subway sandwiches and a television personality. Both have met with limited success for the gap toothed former football player.

Strahan was seen on Manhattan Beach Boulevard Saturday afternoon loudly proclaiming his goal to come out of retirement and play for USC legend Pete Carroll.

Remember you heard it first from ELVISNIXON!