Are we mice in a liberal progressive democrat cage or are we men and women living in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Conservatives Must Build a 'Bite Me' Coalition

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• Kurt Schlichter
   

Mar 19, 2013 TOWNHALL.COM

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Who the hell is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to presume that he has a say in what I or any other American chooses to drink? Of course, the answer for any self-respecting citizen is that he has no such say, and the proper response to him and his legion of petty fascist fan boys is the suggestion that they pucker up – and I will politely decline to identify what they should kiss.

It’s a sad commentary that the once boisterous, independent, take-no-guff New Yorker of the past has been replaced by a gutless, cowardly supplicant eager to obey the commands of whatever pint—sized potentate occupies Gracie Mansion. Back in the day, a real New Yorker would look that tiny troll in the mayor’s office in his beady little eyes and laugh, “Hey Mikey, I got your Big Gulp right here.”

These bossy snobs are getting out of hand, and it’s time to push back – hard. Besides being the American thing to do, resistance to this creeping liberal totalitarianism is a huge opportunity for conservatives.

Obedience to arbitrary authority is counter to everything that America stands for. We didn’t reluctantly cede a tiny bit of our personal sovereignty to the government so a bunch of know-it-all twerps could tell us what to eat, what to smoke, what to do and how to live. We did it to allow them the ability to keep order, which they have manifestly failed to do, and to perform a few basic governmental functions, which they have likewise failed to do.

So, a government that has failed to adequately perform the few discrete tasks which it should be performing now wishes to do a bunch of other things which it has no business doing in the first place, and which it will inevitably do badly and thereby cause even more problems than existed in the first place.

It’s time to say “No,” and our rejection of this obnoxious governmental overreach has the potential to create a new coalition that could up-end the status quo.

Real conservatives detest the idea of a government so big and intrusive that it feels free to interfere with such basic liberties as choosing what to eat. And they also hate the idea of a government so big and intrusive that it feels that it is within its rights to, say, blow up American citizens within the United States because it, well, thinks blowing them up is a good idea.

It’s all part of the same unearned hubris. The notion that some government functionary can tell you what you can drink or not drink based on his notion of what’s good for society is not so far from the notion that he can decide who lives or who dies based on his notion of what’s good for society.

Sadly, the enablers of these uppity functionaries aren’t just the usual liberal nanny-staters. You have putative Republicans conceding that “Well, I guess sugar is really bad…”, as if it matters whether high fructose corn syrup is the devil’s brew or an elixir from the Fountain of Youth. They should never reach the question of whether sugar is good, bad or indifferent; the mere posing of the question is antithetical to everything a real conservative believes. It’s none of their damn business.

Moreover, the appalling argument that “Well, we all have to pay for obesity” itself accepts the flawed premise that “we all” have any business paying for anyone’s health care. I’ve researched the Constitution pretty thoroughly and have been unable to find anything about me shelling out my dough to subsidize some couch-dwelling slacker’s doctor visits.

Maybe the enumerated power to do so is dwelling behind some penumbra or emanation, but it seems like making that argument accepts the idea that government ought to be in the health care business in the first place. And if the fact that the Constitution says nothing about doing so isn’t enough to show why it shouldn’t be, the idea that because the government does so gives it the right to micromanage our lives is itself ample reason to reject that hateful notion.

The specter of pseudo-cons like Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham fussing about Senator Rand Paul making a stink about the fact that the President’s progressive Mini-Me Eric Holder refused to give a straight answer about whether The One could ice folks in the U.S.A. on a whim demonstrates the problem. Too many sort of-cons sort of like the idea of unlimited governmental power.

And you know who else besides real conservatives has some real questions about governmental overreach? Well, a lot of them are folks we conservatives have been simply unable to reach. In fact, we hardly even tried, mostly because we are just as suspicious of them as they are of us.

There is a whole group of potential allies out there – the Millennials who grew up familiar with technology but chafing at their helicopter parents and the politically correct hypocrisy of the education establishment. Many of them think of themselves as “liberal,” but they have little use for bums who want to lay about sponging off producers. Their liberalism is more about affectation and cultural posturing than about political positions – they reject the idea of the anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-sex conservative boogeyman they’ve been taught in the media, not conservatism itself.

These young folks have bought into the notion that conservatives are somehow obsessed with other people’s sex lives, which is false – conservatives are obsessed with their own sex lives, as the CPAC meat market demonstrates. But the wacky notion that some conservative is going to climb in their bedroom window to interrupt their trysting by making them pray has convinced this huge demographic to support an ideology that leaves them burdened with student debt and living in their parents’ homes – and thus unlikely to ever have sex to begin with.

The key to defeating this residual cultural affinity is twofold. First, conservatives need to avoid feeding old stereotypes with boneheaded maneuvers like making idiotic pronouncements about rape and writing jerktastic articles about how being a gay conservative is the result of a Marxist conspiracy. Remember, these young people grew up being taught to be tolerant. They’ll be tolerant of anyone – including hardcore Christians – who are themselves tolerant. We don’t have to accept anything we consider immoral – we just have to not be jerks about it.

Second, conservatives need to emphasize the pro-freedom agenda that both demographics share. Millenials have no desire to be dictated to about their snack options or hellfired by some drone either. Nor do they want to get arrested for jailbreaking their iPhone or sued for a $100,000 for downloading the latest terrible Mumford & Sons song. And for the few who have found jobs in the Obama economy, the tax bite on their pay stubs is just as unwelcome.

Call it the Coalition of the Unwilling to Be Bossed Around.

A pro-liberty coalition is a huge threat to the progressive project, as it steals from the progressive base while building on the conservative one. But we need to understand that we may be called on to give in order to get. The young demographic has huge doubts about the drug war and is largely pro-gay rights and gay marriage. Of course, they need to accept the fact that they don’t get to be little dictators either – the Boy Scouts get to choose their membership and doctors who understand the Hippocratic oath as excluding killing their unborn patients get to exercise their conscience.

We need to understand that the freedom sometimes means people make choices we don’t like and, where appropriate, compromise. I’m certainly ready to accept a few stoners bogarting doobs and some gay dudes exchanging vows if it means a smaller government so constrained and neutered that it wouldn’t dare try to tell me how to live out my faith or how many bullets I can keep in my M4, much less how many ounces of Mountain Dew I can pour into my Styrofoam cup.

It’s time to put aside a few policy disagreements to build a new alliance of citizens who believe that government has gotten too big for its britches and needs to be reined in. We may not agree on all the specifics, but we can build a majority of Americans who can stand together for liberty and, as one, offer the proper response to these tin pot dictators of liberalism: “Bite me.”

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There ARE issues which can bring our people together again and wouldn't it be ironic if it was "BIG GULP" sodas that did it!

I can see it now . . . . a HUGE march on Washington DC, PLUS the bridges leading into New York City filled with (M)illions of patriots holding a 32 ounce soft drink in BOTH hands screaming at the top of their lungs, "SUPER SIZE ME" ! ! !

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[Gordon Ray Kissinger]

DHS Insider Update: It Has Begun

19 Mar 2013

by Doug Hagmann

Photo Credit: Canada Free Press

Much like my high-level source within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined in a series of interviews beginning last year, the orchestrated collapse of the U.S. dollar and the entire world’s economic system has begun. The first shots in a global economic take-over were fired in Cyprus as my esteemed colleague and founding editor of Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod laid out in frank detail in her column yesterday and her follow up today.

Please read it and heed her advice, or suffer the consequences of your own normalcy bias that such an event will not happen in the United States, Canada, or from wherever you might be reading this. It will, and the plan appears to be on schedule for a shot across the bow later this spring here in the West, with a more aggressive take-over starting sometime this fall, according to my source.

The Plan
To those needing a quick refresher, the plan is quite simple and can be summarized by the Clinton-era quip attributed to political strategist James Carville, “the economy, stupid” and the June 9, 2010 statement by former Obama czar Van Jones, Socialist extraordinaire, “top down, bottom up, inside out.” It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the “middle class” will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus.

Based on the events in Cyprus, it should be quite clear to even the most vocal critic of the legitimacy of the information provided to me by my source within the DHS as published on this web site is no longer at issue. The U.S. dollar, the backbone of world currencies and the proverbial firewall preventing the erosion of our national sovereignty, is the ultimate target of a takedown by the global banking interests controlled by a handful of banks and families of the “royal elite.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Read more: http://joemiller.us/2013/03/dhs-insider-update-it-has-begun/#ixzz2O...

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Could Cyprus bank runs happen here?

Proposal would take money right out of depositors' accounts

By Garth Kant

With the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus about to impose a confiscatory tax – up to 9.9 percent – on all bank accounts, resulting in a run on Cypriot banks, the rest of the world is watching anxiously and asking the obvious question: “Could it happen here?”

The economy of Cyprus is the third-smallest in the Eurozone, and its government is heavily in debt. Over the weekend, a group of European finance ministers came up with a $13 billion em...

The government of Cyprus would have to raise $7.5 billion through a tax on Cypriot bank depositors.

Under the most recent terms discussed, depositors with more than 100,000 euros, or about $130,000, would get 9.9 percent immediately deducted from their accounts. Smaller deposits would suffer a deduction of 6.75 percent.

It’s being called a “onetime” deduction, or tax.

Even though some economists say Cyprus is a special case and the “contagion” of taxing bank accounts is unlikely to spread, until now bank accounts worldwide, no matter how dire the government’s financial woes, have been held sacrosanct.

Now the government in at least one nation is poised to simply take money out of depositors’ accounts. That’s a first.

Could it happen in the U.S.?

Some experts say probably not – at least not in the same way as in Cyprus.

Economist, speaker and author Jerry Robinson, who runs Follow the Money Daily and is a featured columnist at WND, assessed the crisis in Cyprus.

“It has a lot to do with politics, Angela Merkel’s reelection bid and also a few others trying to stay in power,” he said.

Robinson said it’s interesting to observe that such powers are playing tough with a tiny nation like Cyprus, while bigger nations with worse economies, such as Italy and Spain, have not been attacked in the same way.

But he said the plans are drastic.

“This is nuclear war on the banking [industry],” he said.

Robinson said while the “tax” has yet to occur, he’s concerned by such actions.

Some analysts point out that in the U.S., government is already “taxing” Americans’ bank accounts by other, less obvious and more long-term means than the naked cash-grab playing out in Cyprus.

For instance, interest rates in the U.S. are near zero, so depositors aren’t getting paid for the use of their funds, effectively “loaning” their hard-earned money to banks. Then, thanks to inflation, their deposits become worth progressively less and less.

The real-world inflation rate – as measured by the actual rise in prices of essentials, including food and fuel – is far higher in the U.S. than the official 2 percent. But even using the 2 percent figure, over the next few years the buying power of American depositors’ bank accounts will be just as diminished as that of Cyprus bank-account holders.

But this new and unsettling form of “tax” isn’t the only concern. The immediate concern for many is that the crisis in Cyprus will spread, causing bank runs in other troubled European Union countries such as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. A European financial crisis of that magnitude would undoubtedly hurt the U.S. economy.

Most American depositors take comfort in the fact that their savings accounts in banks and credit unions are federally guaranteed up $250,000. However, those government funds are designed to bail out very infrequent bank failures. They in no way could cover all depositors’ accounts in the case of a widespread run on U.S. banks, as is occurring now in Cyprus.

Respected hard-money proponent James Turk says bank runs in Europe are a wake-up call to all bank depositors aroun...

“Bank insurance means nothing these days when bureaucrats and politicians are looking for wealth to grab,” Turk said.

“To me this proposed bailout is outright theft, and theft cannot be justified, but the central planners are trying to do that anyway,” he added.

“The events in Cyprus are obviously a scary message that the Greeks, Spaniards, Italians and others are taking seriously, because they see that their money in the bank is at risk, too. But the less obvious message is that all money in banks is at risk. Not only are bank assets impaired, but all the banks are interlinked because they lend to one another and own a lot of debt of insolvent countries,” concluded Turk.

Not surprisingly, bank shares tumbled in Europe today. The latest shock comes as European banks are still struggling to recoup losses from the financial crisis.

Cyprus is particularly vulnerable to instability in the banking sector. The country’s banking assets are about eight times the size of the .... And foreign investors hold almost half of the 70 billion Euros deposited in Cyprus. Moody’s estimates $19 billion of those deposits are owned by Russian corporations. Many suspect the Russian mafia uses banks in Cyprus to launder money.

Russian officials had been considering reducing the interest and extending the maturity of a 2.5 billion Euro loan to Cyprus. Now, the Russians say they are reconsidering because the EU did not include them in bailout talks.

The European finance ministers are also reconsidering. The Eurogroup, as they are known, held an emergency meeting today to try to calm fears over the Cypru...

The Eurogroup now recommends that depositors with less than 100,000 euros be protected.

The finance ministers also have decided to give Cyprus more flexibility over the bank tax, but the country would still need to raise 5.8 billion euros from the tax.

A vote on the plan by the Cyprus parliament has been delayed until tomorrow.

The U.S. Treasury Department issued a statement: “The Treasury Department is monitoring the situation in Cyprus closely, and Secretary Jacob Lew has been speaking with his European counterparts. It is important that Cyprus and its euro-area partners work to resolve the situation in a way that is responsible and fair and ensures financial stability.”

But the damage may be already done to confidence in the European banking system. This is the first time a national bailout has proposed to impose losses on bank depositors. Some call that a dangerous precedent.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/could-cyprus-bank-runs-happen-here/

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

It's easy to dismiss the FED policy of printing (B)illions of new dollars because the immediate result (inflation) is difficult to discern AND the liberal progressive radical democrats are good at covering up the damage.
Take an average meal at McDonald's . . . . can you buy a burger and fries with a drink for under $5.00 bucks anymore? Or even more meaningful is the amount of empty space in all those boxes of cereal or other dry food products you have to buy for your kids breakfast, the price goes up but the amount of product goes down.
Those government economy experts are slowly killing us by squeezing the life blood out of our wallets.
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[Gordon Ray Kissinger]

This is what's coming our way from their liberal agenda -

Former US Treasury official warns of system-wide collapse

Outspoken, controversial former Assistant of the US Treasury Paul Craig Roberts spoke yesterday about the problems that Western policy-makers face and the inevitability of the current financial system ending in ruin.

There are no economic policy solutions. You can’t deal with [the excessive money printing] by cutting spending because you already have high unemployment. How are you (the Fed) going to contain the inflation? Are you going to jack interest rates up and wreck what little is left of the economy? 

The whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen. And they (mainstream media and government officials) avoid it. There is no talk about it. It’s so obvious. How can you not see it? And yet they never mention it. So I just feel compelled. It’s my responsibility to mention it. Roberts claims that the game of printing money cannot last and that there are already early warning signs that the US dollar is slipping in its role as the global reserve currency.

Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management continued with the same theme yesterday in response to Roberts’ comments: They play games, and they manipulate things (such as gold and silver). They are so lucky because they get to borrow money at zero (percent) and lend it to people. They are given this right to make money, and then they turn around and lever it up, and throw derivatives on top of that. I totally agree that someday it will just fall apart and we will find out that none of the counterparties can pay. I’ve never been hopeful for the financial system. 

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis all we’ve had is printing of money and backstopping of banks. The one thing which has happened since Lehman, Lehman was a liquidation, and there has never been a liquidation allowed since. Nothing is allowed to liquidate, whether it’s Fannie, Freddie, various banks, nobody is allowed to liquidate, and I know exactly why they are not allowed to liquidate, because if they liquidated the first domino falls. And once the first domino falls, everyone starts worrying about counterparties and the whole system fails.

That’s why they need to keep propping it up week after week. Somebody is always getting bailed out.  It’s just ongoing and anybody who has any common sense at all knows it will end in ruination.

http://yourtubenews.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=3181219%3ATopic%3A...