A record 10.98 million Americans are on disability (SSDI). We’ve gone from 51 full-time workers for each one on disability in 1968, to a mere fourteen!

According to Richard Finger at Forbes, 5.9 million recipients have been added under Obama alone – a majority, and more than his 2.5 million jobs created. Finger says the list of qualifying ailments has been expanded almost to the point of meaninglessness.

I also read that the Disability Trust Fund is expected to run dry by 2016. Coincidence? [1]

And what are the odds that, if Obama gets around to dealing with this, he will propose higher taxes?

([1] Tongue in cheek. Some leftists might not see the causality, but anyone who understands math, ought to.)

Back in October 2010, blogger Tigerhawk recalled what one of his Princeton classmates, who was originally from Romania, said about the nature of life under socialism:

One recurring tool of socialist tyranny is the capricious enforcement of unworkable laws.

He quoted the passage in making a point about the “capricious enforcement” which was an inevitable feature of the unworkable mess better known as Obamacare.

But two and a half years later, it’s evident that observation could just as easily have been applied to our byzantine tax code, our environmental regulations, and even laws pertaining to press freedoms under the Obama administration.  As Dan wrote earlier today, the only folks who are surprised by any of these scandals are the ones who haven’t been paying attention to what has been going with our government since January 20, 2009.

In the case of the Obama administration, though, it’s not strictly capricious enforcement, but selective enforcement, always with a partisan goal in mind.  The IRS targeting of the Tea Party and conservative organizations is appalling, but one would have to be naive not to believe, as ABC’s Trey Hardin noted today, that it wasn’t authorized by someone in the West Wing.  Hardin observed (audio at the link):

I will tell you this on the IRS front. I’ve worked in this town for over 20 years in the White House and on Capitol Hill and I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it. It simply just does not happen at an agency level like that without political advisers likely in the West Wing certainly connected to the president’s ongoing campaign organization.

And it’s not just the IRS.  Earlier today it came out that the EPA waived fees for leftist organizations and leftist journalists who requested information, but not for conservative ones:   “Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.”  Yes, this would be the same EPA that has classified carbon dioxide as a pollutant, making the mere act of exhaling potentially troublesome.

A coincidence?  I think not.  This is the same administration committed to picking winners and losers on most matters.  Hence, it should surprise no one that while oil companies are prosecuted for the deaths of eagles and other protected species, the bird-killing wind farms are naturally given a pass.   Clearly, some energy companies are more equal than others.

It’s the same with journalists.  Just a day after the AP snooping scandal broke, the administration is playing favorites again.  Jake Tapper has gained a reputation as one who can be counted on to ask tough questions of the White House with greater frequency than the reporters at most of the other lamestream news organizations.  Well, today Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection is reporting that the White House played Jake Tapper by selectively leaking one e-mail with the apparent aim of creating a diversion in the reporting about the Benghazi cover-up.  Jacobson writes: “Like I said, this entire diversion of leaking a single email out of a chain of emails to Tapper was simply meant to put critics of the administration back on their heels and to provide an excuse for White House defenders to throw around words like ‘doctored.’”

And so what else do we see today?  Well, all of a sudden the administration’s lackeys in the press such as Hilary Rosen are now out expressing their sympathy for poor Jay Carney.  I guess they’re afraid of ending up as the subject of a DOJ snooping scandal or an IRS investigation or a selective leak.

Speaking to students at Ohio State University on May 5, President Obama said:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham, with which we can’t be trusted.

Obama said, in effect: Disregard people who worry about tyranny. We can have government do the things that they warn against, without it being tyranny, because we are such wonderful people – so well-intentioned – that it isn’t tyranny, when we do it.

Get it? So, when Obama has his administration lie to Americans so he can win re-election, or when he takes an increasing share of people’s incomes, or requires people to engage in private commerce that he happens to want (Obamacare mandate), or eliminates their rightful choices in the free market, or uses the IRS to obstruct his opponents and violate their privacy, or uses the Justice Department to snoop on reporters, or uses the EPA to extort fees from opponents (that progressive groups don’t have to pay – hat tip V the K), it’s not tyranny. Because it’s Obama doing it, and by his account, he can be trusted.

But the Framers of the constitution thought otherwise. They believed in checks and balances. They *were* those people who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.” They founded America, by “gumming up the works.”

Perhaps Obama doesn’t know that the Framers set up the United States as a republic under a limited government, precisely because they knew that all governments tend to degenerate into tyranny. Or perhaps Obama is unaware of his own party’s President Andrew Jackson, who said that “eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty.”

Obama implies that people who warn us of tyranny are distrustful nihilists. Our only choice, Obama implies, is between continuing the crony-social-fascist gargoyle of a government that he now leads – and harmful anarchy. A typical Obama false choice (flowing from a typical Obama straw man), I’m pretty sure it has the Framers rolling in their graves.

So much for Obama. But there’s more! Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee recently said: (more…)

By now, most of us have heard the reports that the Tsarnaev family received some $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance.

It touches on a key question that arises when government pays people to basically do nothing: what the heck are they up to, all day?

The classic story that welfare-spending advocates give us is, The Family Who Just Need A Little Help To Get On Their Feet: imperfect but responsible parents who are going to school and looking for jobs (however desperately), while they take care of kids or others who depend on them. I’m sure that some proportion of recipients is like that. I’m also sure that at least some other recipients sit on their rear ends for years at a time. And finally, some others must be up to no good: running meth labs, planning crimes, or studying radical Islam and (perhaps) learning how to commit terror. What are the true proportions of the three groups? That, I do not know.

When people must work for a living, we have a pretty good idea what they’re up to all day: Their jobs. If they’re going to make trouble, they must do it more in their off-hours.

Back in 2001, Mickey Kaus noted some of the links between welfare benefits and terrorism. I also remember Bruce Bawer talking about it in his 2006 book: the idea that the European welfare state paid benefits to its unassimilated Islamist immigrants as a kind of appeasement, oblivious to the fact that it was (in effect) paying them to remain unassimilated and Islamist.

Why do some nations’ birthrates fall? And can Big Government boost them?

[Germany] spends some €200 billion ($270 billion) on promoting children and families per year…But its birth rate, at 1.39 births per woman aged 15 to 49, remains among the lowest in Europe…

…The web of benefits is so complex that even experts don’t fully grasp it: There’s a “child supplement,” “parental benefit,” an “allowance for single parents,” a “married person’s supplement,” a “sibling bonus,” “orphan money” and “child education supplement,” not to forget the “child education supplementary supplement.”

The article suggests that the reason that German women don’t have kids is because the government isn’t funding enough daycare and preschools to make it easy for them.

I have a different theory. My guess is that birthrates fall:

1. because living standards rise. (Kids stop being a help on the farm; start being expensive.)
2. and because the Welfare State gives people the illusion that government will take care of them in old age.

My second point would mean that Big Government measures won’t, over time and on average, raise a nation’s birthrates. The more the State does – the more it hands out benefits and asserts its dominance in citizens’ lives – the less urgent its citizens will feel about procreating. Agree/disagree?

…but not in the way you think. No, this isn’t some tirade about how the societal fabric is being torn apart and/or sullied at the hands of libertines and druggies. That’s all a bit corny for me.

It’s because the “socially liberal” people keep electing big-government high-taxing economic illiterates.

I’m often bemused (and, when in a good mood, amused) when I read someone’s online profile’s self-description of his political affiliation as “Socially liberal, Fiscally conservative.”

Really? I wonder which of his Janus characteristics weighed heavier when choosing between McCain and Obama in 2008.

Clearly there is no doubt that the fiscal conservatism took a backseat. After all, the guy who promised that energy prices “would necessarily skyrocket” and professed his desire IN PLAIN ENGLISH to “spread the wealth around” and when confronted by the economic reality that lower tax rates result in higher revenues (and vice-versa), admitted that his philosophy on taxes was more about “fairness” than bringing in revenues necessary to run the government (albeit a HUGE government he’d like to have) was—is—not a “fiscal conservative”.
(more…)

Via Legal Insurrection:

The results have just been posted in the Milwaukee County canvass, and nothing much changed from yesterday. AP reports Prosser picked up 11 more votes and is the winner.

I repeat, JoAnne Kloppenburg lost.  David Prosser won.

The vote margin stands at 7316, a virtually insurmountable lead for a recount.  All the hanging chads in the world will not put Kloppenburg on the Supreme Court.

Awwwwww…. and all that money wasted by the public employee unions, too.  Oh wait — that’s taxpayer money they waste on their liberal political agenda.  *facepalm*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE:  I just found this post that is nearly a year old.  It still seems to fit (even MORE so now, perhaps). 

Take the very worst personal and leadership traits of these Presidents:

Combine the Socialist, statist and world-view philosophy of this one:

And add the big-spending ways of this one:

And you get this big mess:

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I just read this email:

Log Cabin Republicans National Board of Directors to Meet in Washington, DC

(Washington, DC) – The Log Cabin Republicans National Board of Directors will convene in Washington, DC on September 22nd for a quarterly board meeting.

For further information, contact Christian Berle, cberle@logcabin.org.

I’m just wondering if Patrick Guerriero will be there.  Or Tim Gill?  Or George Soros?  I mean will the Leftist money men reveal their hands up the backsides of their “gay Republican” puppets?  Or will the show go on and the LCR-dues paying members just be told to “move along, nothing to see.”

Oh, I’m not going… I’ll be in New York City that weekend.  More interesting gathering and people.  No disguised Socialism-as-gay-Republican-group.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

**WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS!**

I’ve been thinking a lot about the prospects of the much feared age of “Big Brother” — where the Government knows all and uses that information to suppress.  And as dedicated readers know, my view of America and our past and future was radically altered after I read the book “The Fourth Turning.”

Clearly there are a lot of elements to Orwell’s vision that have arrived — too many to list, but originating with the Bush-era Department of Homeland Security.  But recently, I’ve thought about a new phenomenon that turns “1984″ upside down. 

The Internet, blogosphere, New Media, and everyone owning a video camera device has made the “Army of Davids” also an check and balance on the “Big Brother” State.  In fact, one could argue that We, The People are the true Big Brother (in a good way) by constantly monitoring and calling out the never ending moves toward tyranny by the Federal Government.  Exhibit A: Congressman Bob Etheridge (Ruling Class – NC).  Exhibit B: Congressman Brad Sherman (Ruling Class – CA) Exhibit C: Congressman Ciro Rodriguez (Ruling Class – TX)  Exhibit D:  Any Town Hall meeting in 2009 & 2010 (Ruling Class vs. We, The People)

I’ve also been pondering (under the influence of “The Fourth Turning”) whether or not the United States is in a “low grade civil war” (here and here) and whether it will become a “hot” one.  Yesterday’s Investor’s Business Daily has an editorial that combines all of these ideas and lays it on the line.

Will Washington’s Failures Lead to Second American Revolution? – IBD.com (h/t – Instapundit)

The Internet is a large-scale version of the “Committees of Correspondence” that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington’s failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.

People are asking, “Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?”

Pruning the power of government begins with the imperial presidency.

Too many overreaching laws give the president too much discretion to make too many open-ended rules controlling too many aspects of our lives. There’s no end to the harm an out-of-control president can do.

Bill Clinton lowered the culture, moral tone and strength of the nation — and left America vulnerable to attack. When it came, George W. Bush stood up for America, albeit sometimes clumsily.  Barack Obama, however, has pulled off the ultimate switcheroo: He’s diminishing America from within — so far, successfully.  He may soon bankrupt us and replace our big merit-based capitalist economy with a small government-directed one of his own design.

<…>

A wounded rampaging president can do much damage — and, like Caesar, the evil he does will live long after he leaves office, whenever that may be.

The overgrown, un-pruned power of the presidency to reward, punish and intimidate may now be so overwhelming that his re-election in 2012 is already assured — Chicago-style.

It is interesting to see a number of people now thinking the way I have been since August 2009.  I certainly am not advocating armed revolution.  But I also know that we have the right to it under the Declaration of Indepedence (Read up on it, please. It is important.). 

Step one is holding Members accountable with the power of technology (someone should write a book about that!)  The second step is voting.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

This is such a good trailer…. I wanted to bump it up so more folks could see it. 

And as my response to stupid comments from people like David.

Wow. A nice contrast to the Obama-Sherrod vision of America.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Sounds like the title of a great movie!  Heh, heh.  Well, I’m still in a nostalgic mood for what our Founding Fathers did on July 4, 1776.  And I caught this item on today’s Heritage Foundation blog.  I hope you find it as inspiring and motivating as I did when I read it this morning.

Happy Birthday America! America is 234 years old. She was born on July 4, 1776, with the passage of the Declaration of Independence.  Since then, America has grown from thirteen colonies on the east coast to fill a vast continent. Her economic and military power is envied around the world. And the American people are hardworking, churchgoing, affluent, and generous.

Independence Day is an opportunity each year to remember the root of our success—our founding principles as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence serves as a philosophical statement of America’s first principles. As Matthew Spalding describes, the Declaration affirms that all men are created equal. By nature, men have a right to liberty that is inalienable, meaning it cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess such inalienable rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights, and the people retain the right to alter or abolish a government that fails to do so.

These principles have made America the great nation it is today. But, since the early 20^th century, these principles have been under attack in the academy, the media, and popular culture. So-called progressives have rejected the existence of self-evident truths—in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere. Instead, they embrace the notion of “Progress” that is constant change towards an unspecified end. From these faulty principles, it follows that, all men are not created equal; some people are further along in the historical process than others. There are not permanent rights with which man is endowed. Government creates rights, and these rights evolve according to the demands of the time. There is no need for consent of the governed, just experts who will tell us how to live and how to progress.

This is a serious attack on our principles, but not an insurmountable one.

We, The People are in charge.  Our government’s power comes from our consent.  And our rights come from our Creator. Never forget that!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The facts are undeniable. (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics)

November 2008 (Bush)
Total Unemployed: 10.3 MILLION
Unemployment Rate: 6.7%

Obama Inaugurated – Jan 20, 2009
Total Unemployed: 11.1 MILLION

$787 Billion “Stimulus Package” – Passed Feb 2009
Total Unemployed: 12.5 MILLION

JULY 1, 2009 – ONE YEAR AGO
Total Unemployed: 14.5 MILLION
Unemployment Rate: 9.4%

November 2009 – “I will not rest until all Americans who want work can find work,” President Obama
Total Unemployed: 15.4 MILLION

January, 2010
Total Unemployed: 14.8 MILLION
Unemployment Rate:  9.7%

Healthcare Reform Signed Into Law – March 2010
Unemployment Rate:  9.7%
Total Unemployed: 15 MILLION

JULY 1, 2010 – TODAY
Total Unemployed: 14.6 MILLION
Unemployment Rate:  9.5%

NO IMPROVEMENT IN 12 MONTHS. In fact, one could legitimately argued that things are WORSE than a year ago since (based on only ONE statistic) 100,000 more Americans were employed in July 2009 and July 2010.

And almost THREE MILLION Americans have become UNEMPLOYED since the $787B Stimulus Bill was signed into law.

Remember this:  “I will not rest until all Americans who want work can find work,“ President Barack Obama – November 6, 2009

My fellow Americans…. remember this:

June 19, 2010

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Thomas Sowell, one of our time’s great political thinkers, has a chilling piece up today. 

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics.

Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler’s rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions.

“Useful idiots” was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

Put differently, a democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

The president’s poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies.

With vastly expanded powers of government available at the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats, private individuals and organizations can be forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to the government by the Constitution.

If you believe that the end justifies the means, then you don’t believe in constitutional government.

That last bolded statement is so simple and true.

When it comes to Sowell’s question though, I believe the answer to it is: “We are already there.”  I think the next few weeks, especially events toward the end of the year, will show if Americans want to give up 200 years of our Constititutional experiment and drift into a dark age of tyranny.

Last summer I asked readers “Is The US In A Low Grade Civil War?”   I stated seven reasons why I thought so:

1. There is a clear distinction between those who want a more authoritarian/socialist nation versus those who want to preserve the capitalist/democratic America we live in.
2. There is a clear distinction between those who understand the principles and guidance and importance of the representative legislative process versus those who hide behind the Constitution as an excuse to create laws from the bench.
3. There is a clear distinction between those who favor strong national security vs. those who want a borderless, global government.
4. There is a clear distinction between those who hold US Constitutional principles dear (1st, 2nd, 10th Amendments in particular) and those who are ignorant or want to subvert those principles.
5. There is a clear distinction between those who want to maintain a sensible fiscal policy versus those statists in Washington who spend our tax money with reckless abandon.
6. There is a clear distinction between those who see themselves as Americans first versus those who want to segregate themselves into communities and ignore the national identity.
7. Despite his promises, surveys show that Americans have elected one of the most divisive Presidents [Obama] since Richard Nixon.

These factors have gotten worse, not better in the course of the year.  You know it when you talk to friends and relatives.  I can feel the tension everywhere: airports, supermarkets, office complexes.  Those who don’t are Unicornists or aren’t paying attention.

I pray I am wrong and that the resolution to these severe conflicts happens in November at the ballot box.  I don’t think it will.  This will be a long hot summer for the United States of America and future generations will mark the year 2010 for its historical inflection point.  For that, I have no doubt.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I saw this last night live-and-in-person at the NRA 2010 Convention in Charlotte.  Newt had the house rocking the whole time, but this clip was the most memorable.  Outstanding.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Want to know what we as Americans are facing in our near future?  All you need to do is follow the news out of Greece. 

ATHENS, Greece (AP) – Rioting over harsh austerity measures left three people dead in a torched Athens bank and clouds of tear gas drifting past parliament, in an outburst of anger that underlined the long and difficult struggle Greece faces to stick with painful cutbacks that come with an international bailout.

The deaths were the first during a protest in Greece in nearly 20 years.

Fear that the bailout won’t stop the debt crisis from spreading to other financially troubled EU countries like Portugal and Spain intensified amid the violence Wednesday, as credit ratings agency Moody’s put Portugal on watch for a possible downgrade.

The euro sank, dipping below $1.29 for the first time in over a year, on fears of crisis contagion and concerns that political upheaval might keep Greece from keeping its end of the bailout bargain.

Greece faces a May 19 due date on debt it says it can’t repay without the help. The new government cutbacks, which slash salaries and pensions for civil servants and hike consumer taxes, are being imposed as condition of getting a euro110 billion ($142.16 billion) package of rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund and the other 15 European Union countries that use the euro as their currency.

Many Greeks realize some cutbacks are necessary to pull their country, which has a massive debt of euro300 billion ($387.72 billion), back from the brink of default, and reaction until now had been relatively muted by Greece’s volatile standards. But with people beginning to feel the pain of austerity measures, anger boiled over.

Greece and the entire EU are at a dangerous tipping point and I sincerely believe the bottom is about to drop out of the world economy in a way that will make 2008 look like an economic boom.  Mark my words. 

The United States Government has enabled the public sector to the point that its salaries and benefits dwarf the private sector.  That is dangerous.  Our peaceful and classy public sector unions, like SEIU, will take to the streets in a heartbeat if a dime is dared to be taken from them.

Mark my words.  My friends, we are witnessing The Fourth Turning.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

On June 3, 2008, history was made when the party that once defended slavery and stood in the way of equal rights for black Americans gave Barack Obama enough delegates to make him their nominee for President of the United States.

Never one to pass an opportunity to aggrandize himself, the completely unqualified, dearthly experienced Senator of all of four years from arguably the most corrupt political cesspool in our Nation’s history declared that that was, among other biblical things, “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”.

Rightly (in both senses of the word), he was castigated, but naturally and true to his form, he remained unrelenting in his own beatified view of himself.

Five months later, almost to the day, he was elected our 44th President. And we’ve had many moments since.

Just moments ago, I watched in despair on C-SPAN as the nominally representative body of our most democratic house of Congress openly and actively spited the will of the overwhelming majority of its constituents by passing a bill that will, in effect, federalize and seize control of over 15% of our economy.

Apparently on Tuesday, we can expect President Obama (likely to little fanfare, owing to his acknowledgment that what he is doing is so anathema to the will of those from whom he derives his current position, not to mention the Constitution to which he swore his defense) will sign this insult to liberty into law.

That, my friends, will be a moment to remember.

It will be the moment that our representative form of government will have ceased to exist. It will be the moment that those who deign to represent us in our Legislative and Executive Branches have chosen their own will over that which is clearly ours.

It will be the moment our Nation, whose Founders viewed legitimate government as “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is now unquestionably ruled by a political class who exercises its power in spite of the governed.

It will be the moment we look back on, ten, twenty, forty years from now, when, in hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt, facing tens of trillions of dollars of costs due to this social experiment, we think: What the hell happened to America, anyway?

It will be the moment when, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the knowing and purposeful execution of innocent unborn human life was bankrolled by taxpayer dollars, a move, according to a November 2008 Zogby poll, opposed by 71% of Americans.

OR

It can be the moment our so-called “representatives” in government finally begin to hear from us.

It can be the moment they look back on in less than 8 months and see as the galvanizing moment when Americans decided to take back their Nation from them.

It can be the Rick Santelli moment times 100.

It can be the moment that people who have been involved in Tea Parties and town hall meetings begin to take real action by RUNNING FOR OFFICE to replace these scoundrels who currently entrench themselves in the ivory halls of OUR government.

It can be the moment that those who were elected by We The People begin to FEAR the People and what we will do to them come November 2, 2010.

It can be the moment we look back on in ten, twenty, forty years, and reflect on a new birth of American Independence and self-reliance. A new birth of a Nation governed by people who hold true to the ideals of our Founders that our government return to “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

It can be the beginning of the end of the “long train of abuses and usurpations” of our current unrepresentative elected officials, and the day Americans once again dedicated themselves to the prospect that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

What say you, America?

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Mark Steyn has an excellent piece over at NRO today about the degredation of Greece, and it as a model of how socialist policies there (and in Europe as a whole) have driven it to the verge of disaster. Are we headed there? Directionally, Steyn says, yes. But there’s still time to recover. It starts off:

While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand-new, even-more-unsustainable entitlement at the health-care “summit,” thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen — because they’re part of the same story. It’s just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is farther upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe. Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal collapse): The Greeks are at Chapter Seventeen or Eighteen.

And it ends:

Think of Greece as California: Every year an irresponsible and corrupt bureaucracy awards itself higher pay and better benefits paid for by an ever-shrinking wealth-generating class. And think of Germany as one of the less profligate, still-just-about-functioning corners of America such as my own state of New Hampshire: Responsibility doesn’t pay. You’ll wind up bailing out anyway. The problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America, Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?

I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

- Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

Clearly, this is the blogosphere-story-of-the-year (if not decade).  It matters not that the Mainstream Media is covering up this scandal, the free-wheeling democratized Internet is getting the information out.

Here’s another great summary from Robert Tracinski at RealClearPolitics:

For more than a decade, we’ve been told that there is a scientific “consensus” that humans are causing global warming, that “the debate is over” and all “legitimate” scientists acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this “consensus” really means. What it means is: the fix is in.

This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It’s the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being “confused” by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.

The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.

This is the scandal of the century. It needs to be thoroughly investigated-and the culprits need to be brought to justice.

As I stated on Twitter earlier today… “Can we at least all agree now that Global Warming is a political philosophy and not a scientific enterprise?”

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

This was a grassroots-generated concept springing from this year’s Tea Parties across the USA. [Emphasis added by me below.]

We, the citizens of the United States of America, in order to protect our country from those who seek power and authoritarian control under the false guise of compassion and altruism, call upon our elected representatives to sign this Contract and by doing so commit to upholding the principles herein:

Individual Liberty

Our moral, political, and economic liberties are inherent, not gifts from the government. It is essential to the practice of these liberties that we be free from restriction over our peaceful political expression and free from excessive control over our economic choices.

Limited Government

The purpose of our government is to protect our liberties by administering justice and ensuring our safety from threats arising inside or outside our country’s sovereign borders. When our government ventures beyond these functions and attempts to increase its power over the marketplace and the economic decisions of individuals, our liberties are diminished and the probability of corruption, internal strife, economic depression, and poverty increases.

Economic Freedom

The most powerful, proven instrument of material and social progress is the free market. The market economy, driven by the accumulated expressions of individual economic choices, is the only economic system that preserves and enhances individual liberty. Any other economic system, regardless of its intended pragmatic benefits, undermines our fundamental rights as free people.

I’ve signed up.  You should too.  And take it to your Member of Congress to sign.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)