WE'RE BUYING A HOUSE!!!!!!

It needs a little lovin, but its in a great location and we got the sellers down to the price we wanted. See pictures below. We're taking the pool and the fence out.

Pics of the House We Put An Offer on. . .

. . . now we wait.

"Gangster Government"

Michele Bachmann has a history of being a bit of a Christian fundamentalist, however, Dr. Paul has done well in educating her. . .

Cop Assaults Man For Upside-Down Flag

The Federal Trade Commission To Regulate ME

As per the Washington Post article, FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments, if you make claims about anything, and the government doesn't feel that you can appropriately back up your claims, according to their own standards of course, you could be sued by the justice department:

Existing FTC rules already ban deceptive and unfair business practices. The proposed guidelines aim to clarify the law and for the first time specifically include bloggers, defined loosely as anyone writing a personal journal online.

. . .If the guidelines are approved, bloggers would have to back up claims and disclose if they’re being compensated - the FTC doesn’t currently plan to specify how. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.

LOL. Idiots protecting idiots from other idiots. Taxpayer cash hard at work!

Deer Outside My Window @ Work

Appropriately, the photo was taken with my BlackBerry.

Thank You, Barack Obama

Mmmmm Freshly Picked Organic Lettuce

Ron Paul Establishing World Wide Popularity

The HuffingtonPost did an excellent piece on the attention Ron Paul receives from international news organization. You can read it here.

How much international media does a typical member of Congress do? "Practically none," says a top House GOP communications aide. Foreign media appearances are so rare, he says, that the party doesn't track them....

Turn on Russia Today any given afternoon and you're likely to see Paul waxing political. A Paul-seeking viewer could also find him on the BBC and other outlets in Great Britain -- "too many to count," says the spokesman, Jesse Benton, for his ongoing Campaign for Liberty) -- or on stations in Canada, Holland, Sweden, Australia, Brazil and Argentina.

He's also routinely asked to appear in person. "Dr. Paul currently has invitations to speak all over the world, including Turkey, The Czech Republic, the U.K and Hong Kong," says Benton....

Visitors to CampaignForLiberty.com.

Police Officers Keeping The Peace

There's a reason I don't believe in gun control. Not for any love for guns. Simply because we'd be stupid to only allow these thugs to have them. There's no reason an individual shouldn't be able to properly defend themselves from such an obvious infringement on personal liberties.

CNN Cover Steve Bierfeldt's Lawsuit Against TSA

Obama "betrayed more campaign promises this early in his term than any president in recent memory."

Says Anthony Gregory of the Campaign For Liberty:

Much of what energized the left’s critique of Bush concerned his despotic record on war and civil liberties. Amerians from across the spectrum, in fact, came to see foreign policy as the most important issue in the 2006 mid-term elections. Many of us in the libertarian community hoped (not with blind optimisim, but at least we hoped) that Obama would indeed signal a decline in the neocon doctrines of preventive war, preventive detentions and eviscerations of the Bill of Rights in the name of national security. I will discuss his promises broken this Saturday in Monterey (details below).

Obama gave us some reason to hope, when his lips were moving. He said he opposed the Iraq war and wanted to get out. He said he’d restore habeas corpus. He said he’d oppose warrantless wiretapping. He promised a transparent government, on these and other questions.

Instead, only five months into his administration, he has betrayed more campaign promises this early in his term than any president in recent memory. He had gone beyond the Bush doctrine of circumventing the law to detain people without habeas corpus and has explicitly embraced the principle of “prolonged detention” – as in, indefinite detention. He has used state secrets and sovereign immunity privileges to cover up torture, wiretapping, and renditioning. He has stalled on Guantanamo and, in any event, indicated that even with Gitmo’s closure, he would maintain prison camps abroad, beyond the reach of U.S. law. He has issued abusive signing statements. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan, equivocated on Iraq, and bombed Pakistan, contributing to a humanitarian disaster there of unspeakable proportions.

As for transparency, aside from the state secrets nonsense, his domestic policy of expansive government at home has been done without anything remotely resembling the several days of public discussion he had vowed. Even on economics, many on the more intellectually honest left have conceded that he has continued and accelerated the corporatism of the Bush regime, robbing from all of us to bailout the biggest firms and interests.

There are other betrayals from a leftist perspective, on gay issues, health care and the like, all the while he has advanced corporate socialism at a staggering pace. He might destroy the dollar, while doing nothing to ratchet back the Bush state. Maybe only by destroying the dollar will he end the empire, inadvertently, but I daresay that’s not what Obama hopefuls had in mind.

Those in the Monterey, CA, area on Saturday can come see me discuss these and other issues. I’m speaking at 2PM, Saturday, June 20, at the Peace Resource Center at 1364 Fremont Blvd. in Seaside. It’s free to the public. For the rest of you, I hope to have an article version of my talk up at some point soon.

Congressman Ron Paul on Healthcare

Quote - Nathaniel Branden on the Standard of Living

"Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls, ask himself the following question: If one had a "time machine" and transported the united labor chieftans of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century - would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets? When one grasps that they would not, one should identify who and what made these things possible.

Postscript: After completing the above, I noticed an article in The New York Times of September 8 that is too apropos to let pass without acknowledgment. The article, entitled "10 U.A.W. Leaders Find Unions Are Losing Members' Loyalty," by Damon Stetson, reports that executives of the United Automobile Workers met to discuss the problem of workers' increasing lack of loyalty to union leadership and union solidarity. One U.A.W. official is quoted as declaring: "How can we get greater loyalty from the individual to the union? All the things we fought for, the corporation is now giving workers. What we have to find are other things workers want which the employer is not willing to give him, and we have to develop our program around these things as reasons for belonging to the union."

Is any comment necessary?"

Nathaniel Branden, The Role Of Labor Unions, 1963.

Jordan Page - Pendulum

Run Rand Run

A Brief Economic History

Global Warming Petition

I remain a skeptic of global warming. It's kind of like my perspective on religion: I don't know if there's a god, and no one else does either. The only difference is that, if I spent thousands of hours studying, perhaps I might establish a credible and solid perspective on global warming.

I doubt this though, only because the amount of data we have in regard to the history of the world's climate is almost non-existent in respect to the age of the Earth. The Earth has experienced changes in the climate well before the industrial revolution, and will probably continue to do so.

If I'm wrong, I'm ok with that. Most people who support and promote the idea that we're destroying our planet through the release of carbon dioxide almost always follow with a solution that involves bigger government and less freedom. It almost makes one think that government is the solution to pollution when government subsidized enterprises (and government itself) are always the largest polluters.

So, instead of supporting the entities which do the most harm to the environment while falsely assuming they will fix a problem that may or may not exist, I'd rather be wrong about climate change while supporting individual freedom and do my best to take care of and take responsibility for the environment I interact with.

I found the following online petition: Global Warming Petition Project. Close to 32,000 scientists have signed this petition which advises there is no convincing evidence global warming exists. The following is the purpose of the petition:

The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

Publicists at the United Nations, Mr. Al Gore, and their supporters frequently claim that only a few “skeptics” remain – skeptics who are still unconvinced about the existence of a catastrophic human-caused global warming emergency.

It is evident that 31,478 Americans with university degrees in science – including 9,029 PhDs, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,478 American scientists are not “skeptics.”

These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.

While I might simply be a skeptic, these individuals carry a bit more credibility.

Quote - Ludwig von Mises on Wages

"American wages are higher than wages in other countries because the capital invested per head of the worker is greater and the plants are thereby in the position to use the most efficient tools and machines. What is called the American way of life is the result of the fact that the United States has put fewer obstacles in the way of saving and capital accumulation than other nations. The economic backwardness of such countries as India consists precisely in the fact that their policies hinder both the accumulation of capital and the investment of foreign capital. As the capital required is lacking, the Indian enterprises are prevented from employing sufficient quantities of modern equipment, are therefore producing much less per man hour and can only afford to pay wage rates which, compared with American wage rates, appear as shockingly low."

Ludwig von Mises, Planning For Freedom, 1962.

Quote - Paul Krugman

“To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.”

Paul Krugman, NY Times, 2002

Ron Paul on Reforming Health Care

Garden Update

The lettuce has come along great. I've been using it all week on my sandwiches and tonight Sarah and I have made a salad with it (the pictures are from before the salad). The snow peas are not grappling the balcony like I hoped they would; I still need string to tie them to the railing or some sticks for them to grow up on. The cucumbers are okay. I had them outside for a week and they hardly grew, so I brought them inside yesterday and there's been some new growth. The dianthus seems to be ok.

Ron Paul on New Tobacco Controls

Peter Schiff's Best Lines

2 Men & $134 Billion of US Debt

2 Japanese men have been detained in Italy for attempting to carry 25% of Japanese owned United States debt (that would be 249 bonds worth $500 million a piece) into Switzerland.

Trying to divest themselves of some US debt are they?

Read here.

This story has not been picked up by one mainstream "news" organization.

Peter Schiff on The Daily Show

Natural Resource Minister Lisa Raitt

Lisa Raitt has made big news in Canada recently. First there was the issue of leaving confidential documents behind after an interview with CTV, now there's a tape of her saying some not-so-nice things, and on top of that there are allegations of her spending tens of thousands of dollars on lunches and dinners while CEO of Toronto Port Authority (which was bleeding red ink at the time). This last scandal also involves Transport Minister John Baird, who allegedly added two members to the port authority to ensure enough members would vote against an audit, which did occur.

The biggest disgrace of this whole fiasco is Lisa Raitt's attitude on the misplaced tape recording. To describe an issue that involves cancer and radioactive leaks as "sexy" is a disgrace. Its a damning example of the perception our political class truly has toward public matters. These people only care about how they can take advantage of our problems to better their own image. Lisa Raitt should not only resign as the Natural Resource Minister, she needs to resign from public service altogether.

Daniel Hannan - Just Go Go Go I Don't Care How

Nathaniel Brandon on Monopolies

"The question is often asked: What if a large, rich company kept buying out its smaller competitors or kept forcing them out of business by means of undercutting prices and selling at a loss - would it not be able to gain control of a given field and then start charging high prices and be free to stagnate with no fear of competition? The answer is: No, it could not be done. If a company assumed heavy losses in order to drive out competitors, then began to charge high prices to regain what it had lost, this would serve as an incentive for new competitors to enter the field and take advantage of the high profitability, without any losses to recoup. The new competitors would force prices down to the market level. The large company would have to abandon its attempt to establish monopoly prices - or go bankrupt, fighting off the competitors that its own policies would attract."

Nathaniel Brandon, Common Fallacies About Capitalism

The Stellar Success of Obama's Recovery

Found here.

Garden Update

The lettuce is flourishing; makes me wish I had planted a second box. The strawberry plants are looking really well. The snow peas are wrapping around each other; I'm going to need some string to tie them to the balcony railing. Cucumber has finally sprouted! I moved the container inside last week and planted 2 more seeds, now all four have come up. I'm going to wait and see which ones appear the healthiest and pull the weakest. The dianthus is growing very slowly, but thats ok.

Schiff at the Libertarian Party of CT

Greenspan on Laissez-Faire

"The error of the nineteenth-century observers was that they restricted a wide abstraction - competition - to a narrow set of particulars, to the "passive" competition projected by their own interpretation of classical economics. As a result, they concluded that the alleged "failure" of this fictitious "passive competition" negated the entire theoretical structure of classical economics, including the demonstration of the fact that laissez-faire is the most efficient and productive of all possible economic systems. They concluded that a free market, by its nature, leads to its own destruction - and they came to the grotesque contradiction of attempting to preserve the freedom of the market by government controls, i.e., to preserve the benefits of laissez-fair by abrogating it."

Alan Greenspan, Antitrust, 1961.

Ron Paul: No End To Secret Prisons, Ignoring Habeas Corpus, No Penalty For Torture

H. L. Mencken On Peace

"What the common man longs for in this world, before and above all his other longings, is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace- the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary. He is willing to sacrifice everything else to it. He puts it above his dignity and he puts it above his pride. Above all, he puts it above his liberty. The Fact, perhaps, explains his veneration for policemen, in all the forms they take- his belief that there is a mysterious sanctity in law, however absurd it may be in fact. A policeman is a charlatan who offers, in return for obedience, to protect him (a)from his superiors, (b)from his equals, and (c) from himself. This last service, under democracy, is commonly the most esteemed of them all. In the United States, at least theoretically, it is the only thing that keeps ice-wagon drivers, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, insurance collectors, and other such human camels from smoking opium, ruining themselves in the night clubs, and going to Palm Beach with Follies girls. It is a democratic invention. Here, though the common man is deceived, he starts from a sound premise: to wit, that liberty, is something too hot for his hands- or, as Nietzsche put it, too cold for his spine."

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

Ayn Rand on Businessmen vs Unions

Today's "liberals" consider a businessman guilty in any conflict with a labor unions, regardless of the facts or issues involved, and boast that they will not cross a picket line "right or wrong." Consider the evil of judging people by a double standard and of denying to some the rights granted to others. Today's "liberals" recognize the workers' (the majority's) right to their livelihood (their wages), but deny the businessmen's (the minority's) right to their livelihood (their profits). If workers struggle for higher wages, this is hailed as "social gains"; if businessmen struggle for higher profits, this is damned as "selfish greed". If the workers' standard of living is low, the "liberals" blame it on the businessmen; but if the businessmen attempt to improve their economic efficacy, to expand their markets, and to enlarge the financial returns of their enterprises, thus making higher wages and lower prices possible, the same "liberals" denounce it as "commercialism".

Ayn Rand, America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business, 1961.

Insurance Company Buys Gold

The third largest life insurer in the United States, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., has purchased $400 million in gold because "it's a store of value." Read about it here.