ASSUMING FINANCIAL RISK

MY DARLING DEBT, YES, WE KNEW YOU THEN, and we know you now. Texas Congressman Ron Paul delivers a striking blow to what I see in the real estate game as the continuation of the same monetary irrationalities that put us into the fiscal trouble we now find ourselves.

Just yesterday I had a conversation with a MetLife loan officer. He told me that his firm is currently offering 105s to select clients, but he hears that 125s are coming. What that means is that another round of secondary mortgage loans for 125% of current home values will be floated to a certain stratum of financial clients. All it would take is another Islamic attack or a continued dollar plunge or any number of current pressures upon the American and global economies to push back in shocking the system at an unregulated moment, and oops, there goes all that risky lending again right down the drain. Pessimistic? Not empathetic enough for the 21st century debt-oblivious consumer?

Maybe. But risk is always a capitalistic concern. One would think that the government and the banks would have learned something from all this freewheeling market manipulation, and move to modify the business models to help send a solid message to consumers that a slower, more conservative approach to borrowing and spending is not only recommended but of necessity required. For the sake of honesty, I admit that I got caught up in it myself, and am now paying the price for my own irrational exuberance. Congressman Paul is warning that we ALL must snap out of this debt-driven nightmare and learn to live within our means as individuals, communities, states, and nations, or else simply prepare for whatever version of the worse case scenario finds us in its path of destruction.

Would I assume a 125 loan, if it would help me out of a current crisis? I don't know, but I would think about it long and hard with some tough questions answered along the way before I would jeopardize myself, or my lender in such a scheme which is based on an optimism that may or may not be warranted or rational.

As I prepare to enter the real estate industry myself, as a very green rookie agent fresh of the state and national exams, I know there is much to learn, and I intend to wrestle and deconstruct every nuance of the business. I plan to master what I, in good conscience, can stand and deliver in honest representation of those persons who wish a serious and dedicated advocate during what is a very strategic and personal transaction—buying or selling real property.

Owning real estate carries with it a traditional "bundle of legal rights" transferred with the property from seller to buyer. These are the recognized rights of the holder of title to the property and include:

the right of possession - the property is owned by whomever holds title;

the right of control - within the laws, the owner controls the use of the property;

the right of exclusion - others can be excluded from using or entering the property;

the right of enjoyment - the owner can enjoy the use of the property in any legal manner; and

the right of disposition - the title holder can sell, rent or transfer ownership or use of the property at will

This bundle of rights offering strong compulsions toward private ownership should not be taken lightly. Private ownership is the backbone of the American system. Our financial networks must continue to rise to the occasion, but we as owners and potential owners must also redeem our responsibilities if we wish to be considered as carriers of the promise that ownership bestows. The unfortunate fact that far too many of this nation's foreclosure properties from the least to the greatest have been found in a sorry physical state due to departure vandalism is disappointing, and of course criminal. Egregious vandalism like this does not speak well of us as honest and forthright people who deserve to own property.

Life is risky, but the glory of our efforts as buyers and sellers, agents and brokers, is that we can each work to minimize that risk, for ourselves and for others, and in the spirit of goodwill, peace, and liberty we can change the world for the better, one satisfied property owner at a time.

NEW TRAINS, PLANES, AND AUTOMOBILES

All Americans, right or left, Dems, or Republicans, should deftly ponder this letter I received from Sean Brodrick who has described precisely what I would like to see happen to all that disappearing BIG money that the Obama administration, AKA the Obamanation, is trying to shovel to its ACORN cronies after already flushing the toilets of that host of bankers, thieves, and swindlers who continue to live lifestyles of the rich and famous while pillaging the American landscape of every industry and value American was once famous for...

Brodrick's suggestions just make sense in this time of rising joblessness and economical collapse. President Barack Hussein Obama (it's okay to admit, honor, apotheosize that now, right?) promised this great nation an American way out but is delivering chaos and continued crisis instead. Did I mention the slippery slope towards Marxist and Islamic values? No, but I should have.

Solution? Muster those thousands upon thousands of hyperactive ACORN shock troops into the business of real work instead of repeatedly putting them into situations where it is too easy to succumb to temptation and face being hauled into jail for voter registration fraud and other illegal activities, so we can energize this country with righteous industry, and get moving again. Just maybe these folks would feel good enough about themselves after an honest day's work to quit hating America. The psychological warfare going on within the Democratic Party is sad, sad how the party perpetuates the same dysfunctional thinking generation after generation upon its own constituents. Corruption is its own reward. By their fruits ye shall know them.

But rebuilding this country as a first priority is a deserving and capital idea on so many fronts. I applauded these ideas when I first heard Lyndon Larouche suggest them in a long detailed speech I heard off the television from the next room unaware of who I was hearing, about five years ago, but I was cheering nevertheless, and I applaud them now when I read them in an email from a Wall Street market analyst.

By the way, all you guttersnipes lurking in the tall tender grass of assimilation waiting to target my references and arguments with smear jelly, let you be reminded that La Rouche was bulls-eye dead-on in predicting this crisis, complete with critical numbers and important names. He knew about the economical doom headed our way years, even decades before we crashed, not unlike the Soviet splat two decades earlier, so why didn't our entrenched leadership class take heed and siphon off some intelligence in the matter instead of piling on with greed and redirection?

It is important to note that Congressman Ron Paul was also warning us years ahead of time, the lone harbinger of economic truth in Washington it appears, but did we listen, did our bankers listen, did our government listen? For all their conspiratorial and isolationist faults, both of these marginalized men of great knowledge and critical powers were right on the mark in this money game, and several other things, too, but let's stay on track, and keep to the topic at hand—trains, planes, and automobiles, oh, and infrastructure, too!

WE ALWAYS HEAR THAT TRAINS can't survive in this country without public subsidy. That may be true. But you can say the same thing about the big banks, can't you?

Personally, I'm wondering how much of a public transportation system we could buy if we took the money we're spending bailing out Wall Street banks—$70 billion on AIG, $52.5 billion for Bank of America, and $50 billion for Citigroup, just to name three—and spent it on passenger rails.

Still, $8 billion isn't much when we're spending $50 billion propping up a single bank. And that's small potatoes compared to the $79 billon spent on highways and bridges in 2008 and the $80.2 billion spent on highways in 2009, not including spending from the stimulus package.

And sure, we drive a lot more than we ride trains, so more should be spent on highways. But public policy has pushed us away from trains and into cars for the past 60 years. If we start funding trains more, people will start riding more trains.

Now for the really bad news: If Amtrak spends that money on new railcars, it's going to have to go shopping outside our borders. Amtrak only has about 630 usable rail cars. Some are more than 30 years old. Dozens more are worn out or damaged but could be reconditioned and put into service.

But there aren't any U.S. companies that build passenger rail cars. While there are some subway car makers and trolley car makers in the United States, for passenger rail cars you have to buy from Canada's Bombadier, Germany's Siemens or France's Alstom.

Do you think maybe GM could retool and start building passenger trains? Sure, GM knows nothing about building railcars. Well, it didn't know anything about building tanks in World War II, either, and GM learned that pretty quickly. It could always partner with foreign firms—Uncle Sam didn't have a problem forcing Chrysler into a marriage with the Italians.

It's also true that GM's assembly lines are set up to put out cars at a high volume. Well, I'm sure the quarries on Easter Island were designed to turn out Giant Stone Heads as fast as possible—but sometimes, you have to change with the world before the world comes crashing down on you.

Cars Should Be Only Part of GM's Future...

It's not like I want GM to stop making cars. I just think GM should probably make a lot fewer automobiles, but much better ones. Anyone who wants to pay the giant stone head tax can still drive a gas-sucking SUV.

But GM can also make small cars, with a focus on quality, good mileage, and multiple power sources. The Japanese, Europeans, Koreans and Chinese will be making these cars, too, so GM will have its work cut out for it.

In fact, I have news for President Obama and GM: Detroit has already lost the battle over who is going to build cars. Check out this chart from Clusterstock, showing the sources of auto production in the United States:

The "transplants" are Toyota, Honda, and Nissan factories here in the United States. They may be called transplants, but they employ American workers, pay U.S. taxes and have plenty of American shareholders.

In 2002, the Detroit Big 3 produced 80 percent of 12 million cars, or 9.6 million vehicles. In 2009, they will build just over 50 percent of a total production of 5 million cars, or roughly 2.6 million vehicles. That is a plunge of about 73 percent in 7 years.

So yes, I think maybe GM should find something else to make besides automobiles.

Start Building the Transportation System of the Future...

Do you notice how oil and gasoline prices are going back up again? The recent plunge in oil was short-lived, and we're probably heading for another oil crisis by 2012 at the latest — and maybe by as early as next year.

The United States consumes around 20 million barrels of oil a day and imports roughly 65 percent of it. The amount of oil our country consumes is equal to the output of the world's two largest oil producing nations (Saudi Arabia and Russia) combined. It is absurd for a country that has less than 3 percent of the world's oil reserves to consume 25 percent of the world's produced oil—buying much of it from people who hate us!

At some point, we're going to have to move beyond oil. Maybe electric cars or alternative fuels will be the answer for some people. But trains are a cheap solution for most people.

Yeah, GM's Volt and other electric cars will be rolling off the production line in 2010 (so we're told). In the meantime, how many of Detroit's new muscle cars — the new Chevrolet Camaro, Dodge Challenger and Ford Mustang — will also be rolling off the production line? The Challenger gets 13 mpg in the city, 19 on the highway. That sucks ... gas!

I'm not trying to dictate what kind of cars people should drive. I just think gas guzzlers should pay a tax — let's call it the "giant stone head" tax, because when it comes to the energy problem this country faces, gas guzzlers are part of the problem, not the solution.

So for our $60 billion, I'd like to see GM start to build things we really need—passenger rail, as well as electrified streetcars and hybrid streetcars/buses.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs...

It's also true that a factory that makes trains won't employ as many people as a factory that makes cars. Canada's Bombardier employs 34,000 people to make trains.

On the other hand, trains don't run themselves. France's national rail company employs about 200,000 people, and France has only one-fifth the population of the United States in an area the size of Texas. Amtrak has only 18,000 employees. So a push into rail would potentially create a lot of good, middle-class jobs.

Rebuild Infrastructure...

Meanwhile, the railroad tracks themselves are a mess. Again, highways are publically funded, railroads aren't. This makes it cost far more to ship things reliably in the United States, since you have to use air or trucks, both of which are very inefficient compared to rail. I think it's time to change that.

A problem with rail is that sharing the tracks with current passenger trains is iffy at best, and virtually impossible with high-speed trains. We need to build new railroads. Building new rail would keep America's steel makers busy.

The railroads and local trolley services will need to be electrified, of course, so we can tell OPEC where they can stick their oily thumbs. Electrification is work that can be done by U.S. companies and U.S. workers.

And there's something else we need to do that will help ALL U.S. manufacturers, including GM...

THE STATE SOVEREIGNTY MOVEMENT

YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD much about it, but there's a quiet movement afoot to reassert state sovereignty in America and stop the uncontrolled expansion of federal government power. Almost half of the state legislatures are considering or have representatives preparing to introduce resolutions which reassert the principles of the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution and the idea that federal power is strictly limited to specific areas detailed in the Constitution and that all other governmental authority rests with the states.

In the version of this bill being considered in Washington state, they appeal to the authority of James Madison in The Federalist who wrote:

"The powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several states will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people."

The founding fathers believed in a balance between state and federal power. This state sovereignty movement clearly arises from the belief that the balance of power has tilted too far and for too long in the direction of the federal government and that it's time to restore that lose balance.

The emergence of this movement is a hopeful sign of the people asserting their rights and the rights of the states and finally crying "enough" to runaway government. With the threat of increasingly out of control federal spending, some of these sovereignty bills may stand a fair chance of passage in the coming year.

There's a lot of excitement about these bills, but there are also a lot of misconceptions, with people claiming that some states have already declared sovereignty and that the movement is much farther along than it really is. Contrary to popular rumor, none of the states has actually enacted a sovereignty law yet. Some have come close. Oklahoma's bill passed their lower house overwhelmingly but stalled in the Senate last fall and is being held over for consideration in the new year.

Contrary to the fantasies of some extremists, these sovereignty bills are not the first step towards secession or splitting up the union, nor are they an effort to block collection of the income tax, appealing though that might be. For the most part, they are not so much political statements of independence as they are expressions of fiscal authority directed specifically at the growing cost of unfunded mandates being placed upon the states by the federal government. Despite the movement picking up steam as he came to office, the target of these bills is not President Obama, but rather the Democrat-dominated Congress whose plans for massive bailouts and expanded social programs are likely to come at an enormous cost to the states.

Read it all. And don't neglect the long scroll of comments. Quite an educational foray...

And if any doubt the seriousness of this peculiar cause celebre now stirring the minds and hearts laboring inside the legislatures of many states, click HERE for the complete "no holds barred" bill now before the New Hampshire State Assembly. Yes, Virginia, there is a rising tide of resentment among the people jealous for liberty who yet unapologetically cling to the exact words wriiten by our forefathers within the original United States Constitution and its ratified amendments. Strides by the US Congress, the Presidential offices, and the US Supreme Court of late in chipping away at the guaranteed rights of its citizens are not catching everyone flatfooted.

This is really happening, folks. Where do you stand?

Do you even consider yourself neglibibly knowledgeable on these important issues? And so, does mere constitutional scholarship qualify one to assess the amassing questions that exist before us in these interesting times where banks and multinational corporations are failing with the wind, our nation's security shipped along with decent jobs overseas, gone forever we are told, our borders as porous as a rock star's mating habits, and individual rights disappearing faster than the climate is warming. I ask you.

Addendum (snatched off an unnamed BC poster):

1. The Declaration of Independence IS codified law of the USA. It's preeminence as a Free People's final bulwark, requires the Republic's citizenry to cast off such despotic, tyrannical abuses of state, if need be. The 2nd Amendment secures the means to exercise that God-given right, lo duty. Various elements (1st, 4th, 9th, 10th) of the Bill of Rights illuminates less drastic measures to secure such inalienable rights.

2. At all societal levels, creeping socialism has infected this country for over 100 years. Socialism/communism CANNOT exist in tandem with a Constitutional Republic.

3. The US-Marxist time is nigh. Search Cloward-Piven Strategy. The current state of economic crisis was manufactured in order to bring this to pass. Why do liberal policies never work? These policies are not designed to work, only fail. This is why Porkulus will not work. It will only subvert rights further.

4. All branches of military take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not the president, not the congress, nor the federal bureaucracy. It is their right and duty to ignore unconstitutional orders.

Unlike the first two justifiable concepts, and more so than the third which is either a very frightening fact, or simply a falsehood, this fourth statement is highly debatable, and not a path to be taken lightly when confronting the scions of military jurisprudence. Liberty can be such an ugly, yet rewarding, pursuit.

FITZGERALD: HOW DUMB, HOW LONG?

HUGH FITZGERALD OF JIHAD WATCH today asks, "How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?" The answer of course, is blowing in the wind. And you know what that means. Massive destruction. Bombs and explosions of every sort do indeed tend to present the olfactory sensitive with a peculiar odor of the day. But until then, let's just play with words, and send them money, yep that's what they need, more money, boast our misguided leaders.

SAN'A, Yemen - A bomb rigged to a motorcycle blew up amid a crowd of worshippers leaving Friday prayers at a mosque in a rebel stronghold of northern Yemen, killing at least 18 people and wounding about four dozen, officials said. –from this news article

Shi'a and Sunnis at it again. Yes, of course, the American government must do what it can to try to stop this kind of internecine warfare among Muslims, in Yemen as in Iraq. Otherwise there might be a "catastrophic" situation. Otherwise there might be "chaos" in the Middle East.

And somehow this "chaos" and this "catastrophe" that will ensue will, we are told, be bad for us, in ways always unspecified, as if we are simply to accept the conclusion of our betters—you know, the people in the government who pick up their news just as you and I do, but who lack the time, and the inclination (unlike you, unlike me) to spend the time to read about Islam, to read the texts of Islam, to learn what the Western students of Islam (not the espositos but the real thing) have said about the contents of Islam.

For they are just too occupied and preoccupied to sit in a room and read. They may be cosseted, chauffeured about, and so on, but their daily lives are full of meetings, and hectic busyness, and travelling hither and yon, and getting someone above to "sign off" on something, and coming up with "policies" that need to be formulated by consulting with everyone and his brother, and then written up in the stilted bloodless bureaucratic language which is now the favored medium—they know no other, they have never been exposed to any other—of those in the government, and who presume to instruct, and to protect us. They have to deal now with this crisis, now with that, and with every part of the world.

How can someone as mediocre as Bush, advised by someone as mediocre as Rice—people who have never had the inclination or leisure to read widely in history, or to exercise their imaginative faculty through literature—be expected to have read about Islam? Yet if you cannot imagine something, it is difficult to think about it. If you cannot imagine an islamized Western Europe, if it is simply beyond you, then you will not worry about what that would mean, and are not likely to come up with ways to avoid that completely plausible and deplorable, and entirely avoidable, future for the heart of the West.

One more thing. If leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, cause great disruption, chaos, a "catastrophe" in the area, then why don't any of the Sunni Arab states, presumably those who would have the most to lose, bother to give any aid at all to the government of Iraq? Answer: why should they? They do not wish to shore up Shi'a who rule in Baghdad. They will, however, continue to urge the Americans to stay, in order to keep the Sunnis in Iraq supplied with guns and money and with a powerful protector that will pressure the Shi'a to make concessions, and concessions—and the Americans will, listening gravely to the advice of rulers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the other small sheikdoms, fall for it, not realizing how they are being suckered.

And if leaving Iraq would, as some direly warn, lead to terrible disruptions in the supply of oil (during the Iran-Iraq War, that lasted for eight years, there was little disruption and the price of oil went steadily down), then why aren't other oil-consuming nations concerned? Why hasn't China lifted a finger, or spent a penny, to help promote stability and prosperity in Iraq? Could it be that the Chinese are, like the Sunni Arabs, perfectly content to watch the continuing squandering of American money, material, men, morale, happy to see us bleed ourselves, in order to do something which will benefit China and other oil-consumers as much as, perhaps more than, it will benefit the United States?

How dumb do we have to be, and for how long?

Get our troops out of Iraq. Let he chips fall where they may. Inform the public what we are really up against, Begin preparations for all-out war. Seal the ALL borders. Stop all Muslim immigration. Issue national identity cards. Begin a national rationing program for pertinent goods, especially petroleum products. Modify trading levels with China until they bulk up their safety oversights and rectify the massive trade deficit the US has been complaining about for over a decade. Tell Americans that each of us need to gird our loins with the American spirit and start acting like we've got good sense. Maybe, just maybe, candidate Ron Paul had a good idea, or two, or several.

And here's some positive news (well, the ACLU is against it, as well as all the usual suspects who are probably not quite as "law-abiding" as they would have us believe) on the defense front. The LA Times has reported that the LAPD has instituted a new anti-terrorism program that should serve as a national model for detecting suspicious activity, reporting it peer to peer and upward to the federal levels.

IT'S CALLED JIZYA, FOLKS...

SITTING IN THE DOCTOR'S office for a routine visit, I looked across the waiting room, and there was political pundit Chris Matthews of the NBC news show Hardball dressed casually and in beat-up old white sneakers. After five minutes or so of trying to avoid staring at him, I sauntered over to the magazine table and grabbed up an old issue of Time Magazine. Of course, the first article I find has a sidebar comparing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's rather similar outlooks in their race to the presidency.

The sidebar had caught my attention by stating in that Obama's big idea found articulation in his foreign policy, and could be summed up by one phrase: more foreign aid. In other words, Time Magazine believes along with Obama that terrorism is the result of poverty, a lack of education, and general non-sense like that, even though doctors and lawyers continue to get nailed in the act of jihad, from blowing up airports to funneling money to terrorist organizations.

The Middle East—thanks to the oil beneath its sand—boasts some of the richest nations on earth, nations that are doing nothing to share their wealth with their own people, but instead spend billions in promoting its diabolical religion from a book which is nothing but a military manual dressed up in pseudo-religious language.

There is nothing sublime or transcendent about Islam. Islam is an "in your face" no-holds barred problem.

So I am confident that Barack Obama believes in jizya, that is to say, the subordination tax that is required by the supremists in sheep's clothing of all infidels. But then again, most leftists and Democrats believe in some sort of shifty financial shenanigans.

Stop this madness! Reading this article was the last straw. I can no longer fathom a vote for this man from the southside of Chicago. I have traveled the gauntlet from being an enthusiastic supporter (I heard that 2004 speech, and called my wife in to hear this orator), to an indifferent bystander hoping for more (Ron Paul, where are you), to a staunch opponent of this man (anybody but Barack). In fact, it is my diligent position that we must stop ALL foreign aid to these enemies who do nothing but buy weapons and funnel funds to the jihadists with our blood monies. We are already in near terminal bankruptcy.

The Saudis own us and they own billions of our petrodollars. The Chinese, Japanese and others are literally killing us with a calculated trade deficit, which continues to grow each passing year. We cannot afford to keeping throwing money on the fire. The housing collapse is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how fragile our economy is when stacked against the deck of nations who are delighting in their current advantage, while America continues to waltz in with its pompous noblesse oblige throwing national treasure and human capital at those who would not only stab us in the back, they are already stabbing us in the face.

And I haven't even mentioned Obama's declarations of initiating a fireside chat with Amadinejad. Because all he would get for his efforts there would be taqiyya, and that's a camel of an entirely different odor. Although this does beg the question, how much does Obama actually know about Islam? Besides the fact that his Kenyan kinfolk belong to the sect...

THE RON PAUL ERROR

Presidential candidate Ron Paul has finally spoken to the issue which I have been waiting to hear him speak. While I am in absolute awe of his strict constitutionalism, and wish him the best of luck in turning this country back to its original path, I realize geo-political concerns are vastly different in this global supersonic nuclear age, and America's future cannot be resolved without recognizing this more complicated set of affairs. This is not the steam engine era. But with Prof. Paul's recent comments about Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, the slavery issue, and now the Islamic problem, I know I cannot wholeheartedly support this man's candidacy, despite the vapors of wishful thinking of which I may occasionally succumb in a fit of inconvenient nostalgia for the patriotism I was taught in my fifth grade civics class and confirmed in the Boy Scouts of America, Troop 219. The argument that had America stuck to the constitution in the first place, the world and the States would be a very different place, has no worthwhile rebuttal. However, that hallowed place is not where we find ourselves today.

Paul repeats several tired misconceptions about the nature of contemporary Islamic agitation and jihad, blaming the West again despite evidence that this aggression is being accelerated all over the globe and into areas which have nothing to do with American bases, forces, pop culture, morality, or lack of it. It has everything to do with the prime directive of Mohammed to go forth when possible and dominate the earth, giving it over to Allah worship. Muslim leadership sees this time of global crisis amid their own oil wealth as Allah's sign to them to push jihad into all lands of the kaffir. It's that simple, folks.

Another fissure in Paul's flimsy "occupied holy land" construct is that rapidly after 9/11, the US completed a withdrawal from Saudi Arabi, yet today we learn that this terror spewing nation remains one of the major exporters of murderous Jihadis.

Fact: The United States leaves the "holy" trash heap of Saudi Arabia, and the Jihad impulse remains intact and even amplified.

Fact: Leave Gaza, and the bombs and exterminationist rhetoric only elevates, as exemplified here.

Fact: Exterminate Israel, and the work of the pious Muslims is not yet complete.

We are left with the realization that if one comprehends the true nature of expansionist triumphalist fascist Islam, one would must also understand instantly that such Islamic victories would only whet Muslim lust for more booty, more murder, and more territory for the imperialist nightmare of Islam.

An argument can and should be made that today there are more Muslims than ever supporting UBL and al-Qaeda, or offshoots of al-Qaeda. Rather than blaming our actions and our policies, (or our inactions for that matter) for this reality, as many Westerners (and ALL Muslims) do, it's much simpler to explain it as something intrinsic within the infinite hideousness of Islam. Murderous, expansionist, terroristic Jihad is a creed deeply entrenched within Islam. Hatred of non-Muslims is intrinsic. Lust for booty and war too. These, and many other evil and vile strands are in the very weft of Islam, inseparable from it.

These evils are the monster which bin Laden brilliantly awoke and vexed back to full consciousness after centuries of relative dormancy. It is ALL Islam...

As the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote around the turn of the previous century:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

WILL ALL TRUE PATRIOTS PLEASE TAKE A SEAT IN THE REAR OF THE BUS

Illustration by Mike Adams

OKAY, I'M AS DISTURBED by this persistent Orwellian news flash culture where we find ourselves p;ushing back as both observer and the observed, as much as the next proud patriot. So let's take a closer look at this article from a Ron Paul supporter, not that there is anything wrong with being a Ron Paul supporter, although this past year I did run across more than a slugfest of rowdy Paulites that gave me pause.

However, cartoonist and "green" activist Mike Adams is worth consideration by anyone who feels that life on this planet can be improved one decision at a time. Let's begin our investigation...

The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It's a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law. This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned.

The bill states:

‘...ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs...

Note that this means the "planned use of force to promote a political or social belief" would be considered an act of terrorism. This all hinges on the definition of "force," of course. Based on the loose use of logic in Washington these days, and the slippery interpretation of the meaning of words, "force" could mean:

• A grassroots campaign to barrage Congress with faxes
• A non-violent street protest
• A letter-writing campaign that deluges the Senate with too much mail
• A sit-in protest that blocks access to a business or organization
• A grassroots e-mail campaign that overloads the e-mail servers of any government department or agency

The author, Mike Adams of NewsTarget continues on...

You get the idea. "Force" could be defined as practically anything. And since the "planned use of force" would be considered a criminal act of terrorism, anyone who simply thinks about a grassroots action campaign would be engaged in terrorist acts.

Well, maybe. No more Boston Tea Perties I suppose, even though I've heard Bill O'Reilly call for a new Tea Party several times over the past few years.

If you stopped someone on the street and handed them a Bible, for example, this could be considered an act of terrorism ("...use of force to promote the individual's religious beliefs...")

If you sent a barrage of angry letters to Washington about global warming and the destruction of the environment by the U.S. military, this could also be considered an act of terrorism ("...to promote the individual's political beliefs...")

If you believe in same-sex marriage and you wrote a letter threatning a sit-in protest in front of your state's capitol building, this could also be considered an act of terrorism, even if you never carried it out! ("...planned use of force to promote a social belief...")

This is all strong conjecture, but possible. With the Supreme Court going bonkers on issues like property rights and similar bad jokes against the people the past few decades, anything's possible.

Adams concludes that the United States is on the fast track to fascism, with Congress now working right alongside the current administration to criminalize any thoughts, words or speeches that disagree with current government policies regarding war, terrorism, domestic surveillance and civil liberties. Simply speaking out against the war on Iraq, he fears, could soon be labeled a crime. Merely thinking thoughts against the war on Iraq could be considered a criminal act. And while I agree that this doesn't bode well for the America we once knew, one wonders when the police will start rounding up Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Murtha, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and millions of other fine washables who vigorously oppose this war, for whatever reasons.

But we ARE at war, and from my own perspective, well-documented here on this blog and others found at The Scenewash Project, the enemy is already living and plotting here among us. While I cannot in the least fathom why these same leaders seem to show little interest in plugging these immigration holes to actually help keep our potential enemies out of this country, there is no validl argument against the fact that this enemy is already here, and at some point in time, we will fight this enemy on our own soil.

Professor Naomi Wolfe also fears this coming fascist state of America. In her lecture and new book, Naomi reveals the ten steps to fascism. She attempts to persuade us that the United States of America is pursuing all ten steps. Is her fear justified, or is she just another cheese-nibbling liberal defending the enemy as it chips away at our system which is predicated on the achievements of liberty they wish to overthrow and replace with sharia law, as has been stated here in America and abroad many times over by their own spokesmen.

That this S.1959 legislation, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, represents one of the ten steps to achieve a fascist state is worth considering. Wolfe stipulates that this legislation is designed to squash all opposition to the State's ongoing march towards "blatant" fascism, where secret police and secret prisons dominate the law enforcement landscape, stripping U.S. citizens of all civil liberties and Constitutional protections.

Thoughtcrimes would, in the Mike Adams worldview, become a reality in the United States of America, and since Congress is pushing this through as quickly as possible so that each individual member of Congress can claim that he or she is "against terrorism" we as patriotic citizens should feel all the safer, because as well are made well aware, this administration and the Democratic Congress agree on very little. But, as Adams rightly points out, this bill doesn't merely target terrorism: It targets anyone who speaks or even thinks thoughts against the U.S. federal government. Here's his scenario:

With this bill, the U.S. government is officially labeling the People of the United States as criminals. It is drawing a line in the sand and stating that from now on, it's the Government vs. the People. If we don't stop this bill from becoming law, we are lost as a nation. There is no turning back from tyranny once the government turns its own citizens into criminals, enforcing only the thoughts, ideas, words and speeches that it approves or tolerates. Everything is at stake here!

Stopping this bill from becoming law is the single most important thing all Americans can do right now. If this becomes law, all free speech about health freedom, the crimes of the FDA, the crimes of the Bush Administration, America's role in global warming and any other topics could all be criminalized. YOU could be labeled a terrorist, kidnapped by government thugs, taken from your home, thrown in a secret prison, denied access to legal representation, denied due process and essentially "disappeared" into a system of such corruption and evil that it now begins to blatantly mirror Nazi Germany.

Think it couldn't happen here? It's happening right now! This is exactly how it happened in Nazi Germany. First, burn the Reichstag and blame it on the "enemy." Pass new police state laws. Disarm the people. Spread fear. Erect secret prisons and secret police. Call anyone who disagrees with you a "traitor." Control the mainstream media. Sound familiar? This is all happening right now in the United States of Amerika, and if we don't work to stop it, this nation will rapidly devolve into a fascist police state where no one is truly free.

We are but a few small steps away from it right now. All it would take is one dirty bomb in a major U.S. city. Bush would declare Martial Law and take over the National Guard. Troops on the streets. Anyone who writes a blog against the government would be arrested. Authors of "alternative" books would be kidnapped and have their books burned on the street. It could all happen at the stroke of a pen. The infrastructure for tyranny is in place right now, just waiting to be invoked.

There we have it. The ultimate in polarizing designer fear-mongering, as we are continuously bombarded with and held hostage by dystopian nightmares injected into our social being from both sides of the great divide.

Our best weapons: Non-violent protest and speaking the truth

How can we fight back against this onslaught of tyranny? We must use what remaining free speech freedoms we have right now to alert our fellow citizens to what's happening. We must rise up and tell the truth while urging our representatives in Washington to resist the temptation to vote for more "anti-terrorism" legislation that only works to enslave the American people.

We must use our phones, faxes, emails and blogs to rally our friends, family members and anyone who will listen to oppose these police state laws, and we must organize mass (peaceful) protests against this government that is attempting to marginalize the rights and freedoms of our People.

Okay, sounds good on the ears, and pulls at the patriotic heartstrings of those of us who recall with fondness the uplifting stories of America's humble beginnings. But now, let's fast forward:

We must not be lulled into a sense of false security by the purveyors of hatred and fear—the Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world. Instead, we must listen to the voices of freedom. In terms of the upcoming election for U.S. President, there is only one candidate that actually believes in freedom: Ron Paul. He needs your support to win.

All the other candidates are nothing more than tyrants of different political affiliations. Ron Paul is the only candidate who truly understands the fundamentals of freedom. That's why he's the only real choice for our next President. Can you imagine what Hillary Clinton would do with the police state powers that Bush has now created? That's the danger of all laws that centralize power in Washington: It's not necessarily what today's President will do with them, but what some future President will do with them.

That's why it's never good enough to say, "Well, we intend to only apply these laws to terrorists and not to U.S. citizens at home." That may be the intention right NOW, but virtually all such laws creep into areas of enforcement for which they were never intended. Just look at the application of RICO laws which were originally designed to fight organized crime operations but are now applied to virtually anyone (and yet they are never applied to Big Pharma, which operates almost exactly like organized crime!). All these anti-terrorism laws run the danger of expanding in enforcement to the point where they are applied against the People of this country. At first, it's only illegal for "terrorists" to think thought crimes, but before long, it's illegal for anyone to think those same thoughts. That when the domestic arrests of authors, journalists, bloggers and thought leaders will kick off, and the country will plunge itself into outright tyrannical fascism.

Again, we're on the track right now. This is happening, folks. You're LIVING through an amazing chapter of history right now. You're actually witnessing the downfall of a free nation and the rise of a superpower fascist state. You're actually part of it.

When it's all over, will you look back and realize you did nothing? Or will you now take a stand against tyranny and oppose these dangerous laws and lawmakers who threaten the Constitutional freedoms of you and your children?

Mike Adams has his theories down pat, and while I applaud his voice and share his concern, like most moral equivalency adherents usually found on the Left, he leaps to analogize the US with one of the worst regimes in history, and he never once considers the very real terrorist threat that our open borders and legal Saudi-influenced immigration policy encourages. And Ron Paul doesn't seem to be all that concerned either. Here's a rock, and there's a hard place. Don't look now, but I seem to be stuck somewhere in the middle.