Racism 101

Listen to this radio ad put out by aRicherLife.org (a public awareness campaign developed by the National Fair Housing Alliance) and see if you can spot the racism.  (I'll wait)

Did you hear it?  If not, then I'll spell it out for you.  Here's the dialog: 
First guy: "I grew up in an all white neighborhood."
Second guy: "I grew up in a diverse neighborhood."
First guy: "Everyone I knew was just like me."
Second guy: "Everyone I knew brought something different to the party."
First guy: "They looked like me, thought like me, acted like me - so my neighborhood always stayed the same."
Second guy: "They introduced me to different tastse, different ideas, different ways of doing things - so my neighborhood always got more interesting."
Together: "They definitely helped shape the way I look at things"
Second guy: "and they prepared me for the future."
First guy: "They did?"
Second guy "They did."

The announcer then goes on to tell us how great diversity is.

So, if you still don't get it, here's the racism: the implication that all white people look, think and act alike simply because of their skin color.  That, my friends, is textbook racism.

Think about this for a minute...  Do all white people really act and think alike?  Think about all the white people you know.  There are white people who are liberals, and white people who are conservatives - white Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independants, Greens...  There are white Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics... and even within the white Christians there are Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists... There are white Packer fans, Bronco fans, Laker fans, Celtic fans...  white soccer fans, baseball fans... white scientists, white vegetarians, meat lovers, broccoli haters...  well you get the picture.

If all white people thought and acted alike, they'd all be Libertarian Ron Paul supporters and Black Sabbath fans whose favorite football team was the Denver Broncos.  (I'm pretty sure that's not true.)  And that's because diversity is not due to the color of one's skin - diversity comes from our uniqueness as human individuals.  So not all white people think and act alike, and not all black people think and act alike (and I'll save you the suspense; neither do all brown, red, yellow or any color in between).  There is no race that thinks and acts alike simply because their skin is the same color. 

To think otherwise is to be a racist.

I'm Out!

No, not in that way.  I am officially out of the Republican party.  So what did it?  Well, the straw that broke the camel's back for me was the GOP's shameful treatment of Ron Paul, and by extension all of his followers (which includes me!)  Why should I be part of a political party that actively campaigns against the things I hold dear?  That's just stupid - right? 

So I am now a registered Libertarian.  It was only a matter of time anyway.  I've been attracted to the Libertarian party ever since I read the voter's pamphlet entry by the Libertarian candidate for President back in 2000 (who I voted for by the way).  He said (paraphrasing) "we have a Department of Transportation that doesn't transport anything, a Department of Energy that produces no energy, a Department of Agriculture that produces no crops..." well, you get the idea.  All of these government agencies tend to get in the way of the producers who want to transport things, and give us energy and food.

Now, I don't agree with everything the Libertarians believe (I am decidedly pro-life) but I agree with way more Libertarian ideals than Republican ideals (do they have any?)

So that's it.  34 years (plus or minus) as a Republican.  Seems weird.  I think I'll get used to it though.

Stripes on a Zebra

Obama and Romney are like stripes on a zebra: different color - same animal.

Both support undeclared, unauthorized, illegal wars.
Both support massive increases in government size (and power).
Both support corporate welfare to the tune of $trillions.
Both support fractional reserve banking, the Fed and the inevitable monetary collapse they will cause.
Both support government intervention to permanently enslave the poor, destroy the middle class, and reward the financial industry.
Both are beholden to the military industrial complex.
Both support extreme interventionist foreign policy.
Both support sending billions in US dollars abroad.
Both support spending billions on the racist "war on drugs".
Both will do nothing to curb illegal immigration.
I could go on, and on, and...

When will Americans wake up?

When will we vote for someone that corporate-owned media has NOT picked for us?

Write in Ron Paul.

The Myth of the Two Party System

A certain Soviet leader once reportedly commented, "We have a hard time convincing people in the USSR that our elections aren't rigged because we have only one party on the ballot, you Americans have figured it out though... you have two parties on your ballots!"

We do.  We have two political parties on our ballots.  But are our elections still rigged?  What good does it do to have two political parties if the people chosen to run against each other are hand picked for us by big money?

What good does it do to have two political parties if there's not an ounce of difference between them?

Case in point: Barack Obama vs. Mitt Romney. 

Both support the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which gives the US government the power to indefinitely detain US citizens on US soil without a trial (a clear violation of the fourth amendment.)

Both support the right of a US president to assassinate US citizens if they are deemed a "terrorist" or a "terrorist sympathiser" by top administration officials (remember that this administration was calling the Tea Party "terrorists" not too long ago!)

Both support bailouts of big financial institutions that have made incredibly bad business decisions (rather than letting the bad ones fail so the good ones can rise to the top.)

Both support Corporate Welfare - the idea that the government needs to intervene on behalf of the corporations it wants to succeed--with bailouts, and tax incentives--and against those it wishes to fail--with excessive regulations and environmental restrictions (refusing again, to let the free market sort out winners and losers on a level playing field.)

Both support the idea that the president can take us to war without a congressional declaration of war (in other words, without the approval of the people.)

Both support Keynesian economics - the idea that government spending will improve a bad economy (in spite of the fact that we are so deep in debt right now that there is not enough physical money in the world to pay what we owe!)

Both support the Federal Reserve system and the idea that financial crises are "eased" (and Wall Street is buoyed) by printing more money (despite the fact that every time money is printed - without being tied to anything with concrete physical value: ie gold or silver - it is worth less in real spending power.)

Both support an interventionist foreign policy and the idea that it is up to America to right the wrongs in the world (despite the fact that the blowback from all of our international interventions has been catastrophic in every region we're in and the fact that we're broke and can't afford to police the world any longer.)

Both support continued foreign aid (again, even though we're broke and even though most of our foreign aid actually goes to interests counter to our own.)

The list is even longer but those are the points I can think of just off the top of my head. 

This Republican primary season has been a real eye opener for me.  I watched in amazement as all the big money interests, and their propaganda machines, got behind Mitt Romney from the very beginning.  I watched them weed out his challengers one by one.  And I watched them completely ignore the one candidate who doesn't share the common views listed above.

So what now that big money has chosen its contenders?  Who do they want to win?  That's the genius of it - it doesn't matter!!!  Either way Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and the corporations chosen by the government will win.  And everyone else loses.

It's time to wake up America.  It's time to stop letting the media--and the big money interests behind it--pick our candidates for us.  We need to take our country back!

The Media Blackout Continues...

OK now... Ron Paul is either winning, or has won, the most delegates in Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, Louisiana, Alaska, Maine, Nevada and even Massachusetts (Mitt Romney's home state) yet there is not a peep of this on Drudge, Fox News, or any other "conservative" (re: neocon) media outlet.  The media, both mainstream and neocon---believing the AP's "delegate count" (a made up prediction based on straw polls)---has declared those races "over" and has already placed most of those delegates in the Romney column.

This is a disgrace!!

But while the media sleeps, the rest of the country is waking up to find that there IS an alternative to "Obamney" and it is Ron Paul.

While every mainstream or neocon media outlet speaks of Dr. Paul as "having no chance", his supporters are silently taking the country back - wresting it from the greedy, soiled hands of the corporate interests and power brokers who have been destroying it for profit for the last 50-100 years.

Dr. Paul's message of freedom, liberty, sound money, foreign restraint and constitutionaly limited government cuts across party lines and has become the new rallying cry of the youth in America.  This also goes under-reported.  Perhaps what the youth realize (and what some of us old-timers are slowly realizing) is that big government is not the answer.

Think about this: there are currently 90,741 governments in this country, but one---the federal government---completely drowns out the other 90,470.  Is that really the answer?  The 90,470 state and local governments do a better job, and are more accountable to the people, than the monstrous federal behemoth does for 90% of what governments do (national defense, immigration and regulation of interstate commerce being the exceptions).  Why then all the hand-wringing about cutting the federal budget?

I think the country is starting to realize that.  Let's face it, there's a whole lot of government we could do without.  I also believe the country's starting to understand that there's only one candidate who would actually do something about that.

So keep an eye out because the fat lady hasn't even started warming up yet!!!

Ron Paul Or No One At All!!!

I've been a Republican for over 30 years.  I've never voted for a Democrat in my life.  But I've become so disillusioned with the Republican party lately---because of their hostility toward Ron Paul and his supporters (like myself)---that I've decided that I will not vote for anyone else.  I don't care who the nominee is, if it isn't Ron Paul, I'll write his name in (or I'll stay home).  I'm so sick of this "electability" crap!  Ron Paul is the only candidate who represents me, and, in a representative form of government, that's all that matters!

If that helps Obama get re-elected, so be it.  I honestly don't care anymore.  If the Republican party cared about that - they wouldn't treat their own members with such disdain!  Screw them.  4 more years of Obama is what they deserve!!

Chris Berman Foreign Policy

Ever notice how schizophrenic our US foreign policy is?  Like a bad politician, we were always "for that dictator before we were against him"!  It's not like our foreign policy is "evil" or the product of bad intent though - the United States has always been well-intentioned enough when it comes to our dealings with other nations.  It's just that we really don't know enough about what we're doing.  There always seem to be a slew of unintended consequences to our foreign entanglements (of course the same can be said for all manner of central planning!)

Take Iraq for instance...  We went there to eradicate Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" and to stop him from "handing them over to Al Qaeda".  Then, when it turned out that neither of those reasons were valid, we changed it to a Wilsonian "spreading of democracy".  All of those things are well intentioned and noble on their face, but unfortunately, like every big government intervention into volatile areas, reaped all manner of unplanned consequences (more oil contracts for China and more dead Iraqi Christians to name just two.)

And, have you ever noticed how every time we slap sanctions on a country, Russia and China step in and start trading with that country?  Is it because Russia and China are our sworn enemies?  Or is because they are smart enough to recognize large untapped markets when they see them?  I have to think it's the latter.  Of course this leaves all the "experts" scatching their heads and wondering "why do Russia and China always oppose us?"  Well DUH!! 

In truth, our foreign policy can only be described as---to paraphrase ESPN's Chris Berman---"bumblin', stumblin', foreign policy!"