A Blog Dedicated to Freedom, Liberty and the Rights of Man

Who is John Galt?

John Galt, the hero from Ayn Rand's masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, is the name that will be placed on my Census 2010 form.

Who else is with me?

Al Sharpton's Double-Standard

Al Sharpton called for "due process" for Governor Paterson during this investigation for perjury and violation of ethics laws with respect to the Yankees World Series tickets that he received, as well as abuse of power in the investigation of his former aid who assaulted his girlfriend.



Strange. I didn't hear Sharpton calling for "due process" for the cops accused of raping Tawana Brawley, nor the countless other times Sharpton has played judge, jury and executioner.



What's the double-standard, I wonder? Hmmmm...

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What Kind of Idiot Bulldozes His Home?

Apparently, Terry Hoskins does...click the link to see a video of the man bulldozing his home.   Below is my take on this issue.

Hoskins claims that the house is worth $350,000 and is owed $160,000 on his note.  If that was true, he would have been able to sell the house for a profit.  If he couldn't sell it for $350,000, it's not worth $350,000!

He says he had an offer for $170,000, which would have satisfied the note, but the evil bank turned it down, saying they could get more at auction.  The bank is probably right; don't forget, the bank owns the home, by virtue of the lien called the mortgage, which this guy signed.  A deal is a deal.  What happened to honoring contracts?  Is there any evidence that the bank did something wrong?  I didn't see any in that article.  If the bank engaged in predatory, unfair, unethical or illegal practices, that would be a different story.  Most likely, this guy decided not to pay his note.  The bank then foreclosed.  That's the deal.

Now, this fool decides he's going to bulldoze his home, in some sort of scorched earth maneuver.  Congratulations - now, instead of owing the bank $160,000, you're going to owe the amount that they would have gotten at auction! 

Read the fine print of your note and mortgage - you promised not to do anything to damage the premises.  Instead of using a legal maneuver to delay the foreclosure sale, and sell it to recover as much money as possible, this guy decided to destroy something he didn't own...brilliant!

Contract law is such a basic element of society.  If we do not honor our contracts, society is in trouble.  Contract law is so important that our Founding Fathers put the following in the Constitution:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. [emphasis added].

An honorable person lives up to his end of the bargain, or, if he does not, must accept the consequences for the breach, which would be to turn the asset (house) over to the bank.  Congratulations, Terry - you now owe the bank some serious cash.   Maybe you'll get some book deal with a nice advance, which you can use to pay off what you bulldozed.

 

With All Due Respect to Executive Powers...

Let's say, in a perfect world, I'm in charge of teaching our elected officials how they are supposed to perform their duties...The first thing I'd tell a President, such as OBAMA! or G.W. Bush, is that the Executive Order is not to be used to abrogate Congressional or Judicial Authority!  We The People do not elect an all-pwerful dictator for four years.

The President is an executive, similar to a CEO, who is to act on the authority granted to him by Congress.  As we all used to learn back in school, the Congress makes the laws, the President and Executive Branch enforces the laws; and the Judiciary interprets the laws.  All of the branches must operate within the Constitution.  These are the rules that We The People set down.  The People are the sovereign of the Federal Government, not the states, not the cities, not Obama, not Bush, not Clinton.

Now, when someone comes along like President Barack OBAMA! and says "with all due respect to separation of powers..." what he is really saying is, "Piss off, Justices Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and Roberts; I want something done my way and to hell with your interpretation, even if my way is unconstitutional."

To hell with the Constitution, right?  Am I overreaction?  Hardly.  OBAMA! is making plans to use executive orders to advance his priorities in energy, fiscal and environmental areas, according to The New York Times .  Where are the checks and balances? 

“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emmanuel the White House chief of staff.  That's a big F-U to the people - they can't get their legistlation through Congress, so they'll just do it themselves.

I didn't see that in the Constitution.

Bill Clinton Hospitalized

Best wishes to 42...thank God we have such a great private health care system...

SILENCE, TEBOW!

A typical leftist maneuver - rather than counter someone's rational belief with an argument based on facts and reason, they move to silence speech.  It's a good thing that CBS (shockingly) had the good sense to run the Tim and Pam Tebow ad for Focusonthefamily.com. 

If the far left is so opposed to the Tebows' beliefs, they should articulate why their position is superior, or more morally sound...unless that's not possible...

As radio host Michael Savage has so eloquently put it in the past, what happened to the true, classical liberal who would say "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it to the death"?

Now, the mantra of the neo-liberal is "shut up and do as we say."

In truth, the Libertarian is the classical liberal and today's neo-liberal is some derivative of a Marxist/Trotskyite/Statist.

The State of The Union

I'll save everyone some time - here's the State of The Union:

1. The majority of Americans doesn't want gov't takeover of health care (too bad - it's still being forced upon us).

2. We have a thief running the Treasury (Geithner), but so was his predecessor (Paulson). AIG was bailed out in order to turn over taxpayer money to Goldman Sachs.

3. Unemployment is double-digit. Any statistic that says the government "saved or created" X jobs uses accounting that would make Ken Lay of Enron blush.

4. Independents will control the direction of the politics for the foreseeable future. They were suckered into voting for President OBAMA! in 2008 and responded by voting for Republicans in VA, NJ and, most importantly, MA (hello Scott Brown, don't let us down).

5. The majority want tax cuts. Taxes and real prices have gone up since 2008.



I'll throw a plan out there; I can't take full credit for it, because I remember Michael Savage articulating a similar plan some time ago. If you want real economic growth, reduce tax rates across the board by 5%, reduce government spending by 10% (2% per year over 5 years) and eliminate the capital gains and dividend taxes. I'd say allow for the privatization of the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security, but I know that will never happen.

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Theft, Plain and Simple

Our friend Hugo Chavez announced that he was making his countries currency (ironically called the "Strong Bolivar" worth half of what it was worth a few days ago compared to the dollar, in a late-Friday night devaluation.  Of course, as a good dictator, he made the announcement by fiat, late on Friday and during  baseball game so that people weren't paying much attention.

Now, Comrade Chavez says that this is to help the poor.  How is this possible?  If someone had $1000 worth of Bolivars to his or her name and now they're worth $500, do you think that helps a poor person??

And of course, in order to tighten his vice-grip on the next of his subjects, Tzar Chavez said he would dispatch the army to ensure that business don't raise prices, threatening to seize businesses who raised their prices in response to Chavez stealing half of their currency's value.Let me understand this - if I owned a store, and bought a bag of rice for $20 worth of Bolivars and was selling it for $40 worth of Bolivars on Thursday, and the Bolivars were cut in half in value, that destroys my entire profit margin.  The socialist planned market is such a lovely thing, isn't it?

The worst part is that this thug was making nice with President OBAMA! a few months back; a sign of things to come, perhaps?

Marxism Trumps Racism

It's amazing that the Marxists in Washington, DC are supporting Harry Reid, in light of the report that Reid described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

This tells me one thing: the Marxist goal of socializing the health care system is more important than Reid's racist remark. It's clear that President OBAMA! and his allies need Reid as the crucial 60th vote.

Prediction: if the Republicans take Kennedy's old seat in Massachusetts' special election, Reid is done and will be forced out, because the Marxists won't have 60 votes. If the Republicans lose, Reid steps down after the health care vote, or bows out of re-election this fall.

Or, he'll just lose at the polls. Done deal - he's politically dead.

Are Newspapers Like Buses?

"A top Democratic lawmaker predicted on Wednesday that the government will be involved in shaping the future for struggling U.S. media organizations."

"Eventually government is going to have to be responsible to help and resolve these issues," Waxman told a conference hosted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on the future of journalism.

Excuse me?  Do these people think before they speak?  Waxman (who incidentally looks overcome by swine flu) almost sounds like he's talking about providing public services, like buses and trains, or garbage collection, in large cities.

The article references this group, named Free Press, which also advocates "net neutrality", or more specifically government-control of the internet.  "Free Press, a public interest group, said the search for solutions to the crisis in journalism should be premised on the idea that news-gathering is a public service, not a commodity."

The First Amendment was written to protect news organizations that were critical of the government from prosecution for their ideas.  To permit the government to "bail" these conglomerates out, in exchange for their independence (which is dubious at best even now) is absolute insanity. 

Imagine this conversation:  "Here, we'll take care of your debt, Mr. Newspaper - but you can't endorse any candidates, or criticize any of us."  What public service would the media provide the public, while censored and under the government's thumb?

Waxman, and any lawmaker who pushes forward with any sort of act that skirts the First Amendment in this respect should be impeached.