http://www.connietalk.com/…

Martial arts pro and actor Chuck Norris used to be a Mike Huckabee supporter. But appearing on the Alex Jones Show this week, Norris revealed that there is only one politician left that he trusts: and it’s not Huckabee.

I am so worried - like so many people in America are - about the future, about the direction our country’s heading…The founding fathers had a vision for America, and it was not corrupted by greed and power. And the politicians are so disconnected from the will of the People. We’ve got to do something about it.

Truthfully, when the Republicans were in control of the Congress…they ran us into the ground. So the Democrats said, ‘Well, we’ll change everything. We’ll make everything better.’ So now the Democrats have control of Congress, and they run us deeper into the ground. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t trust any of them. Ron Paul is the only guy I trust.

If I had one wish…one wish…I’d like to line up all the members of Congress, and have Ron Paul walk with me down the line and say, ‘Okay, which one’s corrupted? Which one’s corrupted?’ And the ones he points to…I will choke them unconscious. And stick them into a pile.

Part 2

It’s a shame he didn’t come around till now. It couldn’t have hurt Paul to have had his support.

The Wanna-Be Vice Dictators
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:12 PM

They both want more regulation, more totalitarian “oversight,” more national socialism. So far, the only debate is centered around a lie perpetuated by both sides: That the Republicans are for smaller government.

McCain Is a Socialist, Too!
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:15 PM

Palin argues that McCain is anything but laissez-faire. After all, he’s for campaign finance censorship and tobacco nanny statism.

She’s Getting Away With It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:19 PM

The key for McCain is to somehow run against the status quo, to run against his own party’s recent legacy. Palin says that we shouldn’t trust national health care, unless we have been happy with the way the feds have been handling things lately. Of course, she is right. Those who hate the Bush legacy — meaning, total statism — should logically oppose socialism too. But the McCain/Palin administration would be more of the same, more Bushism, more socialism. This severe ideological confusion helps both parties, and creates the illusion that there is a difference between the two.

Biden is getting away with it too, blaming the Republicans for shrinking the state. I can’t stand either one.

The Elephant in the Room
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:23 PM

They both support the fascist bailout. They both support a trillion-dollar foreign policy and a multi-trillion dollar corporate/entitlement state. They are debating over millions when the state they wish to run spends trillions. Even assuming the greatness of mass democracy, this is a grave injustice. They should be debating big, real issues. Not this trivia.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign continues to campaign on the fact that for a few days they nominally stopped campaiging.

The GOP’s Embrace of Autarky
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:30 PM

When, by the way, did the Republicans and almost all conservatives come to champion the frightening and economically ludicrous concept of “energy independence”? What they mean, of course, is autarky and socialism: All energy produced within America, and every single form of energy — solar, coal, oil, nuclear, wind, etc. — subsidized massively by the federal government. Even the Alaska drilling issue isn’t conceived of with anything approaching market reasoning. “We,” as in the federal government, should drill.

(Although the Republicans are more skeptical of the global warming zeitgist, they seem willing to champion big government programs such as carbon emissions limits to address climate change. Hey, environmentalists, with all the Republican leaders and corporate state adopting this line, you know it’s wrong.)

Biden Just Admitted It
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:39 PM

Obama’s Iraq withdrawal plan is the same as Bush’s. Biden does say, however, that the Dems will end the war, eventually. Palin doesn’t even make this much of a promise. On foreign policy, the Dems still seem slightly better than the Repubs.

On the other hand, “Pakistan already has nuclear weapons,” Biden points out, and so, I guess, we should be at war with them.

A Relief
Posted by Anthony Gregory at 08:54 PM

Well, at least both say Israel must be protected at all costs, that nothing is more important, and that Iran is the greatest threat ever. Indeed, they both accuse the other of being insufficiently determined to keep the Persians in line.

They also agreed on gay marriage, just as Bush and Kerry did: More equality under the law but no marriage for homosexuals. Same exact position. Different emphasis.

Dodd Amdt. No. 5685

H.R. 1424: Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008

Both votes, as one would expect, were the same.

Here is footage from the response by leaders of the Senate after the passage. I apologize for the sync. I ripped it from a Realaudio stream and am too lazy to figure out why the conversion is off.

These guys are really self absorbed ass hats. They pushed for programs which caused this mess and now they blame others even when the evidence is overwhelming. The talking heads in the MSM generally just parrot the Democrats and Republicans condemnation of the supposed free market we have and their call for fascism. And what is that Dodd said? “America I hope saw Congress, the United States Senate, acting as the forbearers and the Founders intended it to act.” I’m not sure but voting completely contrary to their constituents desires doesn’t seem to be what the Founders intended in a representative democracy.

http://news.yahoo.com/…

Hoyer, though, said on NBC’s “Today” show he was concerned that the tax issues could complicate the chances of final congressional passage when the legislation comes back to the House floor for a vote.

“There’s no doubt the tax package is very controversial,” he said, adding that “there’s no doubt in my mind that the Senate added this because they thought that’s the only way they could get it passed.” He said he wasn’t pleased the tax provisions were attached to the bill.

Adding a set of popular business tax breaks and legislation to prevent more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from feeling the bite of the alternative minimum tax promised to win House GOP votes for the plan even as it angered moderate “Blue Dog” Democrats concerned about the tax cuts adding to the deficit.

I reported earlier on the some of the changes made to the House amendments by the Senate. Unfortunately the only way to find out is through piecing together random news articles as at last I checked the actual bill to be voted on was not publicly available. So… I hadn’t seen that the AMT was part of this supposed tax reduction. We’ve all have heard the horrors of the AMT and yet Congress has been unable to do anything about it until now? It’s not even a carrot for passage, as a real tax reduction would be, but the promise not to use the stick… as hard. Another example where government regulation has lead to an unforeseen problem that would simply not have existed in any sort of resemblance of a free market. Now they are trying to sweeten this poison bill with it. Getting rid of the AMT is a great idea… but not on the back of one of the most egregious corporatist bills to come our way in a generation.

Speaking of negative unforeseen consequences.

http://www.bizjournals.com/…

The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission Tuesday decided to ease “mark to market” accounting rules which have hurt banks, mortgage lenders and the housing sector during the downturn.

Mark to market is a Sarbanes Oxley accounting rule that requires holdings, assets, and loans be valued at their current value. It was aimed at keeping company’s books on the up and up but it has devastated banks and mortgage lenders in the housing slump.

On Tuesday the SEC said companies and financial institutions have some leeway in assessing value, not just the current market, which is of course way down.

There is also some talk in Congress of a temporary or permanent mark to market repeal to allow for a more long-term valuation of assets and loans.

What a surprise? Government regulation which manipulated the market values of assets caused the market to negatively react to that misvaluation. It’s unfortunate there isn’t a way to translate the economic distortion into something the politicians could understand. Like a punch in the face.

http://campaignforliberty.com

Americans inherit from our ancestors a glorious tradition of freedom and resistance to oppression. Our country has long been admired by the rest of the world for her great example of liberty and prosperity—a light shining in the darkness of tyranny.

But many Americans today are frustrated. The political choices they are offered give them no real choice at all. For all their talk of “change,” neither major political party as presently constituted challenges the status quo in any serious way. Neither treats the Constitution with anything but contempt. Neither offers any kind of change in monetary policy. Neither wants to make the reductions in government that our crushing debt burden demands. Neither talks about bringing American troops home not just from Iraq but from around the world. Our country is going bankrupt, and none of these sensible proposals are even on the table.

This destructive bipartisan consensus has suffocated American political life for many years. Anyone who tries to ask fundamental questions instead of cosmetic ones is ridiculed or ignored.

That is why the Campaign for Liberty was established: to highlight the neglected but common-sense principles we champion and reinsert them into the American political conversation.

The U.S. Constitution is at the heart of what the Campaign for Liberty stands for, since the very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document. Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a “living document” that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers. Thomas Jefferson spoke of binding our rulers down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution, and we are proud to follow in his distinguished lineage.

With our Founding Fathers, we also believe in a noninterventionist foreign policy. Inspired by the old Robert Taft wing of the Republican Party, we are convinced that the American people cannot remain free and prosperous with 700 military bases around the world, troops in 130 countries, and a steady diet of war propaganda. Our military overstretch is undermining our national defense and bankrupting our country.

We believe that the free market, reviled by people who do not understand it, is the most just and humane economic system and the greatest engine of prosperity the world has ever known.

We believe with Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and F.A. Hayek that central banking distorts economic decisionmaking and misleads entrepreneurs into making unsound investments. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ interference with interest rates sets the stage for economic downturns. And the central bank’s ability to create money out of thin air transfers wealth from the most vulnerable to those with political pull, since it is the latter who receive the new money before the price increases it brings in its wake have yet occurred. For economic and moral reasons, therefore, we join the great twentieth-century economists in opposing the Federal Reserve System, which has reduced the value of the dollar by 95 percent since it began in 1913.

We oppose the dehumanizing assumption that all issues that divide us must be settled at the federal level and forced on every American community, whether by activist judges, a power-hungry executive, or a meddling Congress. We believe in the humane alternative of local self-government, as called for in our Constitution.

We oppose the transfer of American sovereignty to supranational organizations in which the American people possess no elected representatives. Such compromises of our country’s independence run counter to the principles of the American Revolution, which was fought on behalf of self-government and local control. Most of these organizations have a terrible track record even on their own terms: how much poverty have the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund actually alleviated, for example? The peoples of the world can interact with each other just fine in the absence of bureaucratic intermediaries that undermine their sovereignty.

We believe that freedom is an indivisible whole, and that it includes not only economic liberty but civil liberties and privacy rights as well, all of which are historic rights that our civilization has cherished from time immemorial.

Our stances on other issues can be deduced from these general principles.

Our country is ailing. That is the bad news. The good news is that the remedy is so simple and attractive: a return to the principles our Founders taught us. Respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, individual liberty, sound money, and a noninterventionist foreign policy constitute the foundation of the Campaign for Liberty.

Will you join us?

I’m not one for spending much effort attempting to change the system from the top down. It’s mostly a waste of time. The Campaign for Liberty seems to me to be both top down and down up. You need to spend a little effort on those at the top but mostly at the bottom. Coordination and access to information are the most important aspects besides the drive to change things. It appears to me that Paul’s Campaign for Liberty is or will provide that. Even if it’s just to get the updates I recommend joining. The Ron Paul campaign for president helped spark this new movement for peace, prosperity and freedom and I think it’s an opportune time to get on board. The potential is there for real change. Even if only used as an educational tool.

www.newswithviews.com

While millions of Americans watched the 2008 Republican Convention on television, the well-staged event wasn’t all peaceful and enthusiastic, according to several delegates attending the St. Paul, Minnesota event.

Several delegates — who are avowed Ron Paul supporters — claim they were treated shabbily at best, harshly at worst.

“While almost every other GOP contender for president was permitted to speak at the convention, Ron Paul was not. The word was that Paul was invited, with the natural caveat that he (like the other speakers) endorse McCain for president, which Paul was reportedly unwilling to do,” said a McCain delegate from West Virginia.

“Instead, Paul held a separate ‘convention’ for one afternoon at the Minneapolis Convention Center,” said the WV delegate.

The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee were unnecessarily nervous about the presence of Ron Paul delegates at the XCel Energy Center, and sometimes that fact was reflected in unwarranted actions, such as someone yanking away a banner proclaiming the word “Liberty” being held by a handful of Paul delegates outside the building, according to several delegates.

In fact, several told NewsWithViews.com that while the Rep. Paul delegates demonstrated little, if any, support for McCain throughout the convention — mostly sitting quietly on their hands while the rest of the crowd erupted around them — they caused no problems and were respectful and polite, including the Paul delegates from West Virginia.

“The Ron Paul movement has brought thousands of young people into the political process — shouldn’t the GOP find ways to welcome them rather than alienate them?” said “Patrick,” a delegate and Ron Paul supporter from Maine.

The actions of the GOP should surprise no one, but it’s worth documenting anyway.