The Truth About the Two Party System
In a recent interview with Reason TV Glenn Greenwald spoke of the “suffocating two party system” and why any election focused on a lesser of two evils and short term gains will only ensure more of the same.
“Presuming that the Republican nominee in 2012 is also bad on civil liberties, what should a voter who cares deeply about these issues do?
A. That’s hard to say, because ultimately, elections are about comparative choices, making it difficult to assess what one should do against an unnamed opponent. If the GOP opponent is substantially worse, that would be a different calculus than if s/he is merely marginally worse or roughly as bad.
But what is clear is that, for a variety of reasons, the two-party system does not work in terms of providing clear choices. No matter who wins, the same permanent factions that control Washington continue to reign. That’s true no matter which issues one considers most important. At some point, it’s going to be necessary to sacrifice some short-term political interests for longer-term considerations about how this suffocating, two-party monster can be subverted. [...]”
Terrorism: Made in the U.S.A.
Moreover, they — along with anyone else who takes time to examine the matter — know that they create the greatest dangers Americans face. They just don’t care. They have bigger fish to fry than keeping Americans safe. Besides, the dangers they create provide excuses for more power.
Let’s just say what many people already know: the “war on terrorism” produces terrorists. No half-intelligent person could think that U.S. treatment of the Muslim world could have any effect other than to produce violent, vengeful anti-Americanism. Even in the government-friendly mainstream media you will find the facts, though you’ll have to connect the dots yourself.
When you treat people like they are worthless, or help others to treat them that way, some of those people will get mad and vow to get even. If desperate enough they will even be willing to give their lives to the cause.
Katrina on Steroids
Many people argue that the Federal Government deserves no blame in the handling of the BP oil spill. The claim is that any comparisons to Katrina are apples to oranges since the Federal Government could have done something in the minutes after Katrina due to the advanced warning yet they chose not to act. The argument continues that with the Deep Horizon oil well explosion there were no advanced warnings and the government is limited in their options and expertise in how to handle such an event. Most of this argument has already been debunked because there were plenty of signs of regulatory creep in the MMS as well as a highly publicized NOAA oil spill contingency plan that was ignored until it was too late. This is not the end of the story. There is new evidence emerging about just how absent the Federal Government has been in their response to the oil catastrophe in the Gulf.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7043272.html
“Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
FREEDOM’S REAL ENEMIES
By Chuck Baldwin
June 11, 2010
NewsWithViews.com
Here Is Where The Attacks Against Liberty Are Really Coming From
Politicians in Washington, D.C., love to manufacture a crisis. The crisis generates fear within the citizenry, thereby allowing the federal government to centralize more and more power. During a crisis, the citizenry becomes much more forgiving of federal abuses and accommodating of federal encroachments than it otherwise would be without a crisis. Hence, we have a federal “war on drugs,” and a “war on poverty,” and a “war on terror,” and an “oil crisis,” and an “energy crisis,” and a “domestic terrorism crisis,” and an “education crisis,” and a “border crisis,” and an “economic crisis”–Blah! Blah! Blah!
You can mark it down: every major crisis that America has faced over the last several decades has been either manufactured or facilitated by policies and activities originating in Washington, D.C. But at the same time that DC is creating these crises, it categorizes any ideological group it finds distasteful as a convenient scapegoat. These convenient scapegoats can include “angry white guys,” “tea party extremists,” “a vast right-wing conspiracy,” Constitution Party or Libertarian Party “extremists,” “Second Amendment extremists” (gun owners), “pro-life extremists,” ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Tyranny’s New Tool
The vote today in the Senate is being dubbed a victory against Cap and Trade. On the surface the vote was simply one to determine who had the rightful authority, if any, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama Administration is borderline obsessed with derailing any traditional Constitutional legislative rules.
The vote today in the Senate was an attempt to prevent the Obama Administration’s end runaround through the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Regulation of gases, which are exhaled by the processes of life by the way, is clearly not a mandated power in the Constitution and the Congress has never granted themselves the authority. Despite some misconceptions floating out there, the Clear Air Act gave the government the no power over carbon dioxide. This act was to reduce smog and air pollutants hazardous to human health.
To get around this technicality, for the first time in human history an essential component of all life, carbon dioxide was declared a poisonous gas hazardous to your health by the EPA, bypassing any need for debate or laws passed by a legislative body of elected officials. Bureaucrats made the call once again. Plant food was decreed through authoritarian fiat to be a deadly toxin. Today was a minor victory against the malicious power grabbing central government, but it is far from the end of their attempts to find schemes to tax, control and turn into another derivatives trading pyramid the lifegiving gas of carbon dioxide.
The Southern Border is a National Disgrace and a Symbol of Hypocrisy
The Mexican President Felipe Calderon recently made a formal statement condemning the killing of a 15 year old boy on the border. It is also Mr. Calderon’s second major public statement slamming U.S. border policy in the last month. Earlier the President of Mexico was critical of the Arizona law, a law he clearly had not read and did not realize was more humane and less restrictive than his nation’s own immigration laws and enforcement. When will a U.S. President be publicly critical of Mexico’s continued enabling of an illegal invasion and dumping of Mexico’s unemployed on a saturated American market?
“MEXICO CITY, June 9 (Reuters) – Mexico has sent a formal complaint to Washington over the fatal shooting of a teenager by a U.S. border patrol agent and is pressing for answers on the incident, Mexico’s foreign minister said.”
BP and Goldman Sachs – The Appropriate Whipping Boys
Not suprisingly there are some interesting connections between America’s favorite Whipping Boys Goldman Sachs and BP.
Peter Sutherland:
According to his September 2009 bio:
Peter Sutherland is chairman of BP plc (1997 – current). He is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995 – current). He was appointed chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008…. Before these appointments, he was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organisation. He had previously served as director general of GATT since July 1993 [and was] chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Institute of Public Administration (Maastricht) 1991-1996.
Sutherland resigned as BP’s chairman in 2009, but apparently still serves in various key capacities.
Neoconservatives lead the charge against Turkey
“Doubts among Western countries about Turkey’s shifting foreign policy began in 2009 when Erdogan strongly criticised Israel for its deadly military campaign in Gaza.
Concerns over growing rapprochement between Turkey and its Middle Eastern neighbours and Iran grew following the Israeli raid on an aid expedition bound for Gaza on May 31 in which nine Turks were killed.
After recalling its ambassador from Tel Aviv, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said relations with Israel would “never be the same”.
Erdogan has stepped up the rhetoric against Israel as tens of thousands of Turks have taken to the streets of Istanbul each day to vent against Israel and praise Gaza’s Hamas rulers.”
A Busted ‘Bailout and Stimulate’ Formula
Author: Eric Sprott 
There’s nothing wrong with throwing a little money at a problem to make it go away. There’s equally nothing wrong with throwing a little borrowed money at a problem to make it disappear, as long as you have the means to pay that borrowed money back.
But what happens if you throw a lot of borrowed money at a problem, and the problem doesn’t go away? If you’ve ever experienced a situation like that you can probably understand how Europe feels right now. It just unleashed a magnificent $1 trillion euro bailout and the market responded with a selloff by the end of the week! So what happened? That money was supposed to make the problem go away, after all. And it was a lot of money. Why did the market respond to it with such disdain?
US Census Workers Knocking on Your Neighbors’ Doors, Looking for Snitches in Memphis
The Census is to be collected in “such manner as they (Congress) shall by Law direct” (Article I, Section 2). The Constitutional wording is an unfortunately defect which our Founders could have never imagined the lengths of the over reach in power it would lead to, or perhaps they believed in a court system and checks and balances that would strike down any such law outside of the spirit of the Constitution and the Natural Law for which it is based. To think that the framers of the Constitution could envision Census workers under White House control being given legal authority to snoop on citizens requires a suspension of disbelief to find rational. When a corrupt Congress makes unreasonable laws that violate inalienable and natural rights of man it is a fundamental duty to abolish and nullify such laws. Dr. Martin Luther King has the best reminder as how to view such laws when he said, “never forget everything Hitler did was legal.” This is not an equivocation of the Census to genocidal actions of a Nazi regime, it is to remind of the slippery slope, the difference between legality and morality and where expansion of centralized power can end if civil libertarians are not on constant guard. In addition to these reports of snooping out of Memphis, Census workers have the legal right to enter your home without warrant. What could possibly be so important in a head count to justify a clear suspensions of the 4th Amendment?
