What's Next?

We are witness to the end of an empire, an empire built on debased currencies, the substitution of debt and credit for gold and silver, and human greed. In the approaching end, the dying and damaged system built by bankers in collusion with governments will fall by its own hand.

The cost of prolonging its stay, however, will be steep. The attempted US $700 billion bailout of the bankers is only one step in the escalating and futile attempts of governments and bankers to preserve their immense power and wealth. It would do us well, especially now, to remember that our welfare is not their concern.

The little guys won a big fight with the defeat of the BAILOUT package (They don't call it a bailout anymore; it's a "rescue"). Let's only hope the celebration is not short lived.

The Great Bank Robbery of 2008

The Paulson bailout failed in the House. If it isn't a death blow to the plan, it should be. This is not an economic plan: it is a heist.

It will go down as The Great Bank Robbery of 2008.

The economics behind it are nonsense, but we are naïve if we spend much time even considering the "arguments" for it. This is a money and power grab, pure and simple.

They are really distressed and are determined to try again to pass a similar bill by the end of this week. GWB made another appeal to Congress and threatened taxpayers with dire consequences should the government not be able to "help" us. Robert Murphy is not quite convinced we need their help and explains why.

The (Near) Death of the State

I'm fully aware that Paulson and Bernanke have some nefarious scheme in mind to reverse the thrilling defeat of their criminal bailout package, a package shot down by independent members of Congress on both sides. But reflect for a few minutes on what it means that the House did this. It was a revolutionary act in the best sense of that term.

The entire establishment was united in favor of what was surely the most horrible and outrageous bill to ever come before Congress. The Fed, the Treasury, leadership of the Democrats and Republicans, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, all the major think tanks, most talking heads, the wealthiest corporations, important academics – in short, the whole of the power elite – were united in favor of this awful thing that proposed the following: Americans were to be stripped of their earnings and their future to prop up failed enterprises.

Forget back-door socialism: this was right through the front door.

The market responded as expected after the vote failed. The market made a necessary correction but, as of this writing, stock futures appear ready to rebound and commodities (except gold) are continuing to fall. Perhaps not the disaster the power elite predicted. They are hoping the market sinks further in order to provide main street support for the bailout. An upswing would support the opposition.

Bailout vote fails in the House

Bailout vote fails in the House.

U.S. stocks plunged and the Standard & Poor's 500 Index tumbled the most since 1987 after the House of Representatives voted down a $700 billion plan to rescue the financial system. The stock market swooned today, but nothing like October 19, 1987, when the DOW dropped 22.6 percent. Today's plunge was 7 percent. The 5th worst day in the history of the DOW was December 18, 1899 when it plunged 8.7 percent.

The only member of House from South Carolina to vote NO on the Wall Street bailout was J. Gresham Barrett. You may want to drop him a thank you note.

J. Gresham Barrett (R-03)
Address: 439 Cannon House Office Building, Washington DC 20515-4003
Telephone: 202-225-5301
Fax: 202-225-3216
E-mail: web form

These S.C. members of the House voted YES for the bailout. You may wish to drop them a note questioning their sanity.

• Henry E. Brown Jr. (R-01)
  Address: 1124 Longworth Office Building, Washington DC 20515-4001
  Telephone: 202-225-3176
  Fax: 202-225-3407
  E-mail: web form
• Joe Wilson (R-02)
  Address: 212 Cannon House Office Building, Washington DC 20515-4002
  Telephone: 202-225-2452
  Fax: 202-225-2455
  E-mail: web form
• Bob Inglis (R-04)
  Address: 330 Cannon House Office Building, Washington DC 20515-4004
  Telephone: 202-225-6030
  Fax: 202-226-1177
  E-mail: web form
• John M. Spratt, Jr. (D-05)
  Address: 1401 Longworth House Office Building, Washington DC 20515-4005
  Telephone: 202-225-5501
  Fax: 202-225-0464
  E-mail: web form
• James E. Clyburn (D-06)
  Address: 2135 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515-4006
  Telephone: 202-225-3315
  Fax: 202-225-2313
  E-mail: web form

Face it. You really want to know what the Paulson bailout plan would have done with respect to your financial circumstances. Spengler offers an opinion: "Paulson's plan likely will provide temporary relief to the stockholders of some American banks, whose balance sheets do not look all that different from Washington Mutual's. But this has nothing to do with the larger problem, namely the de-leveraging of the American household." Wealth in Shrink Mode (Spengler trots out some data worth reviewing!)

(Clipped from Wrisley.com)

How To Solve The Gas Panic

The real problem now is panic buying. People will run their tanks down by about one-third and then rush off to a gas station. Lines of cars are following gas tanker trucks around Atlanta. The supplies are coming back up, but as long as people insist on keeping every car they own filled to the top and then filling a few gas cans to boot, we're going to have these outages and these absurd lines.

So, how do you stop the panic buying? Easy. You let the market do what the market does best, control demand and supply through the price structure.

Neal explains the obvious. Obvious to you and I but not to our pols.

Roll Call Vote and Legislation Draft

In case you're looking, here's the roll call vote.

And here's the "discussion draft" of the legislation.

See if your congressman should be praised or pilloried.

We Are the Neutered Bourgeois

If Congress and the White House intend to do their socialist corporate bailout, strings or no strings attached, it will happen. If Treasury Secretary Paulson convinces enough officials to let him set up his dictatorial command-economy regime in some form, it will happen. And I’ll tell you this: the demonstrators would be pissed, I would be pissed, you would be pissed, and not anyone would rise up to do a thing.

Especially not you.

Heavens no . . . you’ve too much to lose by daring to really struggle against this insanity; you’re too eager to keep your precarious position in the precarious social, political, and economic pecking order. Why, I too would hardly get off the couch unless I see that The People will rise up with me (strength and solidarity in numbers!). And so the band-aid is applied, the Monopoly money flies off the Treasury presses, the pigs-in-suits in our dual capital cities of D.C. and Wall Street snort with glee, and you and me and our children go into political debt slavery.

Marcel Votlucka chastises us for our reticent response to governmental shenanigans.

Not even two cents worth of wisdom

For those who like boxing metaphors to score debates, here's the most frightening one to come out of Friday night's fight: Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain laid a glove on the financial meltdown.

That both men are trying, Muhammad Ali style, to dance like a butterfly around the crisis reveals neither has come to grips with the severity and its implications for the next President. After they delivered their platitudes about protecting taxpayers (Obama) and forcing accountability (McCain), their wells ran dry of ideas.

With the daily headlines filled with warnings of another Great Depression, we really do have something to fear: that our next President isn't up to the job.

Neither candidate exhibited any knowledge of economics in general nor of the bailout plan in particular.

Bailout? Just do nothing

Americans have been living beyond our means, and we should have recognized that fact the moment we saw those glass Voss water bottles. But we can recover from our misbehavior through a little austerity, like having only one house -- perhaps one NBA players couldn't play chicken in. More than the mistakes made along the way, however, I fear the overreaction to them, a lesson I learned from chief economist Wyle E. Coyote.

So let's not stop the short-selling of financial stocks -- the only brake on overindulgence -- as Paulson did last week. Let's not strip Congress of yet another power by giving the Treasury secretary the right to decide where to dole out a large portion of our budget. Let's not encourage more risky loans by making profits private and losses public. And let's not create some bastardized form of communism in which the new rule is, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the size of the investment bank he owns shares in."

Banks are in trouble. Why? They're bankers for crying out loud! They are supposed to know about money and economic principles. Well, most of them do but they were backed into a corner by government regulations which required them to give credit to bad risks. As the money started rolling in, they got caught up in the euphoria and found themselves in a bind with loans not being repaid and depreciated housing assets to fall back on. This, however, does not persuade me to bail them out. They would not be inclined to bail me out if the situation were reversed.

The Bailout Reader

The events taking place in the financial market offer an illustration of the soundness of the Austrian theory of money, banking, and credit cycles, and Mises.org is your source not only for analysis of these events but also the economic theory that helps explain what is happening and what to do about it. There are many thousands of articles available, and also the full text of thousands of books as well as journal articles. It is impossible to draw attention to the full range of literature one can use to understand the crisis.

While we are waiting on Congress to "bail us out", this seems like a good time to review some articles discussing how we got into this mess and, maybe, how we can get out of this mess. Mises.org has compiled such a list and, after listening to the debate last night, I highly recommend it to our presidential candidates.

Bush the Socialist and Destroyer

Anyone who has read a good economics book would be quickly reduced to laughter and tears by George Bush's ridiculous economic address to the nation. He put on his 9-11 suit and tried to warn Americans about the impending disaster: that their access to an infinite stream of paper money might be imperiled if they don't cough up hundreds of billions immediately. It is very tempting to go line by line and shout back.

"I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business."

And this is why he nationalized airport security, created huge new bureaucracies, spent more than any president in American history, centralized control of education, put up more protectionist barriers than Clinton and his father combined, bailed out airlines, presided over the Sarbanes-Oxley reign of terror, unleashed anti-trust regulators, intensified health-care controls, and pretty much used every headline as an excuse to demand more money and power?

Lew doesn't think too highly of the current POTUS and examines his recent call for a bailout of Wall Street. True blue conservatives may take offense to some of his remarks.

Fred Throws Sombrero in Ring

We've been hoping Fred would make a run at political office and now he's decided it's time. Campaign Slogan: The Only thing We Have to Be Afred of is Fred Hisself

A sampling of his platform follows:

First things first. I will need a stirring bumper sticker, this being the key to high office. What? I’m considering “Fred! Piss Poor but Look at the Rest.” Or “A Fred in Every Pot,” or perhaps “Better Fred than Dead”? Or “Tippecanoe and Frederick Too.” The possibilities are endless. In any event, election is a mere detail. Given the competition, the country will flock to my standard. Or wish it had.

Next I’ll need some promises. How about :When in office, I will do the following wholesome things:”

Education. Put a bounty on members of the teachers unions. The season will start with a week for bow hunters and black powder and then be open to all. No bag limit, Think stuffed heads over the mantle. “Ah, yes, Miss Grundy. I knew her well.”

That accomplished, I will require a score of 1200 on the old SATs, before the dumbing-down, for teaching positions. I will then raise salaries until such people take the job. The schools today are in the hands of people too dim to know what schooling is, and resentful of people who have it or might want it. They remind me of vegetarian butchers.

Then I will have everyone in the Department of Education strangled (possible electoral slogan: “Strangulation in the Common Interest”). Local governments will run their schools as they damned well please. Ha. Ha ha!

The Austrian School and the Meltdown

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

Ron Paul explains the origins of this crisis and examines the proposed remedy - lucid probing of the problem you won't hear on the network news shows.

The Case Against the Bailout

Bernanke warns of a recession. But economic downturns are not to be avoided at all costs. And one good thing about recessions is that they end, usually in a matter of months. An intervention of this nature, by contrast, would have malignant consequences for decades to come.

Best to just take our medicine. The prescription recommended by the statists is worse than the illness.

Scaring Us to Death

There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year's politics: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The media, economic "experts" and both presidential candidates are making bad-talking our economy key features of their campaign messages. For politicians and their hangers-on, keeping the populace alarmed is a strategy to seize more control over our lives.

The Chicken Littles are in a flap about the economy and are intent on impressing us by implementing more regulations and spending more money to prop up the sky which is quite gloomy, but not falling.

What Happened to Market Discipline?

Crisis is the friend of the State. The politicians are desperate to be seen as "showing leadership," so we're surely in for a new round of government interventions. Watch for the equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. There'll be much posturing about how the new regulations "will keep this from ever happening again," but that's more nonsense because the root problem is not lack of regulation. It's government social engineering of the housing market, which will be unchanged.

This crisis, unlike many of previously imagined crises, is real and the politicians are intent on "fixing it" instead of letting the marketplace go through a natural correction.

Hot Dog Terrorism?

And on a somewhat different type of assault on the public citizens of Philadelphia...

The discovery of several hot dogs in packages outside Citizens Bank Park brought the bomb squad out and forced the temporary evacuation of the stadium Wednesday evening.

According to police, Pattison Street between Darien and 11th Streets were shutdown as officials investigated the discovery of several suspicious packages near a ticket office.

Fans inside the stadium were evacuated, but players remained on the field following the incident.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution.

The Idiocy of Wall Street: Applauding Its Own Demise

We were told less than six weeks ago by the Congressional Budget Office that the taxpayers may have to spend up to $25 billion dollars bailing out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke assured us that beyond that, all was well. Why is anyone still listening to Paulson and Bernanke?

The announced bailout plans six weeks later have costs that Paulson and Bernanke now admit will run at least into the hundreds of billions of dollars. But why is anyone still listening to Paulson and Bernanke?

Obama and McCain are listening and so is President Bush. Can you say "panic?" McCain wants to call off the debate to "attend to the people's business." Obama still wants to debate but both want to give away the $700 billion to Paulson and Bernanke because they want people who can't afford homes to still have access to credit backed by the government. Representative Ron Paul and Senator Jim Bunning have denounced the bailout as a scam to milk the taxpayers for the problems created by the very people who are proposing a "solution" but it seems that no one is listening. McCain is clueless and panicked. Obama is just clueless.

Our Federal Economy

The essence of this crisis is lack of knowledge, including the inability to know who owes what to whom, and where risk resides. In such a moment, government's speed should not vary inversely with its information. With government's prestige, measured by approval ratings of the president and Congress, at a historic low, government is taking on unprecedented responsibilities. Henry Paulson, aka The Fourth Branch of Government, is intelligent and indefatigable and has as much pertinent experience as could be hoped for. But no one has ever had much experience that is pertinent to the tasks that would be assigned to him by the three-page legislation that would give him almost complete discretion over at least $700 billion.

Perhaps a passing glance at the Constitution would yield some insight to a solution but the document is considered to be an historical relic no longer relevant to our more modern and astute leaders.

Bailouts will lead to rough economic ride

Ever since the 1930s, the federal government has involved itself deeply in housing policy and developed numerous programs to encourage homebuilding and homeownership.

Government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to obtain a monopoly position in the mortgage market, especially the mortgage-backed securities market, because of the advantages bestowed upon them by the federal government.

Laws passed by Congress such as the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to make loans to previously underserved segments of their communities, thus forcing banks to lend to people who normally would be rejected as bad credit risks.

Government intervention led to the housing crisis which snowballed into the banking crisis. More government intervention will not result in a favorable outcome.

9/21/2008 Ron Paul on the Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer

"This isn't saving Main Street - this is sticking it to Main Street and sticking it to the taxpayer." ~ Ron Paul

Quo Vadis, America?

Unfortunately, the folks with the most to lose by "going clean" are the ones with the power. The daisy-chain of collapsing financial structures has laid bare a horror-show of cronyism and corruption at the very heart of our financial and political system. The revolving door between quasi-governmental financial entities (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and the Washington power circuit has created a dysfunctional New Class that is determined to keep the racket going at all costs. If left to their own devices, this clique will eventually transform America into a giant plantation, with the vast majority of the population reduced to toiling under a lifetime of indentured servitude.

More dismal forecasts for the economy and more reasons for the taxpayer to abandon all hope.

What would JP Morgan do?

It is said to be the worst financial crisis since 1929, and no one today can say whether anything will work, or whether another Great Depression is about to descend.

But I am thinking of a financial crisis 101 years ago, the "Panic of 1907," as it was called.

In late October of that year, the greatest banker of his day, and perhaps any day, JP Morgan, 70 years old but at the height of his power, returned early from a meeting of Episcopalians in Virginia to gather titans of Wall Street together in the red room of his famous library. He was suffering from a bad cold, but got through the following days and nights on heavy doses of Havana cigars.

J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller put their wealth on the line during the Panic of 1907. Today, the taxpayers are being called on to put their dollars up to bail out the wealthy.

The Mugging of America

Let us be perfectly clear. The U.S. government has no money. We entered this week with a National Debt of $9.65 trillion. The deficit for next year will surpass $600 billion. Every dime of these bailouts will be borrowed. They will be borrowed from China, Japan, and the Middle East. In an effort to keep our corrupt financial system afloat, we have sold another piece of our country. The prestige and status of the U.S. in the eyes of the world community have suffered a catastrophic non-reversible decline in the last nine months. "We The People" had absolutely no say in this decision.

These are trying times for the economy. Throwing money we don't have at the problems will not solve them. The debt of the corrupt few is being transferred to the prudent in exchange for - nothing.

The drilling bill that bans drilling

Q: Says here the House of Representatives approved a bill to allow offshore oil drilling, but nearly all the Republicans voted against it. Weren't Republicans the ones chanting "Drill, baby, drill!" at their convention last month?

A: Yep. That's why they voted against this bill. It isn't a drilling bill, it's an anti-drilling bill. If it becomes law, nearly all the oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf would be off-limits forever.

Q: Huh?

The Dems "support" for drilling is deliberately misleading.

Before D.C. Gets Our Money, It Owes Us Some Answers

Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening.

We are being told Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has a plan which will shift $700 billion in obligations from private companies to the taxpayer.

We are being warned that this $700 billion bailout is the only answer to a crisis.

We are being reassured that we can trust Secretary Paulson "because he knows what he is doing".

Congress had better ask a lot of questions before it shifts this much burden to the taxpayer and shifts this much power to a Washington bureaucracy.

Just remember that the guys who are offering solutions are the same guys who created the problems.

The Drumbeat

The drumbeat. It's always there. Day and night. Rain or shine. Winter or Summer. Sunday or Monday. It comes at you from every direction. It comes over the TV, the radio, at work, at school, in music, in the newspapers, from the politicians, in conversation with others, even in church. It wears you down. It robs you of the will to resist its message. Even short-lived victories, which stop it briefly, leave you with the knowledge that it will return; each minor victory bound to be lost to the redoubled efforts of this patient and persistent force. You can't escape it. It never stops. It never gives up. It never ends.

What is it? Read on to find out...

Americans, Get Ready for an Enormous Tax Bill

"America's economy is facing unprecedented challenges. We're responding with unprecedented measures," President Bush declared in a press conference Friday.

Bush, of course, was speaking of the government's coordinated efforts to tackle a financial crisis that has roiled global markets and brought down venerable financial institutions.

"These measures will require us to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line," the President added.

Ah, yes. There is no free lunch. Just how significant an amount of taxpayer dollars remains unknown, but it's going to be massive.

Uh oh. The government wants to help us again.

The Party's Over

"Government must save us!" cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government -- the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt -- all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

The government is doing its best to postpone the inevitable collapse of the economy by propping up failing institutions with borrowed money.

Why It's Getting Mean

Both the Democrats and the Republicans spent the week treating the catastrophe as a political opportunity. This was unserious. A serious approach might have addressed large questions such as: Was this crisis not, at bottom, a failure of stewardship?

Instead, from Barack Obama: It's the Republicans' fault, and John McCain means more of the same. From McCain: We're reformers and we'll clean up the mess, unlike Mr. I Can't Think of Anything to Do but Raise Taxes.

It's obvious that neither candidate has a plan to guide the nation through choppy economic waters.

What does Sarah Palin have to hide in her Yahoo e-mails?

The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin's privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.

Snooping is OK only if the government does it.

Ron Paul on Criminal Bailouts

Unlike the two presidential candidates, Ron Paul understands what is happening to the economy and he knows who is to blame. He is not at all optimistic about our circumstances.

The Land of the Free Lunch

…we've come a long way from when Andrew Mellon was Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in the late '20s. When Wall Street cracked in '29, Mellon had the solution: let it happen!

"Liquidate the banks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate Wall Street…" Mellon was ready to let the chips fall wherever they might.

But four score years later, the chips are held up…cushioned…and caught by public nets by officials pretending to labor in the name of the public. Whether it is good or bad, we have no opinion. But it is certainly different.

A few weeks ago, we were reminded that, bad as things are, "it's not a recession." Well, maybe it's not. Maybe it's much worse.

Is George W. Bush the Worst President in U.S. History?

In the twilight of his eight-year term, George W. Bush is the loneliest guy in town these days. Remember him? With the economy in the tank, the Iraq War dragging on with casualties at 2004 levels (which we were all horrified about back then), Bush’s popularity is in the cellar and holding. Republican presidential candidate John McCain is running away from him faster than an Alaskan snow machine. The media has all but forgotten him, as it covers what the two aspirants to replace him have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day.

Conservatives had high expectations from GWB when he entered office. Since then, they have divided into two camps: 1) They stick with him no matter what or, 2) they run as far from him as possible.

Stubborn Ignorance

The fact of the matter is that presidents have no power to raise or lower taxes. They can propose tax measures or veto them but it is Congress that has the ultimate power to raise or lower taxes since they can, with a two-thirds vote, override a presidential veto. The same principle applies to spending. Presidents cannot be held responsible for budget deficits or surpluses. A president cannot spend a dime that Congress does not first appropriate. Given these plain facts, are politicians, pundits and media people — who persist in talking about a president cutting or raising taxes, or creating a budget deficit — ignorant, stupid or deceptive?

Members of Congress are quick to pass blame for their failures to the President.

McCain and the Markets

It's easy to see how a 21-year member of the U.S. Senate like John McCain, or even a Senate rookie, could regard Wall Street as a mysterious and distant planet. Indeed, on the evidence of the past few days, Senators McCain and Obama would appear to know more about Mars than they do about financial markets.

McCain says Wall Street is greedy and corrupt and he intends to fix it but doesn't understand that the greed and corruption emanates from Washington, D.C.

Nightmare on Wall Street

These words appeared at the bottom of the screen for the entire morning segment on the stock market in the opening few minutes of The Today Show on Monday morning, September 15. This was the message conveyed to millions of housewives 80 minutes before the New York Stock Exchange was scheduled to open. The words were entirely appropriate. By the end of the day, the Dow was down by over 500, and the S&P 500 was down by over 50.

At long last, the media are scared. I watched CNBC in the afternoon. I tuned in to see the looks on their perma-bull faces. They were visibly scared. I don't blame them.

It's going to get worse says Gary North.

Quit the NATO Club

Suddenly in 1989, East Germany takes down the Iron Curtain. The cold war thaws into a hopeful spring. What was NATO going to do with all those tanks, planes, and troops? Worse, what were the generals going to do to keep their jobs? No enemies to fight, and the politicians were promising a peace dividend to citizens by closing military bases. A common quip of the Berliners in the last days of WWII "Enjoy the war. The peace will be terrible" now seemed a reality for poor NATO.

Of course, the peace dividend never materialized and NATO justified its continued existence by discovering more wolves howling on the doorstep.

Sound Money

Sound money keeps government spending in check, keeps trade fair and honest, which reduces the temptations, and many underlying causes, for governments to wage wars. It also gives you the peace of mind of knowing that your savings will be able to sustain you in your retirement.

So if sound money is such a good thing, what is stopping people from simply trading with each other in gold and silver?

A simple economics lesson.

U.S. pushing through dozens of foreign weapons deals

From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism.

"This is not about being gunrunners," said Bruce Lemkin, the air force deputy under secretary who is helping coordinate many of the biggest sales.

I wonder why they don't just put them on eBay.

Google search finds seafaring solution

Google may take its battle for global domination to the high seas with the launch of its own “computer navy”.

The company is considering deploying the supercomputers necessary to operate its internet search engines on barges anchored up to seven miles (11km) offshore.

The “water-based data centres” would use wave energy to power and cool their computers, reducing Google’s costs. Their offshore status would also mean the company would no longer have to pay property taxes on its data centres, which are sited across the world, including in Britain.

Google plans to move its supercomputers out to sea and away from the prying eyes - and taxes - of government. Anchors Aweigh!

The Glories of Change

No one person is in charge. Layers upon layers of decisions by millions and billions of people are the essential mechanism that makes the process move forward. All these decisions and choices and guesses come to be aggregated in a single number called the price, and that price can then be used in that simple calculation that indicates success or failure. Every instant of time all around the world that calculation is made, and it results in shifts and movement and progress.

But as wonderful as the daily shifts and movements are, what really inspires are the massive acts of creative destruction such as when old-line firms like Lehman and Merrill melt before our eyes, their good assets transferred to more competent hands and their bad liabilities banished from the face of the earth.

This is the kind of shock and awe we should all celebrate.

Jeffrey A. Tucker explains how the turmoil in the markets is a good thing. It'll all work out unless government decides to "help."

From out of a Rotting Log

What are we doing? The country has gone nuts. If a giant squirrel began collection us and storing us for winter, I’d understand. Three hundred million people, and these factory rejects the best we can do?

Fred Reed critiques the candidates in his usual caustic style.

Ticking Time Bomb Explodes, Public Shocked

The American people have little interest in liberty. Instead, they want the impossible: home ownership for those who cannot afford homes, credit for those who are not creditworthy, old-age pensions for those who have not saved, health care for those who make no attempt to keep themselves healthy, and college educations for those who lack the wit to finish high school. Moreover, they want it now, and they want somebody else to pay for it.

Politicians attempt to suspend basic laws of economics to win elections and the voters expect them to pull it off.

Rainbow Man, once ever-present, shows his dark side

I don't know what made me think of this guy from the 1970's and 1980's who was always appearing on TV at sports events wearing a multi-colored wig and a t-shirt sporting a bible verse, but I did and I googled him. I bet you didn't know he's serving three life sentences for taking a lady hostage.

Reefer Madness and Subsidy Madness

The government almost always intervenes on behalf of the suppliers, not on behalf of the consumers. So it is in this case. The justification has been that there must be orderly markets for homes. This means keeping sale prices higher than the free market would produce.

Let's not kid ourselves. This bailout is a subsidy to the suppliers of homes. It is a subsidy to the few surviving homebuilders, to people who own homes, and to people who may want to sell their home to buy an even bigger home later on.

This is an assault on home buyers.

The government bails out to disguise the fact that government programs are the reason the bail outs are necessary. Gary North explains.

True Temperance

This was the approach initially advocated by the American temperance movement: moderation enforced by self-discipline. Eventually activists concerned about alcohol abuse adopted a different goal, demanding abstinence enforced by law. That change was driven by the conviction that voluntary temperance was a dangerous illusion because alcohol was inherently addicting—the same sort of false belief that underlies the prohibition of the currently illegal intoxicants. I realize Caulkins is merely following semantic convention when he uses temperance to mean abstinence. But the equation of temperance with abstinence lies at the heart of the ideology behind the war on drugs, according to which all use of illegal drugs is abuse.

The essence of the war on drugs is that the government has the power to arrest you if your drug of choice does not meet with their approval whether it is, say, cocaine or trans-fats.

Miles to Go

You must aim your fire at the top of the ticket, John McCain, and not at this beautiful girl, Sarah Palin, about whom you can do nothing.

You can never kill her now. Forget it. She can hurt herself, but in terms of Democratic attacks she is bulletproof. You made her that—she wasn't that way when she walked in.

Hope that Mr. McCain stops campaigning with her and spins her off into her own orbit, to small towns and medium-sized cities. It will cut his recent power in half. Some press will follow her, but mostly on gaffe patrol. They will want to keep their main lens on Obama and McCain.

This is going to be the only way to contain her power: Ignore it.

Peggy Noonan offers some friendly advice to the Democrats. Confront Sarah Palin at your peril - best to just ignore her. It's the same strategy that the Democrats and their friends, the mainstream media, used against Ron Paul. They could not offer better ideas so they kept him off the stage.

Why Disasters Are Getting Worse

If you look at all storms from 1900 to 2005 and imagine we had today's populations on the coasts, as Roger Pielke, Jr., and his colleagues did in a 2008 Natural Hazards Review paper, you would see that the worst hurricane would have actually happened in 1926.

If it happened today, the Great Miami storm would have caused $140 to $157 billion in damages. (Hurricane Katrina, the costliest storm in U.S. history, caused $100 billion in losses.) "There has been no trend in the number or intensity of storms at landfall since 1900,"says Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. "The storms themselves haven't changed."

What's changed is what we've put in the storm's way. Crowding together in coastal cities puts us at risk on a few levels.

Reasons why you should move as far inland as possible to avoid hurricanes - maybe Topeka, Kansas. Uh oh, what about tornadoes? Anyway, climate change is not responsible for costly hurricane damage as much as our tendency to build homes and live in hurricane prone areas.

Bin Laden Laughs

The invasion and occupation of Iraq will wind up costing us three trillion dollars, according to Pulitzer-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, whose notable book makes clear that theirs is a conservative estimate. Imagine if we had taken that money and used it to actually defend the United States of America, instead of traipsing off to "liberate" the downtrodden peoples of Mesopotamia. We would already have a system in place to monitor all air and sea cargo coming into this country, and we'd have a reasonable chance to avoid another 9/11-style terrorist spectacular. As it is, the chances of another attack grow by the day.

The blitzkrieg on the Middle East has been a sinkhole for U.S. dollars - Justin Raimondo doesn't think we're getting much bang for our bucks.

Robbing the poor of Jeffersonian wisdom

I can show the shallow thinking of Thomas Jefferson in another way by merely showing what he should have said, which is, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have, and that is exactly what it will eventually do because that is what it must eventually do if government is going to pay higher and higher bills as inflation in the money supply translates into inflation in consumer prices, and like a giant leech from Outer Space it will sink its fangs into you and suck you dry of financial liquidity, either in taxation or inflation (but usually both), and that is why I, Thomas Jefferson, and all the other Founding Fathers, put into the Constitution the requirement that money can only be gold and silver, which is to make sure that the government can't produce extra money and credit and ruin everything with that boom-bust crap!"

The Mogambo Guru recommends you buy gold, silver or other commodities in order to have a hedge against inevitable inflation. It's too bad Thomas Jefferson is not around to debate Mogambo - it would be a lively discussion.

Ron Paul Statement to the National Press Club

The coverage of the presidential election is designed to be a grand distraction. This is not new, but this year, it’s more so than ever.

Pretending that a true difference exists between the two major candidates is a charade of great proportion. Many who help to perpetuate this myth are frequently unaware of what they are doing and believe that significant differences actually do exist. Indeed, on small points there is the appearance of a difference. The real issues, however, are buried in a barrage of miscellaneous nonsense and endless pontifications by robotic pundits hired to perpetuate the myth of a campaign of substance.

The truth is that our two-party system offers no real choice. The real goal of the campaign is to distract people from considering the real issues.

Just sat through the news onslaught about the "lipstick on a pig" comment by Obama and other "substantive" coverage of election issues.

Day 2,557

There are a lot of details I remember. So do you. We don’t need to rehash them all. To do so is little more than prurient at this point. So I will mention just one more before I tell you what I have to get off my chest. Every day after work, for the next several months, I would pass by a house close to my apartment complex where an enterprising individual had hastily spray-painted a sign, which he placed against some bushes outside his home. The sign simply said, from one day to the next, “Day 12”… “Day 13”… “Day 14”…

That’s how everyone felt who drove by the sign. I went just as nationalistic as the rest of them. I envy now the level-headedness of Internet writers who understood then what was happening behind the deadly, bloody theater to which the rest of us succumbed. I am ashamed of being so naïve, and for so long afterward.

B.R. Merrick felt the way I suppose most of us felt on 9-11-2001 and the ensuing days and months. He wonders though if these feelings were stoked, by government entities, with manipulation and lies to foment support for their agenda.

Stop the Bailout

What should have happened in 1929 is precisely what should happen now. The government should completely remove itself from the course of action and let the market reevaluate resource values. That means bankruptcies, yes. That means bank closures, yes. But these are part of the capitalistic system. They are part of the free-market economy. What is regrettable is not the readjustment process, but that the process was ever made necessary by the preceding interventions.

Let me state this very plainly: I do not believe for one second that if the government fails to nationalize Freddie and Fannie, that the world as we know it will come to an end. Those who are saying that are trying to scare the population, the same as with every other major demand by the regime. It was the same with Nafta, the WTO, the war on terror, the war on bird flu, the nationalization of airport security, and everything else.

Lew Rockwell prescribes 'tough love' economic solutions instead of bailouts.

The American secessionist streak

"The deepest questions of human liberty and government facing our time go beyond right and left, and in fact have made the old left-right split meaningless and dead," the declaration read. "The privileges, monopolies and powers that private corporations have won from government threaten ... health, prosperity and liberty, and have already killed American self-government by the people." The answer, it went on, was that the American states "ought to be free and self-governing."

Radical anarchists? Maybe, but there is a movement to reform the government by secession. It has drawn attention lately only because Sarah Palin and her husband have been associated with the Alaskan Independence Party which wants to put a vote for Alaskan secession on the ballot.

Old Farmers Almanac: Global cooling may be underway

The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming.

Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hits the newsstands on Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.

"We at the Almanac are among those who believe that sunspot cycles and their effects on oceans correlate with climate changes," writes meteorologist and climatologist Joseph D'Aleo. "Studying these and other factor suggests that cold, not warm, climate may be our future."

It remains to be seen, said Editor-in-Chief Jud Hale, whether the human impact on global temperatures will cancel out or override any cooling trend.

"We say that if human beings were not contributing to global warming, it would become real cold in the next 50 years," Hale said.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Drive your SUV's and increase your carbon footprint and save the planet. Don't Recycle. Use plastic. Drill, baby, drill. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oops, sorry, we got a little carried away thinking about how delicious this post is and what the greenies are thinking now. I've got this picture in my head of AL GORE with steam coming out of his ears. Anyone with a little Photoshop talent - please send me a rendering of this.

Just Thought You'd Like to Know

Success! The world hasn't ended

In Hunt for Bin Laden, a New Approach

The Bush administration tried to reinvigorate the flagging hunt for bin Laden early last year by redeploying Predator drones, intelligence officers and Special Forces units to Pakistan and Afghanistan. But by then, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, the war in Iraq had already given bin Laden and his core command precious time to regroup and solidify their new base of operations in northwestern Pakistan.

More recently, the search has been hobbled by a tattered relationship between the United States and Pakistan. CIA and U.S. military officials said cooperation is so bad that they now withhold intelligence about the suspected whereabouts of al-Qaeda commanders out of fear that the Pakistanis might tip them off. Leaders in Pakistan respond that they are committed to fighting al-Qaeda. But they also persistently deny that bin Laden is in their country.

Although they lack hard evidence, U.S. officials said it is only logical that bin Laden is in Pakistan, where he has roamed the mountains along the Afghan border for two decades and enjoyed the protection of Taliban leaders.

"In many ways, it's a perfect place," said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council. "But there's not a scintilla of evidence that we have any idea where he is."

Key Quote: Aurakzai, who was appointed after Sept. 11, 2001, to oversee military operations in northwestern Pakistan and later served for almost two years as governor of North-West Frontier Province, said the United States doesn't want to accept the possibility that bin Laden could be hiding elsewhere.

"We've been imprisoned by this idea that he's either on the Afghan or Pakistani side of the border," he said. "Why aren't we looking anywhere else? I think we need to change this mind-set."

So where to start?

"How the hell do I know?" the general replied.

The war in Iraq was a distraction in our hunt for bin Laden. We have no idea where he is and haven't had a confirmed trace since he escaped from Tora Bora in December, 2001. (Editors Pick)

Let Them Eat Cake

The mass murder by air and land of Afghan civilians, including women and children, continues. It’s not only the U.S. military doing the killing, of course. But none of that murder of innocents would be happening, or would have happened, had Washington not, as Pilger and others have observed, first planned to invade and then moved to base-build in, and occupy, Afghanistan.

In a sheer quantitative sense, the United States has long since avenged 9-11, racking up hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded, and scarred innocents. It has long since avenged 9-11 in sheer destruction, laying waste to cities, villages, homes and hearths, industry, government and religious observance. The destruction and murder is now habitual, profligate and self-indulgent. To the world, the President of the United States – present and future – is an uncouth and supersized version of Marie Antoinette.

By what yardstick do we measure "victory" in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and when do we leave? We have rained bombs and bullets on Afghans and Iraqis for years. Occasionally, we hit the enemy and, more often, we hit the innocent. Have we killed or captured everyone there who wishes to do us harm? Probably not. Are there persons inside our country who wish us harm and are they a more immediate threat than Afghans and Iraqis? Probably so. Is it therefore reasonable to rain bombs and bullets on American cities which may harbor terrorists, even if we kill a few innocents in our efforts? No, but stay tuned.

Don't Steal…the Government Hates Competition

The story is breathtaking. Staggering. Dumbfounding. But there it is - the biggest nationalization in history. Freddie and Fannie finance 3 out of 4 new mortgages. And now, the mortgage industry depends neither on willing buyers and sellers…nor on willing lenders and borrowers…but on the U.S. government. The Land of the Free has put its housing under the control of the state! Yes, there is still plenty of room for private initiative and private decision-making. But, ultimately, millions of Americans now depend on the U.S. government for the roofs over their heads.

We checked the U.S. Constitution for clarification. We were looking for a provision stating that the 'U.S. Federal Government shall enter the mortgage finance business and use taxpayers' money to rescue irresponsible lenders and dimwit homeowners from their own mistakes.' It wasn't there. But so what? If there is anything the government can't do, we have yet to find it.

The FED is desperately trying to avoid the collapse of Fannie/Freddie with guarantees of non-existent money.

The Fallacy of 'Green Jobs'

Governments create no wealth. They only move it around while taking a cut for their trouble. So any jobs created over here come at the expense of jobs that would have been created over there. Overlooking this fact is known as the broken-window fallacy (http://tinyurl.com/ydasa2). The French economist Frederic Bastiat pointed out that a broken shop window will create work for a glassmaker, but that work comes only at the expense of the cook or tailor the shopkeeper would have patronized if he didn't have to replace the window.

Creating jobs is not difficult for government officials. Pharaohs created thousands of jobs by building pyramids. Our government could create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them up. Would actual wealth be created? Of course not. It would be destroyed.

Pharaohs built pyramids - today's politicians want to build windmills.

"Barack Obama Has Never Run a State, a City, or a Business"

The customer is the one who has to be catered to, the one who has to be pleased in the end. Except for some unfortunate circumstances, a business owner (or his managers) have no desire to mistreat, plunder, or dupe their customers. For if there are unhappy customers, there ceases to be customers, and thus, by virtue of the profit-and-loss motive, the business will have to conclude its operations.

However, there is no "customer" of a city or state government -- there are only people who are singled out as prey (because you live the district, locality, county, state, or other) and are victimized and looted for their wealth so that the government entity can plow forward with the stolen pillage and provide jobs, wealth, preferential treatment, and power for the merry band of elected robbers (and their friends) who "run" the government entity.

Karen De Coster nails it by explaining why we don't need politicians whose intentions are to "run" things.

Fannie/Freddie Bailout Makes America 'More Communist than China'

Has America created its own variety of communism with the U.S. Treasury Department’s bailout of two beleaguered government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE)? According to Rogers Holding CEO Jim Rogers, the answer is yes.

“America is more communist than China is right now,” Rogers told CNBC Europe’s “Squawk Box Europe” September 8. “You can at least have a free market in housing and a lot of other things in China. And you can see that this is welfare for the rich. This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters."

Jim Rogers is incensed about the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout.

Palin: Iraq war 'a task that is from God'

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.

Key Quote: "I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches," he said. "The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God."

We don't need another politician in the White House who is hearing voices from above to make policy decisions. GWB has done that for seven and a half years with disastrous results. What we do need is a politician who respects the Constitution - none (except Ron Paul) come to mind.

Fill-in-the-Blank Article About Price-Gouging Laws

As surely as summer follows spring, natural disasters are followed by saber rattling about "price gouging," which is usually defined very lucidly and clearly as an "unconscionable" increase in the price of a necessity. These tend to follow a formula, so I thought that instead of writing a new article discussing the unintended consequences of every price-gouging law that goes into effect after a natural disaster, it would be useful to write a universal, fill-in-the-blank article discussing the economics of price-gouging laws. Whenever there is a natural disaster, you can just fill in the relevant blanks for a complete analysis of the economics of the situation.

Art Carden explains what happens when the government uses a disaster as an excuse to intervene in the free market process. His "fill in the blank" format invites you to participate in his analysis.

When Did Freedom Become an Orphan?

"We must, and we shall, set the tide running again in the cause of freedom. And this party, with its every action, every word, every breath, and every heartbeat, has but a single resolve, and that is freedom." -- Barry Goldwater, accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination

Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions.

You will scour the presidential nominees' acceptance speeches in vain for any hint that your life is rightfully your own, to be lived in accordance with your beliefs and desires and no one else's. The Founding Fathers set out to protect "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but Barack Obama has a different idea.

When presidential candidates tell you to sacrifice, they are referring to your freedom. When they tell you to be unselfish, they want your money. When they tell you to be responsible, they are warning you that whatever happens with their policies, you will be blamed when things go wrong.

Weekend at Henry's

In the 1989 movie "Weekend at Bernie's," a pair of young executives create the illusion that their dead boss is still alive to keep a party going. That's not too far from the premise of this weekend's Treasury bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants that have become financial zombies.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wants to prop up the walking dead so the world keeps buying their mortgage-backed securities. His action may calm jittery credit markets, and it may get the companies through the current mortgage crisis -- albeit at enormous cost to American taxpayers. The tragedy is that he and Congress didn't act 18 months ago -- when the cost would have been far less -- and that he still isn't killing the Fannie and Freddie business model that has done so much damage. These corpses could still return to haunt us again.

Fannie Mae was created in the 1930's and was a government agency until 1968 when it was privatized in order to remove it from the federal budget and to hide the cost of the losses from taxpayers. Freddie Mac was created in 1970 to disguise the machinations of Fannie Mae.

When Storms Batter Islands, Taxpayers Pick up Tab

Fragile barrier islands from Texas to New England take a beating, especially during hurricane season, that cause their beachfronts to wash away and gradually return with the tides. The shape of their sandy shores shifts over time but the islands survive, if left alone.

Yet authorities spend large sums to "fix" them by replenishing sand and other measures, mindful of their appeal to tourists and of the multimillion-dollar beachfront homes along their shores.

It's a pricey fight against Mother Nature that rarely causes the kind of uproar that has accompanied the rebuilding of New Orleans — another spot that's hardly ideal for habitation.

Key quote: "The crazy people are the federal taxpayers who are willing to subsidize that economy."
The coastal islands are home mostly to retirees and investment properties.

Afghans fed up with government, US

The bearded, turbaned men gather beneath a large, leafy tree in rural eastern Nangarhar province. When Malik Mohammed speaks on their behalf, his voice is soft but his words are harsh. Mohammed makes it clear that the tribal chiefs have lost all faith in both their own government and the foreign soldiers in their country.

Such disillusionment is widespread in Afghanistan, feeding an insurgency that has killed 195 foreign soldiers so far this year, 105 of them Americans.

"This is our land. We are afraid to send our sons out the door for fear the American troops will pick them up," says Mohammed, who was chosen by the others to represent them. "Daily we have headaches from the troops. We are fed up. Our government is weak and corrupt and the American soldiers have learned nothing."

OK. I guess you'll need to remind me again why we are fighting a war in this country on the other side of the world. Oh yeah, the Taliban don't like us. I must have had a "senior moment."

Is Gold Money?

The question of whether any particular good is or is not money, can be posed in this way: is the good in question accepted as the final means of payment for transactions?

At present, in the developed world, nearly every nation has its own money or belongs to a currency union, such as the EU. Some nations in the developing world use the US dollar. In highly inflationary environments, the local currency is often spontaneously rejected in favor of the dollar or another foreign currency. Hardly anywhere do we find gold generally accepted as a means of payment. So gold must fail the definitional test of moneyness.

Is this the end of the argument (and so the end of a very short article)? Not quite. Gold is not money, but it has most of the desirable properties of money, and the process by which it became money in the past gives some clues about how it may become money once again.

Gold. Our dollars used to be redeemable for gold. Later they were redeemable for silver. Now they're IOU's. An act of faith in government promises.

Large Hadron Collider will not turn world to goo

The Large Hadron Collider - the atom-smashing machine built underneath the Alps - has sent more internet-based harbingers of doom into a spin than it will have atomic particles whizzing around its 17-mile circumference when it is put into action next week. They fear that the energies released will be so powerful that a runaway black hole will be created that will engulf the planet or produce “quantum strangelets” transforming the Earth into a dead lump of “strange matter”.

So worried are they about the impending end of the Universe that they have been to court to try to stop it.

We plan to continue as usual on September 11. The politicians in D.C. have us much more worried than the LHC or global warming.

Distant Drums at Sarah's Party

Positive polarization has been achieved. The Republican Party has been united and invigorated. The enthusiasm gap with the Democratic ticket has been closed. And the issues upon which the base loves to fight -- the Culture War and Right to Life -- are back on the table.

Palin's beautifully crafted and delivered acceptance speech, after Rudy's gleeful excoriations of the pretensions of Obama, will rank as a night to remember in convention history.

Yet, as the familiar battle lines form up for the delicious eight-week war that lies ahead, one hears a distant thunder. And the seriousness of the hour we are in comes home.

Pat Buchanan sees dark clouds on the horizon and does not think Sarah Palin has all the answers.

Voting for Maggie

Sarah Palin may have changed my mind.

For some reason Governor Palin reminds me of a feisty Margaret Thatcher, who, as a young woman, caught the attention of British conservatism. I remember the old film clips of her battling back against the typically rude carryings-on in the British parliament. (What a raucous mob Britain's Parliament is!) She held her ground, made headway over time, and earned a reputation as the "Iron Lady." Old John Bull benefited from her free market ideas.

Liberals do not like Governor Palin and they are working feverishly to destroy her. It's true she is untested on "Meet The Press." She hasn't been given the third degree by the press corps. The PETA organization hates her. Feminists think she's atrocious. A hick from the wilds of Alaska. But to me, at this moment, she is a breath of fresh air in the political smog that hangs over this nation. More important, she doesn't strike me as the typical stodgy Republican politico promising to expand federal government until it dominates even more of our lives....and pocketbooks.

Potiphar Gride endorses Sarah Palin John McCain for President. This could change things big time.

Leftist media sire hypocrisy

When the story first broke that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had cheated on his cancer-stricken wife and sired a baby with a bimbo on his campaign payroll, The New York Times refused to run it.

But when the news hit that not the president, not the vice president but the daughter of the vice-presidential nominee is pregnant, the Times ran five - count ’em, five - stories about it. In one day.

Edwards dragged his sick wife through the Iowa boonies and paid his girlfriend off in campaign dollars, and the Times decides it’s not worth writing about.

There may not be much to choose between the Republicans and the Democrats but the mainstream media (MSM) definitely leans left says Michael Graham.

We Don't Need a War on Terrorism

The report concluded that the administration's war on terrorism has not significantly degraded al-Qaeda and that the group has morphed into a more formidable enemy. In fact, al-Qaeda has perpetrated more attacks after September 11, 2001 than before it.

RAND deduced that the best way to kill a terrorist group is to capture or kill its leaders. This task is best carried out, according to the study, by law enforcement, intelligence, and, if needed, troops from the local country. Instead of giving terrorists the exalted status of warriors, they should be deemed criminals. In other words, the authors conclude that in most past cases in which terrorist groups have been defeated by getting their leaders, local law enforcement did the job. They say that when troops are needed, local troops have a better understanding of the culture and terrain and thus have more legitimacy than do U.S. forces. In fact, the study says that the presence of U.S. forces on Muslim soil can create more terrorists to fight; thus the authors argue that the U.S. military should confine itself to training the locals.

Or as Fred Reed put it, "The difficulty is that dispersed guerrillas do not have any expensive point targets, crucial territory, or cities. The Pentagon is using baseball bats to fight mosquitoes."

Ichabod!

The Republicans had a chance to nominate the only candidate who embodies everything good that the Republican Party has ever claimed to stand for. Ron Paul is undoubtedly the most pro-life, pro-family, pro-property, pro-liberty, pro-Constitution candidate in history.

The Republican Party and its apologists that write for the red-state fascist blogs and magazines and host the reich-wing nationalist TV and radio talk shows did everything they could to persuade people from voting for Dr. Paul in the Republican primaries.

The nomination of John McCain over Ron Paul means that the Republican Party should never again be taken seriously when it comes to even the slightest pretense of being a friend of liberty, free markets, and limited government.

Neither Democrats or Republicans (except Ron Paul) are seriously interested in reducing the scope of government or increasing liberty.