More on the Peacenik Obama

I just wrote recently about the peacenik Obama and his Nobel prize, then I came across this:

“Recall that President Obama received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Instead, the last budget of his administrations sets an all time record for funding Department of Energy nuclear weapons programs. What this means at Los Alamos is that the Lab’s future is being increasingly tied to expanded production of plutonium pits, the radioactive cores of nuclear weapons.”

Blessed be the peacemaker Obama!

Crony Capitalism

Crony Capitalism

Why are these two words used together? 

Cronyism is the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications. This is the very essence of government currently practiced in the US.

Capitalism is an economic system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners (of capital) for profit. The synonyms of capitalism are free enterprise, private enterprise and the free market. This is supposed to be the economic system of record in the US.

If owners of capital are trying to obtain favors from government by the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, this is just simply cronyism, also known as corruption. There is no need to tack on the word capital to this.

 

Obergefell v. Hodges

Obergefell v. Hodges

I have been troubled by the Obergefell v. Hodges decision by the US Supreme Court that was made back in June of 2015.  I have been contemplating what to write and this is what I believe should be said. But first, let me start with a photo:

Is there any question where the feddle gummint stands on this issue?

I wanted to say a lot about this remarkably brazen decision by SCOTUS, but then I realized that the 12 Apostles of Jesus Christ spoke about this issue 20 years ago.  Here is what they said:

The Family

---

A Proclamation to the World

The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

In the premortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life. The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.

The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife. We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

We declare the means by which mortal life is created to be divinely appointed. We affirm the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.

Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. “Children are an heritage of the Lord” (Psalm 127:3). Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

To me it sounds like the calamities should be on their way. Coincidentally, the fiscal bankruptcy of the feddle gummint goes hand in hand with the moral bankruptcy of American society.

Marriage was instituted by God and predates the scrap of paper called the US Constitution by thousands of years.

Perhaps it will one day become clear to Americans that God, being the ruler of the Universe, makes the Laws and the rubbish scribbled by the robed clowns of SCOTUS is a printed rejection of their belief in Him. These opposing world views are not miscible.

PS. (Rhetorical Question) Am I the only soul on this planet that now comprehends that the only freedom the feddle gummint actually promotes is complete sexual license, while curtailing those freedoms that really matter, like life and property?

 

An Open Letter to Potential Visiting Extraterrestrials

Dear Extraterrestrial Visitors,

As a sign of our friendliness here on earth, I wish to share a few things with you that you might find perplexing and confusing.  I'm sure that once I explain them, you will feel a lot more at ease knowing that some things just can't be explained and even we humans have to shrug our shoulders.

This is how I was going to start a post about Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, but I ran low on satire. It wasn't funny. It was grotesque.

Though I found little solace with satire, I found more in the fact that the unindicted war criminal, Henry Kissinger was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize way back in the 70's.

How could these apparatchiks of the Messianic state be awarded a prize that seems to mean the opposite of peace? 

Obama the commander and chief of drone attacks and the invader of countries and the over-thrower of regimes, a peaceful person?

The only rational conclusion is that the Nobel Peace prize is a messianic prize awarded to a statist messiah by other like minded statists.
 
 For the rest of us, we have to endure the grotesqueness of the whole thing.

The Messianic State

If anyone doubts the Messianic nature the the modern state (the US for example), one only has to see the media veneration of one of the supremes at their passing, Antonin Scalia in this case.

I simply can't believe that the US flag has been at half mast around the country for a week. But, or course, what is the US flag except the battle standard of the savior state.

Why these 9 fools have say over the alleged democracy of 320 million people is nothing short of grotesque. RIP, Antonin Scalia. I can only hope your colleagues join you soon.

Denier

I am a denier. That’s right.  I don’t believe in human caused global climate change or warming or cooling or whatever.  There, I said it. And here is why.

Read the entire article here.

Additionally, all animal and plant life on this planet is carbon-based. (Carbon is an element. It’s not man-made. It’s on the periodic table. Look it up.) The carbon comes from the atmosphere and is incorporated into plant tissues through photosynthesis.  The carbon is then transferred to animals when they eat plants. (And to humans when we eat plants and animals.)

The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 400 parts per million, or about 0.04% by volume. That’s pretty darn small.  In fact, plants cannot survive at 150 ppm and below. That’s right, they die. All of the CO2 humans have putatively added since the industrial revolution only brings us to 400 ppm, not that far from where plants die. Plants can grow much better and produce more fruit at concentrations of 2000 ppm and beyond. 

CO2 doesn't become toxic to human respiration until around 10,000 ppm or 1%.

“A large segment of the public does not even know that most of the molecules in their bodies that make life possible contain carbon atoms that originated as atmospheric carbon dioxide.” Dr. Art Robinson

Global attempts to control the use of hydrocarbon fuels is really nothing short of an attempt to globally control all life on earth. It was probably thought up by Mephistopheles himself.

Economic Imbeciles by Gary North

I stole this entire article from Gary North. I hope he is flattered. You should subscribe to his website.

Someone has got to publish (far and wide) alternative ideas to the collectivized, centralized thinking that congests those 10 square miles on the Potomac and at the FED.

Besides, when the feddle gummint defaults on its promises, monetary and otherwise, I would like to show, for the record, that better ideas are available. There is a way forward. 

Have Hope: Our Opponents Are Economic Imbeciles.

Gary North - January 05, 2016

I have never had a lot of patience. I suppose this is one of my character flaws.

I do not suffer fools lightly. I suppose this is another one of my character flaws.
I use strong rhetoric to deal with economic imbeciles. I do not regard this as one of my character flaws. I regard it as one of my strengths.
ECONOMIC IMBECILES
All around us are economic imbeciles. We find them in the major university economics departments. We find them on the financial media sites. We certainly find them in Congress. Above all, we find them on the Federal Open Market Committee. These people believe that a government committee, filled with tenured bureaucrats, is better equipped to solve economic problems than the competitive free market is, where people have their own money on the line.
They really are economic imbeciles. They may have IQ's that got them through college or graduate school. But, in their understanding of cause and effect, they are imbeciles. They do not understand that they are imbeciles. They preach to the choirs that surround them.
Why do economic imbeciles get a hearing? Because voters desperately want to justify the fact that they have used the state, and especially the federal government, to confiscate wealth from each other. They want to believe in their hearts that they are doing the morally right thing by sending out a thug with a badge and a gun, who tells the hapless citizen to fork over his money, or he will go to jail. We have an entire political and economic system which rests ultimately on this threat.
Anyone who falls intellectually for this kind of immorality is not a reliable judge of much of anything. When this person goes looking for an expert opinion to justify the fact that he is a thief, he is likely to find that only third-rate logicians, who cannot follow the chain of reasoning, are going to come forward in the name of organized theft.
It starts with a moral problem. It starts with a violation of the commandment not to steal. We have a modern civilization that is built on a systematic violation of this commandment.
The overwhelming majority of voters today are convinced that the present economic order in no way violates this principle. Virtually all of the pastors in the pulpits are convinced of this. They don't preach against the organized theft of modern Keynesianism. They don't think it's part of their calling to point out the obvious ethical implications of the system of government that compels people to support other people, merely because the other people don't want to go out and get a job.
Or maybe other people do want to go out and get a job, but they find competition from outside the country difficult to deal with. So, they call upon economic imbeciles to justify their desire by establishing trade barriers against imported goods. Fortunately, on this particular issue, there are a limited number of economic imbeciles with any influence, and there have not been many since the early 19th century. From Adam Smith until Murray Rothbard, economists who understand cause and effect have been opposed to trade barriers. So, those people who feel that they have a right to keep foreigners from competing against them have to appeal to economic imbeciles who cannot think straight.
I suppose I shouldn't use strong rhetoric. The phrase "economic imbeciles" is strong rhetoric. The problem is this: these people really are economic imbeciles. They literally cannot follow cause-and-effect and economic analysis. This is why they don't like Austrian school economics. This is why most of them favor central banking. This is why they favor government intervention into the economy. Their instinctive reaction to every problem is to get the government to pass a law, set up a bureaucracy, and send out people with badges and guns to tell other people what to do. It is a way of life for these people. It is also a way of life for the court economists who are on government payrolls in tax-funded universities.
BAD ETHICS AND PAINFUL OUTCOMES
If there were no built-in self-destruct arrangements in the very character, meaning moral character, of the institutions of organized theft, then I don't think we could win the battle. If it were simply a matter of good arguments driving out bad arguments, I don't think we could win this thing. Self-interest really is dominant. That is what economic analysis teaches, and I believe this principle.
But self-interest on behalf of organized theft is misplaced. Built into the creation, and built into the free market economy, are a series of poison pills. When individuals use violence or the threat of violence to interfere with market processes, they don't look at the long-term consequences of these interferences. Somewhere down the road, there is going to be hell to pay. There is going to be a great default. There is going to be something that disrupts the lives of those voters, as well as their victims, who vote in favor of the expansion of governments into the lives of citizens.
The defenders of organized theft deny that there are these built-in negative sanctions against any society that follows these practices, but, as I've said, the defenders are economic imbeciles.
If incorrect ideas and bad ethics did not produce bad results, the case for liberty would never get off the ground. People would simply ignore the arguments. But, there really are built-in negative sanctions that will produce disasters in those societies that extend the influence and power of civil government into market processes. The public will be astounded when these sanctions arrive. Millions of voters are going to go looking for answers. In that period of confusion, consternation, and enormous capital losses, which is going to destroy the dreams and schemes of generations of complacent thieves, the thieves are going to want to know how this happened.
I think the success of the movie, The Big Short, is indicative of the opportunity that lies ahead. The movie does not talk about the Federal Reserve System, but it certainly talks about the bankers, greed, and the fact that the government did nothing to protect the victims. When the really big short takes place, defenders of liberty will have an opportunity to enter the competitive arena of ideas. We will have this advantage: we are not economic imbeciles. We can follow cause and effect. We can express these ideas without resorting to arcane formulas. We can actually speak in English. Most of our opponents do not have this ability. They cannot make themselves understood by the general public.
A BATTLE OF SLOGANS
The Keynesians have no equivalent of this slogan: "There is no such thing as a free lunch." This is a powerful slogan. So is this one: "You can't get something for nothing." So is this one: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." So is this one: "Honesty is the best policy." But, above all others, we have this one: "Thou shalt not steal."
The Keynesians have this slogan: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." The entire case for Keynesianism is based on this slogan.
This is why it pays to defend freedom. Even when the overwhelming majority of voters do not want to hear the arguments, we should keep making them. We should keep pointing out that there will be horrendous negative repercussions for violations of the principle of voluntary exchange. We don't get a hearing, except during crises. I have good news. There will be plenty of crises in which we will get a hearing.