Nice of them to tell us before they sold us into prostitution.

Apparently, since China owns so much of the U.S.'s national debt, they're allowed to bid on more directly.  They have a direct link into the system, instead of having to bid through the Wall Street banks, like everyone else.

Scary news, right?

Here's better: they've been doing this quietly since June of 2011. 

Our government has sold us into prostitution, with debt as their drug of choice to addict us to, and didn't bother to tell us for a whole fucking year. 

Here we go again.

I've written about the damage that government welfare programs cause in individuals that are told they're forced to depend on them (see here, here, here, and here). The reforms signed in 1996 did a lot to get people who fell into the government safety net back on their feet and off of assistance as quickly as possible. Katherine Bradley of the National Review Online describes how that reform worked.

And how Dear Leader plans to try to reverse those reforms. That, combined with the extension of unemployment (again and again and again), I believe is designed to get as many people dependent upon the government as possible. The more people depend on the government for their income and livelihood, the fewer vote against the bread and circuses as the current administration works to turn us into the USSR in its heyday.

Indeed, once they get as many of us as possible put on welfare, they've already half succeeded. Mandatory Medicaid will put us closer. And if we let them take our guns, we no longer have a chance to keep any of our other freedoms.

In a perfect world...

...scientists would be required to read science fiction before experimenting with things that could be disastrous if they got loose.

It starts.

Walter E. Williams, economics professor and Townhall columnist, wrote a piece published today about various states debating and passing legislation reasserting the right to limited sovereignty under the 10th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Though he makes a great comparison between the abuses Americans suffered while still a British colony under King George III, and Americans today suffer under an increasingly despotic legislature and judiciary, I can't help but think that so starts a second Civil War.

And I can't help but think back to our first one, where most of a generation of men were maimed or killed. States' rights was what the initial argument was about--a state's right to declare as a slave or free state as it entered the Union.

Granted, that was a bad argument. We look back now, from our pinnacle of moral superiority, and declare that no state should have allowed slavery, without looking at it through the perspective of the times--and through the perspective that the South was falling behind economically to such a degree that slavery likely wouldn't have lasted beyond another generation or two anyway.

The argument that will split the nation today is, once again, about economics and morals. Simply put, the fight today is about Capitalism v. Marxism: personal property v. providing for everyone equally regardless of how hard they're willing to work, and is, at its base, about whether the federal government has the moral right to take money from the few who achieve much to give to the many who work little (or not at all) and achieve less.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, permits for taxes to be collected "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." (It also says, right in the same clause, that all federal taxes are to be uniform--in other words, not only are the special, 90% tax levied on AIG executive bonuses unconstitutional, progressive federal income tax could be argued that way, as well.)

There is nothing, not one word, in the constitution that could be read as permitting the redistribution of wealth from those who've earned or inherited it to those who have not.

I guess that's why our current POTUS said that the Constitution was a good, but "deeply flawed" document: obviously, Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto is a better document, if one wants to seize personally owned and held property--and what is a publicly traded company but one that's personally owned and held by many?--to redistribute the money involved. To "spread the wealth."

"Cap and trade" legislation, legislation intended to limit "carbon" emission, is not so openly intended to have the same effect. However, what will eventually happen there is that the companies so taxed will pass their costs on to the consumers: they'll cut jobs and raise prices to offset the "carbon offsets."

Not the effect that the POTUS would like to see. But that's why they call it "the law of unintended consequences."

Much like the coming civil war.

Only this time, the secessionists will more likely have the United States Armed Forces, whose oath is to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic, on their side.

After all, the current administration--almost all of it--is violating the Constitution, and the duly ratified amendments thereto, right and left.

God, don't we have perfect timing?

Our military decided that it was time to upgrade our nuclear weapons. Then, they discovered that we have a tiny problem. Insignificant, really, in the scheme of things.

The government labs have forgotten how to make critical parts.

That's right. Our government cannot remember how--cannot seem to find any documentation on it, and claim to have simply not kept records on the process--to make components critical to the upgrades.

And what wonderful timing they had, too. Not only is Iran fighting to acquire nuclear weapons, but The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (make note of all the Orwellian Newspeak in that--it's Communist North Korea) is threatening that they'll attack anyone who shoots down their "satellite" that no one is sure will actually be a satellite.

Our timing in discovering that we lack critical information and skills absolutely could not come at a better time.

Newspeak for "We're going to take over the world."

China's expanding its navy. They're calling it a "peaceful development." "Peaceful rise" had been considered and discarded because it sounded too "aggressive." They say that they have no interest in being aggressive, and are not a danger to the rest of the world.

Bullshit.

The Chinese navy harassed an unarmed U.S. Naval vessel. They've also emphatically declared that they have absolutely no interest in reform toward Western-style democracy. Much of their navy is focused on troop-landing vessels.

In 1941, Japan decided they wanted to be the only power in the Pacific. It looks like it's China's turn, but I doubt very seriously that they'd be interested in dominating only the Pacific.

Damn you, Bandit Six!

It isn't the bird flu (see chapter 3), but this doesn't look good. It's overloading Britain's hospital capacity.

Not only does Bandit Six seem to be right about global cooling (see previous post), but about health care nastiness, too.

If this is true, we're all in deep trouble.

Kanye West, in a surprising burst of humility, let it be known that he thinks he's the voice of this generation.

I certainly hope not--if he is the voice of even a small part of this generation, we can look forward to true misogyny coming back with the coming of age and into political power of the generation he claims to speak for. We can look forward to the United States' average citizen becoming more selfish, and more arrogant, but more ignorant, and less able to defend him/herself from a power hungry government, and an envious world.

And heaven help the rest of us.

Update: The man himself proves my point.

Predictions

The United States' intelligence chief has predicted that we'll be seeing a lot more armed conflict in the coming years. That was a tough one to predict.

The Soviet Union--er, Russia--is showing more and more aggressive tendencies toward their neighbors/former satellites. They're also instigating difficulties with us in our own hemisphere with their games with Communist-leaning South American countries, and with arms sales both here and in the Middle East.

The Middle East is cooling off in some places, heating up in others.

To top it all off, the continuing economic problems currently plaguing us are destabilizing economies worldwide, many far worse than what we're facing. And with an unstable economy, conflict becomes far more likely as people get restless, nervous, and unhappy, and more belligerent people elect more belligerent governments.

Lovely. Here are some of my predictions: watch for a catastrophic terrorist attack on our shores after the election. It doesn't matter who's elected--it will happen. Also, watch for some serious deflation to begin making itself known, and for a whole lot of jobs to disappear as it becomes impractical for businesses to continue to employ people in a goods-surplus environment, especially after the minimum wage increase. Also, look for a major shift in parties in power in the next two years as people get sick of it all.

Some predictions--like probable war, terrorist attacks, a worsening economy, and voters deciding to see if the other party can fix the problems--are easy to make. Others, like where the attack will happen, are impossible.

Just...peachy.

Here's proof that Russia has no interest in helping the West prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power: the Russian company building the first plant in Iran has just announced that they've reached the final stages in building.

Why do I take that as proof that Russia has no interest in being an active, helpful partner to the West?  I mean, all our power companies over here in the US are private companies, and Russia's a capitalist society, now, right?

Wrong.  The company that's been working in Iran is state-run.  That means it has not only the consent of the government, but the active participation thereof.

I suppose that just shows that Stratfor's and the Heritage Foundation's analysts are right: Russia's interests lie in destabilizing the Middle East, keeping us occupied while they regain their footing as a superpower.

I was afraid of this.

And it seems, as I do more research, that it simply hadn't been reported on. Mexico has been crossing our border fairly regularly--for years. Not the illegal immigrant problem that the politicians debate about, but military incursions onto US soil that are either not reported on at all, or explained away as "just a misunderstanding."

The most recent? Maybe not military--yet--but that could change. Mexican drug cartels have given their hitters the okay to take out targets on US soil. "The cartels, battling one another and the Mexican government for supremacy and control of lucrative drug and human smuggling routes, have become brazen in their attacks in recent months." Juarez is an example of the violence that has broken out down there, and is now spilling across the border. What is our government doing? Issuing alerts to "stay vigilant."

Just before the warnings were issued, we had another "incursion" into our soverign territory: on 6 August 2008, about 85 miles southwest of Tuscon, Arizona, four Mexican army troops crossed the border, and caught and held a US border patrol agent--at gunpoint--for several minutes. The media (and our government) has said that it was a "simple misunderstanding," that the Mexican troops did not know they weren't in Mexico.

Bullshit. It was fenced with barbed wire. The Mexican troops had to have crossed the fence somehow. Worse? "Bonner said there have been at least a half-dozen situations in recent years in which Mexican soldiers have entered U.S. territory and shot at Border Patrol agents." Worse yet? If our agents fire back in self defense, they go away for a while.

By the way, it's probable that many of the, ahem, incursions across our borders are likely related to the drug cartels. Did you notice in the quote above that they're fighting the government for surpremacy? Oh, and this nice little tidbit is what takes that speculation out of the realm of paranoia into probability. Isn't it nice that the Mexican military hires out to kill targets in the United States, and does so with such overkill? Here is access to the police reports. Oh, and by the way. The date on that story? June of this year.

The Minutemen post videos. Judicial Watch posts Homeland Security's incursion reports for the past several years. 226 incursions between 1996 and 2005. More since.

We haven't done anything about it yet. We probably won't do anything about it for the foreseeable future. The local media is afraid to cover it. The national media simply won't. It's not politically correct.

I'll be watching this as closely as I am Russia.

Who do we believe?

I checked my e-mail as soon as I got up this morning. MSN had a story about Russain troops withdrawing from the native city of Stalin, Gori. I heaved a bit of a sigh of relief.

Then I read further:

The first of two planned U.S. aid flights arrived in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi late Wednesday, carrying cots, blankets and medicine for refugees displaced by the fighting. The shipment arrived on a C-17 military plane, an illustration of the close U.S.-Georgia military cooperation that has angered Russia.

So what? Russia's angry? That just matches up with what I've heard about our own nuts blaming us for Russia's invasion of a neighboring country. Honestly, people, how is it our fault?We didn't give passports and citizenship papers to two regions in a neighboring country. We didn't encourage those provinces to rebel. We certainly did not tell Russia to invade on the excuse that they were "only aiding Russian citizens upon their request. " So how is it our fault?

Oh, wait, there's more! It looks like the Soviet Union isn't withdrawing after all! And the Russian foreign minister has said to "forget any talk about Georgia's territorial integrity."

Not that I think it'll do any good, but our own Ms. Rice has gone over there. She says, "This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed." They certainly have, but not for the better: I sincerely doubt that the United States has the ability, at this point, to do anything. Europe simply doesn't have the will.

Victor Davis Hanson of Townhall and National Review sums up why Russia's going to get away with what it's doing:

"…what a richer but more critical world has forgotten is that in large part America was the model, not the villain -- and that postwar globalization was always a form of engaged Americanization that enriched and protected billions.

Yet globalization, in all its manifestations, will run out of steam the moment we tire of fueling it, as the world returns instead to the mindset of the 1930s -- with protectionist tariffs; weak, disarmed democracies; an isolationist America; predatory dictatorships; and a demoralized gloom-and-doom Western elite.

Brace yourself -- we may be on our way back to an old world, where the strong do as they will, and the weak suffer as they must."

Somehow, I'm not surprised.

I never expected the truce to last. I was right. Putin and his probable puppet president didn't have Hitler's reasons to wait a few months: they know--too well, I think--that nothing will be done to stop them. Georgia warned us that they were going to be breaking the truce. I just don't think anyone realized how soon.

What's next? Some have posited that the next target will be the Ukrane. Why? Because they're also pro-U.S, and because they're also a former part of the USSR.

Once again, WHY? Because of Putin. He's former (and some say still) KGB.

Trust, But Verify

Well, Russia has agreed to ceace hostilities--for now. They've (at least oficially) stopped bombing the soverign state of Georgia, but refuse to withdraw troops both from Southern Ossetia and from the areas of Georgia they pushed into. The (probable) puppet president of Russia has ordered Russian troops to hold the ground they've taken, defend themselves, and quell any rebellion in the areas they've taken.

In essence, Russia has cut Georgia nearly in half. They say they've completed what they've set out to do. I say that we need to take them at their word exactly as Regan did: trust, but verify.

Why?

Well, this entire situation stinks of a set-up. I spoke of some of what I mean now yesterday, regarding the parallels between this invasion of a neighboring, smaller country, and Hitler's invasion of Chechoslovakia in '38. The further I've read, the more convinced I am that this has been in the works for a long, long time, at least on Russia's part.

According to the New York Times (not the most credible source of all, but still), Russia has been giving out passports and citizenship papers to anyone who wanted them since before Georgia's current president was elected. The International Herald Tribune (admittedly a sattelite of the New York Times) says:

Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, Russia had been granting citizenship and distributing passports to virtually all of the adult residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the much larger separatist region on the Black Sea where Russia also massed troops over the weekend.

The West was skeptical about the validity of Russia's handing out passports by the thousands to citizens of another nation. But whatever the legal merits, the Kremlin had laid the foundation for one of its public relations arguments for invading Georgia: Its army was coming to the aid of Russian citizens under foreign attack.

Many sources have been skeptical of this move. Many sources agree that has allowed for the position that Russia took in invading a soverign nation. What allowed them to claim, like Hitler, that they were only following the wishes of Russian citizens. Many sources also agree that Russia's response has been "disproportional.

Russia, and Vladimir Putin in specific, has made no secret of personally and politically disliking Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili, from the start. Indeed, "Russia's foreign minister called for Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to resign and Medvedev said Georgia must pull its troops from South Ossetia and Abkhazia — the two breakaway provinces at the heart of the dispute."

Update: As I said first, Russia claims that they've ceased hostilities. Georgia says otherwise. Russia says that the attacks are from another separatist segment of Georgia, Abkhazian. However, there is no proof that Russia is telling the truth. Before we believe them, we need to make sure that they are.

Update: I thought so, too.

Sometime, there'll be some downtime for personal philosophy...

...but it doesn't look like that time is anytime at hand. I was starting to write an entry talking about why the utopia planned for us by our selfless leaders was a bad idea, but then this happened. It doesn't look like Putin & comrades are planning on stopping with Ostia. Georgia's calling for help. We're airlifting their people home from Iraq, where they've provided the third largest troop support, behind the UK, for us. Does this ring any bells, historically? Dick Morris thinks it does.

In an article (or opinion column, depending on how one views it) posted today on conservative site Townhall.com, Morris compares this attack to Hitler's attack on the Czechoslovakia province of Sudetenland in 1938. Indeed, there are some...unnerving parallels.

Germany said it was responding to separatist demands from the large German population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Germany. Hitler's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West.

...

Russia said it was responding to separatist demands from the large Russian population that lived there and that she was merely honoring their desire for reunion with Russia. Putin's tanks took over a vital part of an independent country that had largely rejected his overtures and allied itself with the West.

Neither time did the West, specifically the US and UK, do anything to stop either. A few months after he took Sutendenland, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia, because the Western Allies that won WWI did nothing to stop him. From the stories I linked to earlier, it doesn't appear that Putin will even wait months because he is sure that we will do no more to stop him than we did in 1938 with Hitler.

We may be missing a chance to avoid another world war by not responding here, now, to this provocation.

Update: Here's another take on the situation.

Where's Ghost when you need him?

Has anyone seen what Russia's been doing lately? This, when viewed in light of their history is a little bit nervous-making for me. They certainly seem to be returning to the pre-Regan default. I wonder if there's an unseen reason behind Russia's seeming-sudden attack, considering that we're starting to airlift Georgian troops home. It could be my paranoia making me see things that aren't there, but who's to say that they're not trying to isolate us before another cold (or not-so-cold) war?

I feel more and more like we're facing more enemies with fewer friends. It seems as if our traditional allies are losing their will to maintain freedom, what with Britain declaring that Sharia law is an acceptable substitute for British national law (indeed, is unavoidable, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury), socialism running rampant in Western Europe, and Spain withdrawing their troops from Iraq after a terrorist attack a few years ago. I'm not certain that France was ever an ally in more than name only. Same with modern Germany.

Oddly enough, it seems as if the former Soviet Block countries, and Japan (another former enemy) are our only real friends in this world. And none of these really have what it's going to take to have our backs against the countries that hate us. It really makes me nervous for the future of not only my country, but the whole world. I mean, really. Do we want Russia or China, neither of which has a really decent track record with supporting and sustaining human rights, stepping up when we fall?

Seriously, where's Ghost when you need him?