“Chill out, it’s just a dog, you can buy another one.”

Source: Washington State DUI
Note: The story below is almost a year old ... but still news to some.

San Marcos Officer Paul Stephens Watches a Teacup Poodle Die in Owner’s Arm

By Garth O'Brien August 16, 2008

San Marcos, Texas. This story is very alarming, and will shock the average citizen to the core. Krystal Hernandez owned a sweet teacup poodle named Missy. Unfortunately, Missy was very ill and required immediate emergency care. Krystal and her boyfriend Michael Gonzalez jumped in the car and raced off to a veterinary hospital to save Missy.

Gonzalez navigated his vehicle onto Interstate 35 and reached speeds at high as 95 mph. Driving 95 mph on a public highway is extremely dangerous and should be reserved for a raceway in a secure and safe environment. Other drivers rely upon the fact that their fellow drivers will abide by the traffic regulations. This consistency and predictability creates the foundation that prevents accidents and mayhem on the roadway. Gonzalez clearly tossed out that predictability by careening down an interstate at 95 mph. However, there are situations that require an individual to break a rule because following the law might be more dangerous. For example, most drivers are given a “get out of jail free” card when racing to the hospital to preserve life or to transport a woman in labor. This does not preclude them from being issued a ticket for their actions, but you never hear of a police officer delaying such citizens on the side of the road.

It is too bad Gonzalez and Hernandez were not racing to save a human life. They were desperately trying to save Missy the teacup poodle. Unfortunately, San Marcos Police Officer Paul Stephens was on patrol that night. Stephens stopped Gonzalez and immediately launched into an investigation asking what Gonzalez was “on.” They explained their predicament, but it was clear that Stephens was going to detain them. Hernandez begged and pleaded for Missy’s life.

Stephens chillingly retorted, “Chill out, it’s just a dog, you can buy another one.” Stephens then took his sweet time in issuing a traffic citation. He even chatted with other officers that arrived on the scene. All the while Missy’s condition was declining. Instead of assisting the couple and helping to get Missy to a veterinary hospital he slowly enforced the law. He presented his traffic ticket to the couple 20 minutes later, but Missy had already died in her Hernandez’s lap.

I am distressed that a police officer has such a callous disposition toward life. That a police officer, sworn to serve and protect, can watch an animal die in the arms of their owner. An owner that is begging for help to save her cherished pet. Stephens soaked in the fear, the sadness and the helplessness of Hernandez and reveled in his position of authority. He knew a dog’s life was being extinguished and that he could have helped save that life. Instead he chooses to watch that life slip away.

Stephens could have driven the party or could have escorted Gonzalez and Hernandez to the animal hospital. While Missy was receiving treatment Stephens could have issued a speeding ticket to Gonzalez. However, having the power over citizens can be such a thrill, and being able to decide whether an animal lives or dies is quite powerful. “Chill out, it’s just a dog, you can buy another one.”

I wrote Police Chief Howard Williams explaining my concern about Stephens’ disregard for life. Howie responded with:

I appreciate your concerns. We, too, were disappointed in our officer’s behavior. He has been reprimanded, and he has been counseled on his behavior.

Howard E. Williams
Chief of Police
San Marcos Police Department
2300 IH-35 S
San Marcos, TX 78666
(512) 753-2100

I wonder what class Stephens attended to learn how to respect life? I wonder how that class miraculously taught Stephens to respect life in just a few hours or days? There is a reason police officers receive a psyche and behavioral evaluation during the hiring process. Many are washed out after this evaluation because they cannot manage the power and responsibility lawfully. Some get through the process like Stephens.

I wonder what the San Marcos K9 unit thinks about Stephens. I sure would not want my trusty german shepard working the same call as Stephens. If the K9 is shot or dies while taking down a suspect the handler can fall back on these comforting words, “Chill out, it’s just a dog, you can buy another one.”

Stephens should have been fired because this will not be the last blemish on Stephens’ glorious law enforcement career. You cannot teach someone to respect life in a class. The citizens of San Marcos should demand Stephens’ badge and gun are turned in permanently. Otherwise they should just chill out the next time he stumbles while on the job.

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Swine Flu and You...No Safety Test? Don’t worry, be happy…

Update (11 August 2009): Please check this one out... http://normanhooben.blogspot.com/2009/08/swine-flu-and-youits-been-almost-thirty.html Now Legal Immunity for Swine flu Vaccine Makers By F. William Engdahl

The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 virus—which has yet to be rigorously scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted procedure—a global “pandemic” threat? The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies. Not so sage SAGE That is once the WHO in Geneva, on recommendation of the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group on Immunizations, declared H1N1 to be Phase 6 or Pandemic, automatic emergency health response programs could be activated even in countries such as Germany where reported outbreaks of even “suspected” H1N1 can be counted to date on the fingers of slightly more than one hand. The WHO’s SAGE is also worth scrutiny. Its Chairman since 2005 has been the UK Director of Immunization at the British Department of Health, Dr David Salisbury. In the 1980’s Salisbury reportedly drew major fire for backing a massive vaccination of children with a multiple MMR vaccine manufactured by the predecessor company of GlaxoSmithKline. That vaccine was pulled off the market in Japan after significant numbers of children developed adverse reactions to the vaccine and the Japanese government was forced to pay significant compensation to the victims. In Sweden the MMR vaccine of GlaxoSmithKline was removed after scientists linked it to outbreaks of Crohn’s disease. Apparently that had little impact on WHO SAGE chairman Salisbury. According to one independent UK investigator, Alan Golding, who obtained Freedom of Information documents on the case, in “1986 Trivirix, an MMR compound containing the Mumps Urabe strain AM-9, was introduced in Canada to replace MMR I. Concerns regarding the introduction of MMR in the UK are recorded in the minutes of the Joint Working Party of the British Paediatric Association and the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) Liaison Group on June 26th of that year. Such concerns were soon to prove well grounded, as reports began to come in of an increased incidence of aseptic meningitis in vaccinated individuals. Ultimately, all MMR vaccines containing the Urabe strain of mumps were withdrawn in Canada in early 1988. This was before Urabe containing vaccines were licenced by the Department of Health for use in the UK…” The report adds, “Smith-Kline—French, the pharmaceutical company who became Smith-Kline-Beecham and were involved in UK manufacture at that time, were concerned about these safety issues and were reluctant to obtain a UK license for their Urabe-containing vaccines. As a result of their ‘concern’ that children might be seriously damaged by one of their products, they requested that the UK government indemnify them against possible legal action that might be taken as a result of ‘losses’ associated with the vaccine, which by then was known to carry significant risk to health. The UK government, advised by Professor Salisbury and representatives from the Department of Health, in it’s enthusiasm to get a cheap MMR onto the market, agreed to this request.” Today the same Dr Salisbury is advocating global proliferation of untested H1N1 vaccines, also manufactured by the same firm, now called GlaxoSmithKline. The last phoney Swine Flu Disaster The last time the US Government faced a new swine flu virus was in 1976. Thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects from the shots. This time, the government has taken steps to prevent any possible legal remedy should thousands of US citizens suffer severe complications as a result of being given untested vaccines. In 1976 President Gerald Ford, facing a difficult re-election campaign, was advised by the head of the CDC, David Sencer, to launch a mass national vaccination. As today with H1N1 Swine Flu, Sencer also used the scare of the alleged 1918 flu pandemic. Notably, some scientific researchers maintain that the deaths during the flu wave of 1918-1919, in the aftermath of the ghastly First World War, came not from any virus but from the governmental campaigns of mass vaccination against “Spanish Flu.” Interestingly, the Rockefeller University and Foundation was in the middle of that event as well. Cases of what was then called swine flu were found in soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. in 1976, including one death. That death, whose true cause is in dispute as the soldier, sick with influenza was put on a forced march despite and fell dead, was used by Sencer to convince Ford to launch one of the most infamous public health fiascos in US history, forcing Sencer’s resignation as CDC head. Federal officials vaccinated 40 million Americans during a national campaign. A pandemic never materialized, but thousands who got the shots filed injury claims, as they contracted a paralyzing condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome or other side effects. At least 25 people died after receiving the vaccine died and 500 developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, an inflammation of the nervous system which can cause paralysis and be fatal. The US Government was forced to pay damages after vaccination victims made it a national scandal. In the end the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine proved far worse than the disease. Sencer was fired in 1977 for the fiasco but by then the damage had already been done. No Safety Test? Don’t worry, be happy… The story gets worse. Now that the Obama Administration has signed a document of immunity from legal prosecution, the FDA in the United States and UK health authorities have decided to let Big Pharma put vaccine products onto the market before any tests of the possible harmful side effects of the vaccines are even known. The first doses of swine flu vaccine will be given to the public before full data on its safety and effectiveness become available. The untested “pandemic” vaccines will be spread over two doses in a higher quantity, and one brand reportedly will contain a chemical additive, an adjuvant, to make it “go further,” dramatically potentially increasing the risk of side-effects. Children will be among those first in line for the shots and may get the vaccine more than a month before trial results are received. In the UK the government’s National Health Service, NHS, has been ordered to plan for a worst-case scenario in which swine flu might cause 65,000 deaths over the coming winter, including several thousand deaths among children. The British Government has placed advance orders for 132 million doses of vaccine with two manufacturers, GlaxoSmithKline and Baxter, who have licensed “in advance” three "core" vaccines in preparation for a pandemic, conveniently enough even though we are told by WHO and epidemiologists that we cannot prepare in advance for what could be a more ominous mutation of the currently very mild H1N1 problem. Curiously enough, a full year before any reported case of the current alleged H1N1, the major pharmaceutical company, Baxter, filed for a patent for H1N1 vaccine: Baxter Vaccine Patent Application US 2009/0060950 A1. Their application states, “the composition or vaccine comprises more than one antigen.....such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes." The application further states, “Suitable adjuvants can be selected from mineral gels, aluminium hydroxide, surface active substances, lysolecithin, pluronic polyols, polyanions or oil emulsions such as water in oil or oil in water, or a combination thereof. Of course the selection of the adjuvant depends on the intended use. E.g. toxicity may depend on the destined subject organism and can vary from no toxicity to high toxicity." With no legal liability, could it be that Baxter is preparing to sell hundreds of millions of doses containing highly toxic aluminium hydroxide as adjuvant? Perhaps it is time to demand that all leading officials of WHO, SAGE and CDC, the US Obama Administration, Cabinet officials and members of Congress who voted the $7 billion H1N1 emergency funds and who have gone along with the declaration of pharmaceutical company immunity from subsequent prosecution for damage from their products. The same should apply as well for other national health bodies demanding its citizens take the H1N1 vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline or Baxter to see if it is really safe. And WHO stopped even tracking H1N1 Another indication that the world is being taken for colossal suckers in the entire WHO Swine Flu scare scenario, the WHO itself, the world body entrusted to monitor outbreaks of so-called pandemics or even epidemics worldwide, has just decided to stop tracking Swine Flu or H1N1 Influenza A as they prefer to name it now, so as not to offend Smithfield Foods and other industrialized pig CAFO producers. The World Health Organization in a “briefing note” posted on their Web site posted the baffling notice that they would no longer track outbreaks of H1N1. The last WHO update, issued July 6, showed 94,512 confirmed cases in 122 countries, with 429 deaths. The WHO apparently claims that the numbers of laboratory-confirmed cases were actually meaningless. The briefing note said countries would still be asked to report their first few confirmed cases. It also said countries should watch for clusters of fatalities, which could indicate the virus had mutated to a more lethal form. Other “signals to be vigilant for,” it said, were spikes in school absenteeism and surges in hospital visits. The Atlanta CDC has also agreed to the WHO count drop. Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, admits that the existing tests to confirm H1N1 Influenza A are not even certain, but rather hit-or-miss. “Bad measures can be worse than no measures at all,” he stated. So the WHO has decided to drop tests that anyway did not give a scientific picture of who had H1N1 or not, and as well they have decided to drop counting any test results or cases of H1n1 around the world with the comment that “we can assume almost all cases are H1N1 Swine Flu. This is science on which basis we are told to vaccinate our young? Whoah there…Not with our children. F. William Engdahl author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. To become a Member of Global Research The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: mailto:crgeditor@yahoo.com http://www.globalresearch.ca/www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner. For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com © Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 1999 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=14453

The Scum Also Rises...the movie

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Keeping The Banks Honest

"...we need to pit the public banking option against the private banking option and see which works best. My money is on the public option."

August 6, 2009

The Public Option In Banking: How We Can Beat Wall Street At Its Own Game

By Ellen Brown

President Obama has repeated his call for a public option in health care, in order to create some competition for the insurance companies and keep them honest. We the people need to call for a public option in banking, in order to create some competition for the private banks and keep them honest.

In Wall Street’s latest affront to the public trust, the nine mega-banks graced with $125 billion in taxpayer bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) were reported last week to be paying out billions of dollars in bonuses to their executives. At least 4,793 bankers and traders received more than $1 million each in bonus payments, although it was one of Wall Street’s worst years on record. After months of investigating banker compensation, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on July 30, “The repeated explanation from bank executives that bonuses are tied to performance in a manner designed to promote (national economic) growth does not appear to be accurate.”

To say that it was an understatement would be an understatement. The bonuses paid to executives not only were not tied to national economic growth but were not even tied to some reasonable percentage of company profits. In fact they were generally greater than the net income of the banks. Morgan Stanley, for example, had $1.7 billion in earnings and paid $4.475 billion in bonuses. Goldman Sachs had $2.3 billion in earnings and paid $4.8 billion in bonuses. JP Morgan Chase had $5.6 billion in earnings and paid $8.69 billion in bonuses. JP Morgan’s largesse involved showering 1,626 of its favorite execs and traders with bonuses of $1 million or more. For most people, a “bonus” is a few hundred dollars at Christmastime. A million dollars is what you work a lifetime to try to save, and few people reach that goal. Even Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which have been called zombie banks, paid $5.33 billion and $3.6 billion in bonuses, respectively -- although they lost more than $27 billion each in earnings. The bar for merit is apparently so low that you’re entitled to a bonus if your zombie bank simply keeps breathing!

These blatantly inflated bonuses are just the last in a litany of abuses by those same profligate banks that nearly destroyed our economic system. If the derivatives on their books were “marked to market” (valued at what they would fetch on the market), the banks would be bankrupt, and their employees would be out of a job. Instead, they have been allowed to inflate the value of their “toxic” assets and sell them to the U.S. government at the inflated value. Then they have taken the money they got from the government at these inflated prices and paid back the TARP money they received allowing them to post inflated earnings and reward themselves with inflated bonuses! Many people feel that these bankers are thieves stealing from the public till who should be looking at jail time. But who is there to stop their parade of outrages? No one in Congress, the White House, or the news media is calling them on the carpet for it. As Senator Dick Durbin said recently, Wall Street owns Congress; and that is also true of the major media.

We may not be able to stop them, but we can join them. We the people need to play the bankers’ game ourselves. Even corporate giants such as General Motors and WalMart have now gotten into the banking game and are easing their credit problems by forming their own banks. The U.S. public sector is late to the party. States, counties, public universities could take the lucrative system the private banking industry has created for itself and turn it to productive use in the public interest.

Keeping the Banks Honest with Some Public Competition

In President Obama’s July 17 weekly address, he repeated his call for a public option in health care, in order to “increase competition and keep insurance companies honest” and to “put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry.” The same call needs to be made for a public option in banking. In some countries, publicly-owned banks have operated alongside privately-owned banks for decades; and in those countries, the current crisis has served to show that public banks generally do a better job of serving the people and protecting their interests than their private counterparts.

In Canada, the trendsetter in public banking is the province of Alberta. Alberta’s publicly-owned banking system, called Alberta Treasury Branches or ATB, was initiated during the Great Depression to give the private banks a run for the public’s money. According to a government publication titled “These Are the Facts: An Authentic Record of Alberta’s Progress, 1935-1948”:

“The Treasury Branch system enables the people to pool their financial resources and to use these resources for their mutual benefit thereby enabling them to progressively free themselves from the stranglehold of the existing financial monopoly. These Treasury Branches provide effective competition for chartered banks thereby ensuring banking services at reasonable rates.”

From 1929 to 1933, the average annual income in Alberta had fallen from $548 to $212, a staggering 61 percent drop. Interest payments continued to bleed the farmers of cash, and taxes had increased. In 1935, Albertans decided they wanted a change and swept the Alberta Social Credit Party into power. In 1938, the system of Alberta Treasury Branches was set up literally as a branch of the provincial government. The stated goal of the ATB was to “provide the people with alternative facilities for gaining access to their credit resources.” Bankers initially scoffed at Alberta’s attempts to establish a competing economic system, but Albertans had high hopes and rushed to deposit their meager savings in the Treasury Branches. The government invested in the ATB only once, contributing $200,000 in 1938. That was all that was necessary, as the system was self-funding after that. By 1946, the ATB was turning an annual profit of $65,000. According to a booklet titled “Albertans Investing in Alberta 1938-1998,” by 1998 the ATB had remitted $68 million to the provincial government.

In India, public sector banks also operate alongside private sector banks. Privatization has made significant inroads into India’s banking system, but fully 80 percent of the country’s banks are still government-owned. Before the current crisis, neoliberals criticized India’s public banks for being oriented more toward serving the customer than turning a profit; but studies showed that the public sector banks were out-performing the private sector banks in terms of customer satisfaction. Today, when the credit crisis has hit the aggressive private international banks particularly hard, customers are fleeing into the safety of India’s public sector banks, which have emerged largely unscathed from the credit debacle. The public banks have been credited with keeping the country’s financial industry robust at a time when the private international banks are suffering their worst crisis since the 1930s.

In China, private-sector banking has also made some inroads; but state-owned banks still predominate. In a June 2009 article titled “The Chinese Puzzle: Why Is China Growing When Other Export Powerhouses Aren’t?”, Brad Setser noted that nearly all countries relying heavily on exports for growth have experienced major downturns and remain in the doldrums -- except for China. When China’s external markets fell off, the government turned its credit machine inward to domestic development. Its state-owned banks engaged in a huge increase in lending, with local governments and state enterprises borrowing on a large scale. The result was to create a real fiscal stimulus that put workers to work and got money circulating again in the economy.

In the United States, the trendsetter in public banking is the state of North Dakota, which has owned its own bank for nearly a century. North Dakota is one of only two states (along with Montana) that are currently not facing budget shortfalls. Ever since 1919, North Dakota’s revenues have been deposited in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND). Under the “fractional reserve” lending scheme open to all banks, these deposits are then available for leveraging many times over as loans. Other banks in the state do not see the BND as a threat because it partners with them and backstops them, serving as a sort of central bank for the state. BND’s loans are not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) but are guaranteed by the state. North Dakota has plenty of money for student loans, makes 1% loans to startup farms, has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, and is generally not feeling the pinch of the credit crisis at all.

Theory and Practice: The Proof Is in the Pudding

A bank charter brings with it the privilege of creating “credit” simply as an accounting entry on the bank’s books. The flaw in the private banking scheme is that banks create the principal portion of their loans but not the interest, which is continually drawn off the top as profit. New borrowers must continually be found to take out new loans to create this extra profit, making private banking effectively a pyramid scheme; and like any pyramid scheme, it has mathematical limits. Today, those limits appear to have been reached. Personal and national debts have gotten so large relative to incomes that it is no longer possible to maintain the fiction of solvency. We soon won’t have the money even to pay the interest on our existing debts, let alone to incur new ones. Public banking does not suffer from that flaw, because interest is not drawn out of the system but is returned to the public coffers. Public banking is thus mathematically sound and sustainable.

That is the theory, but there is nothing so persuasive as putting it to the test. Like with the public option in health care, we need to pit the public banking option against the private banking option and see which works best. My money is on the public option.

Informants...lets see, Stalin loved them, Hitler praised them, and now Obama...who would have known? (This does not happen in America...does it?)

White House Website Asking For Informants On Anti-Healthcare Advocates

Posted on August 4, 2009

-By Warner Todd Huston

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that the Obama White House is now asking the public to snitch on their fellow citizens by sending an email to White House staffers informing them of other Americans that oppose Obamacare. I know what you are saying. You are probably saying that I am just a rabble rousing conservative that is just trying to stir trouble. You are probably thinking that I am taking something out of context.

Well I wish I were.

An August 4 bog post on the White House website is clearly asking for Americans to snitch on their neighbors. WH staffer Linda Douglas, a former “journalist” turned political operative, is featured on a video telling tall tales about Obama’s healthcare plan and how wonderful it is for America. But here is the scary part:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

If that isn’t asking citizens to snitch on each other…. What is?

Of course the WH site pushes the Obama lie that we can keep our health insurance “if we like it” by pointing out that Obama has “consistently said” it. But saying a lie 100 times does not make it the truth. It is a fact that millions of Americans WILL lose their current healthcare plans if Obamacare passes in the form the president keeps advocating for.

But of the information that these American snitchers send off to the White House, who in the White House is going to get this information? What are they going to do with it? Will they create a data base of people that stand against Obama? What is to be done with such a database? Who will get visited by the FBI in the dead of night because they sent an email critical of Obama’s socialist styled healthcare policies?

A friend of mine named Bill Collier has written a great letter to the White House asking these questions and more.

A letter to President Barack Obama, sent to flag@whitehouse.gov

Greetings, sir, I pray for your health and that God may grant you peace and wisdom.

I am writing to you at this email address because of a post at the White House blog that, frankly, sir, has me a bit concerned.

I am certain that you are committed to freedom and liberty and do not intend on decreasing the level of freedom or the participation of citizens in the process of deciding public policy for our nation, even if that might mean that some of your initiatives have to be scaled back or simply abandoned.

Some might, however, question your commitment to freedom and the participation of citizens in the decision making process and this is why I am writing, respectfully, in the hope of seeing a happy resolution to what I hope is merely a poorly stated appeal for help in support of your health care initiative.

I understand you are asking people, through your staff, to email flag@whitehouse.gov to report people who oppose your health care plan, even though, Mr. President, you have NOT actually sent out a specific proposal and there are multiple different proposals.

Your appeal, which I sincerely fear is a call for informants (http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/) was cloaked in what seems to some, myself included, doublespeak, and to my mind this appeal carries the implication that the White House wants to capture the names of opponents, which has a potentially chilling effect on open debate.

As part of this appeal, you tell your readers, basically, that people who are citing video of yourself calling for a single payer system and detailing an incrementalist approach ‘liars’, something that is both impolite and, frankly, juvenile and beneath contempt. Those statements were made by you, Mr. President. If indeed you are opposed to a single payer plan and have changed your mind, it is useful to you, and citizens who may even support you but for this perception, to clear this matter up rather than blaming others for a reasonable and logical assumption based on what you actually said.

Mr. President, facts ARE stubborn things and unless or until you publicly disavow a single payer system and actually ANNOUNCE and put in print YOUR health care proposal, it is only reasonable to think that all those things you have said are still on the table and part of your overall plan. If, however, you want a single payer system, please tell us and put in writing what your plan is so that we can have a civil discourse.

Mr. President, are you willing to state what your plan is then publicly disavow any plan that involves single payer plans in any fashion?

Further, Mr. President, would you be willing to solemnly swear that the minute you propose or even SIGN any bill that includes a single player plan or a precursor thereto that you will resign your office? Are you willing, sir, to resign your office if the implementation of your plan results in anything more than a 10% decrease in the number of people enrolled in private plans within 4 years after whatever bill is passed?

Please be advised, Mr. President, I will not be monitored: I oppose what some refer to as ‘Obamacare’ on the basis of my conviction that the Federal Power has no business sticking its nose in such things, a point of view that I sincerely believe is consistent with the original intent of our Founders. I respect that you feel differently and read that differently, but to dismiss our point of view with juvenile and petty name-calling that is clearly beneath contempt and that is simply not professional is a reflection on the content of your character that will not turn Americans against those who oppose state-run or regulated and managed health care by ANY name.

I am NOT afraid to stand up for my convictions, I respect you and your office, and I rightfully and justly demand that you and your staff respect me and my office, the office of “elector”, one of your 300 million “bosses”.

I respectfully request that you stop asking people to become informants, please spend a few minutes and re-read your constitution which you swore to uphold, and which is a condition of your tenure which must be adhered to.

I am enclosing a copy of this email to my member of Congress, my Senators, and my Governor as well as any local media and asking them to investigate WHY the White House is trying to capture names of opponents and asking people to inform on opponents.

If your office is seeking to obtain names of people who oppose your plan and to engage other Americans as informants or agents I would, and I am sure many others would, consider this to be a SERIOUS offense against the Bill of Rights if indeed your objective here is to do this, so, with this in mind, sir, please cease and desist and respect even those who oppose you in a civil and fair manner.

I pray that this communication is seen as a friendly appeal for a quick and amicable resolution of my concerns or, at worse, a friendly rebuke, if you will, due to what is clearly impolite behavior that is beneath of the dignity of the Presidency or the White House.

May you continue to be in good health and good spirits as you lead our free nation of free and sovereign citizens who wish you, and America, Godspeed within the reasonable constraints of liberty, justice, and our Constitution.

Yours in service to the Republic,

Bill Collier,
By the Grace of God, Citizen and Elector, The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, The United States of America
Marysville PA

PS I have BCC’d this to other individuals and hope that they, too, stand up by name and without fear, knowing that your White House, Mr. President, would never seek to in any way censure or persecute in any manner any citizen for simply questioning your policies or conduct: I am sure you will agree with me that the best way to dispel such myths is to reply in a cordial and civil manner to such citizens, even your loyal opposition.

It appears that the White House thinks this is Orwell’s 1984. Big Brother is watching and he apparently resides in Oceania’s White House.

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Mexican-American War Part II...it's just the beginning

Mexico Imposes Tariffs on U.S. Amid Trucking Dispute
Source: Bloomberg

By Mark Drajem

March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico set the stage for the first trade war of President Barack Obama’s administration by slapping import tariffs on $2.4 billion of U.S. goods in retaliation for a ban of its trucks from American roads.

The tariffs, on about 90 items from 40 states, were imposed by Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz Mateos yesterday after the U.S. suspended a program to allow Mexican 18-wheelers to deliver goods across the border. U.S. Republican lawmakers said Mexico, which didn’t provide details, would impose tariffs on farm goods such as rice, beef, wheat and beans.

Mateos said halting the trucking program violated the North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., Mexico and Canada, enacted 15 years ago amid opposition from U.S. labor unions. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents U.S. truckers, proclaimed the suspension a victory on the union’s Web site.

“The sanctity of our commitments to our Nafta partners is being put to the test here,” said John Magnus, a lawyer at Miller & Chevalier in Washington.

The Obama administration yesterday vowed to work with Congress to come up with an alternative to the pilot program, which was canceled under a provision in a $410 billion government spending bill passed by Congress.

“Typically in these situations, the U.S. response is to find a way to back down,” said Edward Alden, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “That’s going to be hard to do” given the sentiments in Congress, he added.

Total Trade

Obama, who criticized Nafta during his election campaign, directed his administration “to propose legislation creating a new trucking project that will meet the legitimate concerns of Congress and our Nafta commitments,” Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said yesterday.

In 2008, the U.S. and Mexico had $368 billion in total trade, making Mexico the third-largest U.S. trading partner after Canada and China, according to the Commerce Department.

A panel of judges said in 2001 that the U.S. was violating Nafta by prohibiting Mexican trucks from American highways for long-haul deliveries. They ruled that American regulators could impose their own safety standards and restrict access for specific companies. The Bush administration started a demonstration program two years ago to allow some trucks to travel into the U.S.

Moving Freight

Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, the sponsor of the amendment that removed money from the pilot program, said he is willing to work on the issue, the U.S. trade office said in a statement.

The American Trucking Associations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both trade groups, supported the program and protested its withdrawal.

“Retaliation makes these U.S. products significantly less competitive and could close the Mexican market to many of our exports,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the trade subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement yesterday. Brady said the tariffs could affect wheat, beans, beef and rice imports.

Groups including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, in Grain Valley, Missouri, said Mexican trucks are a hazard and allowing them across the border could dampen wages for U.S. drivers.

“The right response from Mexico would be to make sure its drivers and trucks are safe enough to use our highways without endangering our drivers,” Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said in a statement. “The border must stay closed until Mexico holds up its end of the bargain.”

Unintended Consequences

Tariffs may have unintended consequences for the Mexican economy, which contracted 1.6 percent in the fourth quarter. The Mexican currency has tumbled 32 percent in the past six months as the U.S. recession throttles demand for exports and slows dollar inflows from remittances, tourism and foreign direct investment.

The tariffs may be damaging for Mexicans, who would pay a higher price for the imported goods, said Claudio Loser, a former director of the International Monetary Fund’s Western Hemisphere department and now a fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy institute in Washington.

“If the tariff sticks, it has serious costs,” Loser said. “It creates distortions and reduces the welfare of the consumers in Mexico.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Drajem in Washington at mdrajem@bloomberg.net

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NYU...I heard a lot about them...little did I know they were that bad!

----- Original Message -----

From: link removed

To: link removed

Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:48 PM

Subject: NYU LAW SCHOOL: NO CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS NEED APPY

August 4, 2009 NYU LAW SCHOOL: NO CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS NEED APPLY Dr. Thio Li-ann, professor at the National University of Singapore, was invited to teach at New York University Law School this fall. After it was discovered that the Christian professor, while serving as a Singaporean lawmaker in 2007, opposed a repeal of the law proscribing homosexual acts, NYU students and alumni organized to protest her appointment. She subsequently withdrew her interest in teaching at NYU. Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote to NYU’s law school dean, Richard Revesz, on July 23, the day the New York Times published a story about Professor Thio; he e-mailed it the same day. Donohue also accessed a statement by Revesz, and a letter by the professor to her critics. Yesterday, NYU law school confirmed that Revesz received Donohue’s letter, though there has been no response. Accordingly, Donohue is going public with his comments today: I have been in contact with Professor Thio, as well as her colleagues, and I have done two interviews with the media in Singapore. Moreover, nyunews.com has covered this issue, including my remarks. In my letter to Dean Revesz I indicated that I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from NYU, and have taught in NYU’s Multicultural Education summer program for many years; I am also a donor. And still no answer. I think I know why. In his July 23 statement on Professor Thio, Revesz tried to flip the issue of intimidation by blaming her for creating “an unwelcoming atmosphere.” I then said, “You also say that ‘she replied to them [critics of her appointment] in a manner that many member [sic] of our community—myself included—consider offensive and hurtful.’” I asked Revesz to identify “a single sentence that is at all untoward.” There is none, and he knows it. Revesz has allowed the anti-free speech bullies to score a victory. He seems to love diversity, except for the only kind that should count on a college campus—diversity of thought. When it comes to conservative Christians, Revesz’s interest in inclusion comes to a screeching halt. Contact Revesz at richard.revesz@nyu.edu

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Am I Weird? ...or is it Massachusetts? (2nd Amendment stuff...if you don't like the 2nd, how ya gonna keep the 1st ?)

 

Click on picture to enlarge.

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Mark Levin On A Roll...Mark Levin on a roll!...Did I say Mark Levin is on a roll?

And it's Arrogance in the lead by two lengths, and bringing up the rear is modesty at his finest!

----- Original Message -----

From: link removed

To: link removed

Sent: Monday, August 03, 2009 12:09 PM

Subject: RE: Fw:

As Jesus once said, “By their fruits you will know them …”

---

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: link removed
Date: Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 7:18 AM
Subject: Fw:
To:

Obama's revealing body language (updated and expanded)
Thomas Lifson
This picture truly is worth at least a thousand words.

I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing.

Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking.

Hat tip: Rick Richman

Update from Thomas Lifson:

I think this photo constitutes another major Obama blunder.

As some AT commentators point out, this picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities.

One of the major subtexts of the health care debate involves the public's fear of indifferent, powerful bureaucrats ruling their lives. It is one thing to wait in line at the DMV to find out which other line you should wait in, in order to begin the process of waiting for multiple bureaucrats to go through the motions of processing your request. I have spent entire afternoons going through this process.

But when we get to health care, waiting often means enduring pain and dysfunction longer than necessary, sometimes a worsening of the condition, and sometimes death.

That's why I think this image will have genuine resonance. It captures something that older Americans in particular can relate to. The President presses ahead with a program that will tell them to take painkillers instead of getting that artificial hip.

At every stage of the entire Gates affair, Obama has provided a revealing tell. The "acted stupidly" blunder revealed that he automatically blames the police and thinks they really are stupid to begin with. It didn't trigger a single alarm bell in his mind as he figured out what to say.

Then, the non-apology apology revealed an arrogant man who cannot do what honest people do: admit it when they make a mistake.

Now at stage three, the beer photo op looked OK. It didn't turn into a disaster.

But then in a small moment that nobody in the White House had the brains to understand, Obama goes and send a body language message like this.

I think he is going to get deeper and deeper into trouble. He is no longer repeating the familiar scripts dreamed up for the campaign. He was a master performer.

But when he goes improv, as a president must do, he lets his true character show. This helps widen the level of doubt that Obama is the same guy a majority voted for. Those doubts can only grow.

Andrew McCarthy has assembled an overwhelming case that Obama has lied about who he is. I predict that more and more Americans will become open to the argument that they have been had by a sophisticated and ruthless effort to foist a phony on America.

Update from Clarice Feldman

A nice comparison of the character of the former president, George Bush with Senator Robert Byrd:

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Obama's High Tech Medicine - "embedded clinical decision support" what this means is...

A computer (somewhere) will tell your doctor what to do...

"Then who needs a doctor when all you really need is a computer?"

Norman E. Hooben

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DEADLY DOCTORS

July 24, 2009

THE health bills coming out of Congress would put the de cisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.

Yet at least two of President Obama's top health advisers should never be trusted with that power.

Start with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. He has already been appointed to two key positions: health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research.

Emanuel bluntly admits that the cuts will not be pain-free. "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).

Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

Yes, that's what patients want their doctors to do. But Emanuel wants doctors to look beyond the needs of their patients and consider social justice, such as whether the money could be better spent on somebody else.

Many doctors are horrified by this notion; they'll tell you that a doctor's job is to achieve social justice one patient at a time.

Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (Hastings Center Report, Nov.-Dec. '96).

Translation: Don't give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson's or a child with cerebral palsy.

He explicitly defends discrimination against older patients: "Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years" (Lancet, Jan. 31).

The bills being rushed through Congress will be paid for largely by a $500 billion-plus cut in Medicare over 10 years. Knowing how unpopular the cuts will be, the president's budget director, Peter Orszag, urged Congress this week to delegate its own authority over Medicare to a new, presidentially-appointed bureaucracy that wouldn't be accountable to the public.

Since Medicare was founded in 1965, seniors' lives have been transformed by new medical treatments such as angioplasty, bypass surgery and hip and knee replacements. These innovations allow the elderly to lead active lives. But Emanuel criticizes Americans for being too "enamored with technology" and is determined to reduce access to it.

Dr. David Blumenthal, another key Obama adviser, agrees. He recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending.

Blumenthal has long advocated government health-spending controls, though he concedes they're "associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But he calls it "debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. (Ask a cancer patient, and you'll get a different answer. Delay lowers your chances of survival.)

Obama appointed Blumenthal as national coordinator of health-information technology, a job that involves making sure doctors obey electronically deivered guidelines about what care the government deems appropriate and cost effective.

In the April 9 New England Journal of Medicine, Blumenthal predicted that many doctors would resist "embedded clinical decision support" -- a euphemism for computers telling doctors what to do.

Americans need to know what the president's health advisers have in mind for them. Emanuel sees even basic amenities as luxuries and says Americans expect too much: "Hospital rooms in the United States offer more privacy . . . physicians' offices are typically more conveniently located and have parking nearby and more attractive waiting rooms" (JAMA, June 18, 2008).

No one has leveled with the public about these dangerous views. Nor have most people heard about the arm-twisting, Chicago-style tactics being used to force support. In a Nov. 16, 2008, Health Care Watch column, Emanuel explained how business should be done: "Every favor to a constituency should be linked to support for the health-care reform agenda. If the automakers want a bailout, then they and their suppliers have to agree to support and lobby for the administration's health-reform effort."

Do we want a "reform" that empowers people like this to decide for us?

Betsy McCaughey is founder of the Committee to Reduce Infec tion Deaths and a former New York lieutenant governor.

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The DeWeese Report ~ and now for a world government...indorsed by Walter Cronkite!

Mainstream Media Finally Catching Up to The DeWeese Report

By Tom Deweese Monday, March 16, 2009

Again and again, The DeWeese Report has told you that the real agenda we face is a global one called Sustainable Development, as outlined in the UN’s soft-law document called Agenda 21. We’ve warned that this policy is designed to establish the United Nations as the main force for imposing global government, replacing national sovereignty, controlling the economy and the population, and that it is based on a strange mixture of Socialism and Fascism. Time and again, we’ve reported that global governance is a euphemism for global government. In addition, we’ve exposed the world-wide environmental movement as the driving force for such policies, working toward a wrenching transformation of the world economy, using the environment as the center (or the excuse) for such policy.

I think that about sums up what The DeWeese Report has been focused on for our entire existence. And for that entire time, forces in the federal government, in the UN, and NGO’s in the Environmental movement have universally denied it, saying we were fringe fanatics and silly conspiracy theorists.

Oh yeah? Well, let’s just share a few headlines appearing in the international press in the pass month.

First, headlines flashed across the nation after the Washington Times reported that Obama’s new Climate Czarina, Carol Browner was a member of a global Socialist organization called, “The Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Here’s how the group’s website states its purpose: “We are aware that essential tasks still lie ahead which we can master only through common action, since human survival increasingly depends upon joint efforts of people round the world… It is the people of the world who should exercise control by means of a more advanced democracy in all aspects of life: political, social and economic. Political democracy, for socialists, is the necessary framework and precondition for other rights and liberties.”

Can you read between those lines? “More Advanced Democracy?” “The necessary framework for other rights and liberties?” They mean the other rights and liberties they will give to us – if it fits their agenda – which is what?? SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT! Just like The DeWeese Report has been telling you.

Second, in a December 8, 2008 article entitled “And now for a World Government, [see below]” carried in the internationally-respected Financial Times (hardly a right-wing conspiracy rag) there is a quote by Jacques Attali, advisor to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which states, “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” Imagine that – just like The DeWeese Report has warned. The article goes on to a recent report issued by the “Managing Global Insecurity” project, in which it calls for the creation of a UN-controlled military force- again, discussed in The DeWeese Report more than ten years ago.

Third, On February 2, 2009, The Times newspaper in London reported the British government’s “green advisor” Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission and was Tony Blair’s advisor on the environment, said that couples having more than two children are being irresponsible by creating an unbearable burden on the environment. According to the Times, “a report by the commission says that governments must reduce population growth through better family planning.” Family planning? Condoms? Abortion? How? China has a good policy. They kill any babies over the government-set limit. And offending mothers are thrown in jail.

As The DeWeese Report has said on many occasions, Sustainable Development is about much more than environmental protection – but we’re just a bunch of nuts!

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And now for a world government

By Gideon Rachman

Published: December 8 2008 Last updated: December 8 2008

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

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The Plan Is Real

The Problem Has Already Been Cracked By The Most Trusted Man In America

(Now that he is classified as a traitor would you still trust him?)

[Up date: The Traitor Is Dead]

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