If Congress has a debt ceiling, then its members must have known what that was, and should never have borrowed beyond that limit in the first place. They bail out banks and big-wigs in government-created organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, blame private industry for messing up the economy, and yet they cannot even follow their own rules. Our government is not too big to fail. It deserves to fail, because it was created by a bunch of greedy idiots and supported by mob rule, where the mob is brain-washed into thinking that what they say has any bearing on anything that goes on at the federal level whatsoever.
They, the mobs and their leaders, pray for solutions while they prey on the innocent tax payer. They do not ever open up their rational, objective, thought processes. At least, there is no evidence that any of them do. Instead, the put their “faith” in faith, and they manage to twist that into irrational, greedy, short-term-gain brand of selfishness. They are not behaving in a rationally selfish (self-interested) manner, like a proper, moral human being should behave. There is looking out for number one, then there is sticking your head up your ass. Sadly, so many go for the head gymnastics. The kind of “sport” that leads to pushing other people around like a brute or a bully. Sadly, so many people consider this type of behavior to be patriotic and the equivalent to freedom. Freedom and responsibility is so easily replaced by fear, ignorance and punishment to those with different beliefs and behaviors.
Not all politicians are criminals, but virtually all politicians at the federal level are beneath criminals on any moral scale that anyone can come up with. Most of them don’t think twice before taking money that does not belong to them and giving it away to their friends. Most of them do not worry about the fact that the US troops needlessly occupy so many foreign countries and destroy so many innocent lives, yet they worry about a single, domestically born or unborn child. Obviously, they only pretend to care about children. Many of them use faith-based “science” and “logic” to run their insane lives where they actually believe that telling other people what to do, at threat of fine or prison, is just peachy. They pretend to care about individuals and families, but one look at the prison population proves otherwise. Another look, and we see some of them signing documents that are racist in nature, so either they cannot read or are incompetent leaders, because they cannot pick literate people to help them with their campaigns (Google the news, if you don’t understand the reference).
Actions speak louder than words. The ends can never justify the means, because your means is another person’s end, in any situation where the “plan” involves so many other people without their consent. That is the nature of government. It does stuff to people (or for people) without their consent. Voting is not consent. Voting is simply the result of a brainwashed mob believing that they are achieving something that is positive. People living in the occupied countries don’t even get to vote. Mob rule has led to filling the prisons with marijuana smokers and while murders, rapists, child molesters and bank robbers go free. Drug lords, prison builders, and a lot of delusional Jesus Freaks and other religious zealots, both on the left and right seem to love and support that. They support the “War on Drugs” (war against individual choise and individual responsibility).
They don’t care about America or the American people. Tea-baggers – I am talking to you too. Arrogant lefties and idiot tea-baggers want to spend all of our money on the one hand, and tell us what to do with our lives on the other. They are both faith-based ideologies with little grounding in objective reality. Irrational selfishness on both ends is what I see. The left and right are both speaking out of the wrong end of their bodies, and it really stinks. If we really care about other people, then why get so upset when people outside of the USA get jobs so that they can feed and provide shelter for their families? Nobody is “taking away your job.” It’s not your job to begin with. Grow up, become an adult, and create your own job. Oh, I forgot, you regulated yourself out of that possibility, you stupid idiots! Hey tea-baggers – read a science book, you faith-based hicks! Nobody will take you seriously outside of your tiny group. Ayn Rand was an atheist you religious freaks! Of course, you read Atlas Shrugged in the same way that you “read” the bible – cherry pick, and don’t actually every really read the thing, but let some talking head authoritarian read it too you in bits and chunks, and often out-of-context, so that it sounds better than it really is.
Of course, government always grows until it collapses under its own weight. Government is Entropy at its best! The laws of the Universe conspire to maximize entropy. Life was the first step, but that was nothing compared to the destructive power of government. The best you can do is to bitch about it, or hope to speed up the process. People who like small government don’t need to worry, because the system will collapse. Conservative tea-bagging just slows the process down and makes it more painful for everybody but the rich, Christian rulers (and their Jesus Freak mob following) of this Corporate Oligarchy of the United States. The crazies on the left are just speeding up the process of ultimately shrinking the government, but in no way that anyone ever intended, except perhaps for a handful of terrorists and possibly one or two score of anarchists.
Good and bad intentions pave the road that leads to hell whenever government is involved. Tea-baggers, go read a book about science if you ever want to be taken seriously! It is not the liberal media that makes you appear ignorant and stupid. If we had a free market, we probably would still have a liberal media, but I doubt that we would have 12 billion Christian channels like we do today. Then again, maybe we would – it seems that there is a big mob of people who would still rather cling to that garbage rather, instead, of simply reading a good science book (oh, so germs are causing that and not the devil? – wow, I never knew that! Oh, so there really are dozens of ways of measuring the ages of rocks – and not only that – they overlap and agree? Wow! Cool! The earth really is billions of years old! Wow, so GPS depends on science? I always thought that there was a little Jesus-Prayer-Unit [JPU] inside of my cell phone, and that it always sends prayers to Jesus for the current location. DNA melting point? What’s that? Duhhhhh! Doh! Why does this stuff matter? I don’t understand why people don’t listen to me about economics and government …. ????). Gawd, you are a dumb lot! So sad!
What is one kind of school worse than terrible US government schools (public schools for those of you who do not know how to Google)? The selfish-based, faith-based, private schools that you all went to; learning how to justify steeling and grabbing up all of the valuable property by using government for your own selfish ends, and taught denial of any scientific facts that dissagree with the bits of the bible that have been cherry-picked (I dare you to follow the Ten Commandments – stone your teenagers to death if the show disrespect and dishoner to their parents – oh yeah you forgot to read that part, because you don’t know how to or refuse to actually read anything all the way through because you are lazy or just want to live in your own fairy-tale world. How can the commandment be true, yet the punishments just be some kind of bizzare metaphorical statement? hmmm?). That is not free market. That is not logical, rational thought. Faith-based thought is only useful for those folks who happen to already be rich and in power. They actually believe it is their faith, the free market, and not their guns and bloody theft that put them in power and provide wealth. Pure evil, with a faith-based foundation is all that they follow.
Ignorance, evil, selfishness, and stupidity all worked together to create the problems that we have with have with the economy and foreign policy today. The loonys on the left and the tea party idiots on the right are just marching in step. One should not be surprised by this. Those in the middle are doing the same thing, only “moderate” in their approach (whatever that means). The squeaky wheels on the left and right get all of the grease, even though we (net) tax payers do not necessarily even want the vehicle on which the wheels are attached. … Wait a second – we tax payers are the same people that make up the mob that votes … hmmm…
Is it any wonder that if you put so many selfish idiots in power that government will just grow out of control? The bureaucrats will simply vote for politicians who will increase their budgets. Defence contractors will continue to push for more war. Oil companies will continue to push for more subsidized freeways and will of course side with war contractors, because plenty of fossil fuels can be sold to the military and to the military industrial complex that makes the weapons.
People generally speak out of both sides of their asses. The difference with the left, is that they think they are being rational and objective, and so it is okay to tell everybody else what to do and what is best for everyone. This is usually attempted be redistributing wealth in truly idiotic ways. All you have to do is look at the crack houses where Urban renewal was intended. You idiots forgot that you subsidized the freeways so that the white middle class could move to the suburbs on the backs of the poor (the poor in the cities still have to pay taxes for freeways that they hardly use).
The mob at all extremes (not just the far left and far right) keep forgetting that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. The moderates are not all that much different either. Humans are the fifth ape, and the earth really is the planet of the apes.
Perhaps that budget can be ballanced and the deficit can be cut, if we would all stop taking ourselves so seriously, and listen to other points-of-view. I predict that that will never happen. Government is doomed to grow until it collapses one way or another. Do you want to have it collapse quickly or slowly? Vote or don’t vote accordingly. Read a good science book every once in a while. You might learn something useful. The odds are, if you are reading this, you probably will not go out and read a good science book, but I hope I am wrong about that!
Upgrade01A 
July 12, 2011 at 5:44 pm
All fiat currencies are institutionalized hypocrisy. The harsh reality is that there is no money. The Federal Reserve note is borrowed debt. Back in the day of real money, it was a crime to loan debt. Since the United States, by mutual consent, has chosen to be lawless, this present perversion of the board game, Monopoly, is accepted as financial reality. Just remember that, at the end of the game,, all of the property and currency goes back to the bank.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/?s=Federal+Reserve%3A+Too+Big+To+Fail%3F
July 12, 2011 at 7:03 pm
Yes, but most people, including yourself, continue to use it, because people are pussies, they agree to the terms, or both. When offered a salary for my current job, I realized the offer was for Federal Reserve Notes and took the job.
All talk and no action – further proving my point. Government will just grow until it collapses and there is nothing you or I can do about it.
A gold standard gives all of the power and money to people who own gold. A person cannot determine what geological region they are randomly born in. Gold is better suited for its valuable use in technology, not just sitting in someone’s safe. I bring up the gold standard, because this is what the Libertarians and Objectivists often advocate as a replacement for the FED and fiat currency. The same people will remain in power, if we move back to a gold standard, because he who has the gold, makes the rules. They will not be libertarian rules either. A facist state does not require fiat currency to remain in power. They were in power back when we had a gold standard.
A libertarian movement won’t lead to a libertarian ideal as visioned by “good” libertarians (those with morals). It will lead to facism or to a place like Somalia, only it will be ruled by people carrying a cross and wrapped in a flag. A libertarian society is not a natural society. Libertarianism and Objectivism both suffer in their stated axioms about human nature. They both assume the existence of “natural rights” and “free will.” These axioms are based on ancient, religious beliefs and have no scientific basis to support them. Communism suffers from a similar flaw in its own set of axioms or assumptions. You cannot construct an artificial state, then expect the classes to just whither away by use of training programs. Human nature cannot be trained or taught. There is no need to teach us who we are in that way. We will do what is inate. Ayn Rand tried to equate reductionist materialism with communist thought. She had a lot of interesting ideas to think about – most of them not her own original thoughts – but she happened to be wrong about that too. Humans have a nature, and it is nothing like she proposed. Her romantic notiions were well-intended, but they were simply based on romance and not in reality.
Most people who become succesful and wealthy are lucky. They were born in the right place, with the right genes. It is true, that some people make it “on their own”, but those are the smart people. Being smart is random, based on the genes and the parents you inherited. Some smart people have an inclination to work hard and learn new things. This inclination is genetically and environmentally-based. Most of that learning is done growing up in an environment that you have no control over.
Freedom is an illusion, but government power is very real and apparently quite “natural”, because it has been around for a very long time. We a social apes, we like to live in a society and pretend that it is a civilization.
If we have free will, and we apparently can do what we want to do, then most of us must like Federal Reserve Notes. At least some people do not have free will, because they claim to not like the notes, but they continue to use them. Something about this philosophy is not consistent or all of its followers are just big pussies. Some claim that it is necessary to “work within the system.” in order for them to get their objectives met. Libertarians/Objectivists working within the system = tea bagger party. A bunch of religious nut cases who believe the Universe is younger than some tree fossils. Nobody will ever believe or take seriously their economic theories, because they are so wrong about most everything else. They only cherry-pick the stuff that sounds good to them and matches closely with their own lifestyle. They believe in a selfish form of “freedom” where it does not matter if other people, with differing lifestyles, are free.
July 12, 2011 at 8:07 pm
I doubt that many tea-baggers understand what a negative right is and what implications that has for minors. I doubt that most understand why I bring this up in the first place. With negative rights (“natural rights” are negative rights), there is no obligation for a mother to care for her helpless infant (Rothbard). Forcing a mother to give birth to her child or even to take care of it after birh is a violation of natural rights. If you believe that it is a right of every child to be taken care of by their mother or else become wards of the state, then you do not believe in natural rights, as understood by the philosophers who invented these rights in the first place.
If natural rights were truly natural, then there would be a lot more agreement on what they are. If they are made up, man made ideas, then we would expect them to match geography and culture. For example, Western Europeans would have a different view on rights than in Eastern Asia. That is pretty much what we see, just like religious beliefs.
Even in the West, there was Life, LIberty and Property before it was changed by Jefferson (perhaps others) to “Life, LIberty and Pursuit of Happiness”. Furthermore, he insisted that these rights came to us via our Creator. Rothbard and Rand (agnositic and atheist, respectively), obviously did not believe these rights came to us from a Creator, but strickly from Nature. However, nature comes from the laws of nature (physics) and does not have any rights built into it.
July 12, 2011 at 9:10 pm
I think the reason a religious group, like the Tea Party, latches on to libertarian and objectivist ideas, is that these are ideas are all inspired by faith-based, wishfull thinking. It is humorous that Ayn Rand was an outspoken atheist and Rothbard was an agnostic. Objectivism sounds like a scientific, objective-based thinking philosophy by its name. Libertarians pride themselves in their consistency, which they are for the most part. Unfortunately, human nature is not always logical or consistent. Human nature only has to be consistent with the laws of physics, and not necessarily the laws of logic, which generally assume a static axiom or set of axioms that are not changing.
“A is A” is meaningless in the real world much of the time, especially when trying to apply it to human nature or politics. It is very useful as a model for predicting outcomes for As that are only slowly changing, like a ripe apple, or the rare case of real constants, like C – the speed of light. One apple plus one apple is two apples, except the first one was already partially eaten by the time the “+ 1 apple = 2 apples” part was written – or not. We cannot be certain without additional facts. Ayn Rand was fond of saying things like “A is A” to make her point about objective thinking and rational behavior. This phrase often does not apply to human nature.
Believing in free will, with all of the scientific knowledge and evidence to the contrary, is a key requirement for both libertarianism and objectivism. This belief is just another form of wishful thinking – much like believing in heaven or Jesus. In spite of the pseudo-science twist some put upon modern quantum theory, particles do not have to be observed to exist, and I doubt that Rand or Rothbard believed those things to be relevent to free will. Stars did not have to be observed by a sentient being in order for some of them to explode into super nova, thus fusing together all of the heavier elements. Eventually people evolved from the star dust – and all of the particles follow the laws of physics – not the laws of free will. It is now known that most of our thought processes are subconscious, and we are only made conscious of fairly important things, like our immediate environment and any sudden changes in the scene. Experiments have revealed that people feel that they make a choice, a couple hundred milliseconds after that choise has been triggered by subconscious processes. In the end, everything is triggered by something else, and that something else is always a particle, or a group of particles of matter or energy.
Furthermore, people do not choose where they are born or there genetic makeup. Even the “freeest” of choices, if possible, is necessarily heavily constrained by all of the events that led up to the present, for any individual. We do not chose our parents, our school, many of our early learning materials, our first religious meeting, and so forth. We are bombarded with marketing, and memes of all sorts, coming in all directions. It is definitely different for Donald Trump than it is for some kid born in Ethiopia to a teenage, single mom with AIDs, just for an example. Succesful people do not generally believe that, because of their wishful thinking flaw in their brain, they insist that it was their free will that made them a success. I agree that their will had something to do with it, but I do not agree that it is “free”, because the facts just do not support that belief, and it is always up to those who make a claim to prove the claim, and not the negation. This is no different than claiming a belief in Santa Claus, Jesus, or God. If you have a theory or belief with nothing to back it up, then there is no reason to beleive it, other than wishful thinking of one sort or another.
July 12, 2011 at 9:23 pm
Largely because the right is so crazy, the so-called “progressives” feel that they must be right. They believe that they are the rational, objective thinkers. It tends to make them arrogant and self-rightous. Just because A is stupid, does not implie that B is correct. In fact, it is hightly unlikely that B is correct, when there are an infinite number of possible variations on the politics of the day. If we just take a look at history, we will easily see that the “left” is just a loony and violent – or even more so than the “right.”
It’s wishful thinking all of the way with this group too, when it comes to politics. it is just another form of faith-based thinking.
If what I say were not the case, then we would not be in the bad state of affairs that we are in today. Both sides tread where they are not welcome, they do not belong, and is immoral to do so. Just another demostration that we are “merely” primate apes and not likely possesed by a supernatural spirit with a magical free will.