Tea partiers will fall for anything

The Right
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Tom Tancredo today boasted a variety of endorsements he has received from local tea party organizers in his bid for the governorship in Colorado. I won’t bore you with the details, but Tancredo, a Republican member of Congress until 2009, launched a campaign as an independent demagogue after he decided the GOP nominee was not to his liking.

Now, I have no idea how representative these tea party organizers are of the rank-and-file tea partier, but I do know that Tancredo has spoken at local tea party events and has been cheered.

What’s interesting is that Tancredo was the only GOP member of the Colorado Congressional delegation that voted for the TARP Bailout. So, Tancredo, who voted for the greatest taxpayer ripoff in American history, goes to tea party events where he recites something about the virtues of small governments, and then receives thunderous applause.

Tancredo, who supported the legislation that stole almost a trillion dollars from the taxpayers and handed it over to Goldman Sachs and friends, now lectures the American people on the need for smaller government.Probably no other piece of legislation in recent memory galvanized and defined the party of liberty in America more than the TARP bailout and the opposition to it. It was the legislation that revved up the non-stop fleecing of the American public to about triple its normal speed. And with the support of Tom Tancredo.

The tea party types here are making excuses for him because Tancredo now says that voting for TARP was a mistake. How courageous. He voted for TARP because that required no courage, and now he’s disavowing his vote because that requires no courage. What a magnificent display of principle!

But, hey, tea partiers, I’m sure that, even though he voted for the biggest big government piece of legislation in decades, because Goldman Sachs told him to, that doesn’t mean he won’t be a staunch opponent of big government on everything else. Right? Keep dreaming, tea partiers.

Hey, remember when all those Republicans slashed the size of government after they got control of Congress back in 1994? Remember when George W. Bush didn’t double the size of amount of federal spending in 8 years? Wasn’t that great?

Oh wait, none of those things happened? Well, I’m sure your voting into office all the exact same people, like Tancredo, who gave us the bloated government and bailouts of the last decade will suddenly act in the exact opposite way now. It’s sure to happen.

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Denver police officer assaults man for talking on phone

Police Statism, Technology, Victimless Crimes
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The brutality exhibited by the police in this video is so unwarranted, so vicious, and so totally despicable, that not even the usual “defend-the-police-no-matter-what” automatons are putting up a fight in the comments section. Of course, the “Safety Manager” maintains that the fine officer who obviously assaults a man for absolutely nothing, deserves to keep his job.

Before the video was discovered, the police officer simply made up a story that the assaulted bystander was trying to strike the police officer. The DPD, however, believes that police who lie and attack the public unprovoked should be kept on the force. Your tax dollars at work.

Note also how the video camera, being operated by a police force employee, immediately pans away from the action after it becomes apparent that excessive force is being used.

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The long, slow flight from the US Dollar

(Austrian) Economics
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Fortune magazine has an interesting piece summing up some recent trends in the dollar. While there has not been a radical or frantic dumping of the dollar, central banks and private investors continue to distance themselves from the US Dollar. The piece notes that other dollars, namely the Australian and Canadian ones, are gaining in prestige:

A new report from Morgan Stanley analyst Emma Lawson confirms what many had suspected: the dollar is firmly on its way to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world. We already knew that central banks have preferred gold to dollars, and that they’re even selling their gold for cash; now, according to Lawson’s data, it seems that those central banks prefer almost anything to dollars.

The new competition over reserve currency is interesting for more than its economics since it is an important political issue. The nation that can build up its own currency as a reserve currency will expand its ability to inflate and incur debt with less fear of inflation.

The US has benefited from this situation for decades. As the Fed inflates to finance deficit spending and to “stimulate” consumer spending, dollars are eventually absorbed by foreign central banks, put in reserves and out of circulation. The United States has managed to stave off the effects of reckless money printing for decades thanks to the willingness of foreign investors and central banks to sit on dollars as a store of value.

Now the demand for the dollar is fading away slowly. This won’t mean sudden hyperinflation, however, since the economy is still in terrible shape, and even if a boatload of dollars were to return to our shores right now, the lack of lending and spending, as a consequence of deflating portfolios across the land, will keep prices relatively contained, at least in the short- and possibly medium-term.

The good news is that the fall of the dollar will mean that the United States will slowly have to come to the realization that it won’t be able to engage in endless deficit spending and monetization of debt without feeling the consequences of runaway inflation. The empire has been financed by a dollar that was the world’s reserve currency. Those days are coming to an end.

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Robert Bork poised to do something uninteresting

Legal System, Vulgar Politics
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Have you ever wondered what happened to Robert Bork? Neither have I. Today, the big media outlets breathlessly reported that Robert Bork opposes the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan.

This wouldn’t be reported at all if Bork were simply some other aging federal judge. Bork isn’t a famous person anymore, and he’s not particularly influential in the Conservative movement from where he occasionally mutters something about something.

The fact that his opposition to Kagan is being reported simply provides us with an excellent illustration of how the media reduces everything to a matter of melodrama and personality conflict.

Why do we care that Bork opposes Kagan? Oh, because he was rejected for a Supreme Court seat by the Senate about a hundred years ago. So, this is being played up as some kind of parting shot from a defeated loser from long ago. It’s tit for tat! It’s Bork’s Revenge! Or something.

Kagan is a shill’s shill when it comes to shilling for the establishment, and she therefore deserves to be rejected by the Senate with extreme prejudice. But, I can virtually guarantee you, dear reader, that Bork’s reason for opposing her will have nothing to do with any consistent or principled opposition to a massive overweening government. So, you can safely get back to ignoring Bork immediately.

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Why Barton apologized (the second time)

The Right, Vulgar Politics
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As is almost always the case when politicians speak the truth, it’s purely by accident. Barton was correct to note the injustice against BP in the Obama administration’s shakedown for 20 billion. But it is exceedingly unlikely that Barton actually cared about the issue beyond the potential for scoring some political points and whipping up some good political theatre for himself. As soon as he saw that his plan backfired, he backed down immediately.

This is the behavior of a person without principles, which Barton clearly is. Barton claimed to be “ashamed” of the way BP was treated. Was Barton “ashamed” when the Bush administration shook down the taxpayers for untold billions for the GOP’s prescription drug benefit? Was Barton “ashamed” when the GOP doubled federal spending and ran the deficit up to $10 trillion? I seriously doubt it. Has Barton ever opposed massive government intrusion into the lives of private citizens when it served the political purposes of the GOP? Did he oppose the PATRIOT ACT?

In fact, Barton’s web site gushes over how great the prescription drug benefit is. Barton has voted to expand government spying rights on numerous occasions, and has otherwise supported the gutting of the Bill of Rights. He has a staunch record of expanding White House powers at the expense of Congress and the taxpayers. Indeed, Barton helped provide the Obama White House with the sort of power it used to shake BP down, by giving unchecked power to the Bush White House. In other words, Barton is the typical Republican: He’s against big government except when he’s not.

Note: Barton did vote against the 2008 bailout, which was hardly courageous since about 80 percent of his constituents no doubt opposed the bailout.

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