Senators Enzi, Wyoming, and Alexander, Tennessee, are currently putting together a bill which would force Amazon and other online retailers to start collecting sales tax even when making sales to customers in other states.  Nevermind that the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that retailers can not be forced to collect sales tax on orders from out of state, unless they have offices in the state where the customer resides.  Surely, Senators Enzi and Alexander would be the heroes of state governments everywhere as this sizeable additional revenue stream would help foot the bill for their previous overspending.

Wal-Mart and other traditional retailers have to collect sales tax so it would only be fair if the online retailers did it also, right?  What would it mean for an online retailer like Overstock.com if this bill became the “law of the land”?  There are well over 7,000 taxing authorities across the country and they all have their own rules and regulations.  I speculate that suddenly having to become compliant with  all the rules and the recording keeping and possibly with payments in “arrears”, this will force a lot of online retailers out of business.

Now I’m just a simple peasant and all but if Congress forces Amazon and other Internet retailers to collect sales tax, does that mean the retailers will lower their prices so when sales taxes is added to the price I still get a good deal?  Or will the price remain the same with sales tax added on, in effect, another tax to be paid by the consumers?

This legislation is being brought to you by Republican Senators Enzi and Lamar and it is backed by Wal-Mart , Best Buy, Home Depot and other retailers.  Now again, I’m just a simple peasant l so I should probably leave politics to the aristocracy in Washington DC, but don’t Republicans usually run around saying that new taxes and regulations would hurt the economy? I guess unless a “campaign contribution” of the right size comes their way?

My thoughts were inspired by Declan McCullagh’s article over at C-net news, please give it a read.

Tom The Amateur Thinker

There’s such a heated political environment this season.  Everyone is concerned about the Democrats losing Congress.  There is pressure on both sides of the debate in an extremely crucial non presidential election year.  All of the candidates are hard at work pushing advertisements about how great they’ll be  in office and all of the good things they plan to do when they get there.

Wait no they aren’t.  Everyone seems to have cut out the bull shit and instead are busy slamming the opposition relentlessly.  I complained to my wife about these ads and told her I’m going to make a list of and simply not vote for anyone running the ads.  She pointed out that the candidates don’t run the ads, it’s other groups running them on behalf.  While this is true, why do you think these ads run in the first place?  The group says “hey, we’ll donate some money to your campaign,” meanwhile the politician says “no wait, instead run these ads”.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter if they are directly supporting these ads or not.  They are still offensive.  Offensive to the people supporting them and offensive to the people watching them.  Is this how we really want to elect our politicians?  Based on who can piss all over the opposition the most?  Maybe these people need to wake up and actually listen to the public.  I constantly hear complaints about how everyone is sick of the government and sick of these idiot politicians.  Part of the reason is they are sick of this bull shit political bickering.

Fortunately there’s a third factor that’s cropping up more and more.  The third part.  The two primary parties are so preoccupied with telling us out lame the other side is that everyone seems to be completely ignoring the third party.  While I don’t particularly support the Tea Party, They seem to be the stronger contender for taking a few spots from the Democrats and Republicans, and i hope they succeed.  If only so people will maybe wake up to the fact that we don’t have to have two parties and we don’t have to stick with what obviously isn’t working worth shit.

There are some other issues to consider here.  It’s my belief that ultimately these ads are terrible for television.  They are offensive to watch, which turns off viewers.  They also tend to preempt regular advertising, which irritates the normal non-election season advertisers.  Sure, you end up with a great month but it would be interesting to see how it affects the long term advertisers as well as how the viewing habits of people are during October.

There is a video floating around the internet lately that you may have seen where a Congressman “attacks” a student reporter and demands to know “Who Are you?”.  In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a link. 

This is not the first of these sorts of videos to go around.  Nor will it likely be the last in this world of citizen Journalists and bloggers.  I’m not here today to discuss this video or who is right or wrong in the video, what I am here to discuss is this video in the sense of it’s “type”.

Many people will agree that the mainstream news on the cable channels tends to be somewhat mediocre, full of pointless paranoia and alarmism with little actual digging into the details of even the most important stories.  One Sided tends to be the term applied.  Bloggers take these stories and try to dig a bit deeper sometimes, or at the very least, they will question some aspect of what is being reported to possibly suggest an alternative viewpoint.  This is great except when the blogger or Independent news source starts pushing the same sort of paranoia and anger fueled type of news that they show contempt towards cable news outlets for.

Like the video above.  Taken at face value, assuming honesty on the part of these “students” the Congressman is clearly a bully and a jerk.  However there are too many unknown facts at work for a true judgment to be made.  For example, why is it so terrible that these students can’t let the guy know what they are really doing?  They claim “Students working on a project”. 

What kind of project? 

What school?

The students don’t provide any of this information.  The Congressman is not required to respond to any of their questions either.  These are people who receive death threats and get harassed by nut jobs pretty regularly, what makes these students any different if they can’t or are unwilling to back up their story.  Even if they said “Hi, we’re students working on a Journalism project for the University of Whatever”, that cordial greeting will go a lot farther in getting a response than the ambush style of “We’re students, why do you need to know more, PS answer our question, answer our question.”

Which brings up the other questionable part of the video.  This clip is almost totally out of context.  For all we know these students have been harassing this poor senator as he walked down the street for an hour.  It’s one thing to keep a straight face and look the other way but there’s a point when people just break from harassment.  This may have been the main goal all along even. 

1) Find some Congressperson

2) Harass him endlessly with vague questions he won’t want to answer

3) Wait for him to explode at you and yell at you (or worse)

4) Post it online for kicks and hits!

Yet people circulate these sorts of videos constantly, out of context with no back story.  I’m not saying that it’s not possible it’s what it seems to be, nor am I supporting the manhandling of this student, I’m just suggesting that even if a story of video comes from some independent “non biased” source it should still be questioned.

There seems to be a subtle push by a decent number of people in the government and the “Old Media” against the so called “New Media”.  There have been numerous cases popping up questioning the validity of Bloggers and Independent News sites in general.  I have written previously about how the internet is giving rise as a new sort of printing press, where anyone can voice their opinions and anyone can listen easily, cheaply, often freely.

As mentioned in that article, the more easily disseminated information flow and easier access to a collective thought process makes people less easily controlled.  I’m not talking about some conspiracy theory based “”Make the population all sheeple so we can tax them and enslave them”.  I mean even a basic style of say, “control via advertising”.  A company could push the old model of press releases and commercials to push say, a new hamburger, but if the bloggers of the world go out and spread the message that the burger tastes like ass and is over priced, that marketing tactic will fail.

There is also the side of the issue where Politicians are suddenly more accountable.  There isn’t any “pay off the local paper to keep the slip ups quiet”.  It’s all posted on Youtube within minutes.  Politicians do stupid or shady things, some independent journalist can easily get the message out.  Now I do agree somewhat there there is a lot of “out of context” or even worse “blatantly provoked” responses being pushed, but there is something to be said about people who push one image when they clearly end up being another.

Finally we have the old school print media.  Readership is declining for magazines and newspapers.  Television viewing is on the decline.  These industries blame the internet and the new media.  They struggle to keep up and stay relevant.  The realities is there are a myriad of other factors that are causing the decline in both of these industries.  There’s enough that I could do a whole article on each Television, Print, and Radio individually, but it can be summed up by "laziness”.  That is to say, these industries were the monopoly behemoths with a strangle hold over their respective industries.  Sure there is internal competition, but there is still a huge cost barrier in all of these areas keeping the average person and their views out.  The internet has changed this.  Anyone can make a “video series” easily and syndicate it to Youtube.  Independent artists and podcasters can make a decent living without the help of radio or the record industry,  “Print” can quickly be achieved with a laptop and a free blog account.  These independent sources don’t subscribe to the model that you have to make a zillion dollars to be successful.  They also don’t subscribe to the idea of the middle man fluff.  This makes them quick, easily adaptable, and able to survive easily on “breadcrumbs”.

So these old industries fight back the best way they know how to.  They lobby for laws.  They lobby for laws, which benefit the makers of laws just as much as it benefits themselves.  A Michigan senator wants to license Journalists, to help push the idea of trustworthiness.  .While there isn’t much support for the bill, it’s something that can set a seed of thought in others and gain support with the proper coercion..

[State Sen. Bruce Patterson] told FoxNews.com that some reporters covering state politics don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re working for publications he’s never heard of, so he wants to install a process that’ll help him and the general public figure out which reporters to trust.

While this seems innocent enough, the promoted litmus test contains the extremely ambiguous qualification of "Good moral character” and demonstrate they have industry “ethics standards acceptable to the board.”.  As the article points out, the bill could easily lead to abuse by politicians and other outlets in promoting a preferred viewpoint to the population.

So where do you turn when you can’t get support in a bill that would help to discredit dissenters?  Perhaps a better plan is to simply turn to the old tried and true method of the money-wall barrier.  The FTC is now proposing a tax on independent news websites.  The best analogy I’ve heard for this is “Taxing cars to save horses”.  This speaks loads to just how much the online “blogosphere” is changing the way people receive news and information.  There has already been a push by the associated press to prevent bloggers from linking to and quoting their stories, now there are rumor of a tax for doing this same action.  It’s unclear from this article how the tax would be figured, though one version suggests attaching it to portable “New Media” style devices such as iPhones and Laptops. 

The bureaucracy sees it as a problem that the Internet has introduced a wealth of information options to consumers, forcing media companies to adapt and experiment to meet changing market needs. FTC’s policy staff fears this new reality.

There’s the joke of the situation though,  “forcing media to adapt and experiment”.  God forbid we have any sort of change or innovation in the market?  We should just keep everything the way it is now, forever.

This was a statement uttered by vice president candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.  Palin was suggesting that additional oil drilling be authorized to satisfy America’s demand for oil.  Recently, the statement has become a statement of ridicule because of the oil platform disaster off the coast of Louisiana.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s website, The United States imported 57 percent of the oil that we consumed in 2008.  The top fifteen sources of import crude oil in February of this year were, in order:

1. CANADA                      1,897,000 barrels per day
2. MEXICO                           996,000 barrels per day
3. VENEZUELA                  913,000 barrels per day
4. NIGERIA                          896,000 barrels per day
5. SAUDI ARABIA             881,000 barrels per day
6. IRAQ                                  540,000 barrels per day
7. COLOMBIA                      371,000 barrels per day
8. ANGOLA                           312,000 barrels per day
9. ALGERIA                          282,000 barrels per day
10. UNITED KINGDOM     260,000 barrels per day
11. KUWAIT                           228,000 barrels per day
12. RUSSIA                             214,000 barrels per day
13. BRAZIL                          192,000 barrels per day
14. ECUADOR                     145,000 barrels per day
15. CONGO                          76,000 barrels per day

Of these top 15 providers, 5 are relatively friendly and relatively stable countries.  Together they provided about 43 percent of our imported crude oil (Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Brazil and Ecuador).

7 of the providing countries are either unstable or in unstable regions and provided about 33 percent of our imported crude oil (Iraq, Colombia, Angola, Nigeria, Algeria, Kuwait and Congo).

3 of the providing countries are adversaries and provided about 24 percent of our imported crude oil (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela).  Saudi Arabia is in theory a friendly country, however they continue to fund Islamic fundamentalist schools that teach children to hate the West (and that they should do something about it).  Russia is a competing military and economic power which even though they engage in trade with the U.S., would like to see American influence in the world reduced.  Venezuela is lead by a dictator who on a regular basis denounces America’s evil ways.  On a side note, is it really a good idea to provide these three countries with vast quantities of American dollars?

If we add the percentage of imported crude provided by unreliable providers with the percentage provided by adversaries, we find that they together provided 57 percent of our imported crude oil for the month of February this year.  Since I do not have a 2010 number for percentage of U.S. import oil consumption, let us say that there has not been any change in the rate since 2008.  Of all oil we use in the U.S. we need 57 percent from the rest of the world and in turn, 57 percent of that oil comes from unreliable sources (as defined by me) meaning about 33 percent of our total oil need may or may not be provided for by imports.

U.S. Army risk assessment talks about the likelihood of negative outcome and if that negative outcome were to occur, how severe would the ramifications be.  Following Army logic, if you are not entirely in agreement with my view regarding how much of our oil supply is unreliable let us ponder what would happen if a substantial percentage of our oil supply was interrupted.

One of many cheap political one-liners is “No blood for oil,” made famous during Operation Desert Storm where Iraq occupying forces were forcibly removed from Kuwait.  I believe that 99 percent of the people who ever uttered that phrase owe their continued existence to oil.  Do you walk or ride your bike to work?  Some do, but the vast majority of people drive or use mass transit to get to work which requires fossil fuels in some form.  For everything you buy at your local Wal-Mart at least three trucks were involved (fresh produce which has the shortest route to the store) usually a lot more depending on the number of steps involved in the manufacturing of the good.  Try to think of anything around you that was not brought by a semi truck.  The floor you are standing on, the pencil you are holding, the laptop you are reading this article on, the socks you are wearing, your refrigerator, the cables from the outside which provides your house electricity, the vitamins you took this morning, the car you are going to drive to work, your favorite video game, the mirror you look into every morning in your bathroom, all these things needed multiple trucks to make it into your daily life.  These trucks are not fueled by hocus pocus, wishful thinking or future green technologies.  They are fueled by petroleum products.

A small cut in our oil supply and our lives become uncomfortable.  Everything costs more, you start sacrificing your luxury items in order to afford the necessities.  A medium cut in our oil supply results in increased unemployment, increased crime (people like to eat even if they can not afford it), and political unrest.  A dramatic cut in our oil supply and it is back to basics, survival of the fittest (pure speculation true, but what do you think would happen if all the supermarkets were suddenly empty?).  It is of the highest national security interest that we take steps to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, more specifically, oil from unreliable sources.  How do we do this?  Contrary to the belief of some, rhetoric and promises does not actually reduce the need for oil.  Hopefully in the future, our data manipulating scientists of “Global Climate Change” fame can come up with technology which will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in addition to being better for the environment.  Meanwhile, we need to increase our own oil production for the immediate future which is easier said then done as car driving, Wal-Mart shopping, airplane riding environmentalists make increasing domestic oil production very difficult.

Am I suggesting that we do away with regulations and let the oil companies do whatever they want to get more oil?  No, I am well aware that the oil industry is one of the greedier industries out there but I do suggest that as one considers environmental concerns, also consider the need for increased domestic oil production.  Take for instance drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.  Do you have to commit one hundred percent and turn it in to Kuwait overnight?  Or is it possible to start on a smaller scale to see if it can be done without destroying the local ecosystem?

Recently, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform sank off the coast of Louisiana.  The resulting oil spill is of historic proportions.  Now be honest, before this news story broke, what is the last oil platform disaster you remember?  The last really big oil spill of this proportion that I remember is the Exxon Valdez but that was a ship, not an oil platform.  Thousands of oil platforms are in service every day and operate so safely that you never hear about them.  Of course, let us examine what went wrong so we can avoid these mistakes in the future, but given the importance of a stable supply of oil, is it too much to ask for our Government to think about the big picture and not give us another knee jerk reaction?  Did we stop using oil tankers after the Exxon Valdez disaster?  Is there another big plan for how to increase domestic oil production besides additional coastal drilling?  Did I miss it?  You can try to fill your gas tank with “green technology” from the future but I am almost certain the resulting mileage will be terrible!  Given how much time our legislators spend finding places to sneak in earmarks and legislation for their campaign contributors, given how much time the executive branch spends watching television so they can call out political pundits by name, I believe they should be able to give this issue the time it deserves.

Tom The Amateur Thinker

I have tried to write in detail whats the back story of the DOW crash and after several attempts i saw no other way but to refer my self to a person who dedicate his blog to this scenarios. I have been following him for a long time and would recommend to any of you to do the same. In the other words I shall leave it to the pro.

In the world that we live in now and every one following the pack, much speculations have been flooding the main stream media and most of it only touch the surface of the issue, but lets not forget that behind most of the problems there is always a winner. A company that has hundreds of computer programmers and the best of them to work on a design of the financial “melt down” . Its not the traders who went into a panic mode when all theis goes down

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( Original file from http://www.zerohedge.com

Imagine you had a stop-loss order in on Accenture for $36. Average investors always put in stop-loss orders to prevent them from suffering a catastrophic loss on a stock. Regular investors, however, do not have computer algorithms that can buy in sell the same stock every millisecond.

An average investor in Accenture literally had his stock stolen from himself today. The stock dropped from from $41.09 to $.04 – triggering your stop-loss order at $.04. After all, the stock didn’t take a normal drop from $41.09 to $38.52 to $36. Instead, it fell off a cliff to…

…Four cents.

One of Goldman Sachs’ algorithm picked up your shares for four pennies in the second that your stop-loss order was triggered. That the stock immediately returned to it’s market value means nothing. You shares are gone.

Goldman wins, you lose. I’ll give you ten-to-one odds that Goldman Sachs made over $100 million today. Want to take the other side of the bet?

….. full post here

There is a tremendous problem going on with the news cycle.  The world has developed a severe case of ADD when it comes to following up on news stories and topics.  We move on almost immediately to the “next big story” completely oblivious to the holes still needing to be filled in the last big press push.

There are two major factors I see causing this problem. Firstly, is the internet.  Secondly, are cable news channels trying to keep up with the internet.

The internet is lightning fast.  With mechanisms such as Twitter, people can be connected and start getting reports of crisis and disaster all over the world before any other news source.  This sparks an awareness level.  There’s not much detail there and it can be hard to follow.  Hashtags can help but there’s often inconsistency in how people use this system. 

We’ll run through a hypothetical situation throughout this column.  Let’s say there is a huge Earthquake in Los Angeles.  People start tweeting about how the ground is shaking or maybe a building next door has started to collapse.  Others tweet bout how they have found shelter in a certain area.  The mainstream news begins to pick up on this story.

LA is a big city so there are reporters about pretty quickly.  We start to get breaking news coverage about the quake seeping into television programming.  Newspapers run stories online since they won’t print a new paper copy until tomorrow morning.  Reports start flowing about shelters and rescue efforts a few hours later as things calm down a bit. 

Then, later that evening, a prominent politician dies when his plane fails and he crashes into a mountain.  Suddenly, no one cares any more about the Earthquake.  Coverage is still there but now it’s in half hour updates as the news focuses on this plane crash.

Questions come in about the safety record of the plane, there is suspicions of sabotage as this politician was a prominent supporter of a critical bill.

The next morning a war breaks out between two nations and there is a huge push from Washington to send troops to support one side or the other.  Now no one cares about the Earthquake or the investigations into the death of the Politician.

Some people would call this a conspiracy.  The war was a staged effort by some massive shadow group known as THEM in an effort to cover up the death of the Politician.  Or possibly even to cover up the actions of some other event all together.

The reality is, it’s all just a huge ratings grab.  CNN, FOX News, all want to get the eyeballs of the public, so they all cover the same stories ad nauseum.  If people want Earthquake news, they’ll get Earthquake news, if they want war news, they’ll get war news.  The real question is, who determines what the people want?  No one wants to chance missing out so they all dog pile onto every new event as  it occurs.

Let’s look out a week after our hypothetical news cycle.  Now all the news cares about is the scandal between two celebrity couples or how there’s potential racism going on inside a big city police department.  People in LA may still be without power and those two countries are now lobbing rockets at each other but we don’t care, we’ve moved on.

The information is still out there on these stories, most often online.  The problem is, it’s buried deep beneath a sea of more recent stories.  Or it’s been researched by some small website that gathers maybe 1000 visitors a month.  The other issue is that some of this research into older news stories is picked up by people who see conspiracy around every corner.

Some blogger on “thecoverup.com” researching the death of the Politician in his plane is likely only every going to conclude foul play.  Even if he actually could afford the time, cost, and effort to go to the crash site and somehow managed to get in to inspect the plane himself and to question those who worked on the plane, that is, if he actually did some real investigating, he’s still likely only looking for the conspiracy angle.

Thus, as mainstream media has been caught up with ratings and flash, the obscure-stream media tends to be caught up in the glam of “everyone’s out to get you”.

In the end, it all just comes down to a numbers game.  No one has time to do real research and everyone has their own bias.  It’s easy to armchair quarterback the news but what happens where there’s no real good news to watch?

Have you ever heard any one claim that Iraq and Afghanistan are illegal wars because Congress never declared war?  When you hear this argument made, the speaker has managed to sort through a host of very complex constitutional issues which legal scholars are still divided over.

Most of us know that the power to declare war rests with the Congress but the military is commanded by the Commander-in-chief, the President.  Does the Constitution classify all military actions as war?  When someone uses the words “illegal war” they are frequently referring to the War Powers Resolution of 1973.  This was legislation passed by Congress which requires the President to notify Congress of intent to send troops into harms way within 48 hours.  It further forbids troops from being deployed for more than 60 days (with an additional 30 day withdrawal period) without Congressional authorization or a formal declaration of war.  Me and Forest Gump aren’t smart men but how does Congress state what the President will or will not do?  Is that not supposed to come from the Constitution?

I want the President to be able to send troops into combat the way we have been doing it.  I believe that technically the Korean War, the Vietnam War and Desert Storm should have been declared wars but it would have been very bad if they actually had been declared wars.  A high intensity, all out, nation on nation confrontation should not be fought without a declaration of war.  However, smaller conflicts like the invasion of Grenada and Panama, Kosovo and Afghanistan should be controlled by the Commander-in-Chief alone.  Why?  An excellent example of this is former presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry.  He voted for the legislation which authorized President Bush to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq before he voted against it.  Legislators are frequently not willing to take a stand on controversial issues until they can read the polls and see which way the voting public is leaning.  In the hour of decision, these are not the people I trust the fate of our nation and the fate of our young warriors to.  I also do not see the benefits of telegraphing to the world, to include potential adversaries, strategies and responses by a grand standing Congress.

However, let us say that any and all American military involvement which bears the risk of active hostilities must be authorized by a declaration of war.  Allow me then to go “alternative history” on you and speculate how things might have turned out differently.

The Korean War escalated into World War 3 because “The Greatest Generation” was still in charge and they believed that communism was an evil force on par with fascism and therefore had to be stopped.  When the U.S. declared war on North Korea, China declared war on the U.S. and China’s close ally, the Soviet Union sided with its ally and also declared war on the U.S.

The Vietnam War escalated into World War 4 for the same reasons as the Korean War escalated into World War 3.  The U.S. declared war on North Vietnam because of their attempt to forcibly subjugate South Vietnam.  North Vietnam’s sponsors and close allies, China and the Soviet Union, declared in response war on the U.S.

Grenada remains a Cuban “protectorate” today as the U.S. Congress failed to declare war on Cuba due to war weariness from World War 3 and 4.

Noriega remains a dictator for life in Panama allowing a free flow of drugs and other illegal activities thru his country.  Sanctions spearheaded by the United States have been in place for several years but have been ineffective due to China and the Soviet Union blocking any efforts to get the sanctions approved by the UN.

The Middle Eastern War, aka “The Modern Crusade”, began when the U.S. declared war on Iraq because of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.  The declaration of war by a western country against an Islamic country alienated most of the Arab nations (most of whom were actually opposed to Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait) and they joined Iraq in what they saw as a fight against western attempts to interfere with the region and the Muslim way of life.

The Balkan Ethnic Wars continue to this day with all four parties, Croats, Serbs, Muslims and Bosnians having committed large scale atrocities.  Weak willed attempts at enforcing cease fires by United Nations peace keeping troops have failed miserably and Western Europe have been reluctant to clean up their own backyard without American support.  With no clear nation to declare war against, the U.S. decided it was a European issue and declined to get involved.

The Second Middle Eastern War, aka “The Second Crusade”, began when the U.S. declared war on Afghanistan after a major terrorist attack which occurred on American soil which claimed over 3,000 American lives.  It was discovered the attack had been planned and directed from Afghanistan by a terrorist group which enjoyed the full support of that country’s fundamentalist government.  In order to prevent further attacks against America and its citizens, the US declared war on Afghanistan in order to deny the terrorists an operating base and to remove the fundamentalists from power.  Once again the Muslim countries of the region resisted the aggression by the Great Satan and allied themselves with Afghanistan in the fight against the West.

Back in the real world, in summary, there is a place for declarations of war and there is a place for regional Commander-In-Chief initiated hostilities.  ”Illegal war” arguments today usually refer to Afghanistan and Iraq.  Congress did in fact authorize the use of force in Iraq and attempts to pass legislation forcing withdrawal in Afghanistan have failed.  It would appear to me that the President is not “going it alone” and that he has the support of the Congress in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  Using the term “illegal war” is a lot like referring to late term abortions as “partial-birth” abortions, you are opposed to something so you label it with the most extreme words you can.

Tom The Amateur Thinker

Anthony Fox No Agenda News

Only a year ago this was the Tea Party:

Dave Johannes: Tea Party protesters just starting

The inaccurate media coverage and the continued bashing of the Tea Parties by the media has only strengthened our commitment to our message and our cause. We are not a bunch of right-wing extremists trying to be disruptive; we are concerned citizens trying to make our voices heard and participate in our political process. We are not protesting any single person or political party; we are protesting the direction and policies of the current Congress and the new administration.

Our issues are:

•Excessive taxes.

•Out-of-control government spending.

•Nationalization of private businesses.

•Redistribution of wealth.

•The TARP bailout plan.

•Loss of individual freedoms.

•Excessive government regulation.

•Socialized medicine.

•Loss of national sovereignty.

Now Raw Story is reporting this:

Oklahoma conservatives, lawmakers plot anti-federal militia

“Have they heard of the Oklahoma City bombing?” said Joseph Thai, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma. The state observes the 15th anniversary of the anti-government attack on Monday. Such actions could “throw fuel in the fire of radicals,” he said.

Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

Tea party movement leaders say they’ve discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.

“Is it scary? It sure is,” said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. “But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?”

Thus far, the discussions have been exploratory. Even the proponents say they don’t know how an armed force would be organized nor how a state-based militia could block federal mandates. Critics also asserted that the force could inflame extremism, and that the National Guard already provides for the state’s military needs.

In one year the Tea Party has made this transformation. All on it’s own? It hardly seems likely. Sure we’re supposed to believe that everyone right of center is completely mad and liable to erupt in gunfire at the slightest provacation. That doesn’t explain the Tea Party stance of a year ago, though. What happened?

Here’s the methods employed by the FBI against the Black Panthers in the ’60′s Cointelpro:

Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

Extralegal Force and Violence: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations. The object was to frighten, or eliminate, dissidents and disrupt their movements.

Psychological Warfare From the Outside: The FBI and police used a myriad of other “dirty tricks” to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.

Harassment Through the Legal System: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, “investigative” interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.

The Tea Party is only a year old. There hasn’t been enough time to apply all of the techniques listed but a suspicious mind could easily see some have. This most recent step would set them up for more.

This isn’t necessarily an FBI operation of course. Our government is rife with secrecy. It really doesn’t matter which agency is doing the dirty work. Why it is being done does matter.

The Tea Party began as a grassroots movement to enact a fundamental change in the direction the Federal government is moving. It should be clear to anyone, regardless of their political leaning, that the government is directed by people with power and money. True grassroots movements of any sort, by their nature, are going to be anti-thetical to the goals of these people.

Why? Because the goal of the power elite is more power. It is simple to the point of being stupid. There are people in the world obessed with power and control. They don’t want to share it with anyone and they certainly don’t want to share it with everyone. A grassroots movement of any sort is going to drive them crazy; unless they control it and at that point it is no longer grassroots.

The Tea Party needs to root out the representatives of the power elite in their organization and the rest of us (liberals included) need to cheer them on.

We need grassroots movements. We need the Black Panthers and we need the Tea Partiers.

In the Homeland Security Appropriations bill we will take up next week, we will appropriate $860 million for this needless, useless agency. This money is a total waste: $860 million for people to sit on airplanes and simply fly back and forth, back and forth. What a cushy, easy job.

And listen to this paragraph from a front-page story in the USA Today last November: “Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.”

Actually, there have been many more arrests of Federal air marshals than that story reported, quite a few for felony offenses. In fact, more air marshals have been arrested than the number of people arrested by air marshals.

Full Transcript

I do have one initial complaint about this report.  They mention problems with these guys involving alcohol and domestic violence, etc.  These are not actions that directly relate tot he job of being an Air Marshal.  It’s not like say, these guys are beating up their wives while on the planes or anything.  I’m not supporting it, It’s just a bit misleading.  One could probably make the same point for say, the military, or the police force in some cities.  The reality is, arguing that more cops in City X are arrested for domestic violence would make the point of questionable usefulness than this argument since part of the job of a cop is to prevent domestic violence.

An air marshal only has to prevent violence on or involving the plane.

Still, one could argue that despite the high cost “per arrest” these Marshals, the presence of them has prevented many other incidents.  Unfortunately this isn’t an easily calculated statistic.  How do you count “potential” terror attacks?   Especially when you have people who think everyone is a potential terrorist running around?

Still, to push for the idea of suspending this service, aren’t we already going through enough pain and suffering before boarding these planes?  If the naked body scanners and x-ray conveyor belts are truly effective, why do we need an armed guard sitting on the plane as well?

He does make a good point about the true success of the 9/11 terror attacks.  I’ve believe for a while that the point wasn’t to destroy buildings, it was obviously meant to cause TERROR.  Hence the word TERRORism.  Now we all live in a panic state of fear, not necessarily fear from random al Qaeda jihadists but fear of our own government.  Fear that we aren’t in control. Fear that we need to “look over our shoulder” constantly..

And this is why the terrorists won a long time ago….