WWE's Kane, Tom Woods, and Taxation

I've been enjoying being back in the US again for the last couple of months for many reasons. Those who have bothered to read my bio, which is displayed next to every post of mine, might have noticed that my profession is as a yacht crew member. I live and work on a big boat and travel the world while catering to the whims of the world's rich and not-so famous. It's pretty cool--usually.

A couple of the things that I've enjoyed doing while being in between seasons in the US recently is getting my daily dose of liberty from two of my favorite truth-tellers and liberty lovers, Peter Schiff and Tom Woods. Peter Schiff has a daily radio show from 10am-noon every weekday and Tom Woods has just started his own radio show in the last month which airs directly after Peter's; best 150 minutes of my day! Normally when I'm abroad, either the internet connection is too slow, non-existant, or I'm too busy to listen in to the shows during the day, so I've really relished this opportunity these last 2 months to regularly get information on current events from people I trust.

The other day on the Tom Woods Show, he hosted WWE wrestler "Kane", real name Glenn Jacobs, who has recently become more and more vocal about his libertarian viewpoints, appearing on radio shows and writing op-eds in newspapers, most notably on the subject of the Internet Tax Mandate, known elsewhere by the Orwellian title of the Marketplace Fairness Act.

As most of Woods's interviews are, this was engaging and enlightening with well thought out questions which were answered intelligently by Jacobs. They covered much of the usual ground, including how Jacobs became a libertarian and what his colleagues in the locker room thought of him and his view points. About midway through, Jacobs touched upon an important point that resonated strongly with me and with Woods as well. He mentioned that as part of the WWE he is employed as a subcontractor and not as an employee of the company and as such is not subject to tax withholding. Tom mentioned that he is in a similar situation since he has no set income stream like wage workers and salaried employers have and therefore has to file quarterly taxes like many other self-employed workers have to.

I count myself in this group. My husband and I have our own S-corporation and are employed as subcontractors to our boss. We formed this business a little over two years ago once we got married since my husband is Australian. Previously, I was issued a 1099 by my employers and paid taxes that way. My husband was not required to pay US tax.

Jacobs mentioned in his interview that if he ever were elected to be President or, more appropriately, Dictator for a day, the first thing he would do would be to eliminate federal tax withholding. If you get a regular paycheck from a company or corporation, your paycheck is automatically deducted a certain amount for Social Security, Medicare, and various other taxes. If you're making $48k/year, you don't get $1000/week as a paycheck (for the sake of simplicity let's assume only 4 weeks in a month). You probably only get about $800 of that. But you don't even notice the amount that's taken away from you. Psychologically, it was never yours to begin with so you don't even miss it.  Maybe you never even see a paycheck, you just get a direct deposit.

Now imagine getting your entire $1000 paycheck every week like clockwork. Instead of $3200/month, that's an entire $4000/month, wow! That's almost an entire extra mortgage payment per month! You see your bank account accumulating quickly, you see those student loans getting paid down, you see a nice beach vacation in your future with the kids, you see trading in the car you've had since college for a newer model, you see being able to help your brother with a small loan, you see putting down an appropriate 20% down payment for a new home. Oh but wait, March comes around and June and September and December and greedy Uncle Sam needs his handout. But instead of just $200 dollars that you give each paycheck, you realize that those little $200 increments that you might not have noticed too much when it was getting taken out of your paycheck every week and was never "yours" to begin with have now added up to $2400, which you noticed very much as it sat in your bank account and were mentally imagining how you could spend it. But <poof!> just like that it's gone, never to be seen again! Beach vacation, gone! New car, gone! college loan payments, never-ending! New home, not in this decade!

I should know, this is what happens to me four times a year. I've joked to numerous friends and family how I could single-handedly support the economy if I were allowed to keep that money myself. We wouldn't have needed to bailout Detroit and the auto giants over there if I and everyone else like me had those several thousand dollars per quarter back in our bank accounts with which to spend how we see fit (possibly on new cars).

When Jacobs and Woods were both talking about mandatory withholding, I was standing there with my earbuds in my ears, hands in the air, shouting "Preach!" Can you imagine how pissed people would be if they saw that huge chunk of change leave their bank account four times a year? And yet nobody bats an eye when a small portion is taken every week or two weeks. Trust me, psychologically it makes a HUGE difference when you see how much you could have had, what you yourself could be doing with your own money, and then you have to give it away to anonymous bureaucracies for unknown purposes. If you'd never questioned the system before, it might seriously give you pause for a second to wonder if the government really knows better than you do how to spend your money. You might recognize and realize a) how much they're actually taking from you  and b) what you could have spent that money on yourself if the government hadn't decided it was more important for them to have it. Maybe, just maybe, if people were able to keep their whole paycheck they would have enough money to save for their own retirement and wouldn't be forced to pay for someone else's. Maybe, just maybe, if people were able to keep their whole paycheck we wouldn't have had to force banks to make subprime loans to questionable buyers who couldn't afford to put a down payment down on a house because those people might actually have had the money with which to put a down a reasonable down payment. But our government thinks we're all too stupid to be trusted with our own money.

Yes, safety nets, yes roads, blah blah blah. But what about all the useless bullshit that we have to pay for? Bridges to nowhere, corporate subsidies, illegal wars, bogus university "research" studies, 800,000

"non-essential" government employees, etc. Ah yes, but you see, overlord Nancy Pelosi would have us believe that "the cupboard is bare" and "there are no more cuts to make" in terms of our federal spending. So too bad to all the peons out there who thought that they'd worked hard for their money and deserved a new home or who worked hard for their money and wanted to take a vacation for the first time in years. No, you must keep working hard, citizen, but not for your own benefit. You must keep the piggies in Washington happy.

If it were up to me, I'd have a bubble sheet like they do with private sector fundraisers where you can direct where you want your money to be spent. I'm betting that most people would not elect to have their hard-earned money going towards the studies of duck genitalia or training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly. But as soon as you start talking about cuts in government, you immediately get accused by both politicians and citizens alike of hating the poor, wanting to throw granny off the cliff, or wanting terrorists to attack America. We the People have been fooled into thinking that our federal government only has 5 programs, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, and defense, and that any proposed cuts in government will automatically leave any or all of those programs vulnerable. They've fooled us, with the help of our complicit media, into thinking that every dollar we send to the federal government is sacred and if we spend even .50 cents less than what we're spending now, the country will self-implode. In other words, no vacation for you, citizen! If you'd rather take your money and go on vacation than send it to the federal government, you're just a greedy, heartless SOB who hates poor and sick people. That's just a fact.

I'll tackle more on taxation in another article. In the meantime, do a little experiment yourself. If you actually get a paycheck, a physical paycheck where you can see what they're withholding from you, do the math yourself. Figure out how much money gets withheld per paycheck, then figure out how much money gets withheld over a 3 month time frame (quarterly). And then ask yourself if you think it would make any difference seeing this money in your bank account month after month and then having to write a check and send it all away. Or does it not make a difference to you one way or another? Let me know in the comments below!

In case you missed it above, here is the link where you can listen to the Tom Woods interview with WWE wrestler "Kane".

Living in an Orwellian World

Most people are at least tangentially familiar with the writings of George Orwell, whose most popular works had recurring themes of authoritarian or totalitarian societies. They were incisive in their observations of how these societies formed and in imagining what one might look like in the future. But while Orwell was providing what surely he thought was an outlandish futuristic dystopia, little did he know that many elements of his fictional universe have by and large come to fruition. 

In his book 1984, which was published in 1949, Orwell imagined a total surveillance society in which an enigmatic Big Brother was watching over everyone through a network of informants eager to rat out their neighbors and omnipresent electronic surveillance. This novel popularized the concept of doublespeak, in which words are deliberately disguised, distorted, or reversed to make the truth sound more palatable or to disguise the actual nature of the truth. The common uses of doublespeak in Orwell's 1984 were: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
Doublespeak is alive and well today, arguably stronger than ever, and I'm going to highlight just a few of the myriad ways in which ours has become an Orwellian society.

WAR IS PEACE
There are more than enough examples of this in our American foreign policy to fill an encyclopedia sized book, but I'll just highlight a few of the most glaring examples. Often you'll hear politicians, mainly Republicans, define their foreign policy beliefs as "Peace Through Strength". What this really means is that we'll achieve peace as soon as the rest of the world falls in line with the American way and if not we'll drop bombs on you until you install a puppet government that will. Peace Through Strength.

Uber war hawk Lindsay Graham was recently fear-mongering in his home state of South Carolina in efforts to drum up support for war in Syria, issuing warnings that if we don't go drop some bombs on Iran immediately if not sooner then they'll send a nuclear bomb in the belly of a ship to Charleston within the next year. So you see, to ensure world peace, we must go fight them on their own turf before they bring the war to us. Nevermind that Iran has military expenditures less than Algeria's and a mere one-tenth of what the USA spends or that there is zero proof that Iran is even contemplating a nuclear bomb despite what the talking heads on the MIC funded news shows would have you believe. Lindsay Graham believes that to achieve world peace, we must go bomb Iran back to Baghdad. WAR IS PEACE.

Speaking of war in Syria, that was another Orwellian attempt to draw the U.S. into yet another unnecessary, unclear, and unwinnable foreign entanglement based on the dubious premise that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. Even if this were true, which it remains unclear who actually released the gas, what would this predicted "limited" and "narrow" strike possibly have achieved? Just to teach Assad a lesson? That's like a parent disciplining her child for hitting their sibling by giving them a spanking. Violence is wrong! <spank, spank>. Or, to put it crudely, bombing for peace is like fucking for virginity.

 The scary thing is that millions of people believe this crap! Our government has got us so scared of jihadists under our bed that we'll consent to any military action, no matter how absurd or costly, in the name of fighting terrorism. The terrorists we trot out daily in the government media talking points are the equivalent of 1984's imagined enemy Emmanuel Goldstein, except instead of 2 minutes of hate we get 24/7 hate with our non-stop brainwash box. The war machine is strong in America and the Obama presidency should have woken everybody up that it's not just the Republicans that are capable of warmongering, the Democrats, too, are beholden to the military industrial complex. They just give war a more flowery, lovey dovey, humanitarian spin while their constituency temporarily forgets that the outcome is still the same. WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
The more our out of control government senses its hegemony being threatened by various factions, the more bellicose its words and actions become. Take, for example, the recent debt ceiling crisis. You had Tea Party Republicans, Constitutionalist conservatives, and libertarians all on one side versus the rest of the Establishment/RINOs of the Republican party and the Democrats on the other in a debate as to whether we should fully fund Obamacare and raise the debt ceiling. The disagreement resulted in the government's being "shutdown" for two weeks which was, for the most part, blamed on the Republican "Tea Tards" or "tea baggers". The left-wing media framed it as "holding America hostage" and "domestic terrorism".

Just recently, outspoken Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen from Tennessee called the Tea Party "domestic enemies" and said that these are the people he swore an oath to defend the country against. How Orwellian. Fellow bloggers at Liberty Blitzkrieg do a good job of breaking this statement down. In regards to Cohen's professed oath to defend the country against enemies foreign and domestic:

First of all this is incorrect. The oath of office for members of Congress is:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. [So help me God.]

Did you catch that? The oath quite intentionally states to defend the “Constitution” not the “country.” This phasing was no accident.  The difference is what separates a nation governed by the rule of law (the Constitution), as opposed to the rule of men (a nation state run by dictators). It is what separates a free and civilized nation from a barbaric fascist one. Rep. Cohen paraphrased the oath of office incorrectly for a reason. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he believes in the rule of men, not the rule of law. He thinks his “brand” should rule and those who share different beliefs are “domestic enemies.” That’s one small step away from calling them “terrorists,” and we all know the gigantic gulag grid that has been put in place to deal with “terrorists.” This man is very dangerous.

They are absolutely correct in their analysis. What Rep. Cohen and many of his cohorts on the left will have you believe, in true Orwellian fashion, is that those who dare uphold the Constitution (truly and not selectively) and invoke it as their justification for opposing clear government overreach are the real enemies of freedom here. Freedom means letting the government do whatever it wants in defiance of any heretofore prescribed laws or amendments. Freedom means allowing the government to place the shackles of debt on every man, woman, and child in this country. Freedom means allowing the government to conduct mass, warrantless spying on the entire country at any time and for any reason. To oppose that is nothing more than "domestic terrorism". FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

In a similar fashion, one of the State worshippers over at Salon warned his readers not to join in on an upcoming anti-NSA rally being held in D.C. this weekend. Not because they aren't against government spying, but because they can't possibly share the stage and form a coalition with the "radical" "extreme" "anti-government" libertarians. We can't have any of this "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" nonsense. I could say a lot more about this but I'll get to the part that literally made me LOL. Deep down in the article, after he got through explaining all of the dangerous beliefs of libertarians using their own words from their own websites, we get to this gem:

 "Or libertarianism itself will rise, and our loss of liberty will be greater still. That’s because libertarianism is a form of authoritarianism disguised in a narrow slice of civil liberties."

Bwahahahahaha! The misinformation out there about libertarianism never ceases to amaze me. Libertarianism's guiding principle is the Non-Aggression Principle. This, simply stated, means that nobody has the right to initiate force against another being or entity or to delegate this initiation of force to another person or group (like the government). This does not preclude one from acting violently in self defense, however. But that's it. That's all libertarianism entails.

When asked to describe libertarianism in one word, prominent libertarian Ron Paul simply stated "non-intervention". There's even a joke amongst libertarian circles that cheekily jests, "Libertarians: Diligently plotting to take over the world and leave you alone". Libertarians don't believe in forcing their personal beliefs on anyone nor that anyone else should be able to through force of law. They believe that you should be free to do with your own person and property whatever you wish so long as you do not violate someone else's person or property. Libertarians believe in economic freedom through peaceful market cooperation and voluntary associations. No force or authority is needed but to protect those edicts as that is the only fair application of the law. But according to our Salon writer, libertarianism is nothing but a cloak for authoritarianism and we should be regarded as dangerous. The irony is rich coming from a left-liberal whose side believes that all good ideas should be implemented with government force and anyone who doesn't agree with them is either a racist or a domestic terrorist. Yes, according to today's keepers of opinion, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
 In Orwell's application of this phrase, it serves to mean that the people need not bother with their own learning and that they should just accept without question whatever the Party told them. This was achieved through State-sanctioned recreational activities, including encouraged promiscuity. The rationale in the book is the same rationale that is currently used, namely that if we can keep the masses entertained, they won't think to question or even notice the injustice and tyranny that surrounds them. Who cares if President Obama has drone murdered 10 x more children in the Middle East than were killed at Sandy Hook, we need to find out the sex of Kim Kardashian's baby! Who cares that President Obama signed into law the use of indefinite detention of American citizens on American soil in direct violation of the 5th and 6th Amendments of the Constitution, would you believe that Kansas City is the only remaining undefeated team in the NFL? Who cares that the NSA is indiscriminately collecting every single piece of digital communications of every single American, Miley is twerking again!

Nay, President Obama himself has issued various warnings against listening to those anti-government wackobirds. In a commencement speech to the graduates and family of Ohio State University, Obama warned:

"Still, you’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices."

Similarly, in Obama's post-debt ceiling debacle victory speech, Obama admonished, “All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists, and the bloggers, and the talking heads on radio, and the professional activists who profit from conflict, and focus on what the majority of Americans sent us here to do." Yes, citizen, don't listen to those pesky bloggers or radio hosts. Click away from the page, my friend. Just listen to your government. "Trust us", seems to be the message here. Just go back to watching American Idol, citizen, and leave the tough decisions to us. All you need do is let us substitute our judgement for yours.

Indeed, the level of cognitive dissonance required to believe the gross lies and manipulations that come from the halls of our government on a daily basis is humongous. I've mentioned before that I'm fairly young but I've seen through the hypocrisy and distortion already; Obama's presidency made sure of that. But try convincing a liberal that Obama is George W. Bush on steroids and you'll hear nothing but excuses and justifications. If George W. Bush were drone murdering children, had a presidential kill list, was presiding over the dragnet spying of the NSA surveillance machine, signed into law indefinite detention, or appointed a Monsanto exec to oversee the FDA, liberals would be screaming bloody murder. But under a Democratic presidency, they seem to not notice or not care. He's on their side so they can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to reading People magazine. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

DEBT IS WEALTH
This one is my own creation and after another round of debt ceiling/government shutdown theater just behind us, it is only fitting that it be included. If you believe most of the government and media hype, we just averted near disaster by finally agreeing to raise our debt ceiling. You see, we can't pay our bills. We've not balanced a budget in Obama's whole presidency and his predecessor decided to go to war with 2 countries at the same time AND pass a completely unfunded Medicare Part D bill. Oh, and somewhere in between there our economy tanked, the housing bubble collapsed, and we spent over a trillion dollars bailing out the entities responsible for all of it. So we're $17 trillion dollars in debt right now.

But this is not a big deal, people. You see, we have what's called the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has what's called a printing press. This magical printing press can be used whenever the US government gets into trouble and can't pay its bills. You just hit the green button and it prints out whatever amount of money you need to cover your bills (ok, so it doesn't work exactly like that but humor me here, ok?). And if that little green button is broken, we can just call our friends Japan and China and they'll loan us the money we need till we get sorted out. "Yo, China! What's up dog?? Yeah, we're trying to go to war in Syria over here so Imma need about 500 million Benjamins up in here, ya know what I'm sayin'? Yeah, I know we haven't paid you back your last $3 trillion dollars yet but Imma get you, I swear!"

If you listen to the voices in our government and not, say, the voices warning you that tyranny is lurking around the corner, they'll tell you that when you're down and out in the middle of a recession, the only way to get out of the recession is to keep spending money. Just like with your own personal finances, if you come up on hard times and all your credit cards are maxed out, just keep spending. Preferably, open up another credit card account and you can use that to pay off your old credit card accounts. And if that doesn't quite cover it, just borrow obscene amounts from your mom and dad with the firm promise that you will pay them back in the undetermined future with money that is worth less than when you borrowed it. Also, as George W. Bush reminded us all in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, if you don't keep spending money at the Olive Garden and Ikea, the terrorists win.

In economic speak, what this all means is that during tough times like we've been having the cure all is government spending. The Keynesians out there believe that government spending is the engine of the economy and not private enterprise. Therefore, if we find ourselves in the doldrums we just need to roll out a litany of "make work" stimulus programs and increase our deficits. This deficit spending will all work out because even though we rack up huge amounts of debt in doing so, once our economy is stimulated we will magically grow our economy enough to eliminate the debt. So the more we spend, the wealthier we all become. DEBT IS WEALTH.

Oh, and if you believe this is an absurd premise and think that you address debt by eliminating the sources of it and not by spending or borrowing more money, then you're a domestic enemy and quite possibly a terrorist who deserves to be indefinitely detained because this is America, land of the free.

There you have it. WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and DEBT IS WEALTH. The sad reality is that this is just the tip of the Orwellian iceberg. We live in times of universal deceit as various powers and paradigms fight for dominance in an ever fracturing world. As such, all the entities fighting for power will continue to employ pages out the 1984 playbook to spin their message to the masses. Orwell is assuredly rolling in his grave right now.  

 

  

Government Saved Us!

For those of you who read my last blog, it will come as no surprise that the very scenario I predicted in the Grand Shutdown Opera has at last come true. The scenario being that the GOP would cave on pretty much everything, their grandstanding would all be for nothing, and Obama and the Dems would come out smelling like roses.

How did I know this was going to occur before it even actually happened? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS EVERY TIME. I can't remember the last time anybody in either party took a principled stand that had any measurable effect on policy. I'm fairly young so I'm sure it's happened but maybe I wasn't around or not paying attention at the time that it happened. But it's also about understanding the very nature of government. The ones who might actually give a crap about the American people are few and far between. Like I said, I'm fairly young but I've already figured out that government is a sham. There are the
power players at the top who are the ones who

really pull the strings. This includes the President, House and Senate leadership of both sides, the career politicians, and the ones behind the scenes who we don't even know about. The ones who give a crap aren't at the top. They're at the bottom; they have little to no clout, they're often lampooned or ridiculed by the government mouthpiece media or Establishment politicians, and their common sense bills usually run up against a brick wall. Knowing this, it was not hard to predict from a mile away that this whole shutdown charade was going to go nowhere.

It also doesn't help that our bought and paid for government controlled media dutifully reported all of the exaggerations, falsehoods, and flat out lies that were spoken by President Obama and his cronies in Congress without question or examination. Let's point out a few, shall we? On September 18, speaking to a group of CEOs at a Business Roundtable, Obama rattled off the following absurdity:

"Now, this debt ceiling — I just want to remind people in case you haven’t been keeping up — raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt; it does not somehow promote profligacy. All it does is it says you got to pay the bills that you’ve already racked up, Congress. It’s a basic function of making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is preserved."

I'm sorry, WHAT?! How does this man get away with such blatant and outright LIES? How is it that our mainstream media does not trumpet the lies as BREAKING NEWS on the airwaves or as a front page headline?! Of course, the conservative media picks up on this immediately, but they're just preaching to the choir. So what's the rest of the media's excuse?

The sad thing is, is that I've heard and been engaged in many a Facebook debate recently where liberals will spout off this very line. I don't think Obama is stupid. I don't think he actually believes what he says in this instance. But he knows that if he says it, masses of our dumbed down, uninformed, unthinking, naive populace will buy it hook, line, and sinker. He also knows that none of the mainstream media will challenge him on this point. Oh they'll report on it, they'll repeat it, but they'll do it with a completely straight face and no mention of the fact that he's flat out WRONG.

How can anyone actually believe that raising the debt ceiling DOESN'T increase our debt? Why else would we need to keep raising the friggin thing if it didn't actually increase the debt? Duuuhh. What does he think we are, morons? Oh wait...

Obama and his cronies' other masterful use of doublespeak was their repeated insistence that if we do not raise the debt ceiling that it will result in default. This was parroted ad nauseam by virtually all of the MSM outlets.  
  

 

MORE: Senate passes bill to avoid default, reopen government; now heads to House and expected passage: http://t.co/IxDjt1kMTb -SS
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 17, 2013

Notice the headline, "Senate passes bill to avoid default...". Hundreds more versions of the exact same headline were printed everywhere across the country, concealing the reality that we were never going to default! The US government takes in ~$250 billion dollars per month in tax revenue. Our monthly interest payments on the debt are ~$20 billion dollars, 10 times less than our tax revenue. The only way we were going to default on the debt was if President Obama chose to default. Didn't mention that, MSM, did you? Of course not.

That's not to say that we wouldn't have had to make some painful decisions about government spending, because in order to avoid a default, we would have had to pay our bills. This point has completely been missed by all of the lemmings in the media. If we hadn't raised the debt ceiling, we would have had to start making cuts to our government because right now our tax revenue doesn't cover it. Raising the debt ceiling means we're able to borrow more money so that we don't have to pay our bills; we can keep papering over the fact that we are completely broke. Peter Schiff makes this point brilliantly in his most recent video blog, cutting through the spin and BS that the MSM serves us everyday.

Presently all across America, people are popping the champagne, the confetti streamers are falling, the balloons have floated to the ground, and we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief since President Obama and our saviors in Congress have averted near disaster. We can all sleep tighter tonight knowing that we will keep piling on the debt for another few months, that we have sold out the future of our children, and we have showcased for the world our complete and utter idiocy, instilling confidence in our creditors and investors worldwide. Oh, and did I mention that we still have Obamacare?

There's an old refrain that goes, "Government is good at breaking your leg, handing you a crutch and saying 'There, without government you couldn't walk.'" This government shutdown theater has demonstrated another such example of government loudly and publicly saving itself and the American people from a completely self-made crisis, patting itself on the back for doing so, and expecting the American people to congratulate them on it. We knew this day was going to come. We've known about it since we went through this dog and pony show the last time. Why did we only start talking about it again mere weeks before we were about to reach the debt limit? Why didn't they start holding rounds of discussions immediately after the last debt ceiling crisis to start addressing the whole underlying cause of the present debt ceiling crisis: the debt? Shouldn't that be considered failed leadership? That's what I consider failed leadership. In the twisted world of our government, however, the Democrats are congratulating their anointed leaders for their leadership in the continued herding of the American people down the path of debt slavery. Then we get to wait four months and the Dems and RINOs in Congress will again don their capes and fight this same fight again, courageously standing up for what is good and right in American by telling us that we don't have a spending problem and if we could just borrow more money from Japan and China, all will be right in the world.

Sad thing is, I don't know if those in Congress actually believe their own lies, but they sure do have most of America fooled that this won't have any consequences. They're living in the Keynesian fantasy land that we just need to keep spending trillions more dollars stimulating the economy and once that happens we'll magically be able to grow our economy enough to be able to pay back our debt, however many tens of trillions it might be at the time. Or if not, it doesn't matter because we'll also magically be able to keep interest rates at zero forever so we won't ever have to worry about rising interest rates wreaking havoc on average Americans and the government debt servicing payments. Or if not, it doesn't matter because our creditors don't ever actually want to get paid back because we all know that the dollar will be reserve currency forever so they're happy to hold onto our dollars indefinitely and lending us money even though we've had the printing presses going at full bore since the crisis began. If you believe all this, I have a bridge to sell you.

What happened today would have made George Orwell proud. It reveals the level of indoctrination and education we've been exposed to in this country for the past few decades when we cheer on an effort that impoverishes our nation. We now live in a country where Debt equals Wealth, Truth is Treason, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery. We're like a dog that follows the line of free treats not realizing that it leads straight to a cage. Yup, government saved us all right. Time to celebrate.

Shutdown Theater

Have you all been enjoying the show that's been going on for the past couple weeks? What a performance! The House Republicans have been pretending to take a bold stand against Obamacare while the Senate Democrats have collectively yawned, put their hands behind their heads, and shut their eyelids. "Wake me up when the 3rd act is over," they seem to be saying.

You see, these Senate Dems and the President know this is all theater. They know that the House Republicans weren't really going to hold the line on defunding Obamacare. They never do. The GOP lost its spine a long time ago. That's not to say there aren't a few stalwarts in there who would have gladly seen this through to the end, but we all knew, especially and including the Senate Dems and the President, that if they just let this go on long enough that Speaker Boehner would fold. They were never scared and that's why they never felt the need to negotiate.

Truth is, we don't really have a 2-party system in this country anymore. We don't have true checks and balances. While it was a good idea in theory, I'm sure the Founders didn't realize we would soon be electing a bunch of spineless, gutless, remorseless, idiotic psychopaths to run our country. A group of people who are so morally devoid, who lack individual thought, who grew up with and espouse no set of guiding principles, who can't even honor an oath to their spouses nonetheless to a piece of paper, and who have no moral character whatsoever so as to render checks and balances useless, nay, to render even a 2-party system useless. It's not Republicans vs. Democrats anymore, they're all in bed together now. It's the ruling class vs. the rest of us. I'm quite certain the Founders never saw that coming.

And so we get to be entertained by the great Shutdown Theater spectacle. It's like going to watch a play about the Titanic, we all know how it's going to end. The House Republicans, to mollify their base, have to put on a great show about taking a principled stand and not backing down and finally using the system to their advantage. That whips the base up into a frenzy, cheers and shouts and encouragement ensue. The Democrats do their part to add to the drama by engaging in nonstop hyperbole and finger pointing, which gets their base fired up too. President Obama sings the climatic aria by spitefully shutting down the most visible and beloved parts of government to show just how necessary and important Government really is, pissing people off on every side of the aisle. Oh man, this show is really getting good now. It's like the Real Houses of Congress DC. Next we just need to cut to a scene of Harry Reid flipping a table over in anger at a DC restaurant and our masterpiece will be complete. 

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Just like we knew the Titanic was going to sink, we knew that the House Republicans were going to fold, having pretty much nothing to show for this grand stand despite all the theatrics. But bravo, boys and girls, what a performance! You really had us going there for awhile.

There were many low points of the show, from trying to keep WWII vets out of their own friggin memorial, to kicking people out of their homes which happened to be on federal land, to locking people in a hotel on federal land, to shutting down open waterway systems. There was no deed too petty for uber-villain Obama not to order his minions to undertake.

The one that took the cake for me, though, was when a South Carolina man who voluntarily took it upon himself to groom some of the monuments and mow the lawn at the Lincoln Memorial was told to stop. I think this is just the perfect illustration of what's wrong with things today. The authoritarians in power can't let it be shown to the world that life goes on without government. They can't let it be shown that there might actually be answers to questions like "But without government, who would mow the lawns?" or "But without government, who would build the roads?" Nope, we must maintain the illusion at all times that every stinkin' part of our $16 trillion-dollar-in-debt-the-cupboard-is-bare-there-are-no-cuts-to-make (props to a cameo by Ms. Pelosi for another gem of a statement) government is absolutely essential, therefore no volunteerism allowed during a government shutdown.

The man said he didn't take any money for it or expect to be paid. This in itself provides the answer to many liberals' objections that if government didn't provide these services that capitalist, greedy pig bloodsuckers would take over and price gouge everyone for their monopoly on lawn mowing services. And yet people were approaching the man and offering him small bills for what he was doing, trying to pay this individual for his efforts. But wait, this here again blows up that capitalist, greedy pig myth liberals like to use. You mean to tell me that in the absence of a government service people will voluntarily provide that service and that instead of forcing society to pay for a service that they might not want or need via legalized theft (taxation), that other individuals who do value this service will voluntarily give money for this cause? No way! Waaay. This one man band, in one small but noble deed, just illustrated the system of voluntary exchanges beautifully. That's precisely why he was shut down. We can't show the people how irrelevant most government really is to our lives. It might not have been the grandest gesture or the most ballyhooed, but it spoke volumes to me.

Thus concludes shutdown theater. I think the whole brilliance of the act was not the star performances of John Boehner, who really had (some of) us believing for a moment he was serious about defunding Obamacare, nor Harry Reid or President Obama, who played their role as villains who were ruthlessly withholding benefits and spitefully shutting down open swaths of earth brilliantly. No, the true magic of this performance was leaving the theater feeling not that you'd been entertained, but that somehow the players themselves were winking at each other throughout the entire play giving you the sick feeling afterwards that somehow the joke was on you. I want my money back.