Arms for the Women of Juarez!

25 02 2010

I just saw a very powerful documentary the other day.  It’s on the disappearance of scores of young women around the area surrounding Juarez, Mexico since the early 1990s.  Now, some of these women are prostitutes who live double lives with their families and the shady nightlife, but a lot of the victims are also migrant workers with more respectable professions.  The police department claims that they are investigating the issue, but this is all nonsense.  In fact, the police officers are often the perpetrators of the crime.  One woman who happened to be married was able to implicate some crooked cops after she was lucky enough to get away.  Of course, due to the inept justice system down there the bastards got away with it.  No wonder, since all the authorities are unreliable:  the police department, investigators, the news media and even the Attorney General.  It seems ironic that Mexico has been able to join the ranks of decent first world nations like the US and Canada with the NAFTA agreement.

Well, Common Sense says the solution to this is very simple.  These people should all carry guns!  Think about it – if every young woman in Juarez carried a concealed handgun on their person, that would make all the difference.  They can’t rely on the corrupt law enforcement in their Kleptocratic locality, so they have to rely on themselves.  “Oh, mister corrupt police officer, what’s that?  You want to rape me and kill me?”  Ba-bam!  Problem solved.  No sicko narco-trafficking here.  Results are much more effective when individuals and citizen’s militias solve problems rather than the state, which has accepted protected narco-trafficking zones as part of their culture.  This is no time to be defenseless.  As the Romans said:  “If you want peace, prepare for war.”


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Categories : Common Sense, Craziness, Globalization, International Conflicts

Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll!

24 02 2010

This past weekend Texas Congressman Ron Paul came in first place in the CPAC straw poll with 31% of the vote, upsetting three-time winner Mitt Romney, who came in second with 22% of the vote.  CPAC is a very large annual event and the straw poll is one of the most pivotal events in determining the winner of the upcoming presidential nomination for the Republican Party.  Ron Paul spoke himself at the conference on and the line to get an autograph by him stretched two ways to Sunday.

This victory is huge news for Ron Paul and for the Tea Party Movement.  However, Fox News and the establishment are doing just like they did during the campaign and doing everything they can to discredit the results.  There are a lot of people out there who don’t like Ron Paul, don’t like his ideas and will do anything in their power to keep him down.  Just when things were starting to look better for him, there is an onslaught of backlash.  Any poll where Ron Paul wins must be discredited at all costs to these people.

Now, with such hostile forces present a lot of people seem to believe the Republican Party is irreparable and that the Tea Party should form its own political party.  This would be a terrible idea and lead them down the road to disaster.  Third parties rarely gain any steam in this country and it would simply split votes.  If this were a European or Israeli electoral system instead of the American one that might make more sense.  A possible exception would be if the Tea Party played a role like the Conservative Party of New York where they do not typically nominate their own candidates but nominate the Republicans with the option of withholding their support if the candidate is not good enough.  With the never-ending army of activists the Tea Party musters, this would be a great way to participate in the 2010 midterm elections.


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Categories : News, Politicians

No Easy Money, No Free Lunches in the Business World

16 02 2010

I got this shady email a while ago.  It contained a job offer from this shopper survey company which told me to go to a couple of stores, buy some products and get paid $500.00 for a just filling out a simple form.  All I had to do was go to McDonald’s and MoneyGram to rate the quality of their services in detail. Wow, you’re telling me you’re offering me a job without any resume, references or interview!  And just to spend a little money in stores, I get to be paid a lot of money?  Not only would I take that job, I’d tell all my friends about it.  So here’s the exact terms of the agreement:  I go to McDonald’s to buy a Big Mac and a large fries – then I go to MoneyGram and mail two payments of $1,500.00 to this address they gave me.  As soon as I commit to doing the job they’ll send me a check for $3,500.00 meaning I get my near-$500.00 profit payment in advance before I even do anything!  What a deal!  And they trust me with this kind of money – almost a full semester’s college tuition – without even meeting me in person or doing any kind of application, background check or anything.  Wow!  I must be the most exceptional person in the world!

If you think that this offer was legit, you’ve got a lot to learn about the internet.  If I had followed through with the offer, I would have had $3,500.00 deposited into my account, seen cash on my statement, withdrew the money and sent the money to MoneyGram.  I would have patted myself on the back and thought that I had just made some good quick cash.  Then I would have gotten notified that the bank that the check bounced, that I got totally scammed and that I was down $3,000.00.  Fortunately I had the Common Sense not to buy into their scam and that did not happen.  You see, Conventional Wisdom says that when you deposit money in a bank and a short time later you see the official balance with the new money added in, that the check has now cleared and you can use the money.  However, this is not the case.  Just because you see the money there, doesn’t mean it’s really there.  Just because you see the check cleared doesn’t mean that the check really cleared.  Banks actually let you use the money from checks before there is a verification.  That’s where a lot of people get scammed.  In this case, the Conventional Wisdom is fault.  Unfortunately this piece of trivia is not Common Sense either since it’s a remote technical issue most people do not understand.  The reality is that there is no legit reason for someone to give you money and then ask you to send some back.  The scammers I got an email from disguised it all as a shopper survey theme to hide what they were really up to.  For more info on fake checks, their riskiness and how to identify them, check out Randall Simm’s website and his short web series Fake Out. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : Common Sense, Craziness, Internet

The Ideological Evolution of the Republican Party

15 02 2010

Politics can be an immensely complicated subject and in the American political system there is only room for two parties to exist in the long-run.  Therefore, each of the two parties is highly factionalized, with each individual member agreeing with anywhere from fifty-one to ninety-nine percent of the party platform.  The Republican Party has had the dominant school of thought within itself shift so many times that the old school adherents may barely recognize it anymore.  Republican politicians can be identified by their place on the political spectrum as “Rockefeller Republicans,” neoconservatives, theoconservatives, paleoconservatives, libertarians, neolibertarians, paleolibertarians, Independent Republicans, etc.  From the 1930s to the 1970s the country as a whole was largely Democratic and the moderate wing of the party had the most sway.  These are known as liberal/moderate Republicans or the more old-fashioned name:  Rockefeller Republicans after Nelson Rockefeller.

The Rockefeller Republicans had been the preferred faction of the party for many years – in every presidential election from 1928 to 1976 with the sole exception of 1964, the party nominated a moderate-to-liberal candidate.  With Ronald Reagan’s ascent in 1980, that began to change.  Slowly new political forces came forward and the ideology of the party became less rigid.  In 1994 Republican Minority Whip Newt Gingrich unveiled the famous Contract with America, which reflected the sentiment of the election season which gave the party both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years.  The 1994 “Republican Revolution” was largely led by younger members of the party.  Many old timers who served during the Rockefeller Era were critical, believing the Contract to be too ambitious.  That may seem ironic since a lot of conservatives today view the Contract as a failure.  I can understand such arguments – a lot of the promises were broken and starting in the early 2000s the Republicans started growing the size of government, with the original sentiment of the Contract in the past.  However, the Contract was not a failure from the very beginning. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : History, Israel-Palestine Conflict, Neocon-Theocon Hegemony, Obama Administration, Sovereignty, States, Taxes and Spending, Theory, War on Drugs

Mercy Rule Shmercy Drool

14 02 2010

Congratulations to the Canadian Women’s Hockey Squad for totally stomping their ex-commie Slovakian rivals last night.  With a final score of 18-0, this is a new record for them.  However, rather than marveling at this achievement, some would rather shame the winning team for their great skill.  “Oh, how embarrassing for them (the Slovakians.)”  At the OLYMPIC LEVEL??!!  You’ve got to be kidding me.  If one team scores 18 goals, they deserve to score 18 goals.  If one team gets destroyed 18-0, than they deserve it.  The Olympics should signify Personal Responsibility and achievement – we have no room for mercy here.  These are not little kids – these are Olympic athletes.  And they deserve to be treated like adults.  With Olympians this kind of pampering is just absurd, but I’m also strongly opposed to this attitude at a College or High School level.  Why should players who score more than 100 points in a basketball game be made to suffer embarassment instead of the glorification they deserve?  People are too busy feeling sorry for the losers instead of being happy for the record-setting winners.  As for the losing team, if they don’t want the embarassment of losing so bad then they should toughen up, get off the couch and start practicing more often.  Don’t blame anybody else for it.

There are mercy rules in Little League where you can only win a certain amount of games in a season or score a certain amount of points in a game.  That seems more reasonable than the Olympic example, but I’m still opposed to it – much more mildly than the Olympics.  We should teach the value of Personal Responsibility from the very beginning.  You’ve got to stay in the game and every victory is an earned victory.  When the youngsters grow up and get out in the business world, no one’s going to bail them out (unless they work for GM.)  You cannot build up the weak by tearing down the strong.  Another criticism Conventional Wisdom mercy-hackers are making of the Canadian victory is that the Hockey tournament is overwhelmingly dominated by Canada and the United States.  Well, probably because they’re THE BEST teams and they deserve to be on top, while everyone else deserves to be on bottom until they step it up and compete.  You want to be number one?  Stop whining and make yourself number one!


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Categories : News, Personal Responsibility

Tea Party Must Disown Sarah Palin

10 02 2010

I have usually been a fan of Sarah Palin and given her a lot more deserved credit than my peers who bow down to the Conventional Wisdom of the media do.  But even I am up-in-arms over her recent comments on Daniel Pipes’s article and as the keynote speaker at the Tea Party Convention.  Daniel Pipes made the suggestion that the only way for Obama to drastically recover support in time for the next election would be to attack Iran – Iran not being a popular nation in America these days, especially with their current president.  This would rally the patriotic support that the neoconservatives thrive off of.  Pat Buchanan wrote his own article on the matter – rightfully denouncing the prospect of going to war, especially for merely political reasons.  “Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,”  in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.”  Now, I agree with Sarah Palin on a multitude of issues, but she’s still an amateur when it comes to foreign policy.  I think the McCain camp may have had a little too much influence on her in this regard.  I sense some of McCain’s explosive impulse in her.  She claims to have read Pat Buchanan’s article, but she’s in favor of attacking Iran.  She doesn’t seem to acknowledge any alternative to a full-scale attack on Iran.  And also, why is she giving political advice to Obama?!

I find it remarkable that Palin is a long-time fan of Buchanan’s – she attended a rally of his in Alaska with her husband during one of his presidential campaigns in the 1990s – but is seemingly oblivious to his theory on war and foreign policy.  Buchanan is a paleoconservative, not a neoconservative.  Maybe she misunderstood the message of the article he wrote.  Anyhow, it is not only Buchanan that Palin is pulling doublespeak on.  It is the Tea Party itself.  The Tea Party originated in response to reckless deficit spending by the Bush and Obama administration.  Bombing Iran would only add to that problem.  The Tea Party represents a need for a smaller and more subserviant government for the people.  An unprovoked war with Iran would not help that in any fashion – government expands and becomes more intrusive in war time.  Palin may have jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon and has been tirelessly rallying support for some of its causes, but she can’t be allowed to set the agenda.  If she wants to be a part of the Tea Party, than she must work for the Tea Party – the Tea Party does not and never will work for her.  She needs to accept this or just butt out!


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Categories : International Conflicts, Obama Administration, Politicians, Taxes and Spending


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