The Folks with the Pens, the MSM, have been doing their best to stop the revolution within the Republican Party. The MSM, and their Leftist masters are TERRIFIED that the two-headed, one party system could come undone... and they simply cannot have that. For all of its blather, the Right has been just as complicit in this Cluster F**k as the Left.
Rand Paul IS a political novice. He does say the very things that let the MSM and our oppressors in the two-headed single party running the joint take his comments out of context and lambaste him for those with a 15 second attention span. You see, there are enough of the 15 second folks to undue almost any national candidate...
Note to MSM and the two-headed monster: Rand Paul is going to COAST into the U.S. Senate, this time with a cadre of like-minded Libertarians. My bet is these guys are not buyable by the same folks that bought and paid for the f***ing morons we currently are stuck with... and that is what is freaking TPTB right out of their skin.
Libertarians ARE NOT anarchists! We recognize that the government provides the very services that makes society inhabitable - law and order, defense, and property rights. Much of the rest of it is merely political payola. Of course, that is NOT how the folks benefitting from such government largess and waste and extortion are going to see it. That's why this is going to be such a nasty fight.
If you are a Libertarian, now is our moment. This election, and the 2012 presidential election, likely represent one of the last chances to make some good decisions before the International Bond Market makes them for us. This must occur not only at the national level, but at the state and local level as well. For better or worse, our best shot is INSIDE the Republican house. They lost their way and the apparatus is there for the taking. The Democrats are nothing but Socialist/Fascists in sheep's clothing - hiding behind their idea of Libertarianism: Abortion Rights. They have done an amazing job of duping their supporters; of course, so has the Right and the Mainstream Republicans. I look forward to kicking sand over both of their discorporate remains... if you Grok.
All of the items I have listed below are going to happen irrespective of what you or I want. Its time to do this of our OWN volition rather than at the point of a sword:
- End the "War on Drugs" at the state and federal level.
- End the extortion of money from the private sector to fund the lavish pension system of the public employees.
- Cut military spending and bring home the troops.
- Cut benefits of Social Security, Medicare, and eliminate most of the Federal Agencies (what have they done for us?). Reduce head count in government at all levels "by any means necessary".
- Cut the budgets for Law Enforcement, Fire, and Public Safety at the state and local level. It is axiomatic that we all want life to be perfect; it is time to do a cost/benefit analysis of what we are paying for and what we are getting... including all of the unintended consequences. This includes our embarrassment of a legal system.
- Enact Laws to reduce lobbyist influence.
- Accept less regulation in most instances, not more.
- Address the energy issue! Its the 800 pound Gorilla in the room!
Not to worry. I am not delusional. None of these things will come to pass until we are in a Greece-like crisis. The good news, I guess, is that that is not really that far off - and then all of the above, plus a whole lot more, WILL come to pass.
As I said. If you are a Libertarian, now is our time. If you are not... not to worry, you soon will be.
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The biggest contributor to the tidal wave of change we are experiencing is the slow motion train wreck that is the American Energy Crisis. That the above is, in my opinion, ineluctable is supported by the fact that the U.S. has an annual budget deficit of 12% of GDP. If I throw in the State and Local budget deficits for this year that number rises to nearly 16% (give or take). Now consider that the the U.S. experienced "economic growth" of 3%... that means in the absence of deficit spending we would be looking at contraction of 13%? Yes, that's what it means... which would make the Great Depression look like a prom data - a prom date that gave us WWII and those lovely, goose stepping, lovers of humanity, Hitler & Co.
Well, U.S. Oil imports, with the possible exception of Canada (and it won't be much) are coming to an end this decade. No, ifs, ands, or buts. 9 million + bpd of Oil... POOF! Gone!
From Jeffrey Brown's comments on my previous post:
Some Simple Net Export MathThe simplistic Export Land Model (ELM) assumes an oil exporting country that hits peak production and then declines at 5%/year, with a 2.5% rate of increase in consumption, with consumption equal to 50% of production at peak production rate.Instead of projecting net export volumes (and instead of discussing two exponential functions), an alternative, and simpler, way of portraying net export declines is to simply plot consumption as a percentage of production. When this number hits 100%, by definition the exporter transitions from net exporter status to net importer status.In any case, at final peak Export Land was consuming 50% of production. At the end of year three, they were consuming 63% of production. Consumption, as a percentage of production, increased at 8%/year. So, 10 years after the peak, if we extrapolate the trend, they would be consuming 111% of production (the model shows them going to zero net oil exports in 9 years).In 2005, Saudi Arabia consumed 18% of production. In 2008, they consumed 22% of production (EIA). Extrapolated out for 25 years (from 2005), in 2030, they would be consuming 104% of production (Sam Foucher’s modeling shows them approaching zero net oil exports between 2030 and 2035).And of course, this presumably would work for ELM 2.0 (the observed tendency for developing countries like China & India, i.e., “Chindia,” to outbid developed countries for declining net oil exports).Chindia’s combined net oil imports, as a percentage of (2005) top five net oil exports went from 19% in 2005 to 27% in 2008, a 12%/year rate of increase. Extrapolated out for 14 years (from 2005), to 2019, Chindia’s combined net imports would be 102% of (2005) top five net oil exports, i.e., 102% of combined net oil exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran and the UAE. If we take Sam's best case for the (2005) top five net oil exports, and if we extrapolate Chindi'a current rate of increase in net oil imports, we get the same answer (Chindia approaching 100% of top five net oil exports around 2018).
The rate of decline for U.S. Oil imports has been roughly .7% PER MONTH for about 4 years now, and that rate will likely accelerate for a few years in the middle of the bell chart to over 1.0% per month. THIS, along with the U.S. total debt picture, is why the economy is where it is - we are are only in year 4 of a 15 year process to ZERO IMPORTS OF OIL.
Look, I really feel for the people that are having their belief systems shattered like an 8 year old told by his older brother that Santa wasn't the guy leaving the toys under the tree - it sucks to be them. I fully understand that many of these people will die out before recognizing that their belief system was a farce... That has been going on since we crawled out of the primordial soup. For the most part, these people only matter because there are SO MANY of them, not because they are individually "people of consequence" (People of consequence GOT that way by not deluding themselves for very long...). But Nature bat's last. And Nature says: "No more U.S. Oil imports within a decade or so".