Atlas Shrugged is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. It’s also available in Softcover, Softcover Centennial Edition, Hardcover Centennial Edition, CD Audiobook, MP3 CD Audiobook, Cassette Audiobook, and Spanish-Language Softcover. So, there’s no excuse to not read it. The book is prophetic, first published in 1957, detailing the inevitable collapse of the United States of America [...]
Atlas Shrugged is now available on Amazon’s Kindle. It’s also available in Softcover, Softcover Centennial Edition, Hardcover Centennial Edition, CD Audiobook, MP3 CD Audiobook, Cassette Audiobook, and Spanish-Language Softcover. So, there’s no excuse to not read it.
The book is prophetic, first published in 1957, detailing the inevitable collapse of the United States of America because of the prevailing philosophy of altruism and statism. As an example: at least 52 years before the current health care debate, Ayn Rand wrote these words about a Doctor’s reasons for retiring:
“I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything – except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards – never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind – yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it – and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.”
Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged
If you look at current events and say “what the heck is going on?” then get this book. It tells you exactly what is happening, exactly what will happen, and exactly why.
Ben Nelson recently became famous when he was the 60th vote for cloture on the senate healthcare bill, largely because he was bought and paid for. Not according to Nelson though: he says he now really believes in this bill: Having said that, I also recognize the legitimate role of government, and the need for [...]
Ben Nelson recently became famous when he was the 60th vote for cloture on the senate healthcare bill, largely because he was bought and paid for. Not according to Nelson though: he says he now really believes in this bill:
Having said that, I also recognize the legitimate role of government, and the need for governmental regulation…to address the shortcomings of the free market system and the need to reach out and help those who need a helping hand. That is why I support the very significant insurance reforms that are a part of this bill and the subsidies provided to lower-income Americans so they to will have access to affordable and quality health care.
link: Ben Nelson, U.S. Senator for Nebraska: Speech: Nelson Statement on Health Care Deal
There are oh so many things wrong with that statement. Let us count the ways:
- “I also recognize the legitimate role of government, and the need for governmental regulation” – Contradiction. If he recognized that the only legitimate role of government was to protect our individual rights, he would recognize that governmental regulation of any of our personal activities is illegitimate.
- “… to address the shortcomings of the free market system…” – What free market system? Our economy is controlled by our government through the Federal Reserve (artificially controlling the supply of money), thousands of taxes, a mountain of regulations, etc.
- “…and the need to reach out and help those who need a helping hand.” – There is no need for the government to do this. Well, if they’d stop taxing the hell out of us there would be no need. Even so, why does someone’s need justify enslaving everyone to pay for it? The only “helping hand” should be from voluntary donation or action, period.
- “That is why I support… (blah blah)” – Wrong, you support it because you are bought and paid for.
As a followup to my post on banking yesterday, if you want to see what will happen to the entire country if we continue down the statist path of government regulation, taxing the rich, distributing property, etc, just look at Detroit:
As a followup to my post on banking yesterday, if you want to see what will happen to the entire country if we continue down the statist path of government regulation, taxing the rich, distributing property, etc, just look at Detroit:
NEW YORK, Dec 21 (Reuters) – U.S. banks that spent more money on lobbying were more likely to get government bailout money, according to a study released on Monday. Banks whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive government bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the study [...]
NEW YORK, Dec 21 (Reuters) – U.S. banks that spent more money on lobbying were more likely to get government bailout money, according to a study released on Monday. Banks whose executives served on Federal Reserve boards were more likely to receive government bailout funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the study from Ran Duchin and Denis Sosyura, professors at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
link: Banks with political ties got bailouts, study shows | Reuters
Does this surprise anyone? In an economy where the government creates regulations, whimsical laws, oppressive taxes, and then bails out companies that are deemed “too big to fail,” does it really surprise anyone that the criteria for receiving taxpayer dollars depends on political back-scratching? This is pure, classic fascism. Just like Hitler used to do, the American Federal Government has played favorites, throwing our stolen wealth at companies who’s lobbyists payed off the right people in the right amounts. Instead of stealing the wealth from the “undesirables” of society (as Hitler labeled Jews, Homosexuals, Gypsies, anti-Nazis, etc), our government is stealing from all of us.
You see, the bailout money didn’t materialize out of thin air, it was stolen from “we the people” indirectly, and in a couple of ways. First: the money was tacked onto our national debt. If you’ve never looked into the federal reserve and international currency dealings, I’ll make this simple: The government takes out lots of huge loans on the international market and uses us as collateral. Our future tax payments are the income source the government uses to guarantee that debt. Obviously, when you tack on trillions of dollars overnight, those tax payments have to go up.
Second: those trillions of dollars also deface the value of each one individual dollar. So the money you make or have now is worth less that is was previously. If you look at the price of gold in comparison, when the DOW was around 14,000 in the 90′s, gold cost $300 an ounce. A few weeks ago there was a big celebration because the DOW got back over 10,000… only what people didn’t realize is that the price of gold has shot up to over $1000 an ounce. In other words, DOW 10,000 today is like DOW 3,000 in the 1990′s… not all that great. Tragic, in fact.
The problem here is that we have a government which has ruined the American spirit of individualism. This is not just some nostalgic reminiscing on my part, because I identify Americanism as the recognition of individual rights: the right to your own life, the right to use your own mind to reason and communicate, the right to act on your conclusions, and the right to keep the produce of this activity. This is how we were as a young country, when people had actual freedom. Today we have a government that thinks its role is to take the produce of your life and distribute it as they see fit. Since they can’t always fully accomplish this out in the open, they create mountains of legislation to control how we can use the property that we are “allowed” to keep. This is something that has been going on in ever increasing amounts since the first days of our conception, which can be clearly seen in the battles between Jefferson and Hamilton around the turn of the 19th century. For more on this, I refer you to Hamilton’s Curse.
Whenever the government allows people to own property, yet controls its use either directly or indirectly, that is fascism. This is exactly what has gone on with the banking industry. The government allows us to “own” real estate, meanwhile they have tons of laws and regulations controlling our real estate and controlling the loans and the terms of the loans. They also have the ultimate control through the Federal Reserve of controlling the supply of money and therefore the value of our property.
Socialism is the system where the government owns the property and distributes it as it sees fit. America has been operating under a mix of Socialism and Fascism since about 1913, with the inception of the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax. This was made worse with the “American Society” and the “New Deal” and has grown worse and worse since. As a result, what used to be a country of laissez faire was turned into a country of special interests and perpetual civil war. You see, when the government controls and confiscates our property, it creates a situation where different people or groups of people fight over who gets the payouts. Instead of fighting with weapons, they fight with bribes. Instead of one side winning or losing, we all lose.
An unfortunate side effect of the way these events have played out is that the majority of the people in this country still believe we are the land of the free, and that the spirit of individualism still holds up as the standard of law. It does not. However, whenever the supposed “right” argues for less regulation and less property confiscation (taxes), the “left” immediately accuse them of being capitalist fascists (an oxymoron.) Whenever the “left” argues for more government programs (healthcare) the “right” argues against cutting socialism (medicare.) The issues are muddied and confused to the point that nobody stops and realizes that nobody is standing up for freedom, for the right to decide what to do with your own life and nobody else’s.
It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
link: Fascism and Communism/Socialism — Ayn Rand Lexicon
If we don’t break the mold and elect politicians who stand up for complete laissez faire capitalism (freedom) then we will suffer the same fate, no matter what we call it: slavery. We’re already there according to some, but hopefully there is still time to change the course of history.
In case you’ve been living under a rock the last few weeks, or if you’re a believer in the myth of anthropogenic climate change and you’re covering your ears and screaming “it’s not true, it’s not true!”, there have been some big time revelations spurred by the release of hacked emails coming from the Climate [...]
In case you’ve been living under a rock the last few weeks, or if you’re a believer in the myth of anthropogenic climate change and you’re covering your ears and screaming “it’s not true, it’s not true!”, there have been some big time revelations spurred by the release of hacked emails coming from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia and you should start paying attention. Why? Because the leaders of the world are determined to tax and regulate us all into the stone ages while enriching themselves and living as an elite Aristocracy all under the guise of “saving the world.”
Well, it’s all bullshit.
It turns out, information contained in these emails leads to the revelation that the conspiracy and data manipulation wasn’t just limited to one University, but it was in fact affecting the world’s foremost authority on the subject, the UN’s IPCC:
What the Russians are suggesting here, in other words, is that the entire global temperature record used by the IPCC to inform world government policy is a crock.
Now, I know what you’re saying: “but the consensus! but science says it’s true! just look at Wikipedia!”
Let’s look at Wikipedia:
All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
“But what about the models! The computer models say the world is warming because of CO2!”
What about the models?
Here’s the “fudge factor” (notice the brash SOB actually called it that in his REM statement):
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904] valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
These two lines of code establish a twenty-element array (yrloc) comprising the year 1400 (base year, but not sure why needed here) and nineteen years between 1904 and 1994 in half-decade increments. Then the corresponding “fudge factor” (from the valadj matrix) is applied to each interval. As you can see, not only are temperatures biased to the upside later in the century (though certainly prior to 1960), but a few mid-century intervals are being biased slightly lower. That, coupled with the post-1930 restatement we encountered earlier, would imply that in addition to an embarrassing false decline experienced with their MXD after 1960 (or earlier), CRU’s “divergence problem” also includes a minor false incline after 1930.
In other words, when the results didn’t match the desired output, they programatically manipulated the data so that it would produce the desired hockey stick graph. They reduced temperatures that they thought were too warm, and they increased temperatures that they thought were too cool. They used computer code to generate computer models that had the mirage of sophistication and objectivity but in actuality invented an increase in temperatures.
This story is only just beginning. In the coming months we will surely see more and more revelations and more and more denials from the “warmers” (people who believe in the religion of mother earth). For me personally, this is just confirmation of what I’ve always believed: environmentalists don’t care about the environment, they just hate capitalism. They either misunderstand what true Laissez Faire is, or they directly hate human freedom. Either way, they are evil, and must be stopped.
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