Laters for you bitch!

Update: D’oh! The Times says it’s just temporary. They should know.

Update2: A bit about his brother from the AP:

Raul, a political hardliner, belonged to a Communist youth group even before the revolution. The elder Castro didn’t publicly embrace socialism until 1961.

But on the economic front, he showed signs of flexibility. As defense minister, Raul has overseen some of Cuba’s most important experiments with limited market-style reforms. Military units produced and sold food at free markets and the military ran an important tourism company, Gaviota.

He also expressed interest in China’s version of free-enterprise socialism during a November 1997 visit.

In 1962 he became deputy prime minister and in 1972 first deputy prime minister, behind Fidel.

Like his brother, Raul has been suspicious of the United States and at a September 1960 rally denounced the U.S. Embassy as “a cave of spies.”

Attention: Do Not Waste Your Hard-Earned $8.00 on this piece of crap.

I knew it when I saw the trailer claiming the Fed was private. Great.

Then I saw that my man Dr. Ron Paul is in it, as well as personal hero G. Edward Griffin and friend James Bovard. My old friend from high-school was going.

Okay, fine, I’ll go see the damn thing.

Piece of shit. If I may borrow a phrase from Bill Hicks. (At least Basic Instinct had a pussy in it.)

Nearly the whole first hour is wasted on the marginally popular technicalitarian guff that ‘congress never got around to saying that you have to pay any of the taxes they legislate’. In a cutesy ‘gotcha’ moment Russo confronts a former IRS commissioner with Supreme Court cases from the nineteen-teens, then depicts him claiming that the IRS is above the law, when all he is saying is that those USSC decisions no longer apply because they are from the nineteen-teens and were overruled long ago.

Thanks alot for making me defend an IRS commissioner, jerk.

Oh, and the interview with the juror that went on and on and on… and on…

Please give me a break. Better yet, read “The Dead Ends of Technicalitarianism” by Anthony Gregory.

Next is a bunch of crap about how the Fed is private (seems like he’d have read Griffin’s book before making this thing; guess not) and how we ought to do like ol’ Honest Abe Lincoln and have the state just print money backed by nothing all day… while at the same time saying money ought to be redeemable in gold… while at the same time saying Federal Reserve Notes are backed by nothing, which ignores the national government’s promise to tax us to pay their bondholders… while at the same time saying the Fed holds all the bonds and makes pure profit off the interest when in fact the Fed holds a small percentage of them and pays that ‘profit’ back into the Treasury.

The private banks that are members of the Fed make profits on the interest they collect on printing unbacked money, but the regional federal reserve banks do not. Surely corruption of all kinds emerges - drug trafficking and so-forth - but we’re only talking about the structure.

The Fed is evil alright - it is state power, after all. Do the private banks benefit from the arrangement, which is effectively a cartel? Of course. That’s why they created it. The purpose of the Federal Reserve Act was to forever tie the economic life of this land to the national government so the powerful can protect and enrich themselves. For Russo to trot out Michael Ruppert with the ‘no more Federal than FedEx’ garbage is insulting.

Does the president appoint the head of FedEx and the board of directors? Does the Senate confirm them? Does he have police power (other than through his lobbyists and congressmen), or the authority to charge people for packages that were never shipped?

Get it straight, then give it straight. They need it.

What’s the deal? Apparently they couldn’t find any Austrian economists to explain central banking, but turned instead to… Michael Ruppert!? They didn’t give Griffin the spotlight at all and even got the title of his book wrong at the bottom of the screen.

I liked the part that showed IRS SWAT teams terrorizing the hell out of innocent people for fun. Government at its best is a tazer in a woman’s guts. Sometimes they just murder people, or turn them over to the Navy, for refusing to be a snitch.

What they did to Joe Louis was messed up, but all his fault. He gave all his money to the state voluntarily (we all gotta pitch in if we’re to prevent the US from being overrun by the Japanese, ya know) and they taxed him on it anyway. Sucker.

I also thought the part about the national ID card and RFID were okay, though he seems to think congress will soon demand ‘everyone get microchipped or else’. I think they would get the ‘or else’ that day. (The American people have got to have a line somewhere, right?)

“Freedom to Fascism,” and they barely get around to war until nearly the end. Even then it’s all standard patriot movement, UN-takeover conspiracy theory circa 1994 (i.e. no source newer than 1992 and most much older.)

That’s why the US invaded Iraq, don’t you know? It’s empowered the UN so much.

No WWI, no WWII, no Korea, no Vietnam, no Cold War, no Nixon, no nuthin.

Just as I thought it could get no worse and must surely be ending soon, Russo puts up these little one sentence messages like “Go on strike,” “Don’t accept a national ID card,” and so on… for like seven minutes!

And then it’s still not over. More clips of Ruppert. More little messages.

I appreciate the sentiment - government is evil, central banking is evil, government officials deserve contempt - but how are you going to win anyone over when they can refute your whole presentation with fifteen minutes and a Google machine?

I wonder if stuff like this doesn’t do more harm than good. From now on some may dismiss all criticism of central banking as something they’ve heard before but were in no way convinced of.

He doesn’t mention Roosevelt or the New Deal at all. No point bringing that up in a movie about American fascism, I suppose.

If it’s not too late, the producer might consider hiring someone to hack the majority of this movie to the cutting room floor.

This editor should read The Creature from Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin and The Case Against the Fed by Murray Rothbard. Or at least scan through Mises.org or something.

Update: Oh yeah, and he comes out in favor of a police state on the border, many of the quotes are terribly sourced and there is no common thread or storyline in the movie at all.

I give it three steaming piles of shit.

At least 56 people [CNN now saying 60], more than half children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the campaign against Hezbollah. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to return early to Washington with her diplomatic mission derailed after Lebanese leaders told her not to come.

And you paid for it.
Update: 15 of the dead were crippled children.

U.S. TO MOVE TROOPS FROM SOUTHERN IRAQ TO NORTH, AND FROM NORTHERN IRAQ TO SOUTH

Andy Borowitz:

In a bold attempt to confuse Iraqi insurgents, the U.S. will move 10,000 troops from southern

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker said at a Pentagon briefing today that the plan, called Operation Shell Game by the Army brass, was the Army’s best bet for leaving Iraqi insurgents scratching their heads.”This is the largest mobilization, re-mobilization and mobilization in U.S. military history,” Gen. Schoomaker said. “We believe that the Iraqi insurgents won’t know what hit them — or, what didn’t hit them.” …

Gen. Schoomaker, who paused a full 10 seconds in an earlier press briefing when asked if the United States was winning the war in Iraq — only to answer, “I don’t think we’re losing” — sought to clarify his position in today’s press conference: “Right now I would have to say the war in Iraq is a tie.”

————

Garris points out that this joke is partially true.

“Comedy is a lost art form. Tragedy. … Now that’s funny!” - Bender the Robot.

Do you hate the state? …

Do you wish that all those idiots in traffic hated the state like you so that you and your little children could be free? …

Well now, there’s finally a way for you do what you always dreamed of: Set an example for those idiots to follow!

Buy some goddamn stickers!

Put them on your car!

It’s their own fault for driving behind you.

Choose from all time favorites, such as:

Or:

For when you feel like mocking Christian warmonger types:

How about this one

as an answer to all those jerky rightwingers who think they have a monopoly on putting stupid declarations of nationalism on their trucks?

Now, if you’re like me, sometimes you don’t even want people to understand what the hell you’re talking about or who. That’s when I bust out the H.L. Mencken:

This next one is a great way to get ahead on the election of 2008 and also makes a great gift for the hard-core kooks from back in the day:

I think they have a pretty good chance.

Here’s one for when you’re being tailed by unmarked federal cars:

You get the idea.

So come on over to the next page over from here and buy some stickers today!

http://www.scotthortonshow.com/stickers/

I am sad to say, I’ve not seen or heard anything convincing from any of these idiots.

I still believe that Cheney and Rumsfeld knew, but there’s no proof.

Prof. Jones claims that he’s got the molecular evidence, but doesn’t present it.

It would be okay, I suppose if the American public believed these assholes, because it’s better than believing Bush, but wouldn’t it be great if any of these people actually had anything besides half-baked assertions backed up by evidence that does not in fact back up anything?

And the Loose Change guys are the stupidest idiots I’ve ever had to suffer through a production of - and that includes Big Top Pee-Wee.

Update: Then they cry about “Gate-Keepers.”

It’s because you are full of shit.

Update II: That Fetzer guy is the biggest asshole of them all. Sheesh.

Some guy goes into a Jewish business in Seattle, and murders one innocent woman and wounds five others.

What’s his excuse? He’s “mad at Israel.”

Well, I have some news for you genius: None of those six people were “Israel.” Nor all of them in one room together.

In fact, there is no such thing as Israel, unless just used as shorthand for land (which can not bear responsibility for anything) or for the individuals who control the government: Olmert and his advisors, the military chiefs, etc.

The same flawed thinking is evident in the arguments of the defenders of those officials who repeatedly cry, “Israel has a right to defend herself.” Israel is not a woman, it is just shorthand for land and officeholders (see above), and states don’t have rights. Only people have rights.

States have powers. Powers delegated to them by their constituents (flawed theory here too but close enough for this argument’s sake) who, by definition, cannot delegate authority that they do not have. Such as for example, slaughtering civilians en mass.

Once individuals become nothing but members of a group in their enemies minds, they can, apparently, be killed much more easily.

So cut it out. This is America, the land of individualism. All you Americans who percieve a personal or religious stake in the Middle East’s religious wars can get on a plane and go fight your way back to the Middle Ages your damned selves.

Leave the US out.

Update: Jeff A. Taylor at Reason Hit and Run wonders why this event is not being reported as a terrorist attack:

“Is it because a terror attack would pre-empt Bush administration claims that its policies, like the PATRIOT Act, have kept America terror-free since 9/11? Is it an attempt to deny that violence in the Middle East does, the evidence indicates, motivate some to do violence in the U.S.? Or do we have some unspoken notion that terror can only result from a conspiracy of two or more persons? Or is it bodycount?”

My take is that all of the above are factors, though the first two probably carry more weight. It was the Bush-has-prevented-any-more-attacks garbage that made his vote total close enough that he could get away with the theft of 2004, though even he now admits that it was American foreign policy that provoked the 9/11 attacks.

Raw Story:

On Feb. 6, 2006, Jessie Lee Williams, Jr., a 40-year-old black man in a Southern Mississippi jail, was allegedly hooded and hog-tied by police, beaten about the head and testicles and ultimately died from blunt injuries to the head.

The coroner determined the death was a homicide. The local sheriff indicated law enforcement agencies were investigating and that the individual targeted by the investigation is “no longer employed by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department.”

Despite the fact that the beating was videotaped, no arrests have been made.

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