Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Editing Freedom's Works

I've been blogging here for close to ten years. One of my major quests on this blog has been to show the readers what Socialism is, what it does, and how it got that way. I think I've just found the best, most concise explanation of Socialism ever. I didn't write it, and it needs editing, but it IS readable, so I will present it here after only changing the font to better suit my blog (it was originally Verdanna Bold 14-pt).

Without further ado, from this URL:

"p32
Most of us believe socialism is what the socialists want us to believe it is-a share-the-wealth program. That is the theory. But is that how it works? Let us examine the only Socialist countries-according to the Socialist definition of the word-extant in the world today. These are the Communist countries. The Communists themselves refer to these as Socialist countries, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Here in the reality of socialism you have a tiny oligarchial clique at the top, usually numbering no more than three percent of the total population, controlling the total wealth, total production and the very lives of the other ninety-seven percent cent...

If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of superrich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead it becomes the logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism, is not a movement of the downtrodden masses, but of the economic elite.

p35
If you wanted to control the nation's manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful socialist government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want - a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. "Communism" is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world . . . first by establishing socialist governments in the various nations and then consolidating them all through a "Great Merger," into an all-powerful world, socialist super-state ..."

Note that his example is best considered in the light of history, and in the light of the two most recent failed Socialist attempts, the USSR and Nazi Germany I hope by now that you all understand that Hitler led a socialist state, not a right-wing fascist state as the Left would alter history and have you believe.

Now put it together. What did both of those States do to get started and how did they wind up failing?

Both States took over from weak governments. The USSR was formed out of the failed Czarist monarchy, and Hitler sprang up from the Weimar Republic which failed due to losing WW1, having to pay reparations, and the world's Great Depression. In both cases, the putative dictators paid lip service to the downtrodden masses, with Hitler doing the better job of that. Hitler, between his release from imprisonment and seizing of absolute power, was the perfect "community organizer", setting up soup kitchens to feed the starving masses, putting clothes on the masses' backs (uniforms, but the ensembles kept them warm and gave them the required sense of identity), and controlling the worst of the street terror (anarcho-bolshevism) which had arisen with the decline of the Weimar Republic.

Then Hitler and his counterparts in the USSR disarmed their citizens. This disarmament was actually the most important step, because it precluded the citizens from changing their minds later and tossing out the Socialists.

Skipping over the obvious mechanisms of failure, in both cases, the USA, we find that the US Military ended Hitler's dreams, and the US Dollar ended the Soviets' dreams.

If you are a Socialist trying to conquer US individualism and turn the nation into the next "great" Socialist empire, how do you proceed?

You proceed as in above:

• Disarm the citizens.
• Control the press.
• Throw free shit at those whom you've convinced that earning their way in life is not required.
• Constrict commerce to only those avenues of trade that the Government can control.
• Do it all in the name of the downtrodden masses.

There it is, in a nutshell.

What is the one thing that is currently stopping the wannabe Socialists?

Our guns. In our safes. The Socialist Dream simply cannot proceed while we have the guns.

Designed to destroy the Constitution

Observe this process. It is carefully calculated to attack the Bill of Rights.

@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#

There was a mall shooting a year ago in Oregon. A crazy guy went into a mall full of Christmas shoppers and opened fire with a stolen rifle, killing two, but when a Concealed Carry person drew on and aimed at him, he ran off to a remote part of the mall and killed himself.

The simple fact of history from the Clackamas Mall shooting was that the Second Amendment didn't start the shooting, it ENDED it.

That simple explanation doesn't fit the agenda of the Left, who want to eliminate the Second Amendment, so, in a carefully-laid plan to "memorialize the victims", they have deliberately left out mention of Nick Meli, the armed citizen who stopped the shooter's rampage without firing a shot.

The Left is AGAIN revising history to suit their agenda. I am AGAIN bringing out the HISTORY book to remind folks of the truth of the incident.

Exhibit A: in today's Oregonian:

The "commentary" mentioned there is from a MAIG supporter, and does not mention the armed citizen. The link goes to a list of articles, none of which promenently mention the armed citizen. There ARE, however, plenty of mentions of gun control ideas with which to weaken the Second Amendment.

This blog does not believe in defensive warfare. Never has, never will. I offer the following solution:

Since the "free press" is not free, but is totally enrolled as a major political tool of the Left, it has ceased to deserve the protection of the First Amendment. In the State of Oregon, all political organizations which seek to press the Government for a political end must Register as Lobbyists.

It's time the press was Registered as lobbyists, and it's time that they are forced to follow the strict rules that all political lobbyists have to follow.

Register the Press, not our Guns.

 

Mandela and de Klerk

With the passing of Nelson Mandela, world and media leaders of leftist persuasion (but I repeat myself) are falling all over themselves praising Mandela. They have all chucked the book of South African history into the dustbin. I hope this post reminds you of that history.

Nelson Mandela was nothing without President F.W. de Klerk, the last President of apartheid South Africa. In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee realized this when they co-awarded the Peace Prize of 1993 for the two leaders' JOINT effort to end the official Government policy of Apartheid in South Africa.

The facts of history are that Mandela was a communist revolutionary, and F.W. de Klerk was anti-communist. They were enemies, and Mandela's revolution is well documented. de Klerk surrendered the apartheid policy for the whites, and the war ended. Had de Klerk chose to fight on, South Africa would have been utterly destroyed.

Now, History generally judges successful revolutionaries by how well their post-revolutionary efforts held up. Like the majority of revolutionary leaders of note, Mandela was successful on the field, less so in administration of the new government. The new South African regime seized corporations and properties, on the sole excuse that their owners were white. This inspired other African nations to do the same. Jomo Keynatta comes to mind, but there were others, and the practice continues to this day all over the continent.

Mandela was noted for not executing his defeated enemies, and he even formally forgave many of them. To me, this is his main legacy. I have mixed feelings about the "Truth Commissions" he established: most were simple witch-hunts, but most whites who faced them were forgiven their sins (after being stripped of all their pre-revolutionary wealth).

There is one huge stain on Mandela's record, though, and no review of his legacy is complete without it. That is the black thugocracy that established itself after Mandela took over. Mandela's own wife was part of it. Government power was used to establish gangs which not only indulged in corruption, they operated crime rings as well. South Africa is only just beginning to work out of this problem in this last decade, but it has a long way to go.

Nelson Mandela opened the doors of South Africa by overcoming the white door-men. The transition to multi-racial democracy has only just begun, though, and only time will tell if it flourishes or fails.

A second face

...to spread that egg on will always seem best to a secular progressive.

I guess that's why Bloomberg News penned this piece on the NSA-spies-on-Europe scandal.

Two Wrongs always make a better Right, according tho liberal policy on spinning.

Impeach Jack Lew

I do conflict management. I did it professionally, in two careers, for a total of 47 years, and I do it as a hobby now that I'm retired.

Any good conflict manager studies the aftermath of great conflicts, to see where lessons may be learned, what mistakes were made, where conflict can be better managed.

I find that the biggest single mistake made in the two-week stalemate between the Left and the Right was the handling of the threat of "default".

Let's look at default. Default would have occurred if the United States Treasury (led currently by Jack Lew) had failed to pay interest/dividends on the various lending instruments it had issued. The monthly cost of that interest is currently $23 billion dollars. On average, Treasury takes in tax receipts of $230 billion per month. How then can it be said that the United States was ever in danger of being in "default"? The US had income of ten times the expense which had to be paid to avoid default!

The fact that "default" was ever an issue at all was because President Obama wanted to raise a boogeyman to threaten and cow the House of Representatives with. The President, along with his fawning media corps, managed to convey the lie that the United States was sure to default if the borrowing limit was not eased. The dumbed-down electorate, which should have been shouting "pants on fire" at the President ever since he began this Big Lie campaign, said nothing, never challenged the basic assumption, even when many, many economists and respected economic-evaluation institutions raised the bullshit flag on "default" several months ago.

President Obama appointed Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and he was confirmed by the Senate. Article One, Section Three, last paragraph of our Constitution says, 

Judgment in Cases of Impeachments for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives, shall not extend further than removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

The Senate would not be involved in the Impeachment of Jack Lew.

What was Jack Lew's offense? When confirmed, he was charged with the absolute duty to protect the faith in, and credit of, the fiscal obligations of the United States. When forced by circumstances to put US Treasury operations on a cash-receipts basis, meaning that he would have to prioritize spending according the the importance to the credit of the US of his expenditures, he failed to do so. That is a deleliction of his duty, a complete dereliction of it.

Were I Speaker Boehner, I would immediatley direct the House Counsel to prepare those Articles of Impeachment, and summon Jack Lew before the House for his trial.

How would this action affect President Obama? There are a number of possibilities, but the first would be that the President would probably ask Jack Lew to resign, and he probably would. The President cannot afford to expend any political capital protecting his appointee. Speaker Boehner should then schedule a hearing in the Oversight Committee, or the Finance Committee, offer Jack Lew full immunity, and ask him under oath if he was ordered not to prioritize payments that Treasury had to make, so as to make it appear that "default" was a certainty on October 17th. If his answers provide ANY inkling that the President, or a trusted advisor such as Val Jarrett issued such an order, the Speaker should commend him for his honesty, and prepare to impeach President Obama.

In the meanwhile, Speaker Boehner needs to draw up a Federal Law requiring that the Treasurer of the United States have such a payment priority in case of such situations. That law should be passed and sent to the Senate, with pressure to have it heard in the Senate. It would be very interesting to see what "justification" would be rolled out to oppose such a common-sense law.

 

Thursday Thuds, Burst-option selected on my unregistered Assault Thud Gun

Thud Subject One: Syria: Three-round burst selected:

• The US wants "teeth" in Putin's UN proposal to divest Assad's military of it's Chem weapons. Channeling Jack in "A few good men", "Teeth, you want teeth? You can't handle teeth".
• Note that Russia was the vendor for all these gas weapons, can fake up "1,000 tons" of them very easily. There is NO way to effectively inspect after the "hand-over". WE will have to trust Putin...and he has bridges for sale.
• Note that the US CIA has been giving "traceable" weapons, mostly AKs and LMGs, to the Free Syrian Army (but only the "good" militias"). Yeah, we really know how to do that "traceable" weapon thing. Just ask Eric Holder how that's done...

Thud Subject Two: Colorado anti-gun recall: Two round burst selected:

• Read the actual results. The recalls succeeded, but only because they were polling-place elections, had less than 20% turnout. Okay then, two GFW* pols are gone. The gun laws aren't, and the Kingfish, Gov. Hickenlooper, who signed the laws after hinting he'd veto them, wasn't touched. Phyrric Victory. Magpul's departure from CO is a much harder hit than this.
• Now we get to see how the NRA-ILA will use this "victory" to keep the save-the-2A ball rolling. My guess: a money solicitation is in the mail. Not being a member of NRA, I won't get one, but I'd bet on it happening. If the NRA would double-down now, and go after Hickenlooper, I might send some shekels their way, but I bet they don't go after the real prize.

Thud Subject Three: US Public Schools: Three-round burst selected:

• Just saw on Fox News this ayem that the idea of paying dropouts to come back to class is upon us again, like a bad 'Nam foot-rot that won't go away forty years later. Let's see, what do we REALLY accomplish with this idea: Nothing! These louts and loutesses who would come back for a $100 gift card will stay only until it's spent. While they are there, they will either sleep off their dope in class or worse, be disruptive to those who are there voluntarily to learn. Portland Public Schools tried this out up in the North End. It failed.
• Have you noted the drumfire of liberal writers in the liberal blatts trying to shoot down the No Child Left Behind testing? The harassing fire is getting louder. You will recall that this "program" was passed during the Bush Administration, when the (D)s had a lock on both houses of Congress. 
• NCLB is a Liberal-owned program, and even it's watered-down testing shows that schools are doing a worse and worse job on the kids all the time. The entire Liberal approach to education, that is, to just keep dumbing the lesson plans down until the dummies finally can "get" them, has failed.

Thud Subject Four: Obama masked bandit: Full-auto, empty the magazine!

• Check it out. Now stay tuned on this subject to see if this WHITE guy is charged with racial intimidation for wearing an Obama mask during a bank robbery. Get your bets down!

Thud Subject Five: Climate Hooey: Reload, fire another full-auto magazine:

• New study finds that out of 117 recent model-based climate studies, only three were "roughly accurate", and the other 114 "over-estimated the amount of warming" on the average, the over-estimations averaged on the order of double. That is not science, that is propaganda, and not very good propaganda at that.

That's it, readers. Your thud-gun recoil therapy for this week.

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* GFW (Gun Fearing Wuss), a term coined by the former gun-blogger and 2A-defender Kim duToit. 

 

Wednesday whoppers - L.O.T.Ds

Yep, we've become a prevaricating society. How else do you explain getting up in the ayem, awoken by the usual Wednesday fleet of garbage/recycling trucks at 0530, climbing into some clothes, going downstairs and outside to put away the empty carts, and picking up the fishwrap, only to be insulted by the FIRST lie of the day, in the main headline on Page One:

"Owl ethics: 1 dies; 1 survives:

The folks that killed the Oregon economy thirty years ago with the Spotted Owl fiasco are at it again, only now they are killing another species of owl, the Barred Owl, because it uses the same habitat as the Western Spotted Owl and might chase the spotted owls out. Poor spotted owls! So here we are, constantly told by the Animal Rights Community that we must respect ALL species, killing off a superior species of owl to preserve an inferior one, mainly because to NOT do that would be an admission that they got the whole Spotted Owl thing wrong in the first place (gotta protect those envirowhacko egos, they can do NOTHING wrong, ever). For decades, we've been "protecting" (read: shutting down) the Oregon, Washington and Northern California forests from logging to save an owl that Ma Nature has now shown us to be an inferior species, and Gaia's own obvious plan is to replace that inferior owl with the superior Barred Owl? The fishwrap then lies with it's headline: this is NOT "Owl Ethics", it is HUMAN ethics, and the ethics do not prove out, Ma Nature has shown us the correct way.

The SECOND Lie Of The Day is brought to us courtesy of CBS News, which showed this video from SloDivers.com, an outfit which runs a dive boat off Morro Bay, CA. Watch the video. It comes out that far from the "divers were surprised by the whales", it appears that the divers set up the whole thing by finding or attracting a "Bait Ball", a dense school of small fish such as sardines, that the whales feed on, then they waited in the water by or in the bait ball for the whales. Next, note the loud chuckling by the deck crew on the dive boat. Those are NOT the remarks of people who were surprised/horrified by the whale encounter, those are the remarks of people who were happy that a plan worked the way it's supposed to. Why get interested in this little lie, you ask? Well, for one, it is illegal to harass whales like this, and second, the CBS crew had to know that, went along with the dive-crew's little conspiracy, and the video went viral. But hey, it's CBS, what more can we say?

The THIRD L.O.T.D. simply HAS to be Anthony Weiner, the New York "Peter Tweeter" whose sexting forced him to resign his NY Congressional seat 25 months ago. Now, it turns out, that Weiner is still sexting to gullible young women, or, at the least, failed to tell the world the extent of his past peckerdillos when he gave us the tearful "apology". We can't know because he refuses to clear up the matter of this sordid practice by presenting a diary of the transgressions, which any therapist would consider the FIRST step in recovery. This means that the voters in NYC, where Weiner is the front-runner in the Democratic Primary race for Mayor, have no idea whether they are getting ready to vote for an active or a reformed sex fiend. There is one way to find out though. Weiner will tell us that he has no record of his sexting, but since the question of whether he has halted the practice or not is vital for voters, we know someone who COULD provide that answer - the National Security Agency, which has a record of every text message that Weiner ever sent. How about it, President Obama: could you help out a fellow Democrat here and whistle up that sexting list from the NSA? Weiner is trying hard to get everyone to believe that he is reformed, and that all of these instances of the bad practice are in the past. I'm sure that with his permission, this could all be cleared up quickly. If Weiner HAS actually overcome his fondness for broadcasting his manliness to strange women, it's a sign of a healthy recovery from that affliction, and, under current Democratic Party ethical standards, he should remain a candidate. OTOH, if the NSA list were to show he's still doing it, he's a very dangerous man to elect to high office, since he would be not only a sex fiend but a liar to boot.

While we wait...?

While we wait for Obama to decide whether to play more failed race cards or just fold his bad hand, how about we have a discussion on Race?

Gasps, I can hear the gasps, the astonishment.

"We must heal from this insult", say the less-loud race-pimps. "We must drive this racial insult home to white America", say the major race-pimps. "Get Whitey" say the rioters in Oakland.

Since the Zimmerman verdict yesterday, cable news channels (well, CNN and Fox, those are the only two I watch) have trotted mikes out to every race pimp they could find, there are quite a few, and not a single one of them has admitted what has to be seen as the blinding truth by now: this case wasn't about race at all, it was about Zimmerman having to defend his personal freedom against a charge of homicide when all the investigators' evidence pointed to his use of deadly force as being a legitimate use of force. Race only got injected from the White House, then the DOJ, then down to the FL Attorney General, and then the Seminole County DA. That avalanche of doo-doo, all rolling downhill, simply smothered common sense and the calm, sane legal reflection that screamed "DO.NOT.PROSECUTE." We got the Zimmerman media circus then.

The prosecution ensued anyway, and the mainstream media did their utmost to inject race, never once looking back to see if this really WAS a case where race should have entered into the argument, which it never should have.

What do sane people take home from this case?

We take home the obvious fact that no one yelling "race case" can be trusted, ever again.

We take home the obvious fact that race has become a simple political tool, the purpose of which is to keep the races apart, not allow them to blend and homogenize, as should be the case.

We take home the obvious fact that the political parties have both failed in their duty regarding race: the Left, represented by the Democrats, has failed because of their use of race as a political tool of societal division, and the Right has failed because we let them do it, instead of being proactive and showing the way to homogenize the races. The Left took the wrong path, and the Right refuses to budge from that fork in the road. Both are wrong.

I learned my racial tolerance in the military. I did NOT learn it at home, for while both my parents were otherwise the best parents they could be, they were both racially prejudiced, and remained that way until their deaths.

In the military, I learned that acceptance of racial unity was crucial to operational success, and I personally helped to break down some racial barriers to that success by joining a racially-integrated bomber crew and helping them achieve the top level of success available within the measuring systems of the time. My mixed-race bomber crew proved to everyone's satisfaction that the highest levels of competence could and would be achieved by racial minorities, something new at the time in the USAF's Strategic Air Command in 1982.

I'm a geezer now, approaching 70 years of age, but in my cognizant lifetime, I've seen the country first recognize that it was racially divided, then spend agonizing decades attempting to address that divide, almost succeeding, but then falling back to a racial divide again because of the wrong values being taught to racial minorities. Minorities of today are taught, by our Government, that personal work ethic and personal success is secondary to expressing or "celebrating" their minority racial status.

Until we can break out of the gangsta-rap era, wear our hoodies up only in blizzards or bad rainstorms, and celebrate success, not color, we will never be a racially-homogenized Nation. That's sad to say, but it's true.

YOU know it's true.

Discuss the given points, not the author, when you comment.

Snowden redux

Legitimate question: Is Edward Snowden a double agent? That would be a double agent who only "went double" to protect his primary loyalty, to the Chinese?

We need this answer, but in the meanwhile, let us NOT forget that the entire machinery of our huge Government is now organized against Snowden for one purpose, and one purpose only:

to protect the intrusive nature of big government itself against individual Liberty

It's tough, staying on task to use the information Snowden gave all of us, at considerable risk to his life (and very little to ours, contravening what the Bigs are trying to tell us). But stay on task we must, and we must not get buried under this avalanche of disinformation aimed only at putting the sheeple back in their sheep-pen so more wool can be sheared, or so the sheeple can be turned into mutton chops.

So, in the meanwhile, continue to view any and all of Snowden's attackers as foes of Liberty, and continue your tactic of whenever a Big Government wallah tells you or anyone else that NSA surveillance has saved our bacon, many times, yell back at the wallah, "Details, please". When no details are forthcoming, or the details are lied about as General Clapper did before Congress and the Nation, the very least you should do is run up the big red Bullshit Flag on your signal halyard.

NYT gets caught with a slimy Weiner

Hmmm....seems that some of the Grey Lady's staffers had an assignment to do a follow-up on Anthony Weiner's peter-tweeting victims, so they did, and put it online, but then the "Paper of Record" almost immediately withdrew their article. Thanks to Google, there is no such thing as denying that you posted something online, if you did, but the New Jack Slimes is trying mightily to do just that. Newsmax gleefully put the lie to the higher NYT staff who pulled the story.

This little chuckle brings up a bigger question, though: Weiner, being the laughingstock he is, is nevertheless running for Mayor of New York City. He's obviously hoping for a Clintonesque defense to his peter-tweeting past. Could it be that he has a powerful ally in the Editorial Board of the NY Slimes?

Here's how we put that idea into the dustbin: fire up your stock trading program and buy a share of:

 

The New York Times Company

 

NYSE: NYT (running about ten bucks today)

As a shareholder (even more than as a subscriber), you have the right to communicate your frustration with company policy. Let them know that, as a shareholder, you will object mightily to any endorsement of Weiner for Mayor, and will contact other shareholders to organize them towards doing expressing the same frustration.