Independent News and Politics

Two amendments aimed at providing a public healthcare option were shot down in the Senate Tuesday.

A large minority of Democratic senators are are caving in to insurance pressure, and just a few of the most corrupt Senators have taken up as champions of a public option.  Perhaps they’re trying to reclaim some credibility as blue working-class heros, but the party’s Senate leadership seems dead-set on selling out their constituency.

Blue collar democrats are stuck in an abusive and financially draining relationship – but if they leave, where can they go?

Justifying violence, for fear of chaos

If the serfs can leave their land, it will be chaos for England!

If education spreads to the masses it will be the ruin of civilization!

If commoners were allowed to have a society where all are free and none are coerced, America would soon look like a zombie movie!

We progress toward anarchy. We evolve. The desire to follow fades and the desire to lead replaces it. We’ve killed all the kings or turned them in to tokens – we seem to have progressed for it. Why should we now crown the captains of industry and the engineers of political machines with the same powers our ancestors found to be oppressive? But don’t look back too long, look forward…

The debate is practically useless. Soon enough, we’ll be fragmented across the solar system. Smashed up into tribes all over again. Centralization and control are both already dead, even if the mainstream hasn’t caught up yet.

Its increasingly clear that the rich and powerful of the world don’t like to tolerate dissent when they don’t have to.

And who needs to tolerate dissenting opinions when you’ve got armies, unmarked cars, and the ability to snap people up off the street in broad daylight?

If the protestors used these types of tactics, we’d just crush down on them harder, in the name of fighting “domestic terrorism.”

The official report is that the suspect arrested here is charged with vandalism. The video doesn’t tell both sides of the story.

What it does tell us, is that strong-men in military fatigues can grab someone and shove them in a car, and at best we can hope that they actually work for “the government.”

The Federal Reserve has long been suspected of directly manipulating gold prices, but they’ve been able to deny this activity due to the secrecy that surrounds all of their monetary policies.

In response to the looming threat of a Congressional audit of the central bank, the Fed is now fessing up to some manipulations in the gold market.

Will the unlikely alliance of Ron Paul and Barney Frank deliver the votes needed to reveal what “our” bank is really up to behind the scenes?

Stay tuned, more news on the Federal Reserve audit is on the way.

While no protests were “legally” allowed, and despite police activity designed to intimidate potential demonstrations, some discontents found their way to protest the G20 meeting hosted in downtown Pittsburgh.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/09/24/tsr.todd.g20.tear.gas.cnn

CNN got some good video of the police using chemical weapons on anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just in case you were wondering, the economy still sucks.

Don’t be fooled by the stock market numbers – those guys are playing with a stacked deck.  Even if they lose a hand, they’ll get bailed out by the Fed and/or treasury.

For the rest of us, you know, the people who get paid by doing actual work, the economy pretty much sucks.

Unemployment is just under 10%, but it takes a whole lot of creative accounting to even make that happen.
My advice is to find or build a product you believe in.  Then sell it.  Make your own job.  Don’t sit around waiting for someone else to make one for you.

Don’t make my mistake.

There are plenty of happy things you can learn at school, like math or chemistry.   The last thing you really want to know and understand is how a government works.

Unless you’re a power-hungry sociopath…  Then you should probably major in politics after all.  There will be a nice well-paid career ready for you, as long as you don’t have a soul.

If you do have a soul and studied politics, leave a comment.  I’ll link to your blog or something.

Just received an email:

This Friday, the House Financial Services Committee will meet at 9 am eastern to hold a hearing on Congressman Paul’s Audit the Fed bill, HR 1207.

Critics of the audit movement have complained that a full inspection of the central bank’s finances would inevitably lead to more direct Congressional regulation of our monetary policy.

Critics of the Fed say that auditing the bank will reveal decades of systemic corruption and collusion.

I guess there’s only one way to find out.  Let’s take a look at what our bank is doing with our money.

Get the full story here.

Society likes scapegoats to blame negative human behaviors on.  Sometimes we blame immigrants or foreign labor, and sometimes we blame drugs or the devil.

But prohibiting these things won’t make people holier.  It makes them criminals but they’ll keep on acting like people.  This means belonging to the wrong nation or church or ethnic group, or it means drinking and smoking and popping pills.

We tried to get rid of alcohol, and realized that was pretty stupid.  Now can we realize that the rest of our prohibitions are just as silly and ill-conceived?

The federal student loan policy over the last twenty years has been an exceptional case of failure.  Despite costing the government tons of money, they somehow managed to “privatize” the profits of these debts.

So while we see a downturn in students becoming doctors, we have to wonder if that has something to do with the fact that medical students end up with $200,000 in student loan debt before they’re licensed to practice medicine.

Maybe kids heading to college can save a few bucks on interest rates, and maybe the tax payers of America can even save a few bucks by cutting out an unnecessary middle-man.