I did not see Obama’s address to Congress on TV but, I did catch some of it on YouTube. I read about most of the address from news articles. As was expected, this address was about the economic crisis and how the recent stimulus bill would fix things. If you’ve ready anything I’ve written about the bill, you’ll know that it will not work–Obama is just blowing smoke.
I wasn’t sure that I was going to blog about this at almost 3AM on the East coast but, then I heard this statement from his address:
“Tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”
Of course he did not go on to explain how this will happen. He just says it will. As if he can command the forces of economics to do his bidding if he just signs it into law. Let’s not be ridiculous. You can no more change the laws of economics as you can change the law of gravity.
“Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession,” Obama had urged Congress to do whatever proves necessary. What does that even mean? Completely vague and useless as is most of Obama’s fantasticly spoken speeches. It all sounds great, it just doesn’t mean anything.
The recession was never “open-ended”. It would end as soon as the bad debt was liquidated from the system. A lot of pain and suffering would have occured but, the recession would not turn into a depression. The almost $800 billion stimulus bill will make a recession that would have lasted a couple of years in the worse case scenario to something that is now open-ended.
No one knows how long this will last. You cannot solve the problem of too much credit and spending with more credit and spending. The idea that you need to fill the “gap” left behind by a decrease in consumer spending with government spending is idiotic.
The single biggest debate topic I have with my European friends is about guns. I have already written about the guns after discussing it with them. No one has changed their minds since. My political stance on every issue revolves around the protection of Liberty.
From what I have gathered, Europeans treat guns as if they were nuclear weapons. While I do not disagree that guns can kill people and have been used to kill people, I do disagree that we should have laws against guns. There are many reasons for this line of thinking. The most important one being that owning a gun does not directly harm anyone and disallowing someone to own a gun is a violation of Liberty.
I refuse to take away any Liberty. I do not believe you can take away some Liberty so that some other Liberties can be protected. That is what the recent debate was about. I first head this argument after a few beers–perhaps some tequila as well–but, I still understood that owning a gun is not a violation of Liberty.
The credit for the argument that the act of owning a gun is a violation of Liberty–and that being why I should be against guns–goes to my German friend who is also teaching me German. Her argument is that guns have no purpose outside of killing. Because its only purpose is to kill, it is a violation of the Liberty.
I do not know if gun technology is useful for anything else. I’m not that knowledgeable about guns. No one knows if gun technology can be useful in the future. I can accept that guns have no use other than killing–whether in defense or aggression. The part where her logic falls through the floor is claiming that ownership of a gun is violating Liberty.
By Tommy Leung on February 19th, 2009 in Liberty, Video
I have nothing against this guy representing the DSA but, his ideas of socialism are pretty funny to those of us who understand free markets and liberty. Beck’s use of the M&M’s were pretty funny. The man clearly undermines the idea socialism and enforces the principles of freedom when he talks about the M&M’s.
Socialism cannot work. It has never worked. The two parties are indeed both socialist as Beck points out. The oddity of the Democrats fighting with the Republicans where one calls the other socialists when they are both one and the same.
I saw some signs for socialist gathering on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I found it insane that the socialism movement is taking hold. The economic crisis was created by the idea of big government. The world’s biggest problems are a result of big government. Why in the world would anyone think we can create a government run by angels?
This appears to be a time in history where there is room for new discussions on the role of government and whether slavery is better than freedom. It wouldn’t take a genius to choose freedom over slavery except when you use synonyms for slavery such as socialism, communism, marxism, etc.
The man also doesn’t know much about economics as he refers to the misguided principles of Keynes. We don’t need a bigger stimulus, we need less government for the economy to recover. True free marketers can preach this all day long but, the proof will be in the pudding. If the economy does recover, it will be despite of the socialist actions. Chances are, the economy will tank into the abyss because of all this government spending. We’ve been here before and it didn’t work last time either.
By Tommy Leung on February 18th, 2009 in Liberty, News
Body scanners replaced metal detectors in Tulsa International Airport as a tryout. The idea behind these wonderful machines is to provide outlines of your body underneath your clothes.
“We’re getting closer and closer to a required strip-search to board an airplane,” said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The insanity of all these security measures is that they do not protect us. They are only taking away liberties. I will specifically choose not fly into or out of the airports that employ this particular device. I’m already sick of the normal security measures of taking off your belt, shoes, etc. This is not going to fly.
It is hard for those who believe in liberty to find anything wrong with adults choosing to do what they want so long as they are not violating the liberty of others. Michael Phelps was recently “caught” smoking marijuana. I expected nothing less than a complete backlash against the star athlete after I had heard about that. I am happy to hear that a good number of his major sponsors have stood by him including Visa, Speedo, and Omega.
However, Kellogs decided to drop Phelps. This is understandable considering their demographic. I am sure a majority of parents in America were appalled by his behavior. The irony is that smoking pot is an American pastime. It isn’t “officially” recognized as such and no one is going to compare it to baseball but, at least 42% of Americans have tried marijuana at some point in their lives.
What is even more absurd is the ban for three months from USA Swimming. The official line from USA Swimming was, “This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people”. No rules were violated but, a harsh punishment will be levied anyway because he disappointed “so many people”–way to give into vague peer pressure!
I am against the war on drugs and the destruction that it has caused. There is nothing more dangerous about smoking marijuana than there is smoking tobacco–cigarettes might even be worse. The government’s justification for this ridiculous war on drugs has no substance yet, they have been throwing taxpayer money into this sinkhole for decades.
The American populous has become so conditioned to believe that anything deemed “illegal” is bad. I don’t personally smoke marijuana but, I happen to know people who do. There is nothing wrong with them and they certainly are not wasting their lives away in a state of stupor. There are much worse synthetic drugs promoted by Big Pharma than naturally growing marijuana plants. Yet, we feel safer with those drugs because the FDA or the government has not deemed them “bad”.
Karen DeCoster does a great job of explaining the absurdity of all this at the LewRockwell Blog.
