Your Fascist Police State At Work: More Than 9,300 Unannounced Checkpoints Run in 2011

So says the story here.

And the LA Times here:

TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass transit locations around the country.

"We are not the Airport Security Administration," said Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte. "We take that transportation part seriously." ...

In Tennessee in October, a viper team used radiation monitors and explosive-trace detectors to help state police inspect trucks at highway weigh stations throughout the state. Last month in Orlando, Fla., a team set up metal detectors at a Greyhound bus station and tested passengers' bags for explosive residue.

In the Carolinas this year, TSA teams have checked people at the gangplanks of cruise ships, the entrance to NASCAR races, and at ferry terminals taking tourists to the Outer Banks.

The instruments of fascism are slowly being introduced, and the American people accept it like sheep.

They deserve everything they're going to get.

George Orwell on the Meaninglessness of the Term 'Fascism'

"It would seem that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, youth hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I don't know what else."

The source of this statement attributed to Orwell is given as "Tribune, 1944" here. I haven't found a credible alternative citation proving Orwell wrote it.

In a leftist age, the promiscuous use of the term would be understandable.

To Romney, Calling Obama a Socialist is the Same Thing as Calling Him a Momma's Boy

From an interview on FOX as transcribed here by The Washington Post:

O’Reilly: Is he a socialist?

Romney: You know, I prefer to use the term that he’s just over his head. ... I consider him a big-government liberal Democrat. I think as you look at his policies, you conclude that he thinks Europe got it right and we got it wrong. I think Europe got it wrong. I think Europe is not working in Europe. And I’ll battle him on that day in and day out. But I’m probably not going to be calling him names so much as calling him a failure.

The Economy is NOT Improving: 3rd Estimate of Real GDP Falls to 1.8 Percent from 2.0 for Q3 2011

What a joke the news is today. GDP is revised down and all you hear on the news is Ho! Ho! Ho!

Q2 GDP was 1.3 percent, and Q1 0.4 percent, for an average growth rate in 2011 so far of barely 1.0 percent.

One percent. From 1930 to 2000 growth averaged 3.5 percent a year. That's the normal America, and it isn't anywhere in sight and hasn't been in over a decade.

If the economy were improving truly, GDP would be much in excess of 2.5 percent, the minimum growth needed to accomodate just the natural growth of the population. The last time we had such growth ended a year ago September, spurious as it was, consisting primarily of parasitical spending by government. It wasn't even tax money the government spent. It was borrowed money. For all that, 2010 growth overall was merely 3.0 percent, in 2009 -3.5 percent, in 2008 -0.3 percent.

The personal savings rate since September 2010 has fallen 30 percent.

The ratio of the number employed to the size of the population has fallen back dramatically to levels last seen in the 1970s and early 1980s.

The growth in employment in the post-war period has stalled with the stall in GDP:

Household net worth has fallen 12 percent since 2006, 85 percent of that from the housing collapse.

Without jobs there is no growth in the savings which form the foundation of housing wealth. Without housing wealth there is no middle class which consumes the products whose aggregate value comprises 70 percent of GDP. And hence no advance in GDP.

A rich man can smoke only so many cigars, a Christopher Hitchens only so many Rothmans.

Data here and here from The Bureau of Economic Analysis.

FDR, The Enemy of Money, Devalued the Dollar Nearly 70 Percent Overnight

FDR in 1933

Executive Order 6102

Gold priced in dollars went from its historic price since 1879 of $20.67 the ounce to $35 in 1934. Gold was confiscated because the government claimed the American people were hoarding it, thwarting commerce. Kind of like today where people hoard cash but government interferes with interest rates so that you get no return and are more likely to spend it. History rhymes.

From One Perverse Little Man To Another: Pres. Carter Consoles North Korea

Here's what North Korea said about Pres. Carter giving aid and comfort to the enemy again:

"In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il. He wished Kim Jong Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to [North Korea] in the future." 

Naval Tradition: Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

Harrier Jump Jet Landing Zone

Right here, fellas.

Both Santorum and Gingrich Endorsed Liberal Republicans. Expect the Same as President.

endorsed Spectre

endorsed Scozzafava

Flashback to Dec. 24, 2009: Democrat US Senate Rams Through Healthcare in Rare Vote

Reid The Arrogant

From The New York Times (link):

The 60-to-39 party-line vote, starting at 7:05 a.m. on the 25th straight day of debate on the legislation, brings Democrats closer to a goal they have pursued for decades and brings President Obama a step closer to success in his signature domestic initiative. When the roll was called, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. presiding, it was the first time the Senate had gathered for a vote on Christmas Eve since 1895.

Fast forward to today.

The US Senate is still controlled by Democrats, but it adjourned for the year on Saturday, Dec. 17, even though the Social Security Tax Cut measure it passed is different from the US House's bill and requires reconciliation before the tax cut can be take effect on January 1, 2012.

House Republicans have remained in Washington, willing to work on the measure, but Democrats have fled town.

Chevy Volt and East German Trabant, Compared

Their Commie Junk

This one had a heater in the back to keep you warm while you pushed it.

Our Commie Junk

To keep your hands warm in this one, the battery catches fire.

Militarized US Police Units Have Grown in Number by at Least 60 Percent Since 2000

From The Daily Beast (link):

The homeland security market for state and local agencies is projected to reach $19.2 billion by 2014, up from an estimated $15.8 billion in fiscal 2009, according to the Homeland Security Research Corp.

The rise of equipment purchases has paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams, but reliable numbers are hard to come by. The National Tactical Officers Association, which provides training and develops SWAT standards, says it currently has about 1,650 team memberships, up from 1,026 in 2000.

These Aren't Really Man Boobs, Are They?

(video here)

Gasoline Consumption Down Every Week for Nine Months in 2011

We're having a little gas war in southeast Grand Rapids

Annual records for gasoline prices are taking their toll on the American economy, consuming as much as 0.5 percent of annual GDP.

As such, it's an example of a tax which only hurts, averaging over 5 percent of the typical household budget in the past but over 8 percent now.

The AP has the story here:

For this year, gas should average $3.53 per gallon. That's 76 cents more than last year. It's 29 cents per gallon more than 2008, when gas last set an annual record, $3.24. ... Compared with the year before, American gas consumption has been down every week for more than nine months, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse, a spending survey.

Or Else Tyranny Wins

From Aaron MacLean here:

If one wanted to be unkind to Hitchens, a claim could be made that, as a natural belligerent and contrarian, he was in the end drawn naturally to soldiers, whose aggressiveness and courage he admired. Less generous formulations of this argument can be encountered among his critics, but all versions of it are essentially false. It wasn’t so much the fighting which was the point, as the fact that there was so much for a free man​—​if he wanted to deserve the name​—​to fight against. If -others were unwilling to challenge the slavemasters of the world; well, then, as with Orwell before him, the willing slaves could come in for some rough treatment, too. 

I remember that at our first meeting, a lunch in Dupont Circle shared while I was still a student, an old man came over to our table and hoarsely exclaimed the motto of the Greek Cypriot struggle: “eleftheria i thanatos”​—​freedom or death. (It isn’t every day .  .  . ) In the end, Hitchens went to war with death itself. Not just by means of his treatment​—​a delaying action which was destined to fail in the end​—​but, characteristically, by going to war in print with the sentimentality and dishonest fluff that attaches to the fact of death. Practicing his craft in a condition in which most of us would be content merely to continue breathing, he went on shattering icons and offending pieties even from his hospital room: a free man, telling the truth about one final tyrant.

Religion exists because some men are unwilling to bow even in death.

Props to Erick Erickson: Republicans Are Insane

It's not a long post, but a good one:

The Republican Party has gone insane.

For the better part of the last three years the Republican Party has exercised itself into a frenzy over the need to repeal Obamacare. For the two years leading up to November of 2010, mostly middle aged working white people took to the streets in sizes rivaling a NASCAR race to protest the socialization of the American health care system.

The individual mandate and TARP draw the ire of scores of primary voters.

And our two front runners for President? They both support an individual mandate and they both supported TARP.

Not only that, just last year Mitt Romney was saying he’d keep parts of Obamacare. Like supporting amnesty, he has changed his position just in time for an election cycle.

Are we really going to do this?

I just want everyone to make sure they understand this and remind them that Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman, and yes, even Rick Santorum are still in the race.


A movement that doesn't understand what's happened to itself and can't come up with a candidate deserves everything it's going to get . . . in spades.

Black Friday Gun Sales Set Record, Up 32 Percent Over 2008

Kentucky led the pack in requests for federal background checks in November with nearly 204,000 according to this story:

In November, licensed gun dealers requested 1.53 million federal background checks for prospective gun buyers, breaking the record for the month set in 2008.

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation data, the number of such checks done on this year's Black Friday, the traditional kick-off of the holiday shopping frenzy, went from the previous high in 2008 of 97,848 to 129,166 — a whopping 32 percent increase.

Evidently some people in America still aren't convinced of this federal government's benevolent intentions.

Kim Jong Mentally Ill Leaves Terrestrial for Celestial North Korea, Meets Christopher Hitchens!

The Associated Press announces tonight, tonight!, that Kim Jong Il has died.

What a week for Christopher Hitchens. The Iraq war ends, he dies, and now he's stuck with a dwarf playboy, forever.

Kim Jong Il supposedly died of heart failure at the age of 69 on a train.

Mish is an ignoramus: "Newspapers are surely dieing a slow death"

Maybe because no one can read, or write, the English language anymore.

Try this on for size from the end of the same blog post:

My site, ZeroHedge, Calculated Risk can all be shut down if a newspaper or other cite thinks we went beyond fair use in quoting an article.

That's a college freshman's tired mistake, or used to be.

If I wrote that the author of the above was a cereal malefactor, would you get it?

Seen here.

Hitch: A Stalinist to the End . . .

. . . at least in the mind of George Eaton, in the New Statesman:

In his boisterous advocacy of the [Iraq] war there was more than a hint of the Marxist belief in the necessity of violence in order for history to progress. As Stalin once grimly phrased it, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

A shoddy little slam on a dead follower of Trotsky who can no longer defend himself if you ask me.