Tired of that $2.6 Million Program that Teaches Chinese Prostitutes to Drink?

by John Ransom


Liberty is about a lot of things; it’s a deep topic. But at its core liberty can be summed up in one simple and reciprocal concept. That concept is respect.

You know the 2010 last election was about many things, but it was mostly about respect.

It was about starting to restore the respect that people have in government, by getting the government to restore the respect that they show to you…by taking liberty seriously.

If you are like me, you think that many of our elected officials from both the right and the left truly believe that what they think of you is much more important than what you think of them.

If you’re like me you’re tired of a trillion dollars in so-called stimulus spending that went to mob-connected asphalt contractors rather than the pockets of working families who own businesses and pay taxes and do all the working and dreaming in this country.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of a $2.6 million program that teaches Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly while unemployment soars across the country.

If you’re like me, you're tired of an arrogant federal government which pays out $47 billion in fraudulent claims in Medicare every year while they lecture the rest of us about healthcare economics.

If you are like me, you’re tired of the US Postal service wasting $30 million on a program that pays 1100 employees to do nothing. Yes, today, the US Post Office sat 1100 employees in empty rooms, as they do every day, and literally paid them to do nothing. They can’t play cards; they can’t watch TV, in fact they can’t do anything at all. To the tune of $30 million per year.


Yet this very same federal government comes to us now and proposes to manage our healthcare, our retirement, the education of our children, the auto industry, the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, the mortgage industry and lectures the American people that they are under-regulated.

If you’re a middle American like me, from the grassroots, I bet you know someone who owns their own business; if you’re like me you probably know someone who has paid employees of that business on time every week, but hasn’t been able to pay themselves a dime. Yet these very same people who provide half the new jobs in our economy, who have lost money over the last few years, still owe the government tens of thousands of dollars in taxes every year. People wonder where our jobs have gone? They’ve been crushed by a system that doesn’t honor job creation; by a system that doesn’t honor liberty; a system that gives no respect.

And if you are like most of the voters I speak to, you are tired of insiders from Washington and Wall Street on both sides of the aisle, and their wasteful spending schemes that don’t even propose to solve the very issues facing Main Street and working families.

Let’s suppose global warming is real; I don’t think it is, but let’s say it's so for the sake of argument. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard-- which will cost American families $1800 per year-- please show me how it’s going to lower the earth’s temperature. They can’t because the Renewable Electricity Standard wasn’t created to combat global warming and it won’t lower the earth’s temperature.

Ok, so let’s suppose the issue is carbon emission; that carbon is really bad and we have to get it out of our atmosphere. Show me please how the Renewable Electricity Standard is going to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere. They can’t. It wasn’t designed to do that and it won’t do that.

The government doesn't write legislation with solutions in mind, but rather with power and control of your very lives. And it is inside of your lives where you will wrestle back that control.

I’m often reminded that it’s with readers just like you where many of the seminal events of our country happened. It’s in rooms just like you’re in right now that a small group of patriots in Massachusetts planned the Boston Tea Party; it’s in groups just like you are a part of today that was born the Mayflower Compact; it’s in the free association of our citizens, for the common good and with common respect, that the greatness and goodness of our country will always be found.

And as long as people like you, freely associate for the common good and meet in respect, our country will always remain both great and good.

But ordinary people are paying attention, actually reading the Constitution; people are actually asking questions about the 10th Amendment, asking: What kind of power does Washington really have over us?

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough people who have been awakened to that yet, that’s why readers like you are so important. Each individual reading this is so incredibly important because the job you have this year as a citizen has never, ever, ever been more important. The 2012 election is going to determine what it’s like to live in this country for a long time. It’s going to be people just like you, having conversation just like this, in rooms across America that are going to make a difference.

This is the chance to turn the tide. The chance we have today is to bury that last vestiges of big government in our country; to reclaim our liberty from a new deal and replace it with a true deal.

I’ve been very fortunate because over the last half dozen years I’ve been able to travel all around the country working with grassroots activists just like you. I understand, I think, better than elected officials, what makes the grassroots so special. It's you and your ability to communicate.

We have all these new tools available for citizens to communicate that just a few years ago we didn’t have. A few years ago readers wouldn’t have been as energized and as informed because we didn’t have the ability to communicate as we do now. We have been so fractured and fragmented all around the country and around the nation that we feel like we can’t do anything, that Washington is so big and out of touch that we can’t do anything.

In fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Now is the time we really do have the opportunity. For the first time in our history ordinary citizens have the ability to communicate with one another over the heads of the media in publications like Townhall. We are networked on social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter that expose us to thousands of people for free.

But when I was growing up there were three TV stations and two newspapers in every town that decided what the news was. There were probably a dozen people in any town that picked our news for us.

Those days are over.

This election isn’t about voting for the next person standing in a long line of elites who will rule over us; it’s about what kind of country we want to be in the future.

It’s about preserving the American dream right here right now. Because when they mess with our liberty, they really mess with our ability to dream.

I believe that the ability to dream is worth handing down to our kids.

I believe that it’s our dreams that makes us the most dynamic country in the world.

It’s the dream that brings jobs and prosperity to the US.

It’s a dream that treats promises like they really matter.

And it’s the dreams that are the promise of America.

Because when politicians treat the promises they campaign on like they matter, when they are held accountable to those pledges-- by us-- we will restore the respect they owe us.

>> ^Stormsinger:

>> ^chingalera:
Dubstep has the capacity to set up some fundamentally deleterious vibrations in a human body at high volumes. Been to quite a few venues in my city, varied settings, and most have one thing in common: Poor sound engineering and too much Db for the space....
The evolution of Dj's styles goes hand in hand with the kind of durgs available and popular nowdays-Less pot and hallucinogens and more pharmaceuticals and bathtub amphetamines has created an evolutionary path for the sound. The music was more creative and ethereal, beneficial to the psyche when the majority of the crowd were high on natural drugs.
The genres' turning to complete shit IMO, sort of like rap and hip-hop did (although in a much shorter amount of time) and this time I blame the drugs first, and the idiots who abuse them next-
Dubstep it seems bees morphing into an un-listenable schizm whose fans are as hollow and vapid as the creativity it takes to rub two cuts together and drop an angular, hypnotic beat in the "release all bowels" range of hearing

You know...you could just say, "I don't like it." No need to get all hipsterish on us.


Gad. I had no idea my opinions could be considered hipsterish!!.....i feel like I need to wash now

>> ^chingalera:

Dubstep has the capacity to set up some fundamentally deleterious vibrations in a human body at high volumes. Been to quite a few venues in my city, varied settings, and most have one thing in common: Poor sound engineering and too much Db for the space....
The evolution of Dj's styles goes hand in hand with the kind of durgs available and popular nowdays-Less pot and hallucinogens and more pharmaceuticals and bathtub amphetamines has created an evolutionary path for the sound. The music was more creative and ethereal, beneficial to the psyche when the majority of the crowd were high on natural drugs.
The genres' turning to complete shit IMO, sort of like rap and hip-hop did (although in a much shorter amount of time) and this time I blame the drugs first, and the idiots who abuse them next-
Dubstep it seems bees morphing into an un-listenable schizm whose fans are as hollow and vapid as the creativity it takes to rub two cuts together and drop an angular, hypnotic beat in the "release all bowels" range of hearing

You know...you could just say, "I don't like it." No need to get all hipsterish on us.

Dubstep has the capacity to set up some fundamentally deleterious vibrations in a human body at high volumes. Been to quite a few venues in my city, varied settings, and most have one thing in common: Poor sound engineering and too much Db for the space....

The evolution of Dj's styles goes hand in hand with the kind of durgs available and popular nowdays-Less pot and hallucinogens and more pharmaceuticals and bathtub amphetamines has created an evolutionary path for the sound. The music was more creative and ethereal, beneficial to the psyche when the majority of the crowd were high on natural drugs.
The genres' turning to complete shit IMO, sort of like rap and hip-hop did (although in a much shorter amount of time) and this time I blame the drugs first, and the idiots who abuse them next-

Dubstep it seems bees morphing into an un-listenable schizm whose fans are as hollow and vapid as the creativity it takes to rub two cuts together and drop an angular, hypnotic beat in the "release all bowels" range of hearing

Careful now, I'm not a liberal. I'm an independent. You should try it sometime.

At one time or another I've been an anarchist, liberal, conservative and (card-carrying) Libertarian. Like anyone here, my views are complex because life is complex.

I don't put much merit on any of the attributes you've given Romney. Inheriting money isn't successful -- creating it is; knocking up a your wife isn't noble, it's natural; using laws as a barometer for morality is repulsive; and squares are just fearful of everything everybody but themselves do.

Many people inherit money and burn through it irresponsibly. Romney worked hard and created value, which brought him more wealth.

Clinton knocked up Hillary, are you going to compare his "natural" abuse of women and dishonoring of his marriage with Romney's marriage?

Laws, for the most part, reflect morality. Plenty of stupid, unjust laws exist and are bent. I believe if anarchy ensued, Romney would still be the same decent square. He could be fooling us all, of course.

The fact is, Obama has been vetted.

Where are his grades and college papers? Does anyone have a timeline of his immigration status? When did he have dual citizenship and for how long? Do you think a boy raised by marxists in a foreign land shares American values? I don't. Obama was a spoiled kid who decided to "forward" himself playing the race card. He had no reason to be bitter about anything except by choice.

And if you want to talk trash, call him out for: not closing Guantanamo; for not using his position to limit Wall Street's power and corruption; for allowing indefinite detention; for allowing citizen executions without a trial; for extending unwarranted wiretapping; for catering to the pharmaceutical industries during negotiations for the Affordable Care Act; etc.

Arch-liberals 'hate' Obama for reasons different than centrists. On many points, we would agree Obama poses a serious threat to liberty, and there are other additional points which make him an unacceptable candidate to me, but not to you. So be it.


>> ^MrFisk:

Careful now, I'm not a liberal. I'm an independent. You should try it sometime.
I don't put much merit on any of the attributes you've given Romney. Inheriting money isn't successful -- creating it is; knocking up a your wife isn't noble, it's natural; using laws as a barometer for morality is repulsive; and squares are just fearful of everything everybody but themselves do.
The fact is, Obama has been vetted. And if you want to talk trash, call him out for: not closing Guantanamo; for not using his position to limit Wall Street's power and corruption; for allowing indefinite detention; for allowing citizen executions without a trial; for extending unwarranted wiretapping; for catering to the pharmaceutical industries during negotiations for the Affordable Care Act; etc.
But I know the foam at your mouth hinders any reasoning in your brain. In fact, is Romney the man you put in for during the primary? Or isn't it just anybody but B. Hussein O.?
>> ^quantumushroom:
Romney: successful businessman, family man, upstanding citizen, square.
The irony here is that you, the liberal, have all the facts the libmedia could dig up on Romney, with a huge side dish of bias, of course.
Obama hasn't been vetted to this day, huge gaps remain in his personal history.
What we have now, however, is a 4-year record meriting his firing.
>> ^MrFisk:
Based on Romney's imperformance, he doesn't merit a first term.
>> ^quantumushroom:
Based on BHO's performance, he doesn't deserve a second term.

Careful now, I'm not a liberal. I'm an independent. You should try it sometime.

I don't put much merit on any of the attributes you've given Romney. Inheriting money isn't successful -- creating it is; knocking up a your wife isn't noble, it's natural; using laws as a barometer for morality is repulsive; and squares are just fearful of everything everybody but themselves do.

The fact is, Obama has been vetted. And if you want to talk trash, call him out for: not closing Guantanamo; for not using his position to limit Wall Street's power and corruption; for allowing indefinite detention; for allowing citizen executions without a trial; for extending unwarranted wiretapping; for catering to the pharmaceutical industries during negotiations for the Affordable Care Act; etc.

But I know the foam at your mouth hinders any reasoning in your brain. In fact, is Romney the man you put in for during the primary? Or isn't it just anybody but B. Hussein O.?

>> ^quantumushroom:

Romney: successful businessman, family man, upstanding citizen, square.
The irony here is that you, the liberal, have all the facts the libmedia could dig up on Romney, with a huge side dish of bias, of course.
Obama hasn't been vetted to this day, huge gaps remain in his personal history.
What we have now, however, is a 4-year record meriting his firing.
>> ^MrFisk:
Based on Romney's imperformance, he doesn't merit a first term.
>> ^quantumushroom:
Based on BHO's performance, he doesn't deserve a second term.

Whoa. Four promotes on the same vid. That is a record for a video I have posted.

There is something truly accessible and simultaneously awful about this -- her winning smile and calm "commercial" voice as horrific things are done to her.

And my favorite moment -- ask your doctor, uh congressman.

PERFECT.

Thanks for suggesting the playlist. I screwed up and did it as an individual rather than a group playlist. Otherwise I would empower you to add to it.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
*promote

This vid has hit a nerve. Thanks for the promote.


In reply to this comment by Boise_Lib:
*promote

Two promotes in less than an hour!

This thing really is pretty amazing, isn't it? Love love LOVE that :52 moment.

Thanks!

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
*promote

@bmacs27

I am all for good lending practices, but what is happening now goes beyond that. I know of several instances of developers having signed leases from investment grade tenants (large pharmaceutical companies , retailers etc.)who have had significant challenges obtaining financing, even with putting up 40% equity.

At the end of the day the fewer 'good' projects that get done means fewer jobs that are created, both on a temporary (construction) and permanent basis.

I am not on the development side so I don't have first hand experience with the above.

I don't disagree that speculative real estate developments should have trouble getting financing, but that isn't the only kind of product being effected by the new standards.

My take on Jamie Dimon is he isn't Bill Gates. He is a banker and he wants to make money for his company and his shareholders. So did Steve Jobs. I don't fault him for looking out for his interests and I don't fault those who seek to restrain them reasonably. I don't view him as a hero or a demon. He is just a banker - and he seems to be a very 'good' one.

I hope he's smart enough to patent it then release it for free.

>> ^Esoog:

Now we just sit back and wait for the pharmaceutical companies to buy up this technology, shove it in a drawer, and never use it again because they cant make enough profit off of it.

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^Yogi:
it is THE stance you have to take if you want funding to get elected.

Many of the stances he took to get elected have turned out to be just that. Gitmo is open; the wars continue on Bush's schedule; the MCA is in effect; minimum wage is $7.25; he now supports gay marriage; he sang the praises of "prolonged detention" not 3 months into his term. He can't change his position on drug laws because...?


He can't if he wants the support of the pharmaceutical industry.

That's great that you found a medication that works. Really, I mean that. I'm a big fan of "whatever works" when it comes to mental health -- although there are some extremely unethical goings on with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA, readily spelled out in this brief piece. I especially like that the FDA man has a fundamental misunderstanding of basic statistics -- and then said it was basic statistics. Facepalm!

Data are data, and anecdotes are anecdotes. And with anecdotes, there is a distinct lack of control over extraneous variables.

Also, at the end of the report, and in the companion piece, they state explicitly that you should not stop taking your anti-depressants.

I encourage you to look further into this story and the science behind it, rather than dismissing it simply because it doesn't match your experience.

>> ^DuoJet:

This is total, f cking, bullsh t. I tried a number of different medications before I found the right one for me. Some of the medications I tried did nothing, some caused unwanted side effects, only one got me where I wanted to be.
For me the difference has not been modest, but life-changing.
Friends have described the similar experiences.
Do not stop taking your anti-depressants based on this report.

Man, he doesn't get everything right (like the pharmaceuticals thing), but he's very funny.

Love the reference to pseu-pseu-pseudeo (is that the spelling)?