Fuck Ron Paul

[Elihu]

what is it with these sovereign city - states? london's city, the vatican, etc. i only vaguely understand them. their sovereign territory, their own constitutions, their own police, banks etc. what's up with the 10 square mile DC? you know, the one with the egyptian oblelisk, the masonic halls, the pentagrams, etc. why did we need that? who and what was the impetus behind it? it cannae all be benign. a mystery in a riddle in an enigma. the stars might lie but the numbers never do. looking at the books, it certainly has bank-rupted this nation. alot of anonymous international bankers hold t-bills. heck they've even got a temple out-post there. might lead one to form all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories ???

[slimmouse]

what is it with these sovereign city - states? london's city, the vatican, etc. i only vaguely understand them. their sovereign territory, their own constitutions, their own police, banks etc. what's up with the 10 square mile DC? you know, the one with the egyptian oblelisk, the masonic halls, the pentagrams, etc. why did we need that? who and what was the impetus behind it? it cannae all be benign. a mystery in a riddle in an enigma. the stars might lie but the numbers never do. looking at the books, it certainly has bank-rupted this nation. alot of anonymous international bankers hold t-bills. heck they've even got a temple out-post there. might lead one to form all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories ???

Well, to paraphrase from some Taoist/Buddhist philosophy ;

( around this forum ) the sum of all ( this ) is ( apparently ) nought.



However, I digress. Doesnt appear to take much to confuse a CNN anchor these days, but I guess I shouldnt be too harsh on the pretty lady ;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... p5bfxpchAY

[IanEye]

*



"I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level.
And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment.
And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there."

*





We had broken up for good just an hour before
Now I'm staring at the bodies as they're strewn across the floor
And then the band slowed the tempo when the music took you down
It was the same old song with the melancholy sound...

*

[Elihu]

Well, to paraphrase from some Taoist/Buddhist philosophy ;
( around this forum ) the sum of all ( this ) is ( apparently ) nought.

word.
"Isaiah 47:13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from ..."

However, I digress. Doesnt appear to take much to confuse a CNN anchor these days, but I guess I shouldnt be too harsh on the pretty lady ;

lol! enjoy this phenomena while it lasts. someday there won't be any reality except "official" reality. they'll still be pretty but they'll never be confused...

[publius]

The states in the Confederacy wanted to secede badly enough that they started a war over it.
\==
This then is YOUR myth.
=========
This I submit is historical fact. The Hampton Roads Peace Conference During the War Between ...
They rarely, if ever, mention the Hampton Roads Peace Conference which occurred ... Mr. Blair was closely connected to the Lincoln administration and he was ...
mises.org/resources.aspx?Id=2730&html=1 - Cached - Similar

Finally, in order to bring into clear focus the significance of the Hampton Roads Conference, it should be recalled that on April 4, 1861, before the start of the war on April 12, the Secession Convention in Virginia, which had convened in February of 1861, sent a delegate to visit President Lincoln in the White House to discuss the results of the action recently taken in Virginia. When the State of Virginia originally voted on its ratification ordinance approving the U.S. Constitution, it contained a specific clause protecting their right to secede in the future. The delegate was Colonel John B. Baldwin, who was a strong opponent of secession by Virginia, although he recognized the right. His message communicated privately to the president on April 4, was that the convention had voted not to secede if President Lincoln would issue a written pledge to refrain from the use of force in order to get the seceded states back into the Union. President Lincoln told Colonel Baldwin that it was four days too late now to take that action. Unknown to all except a few insiders of the administration, meaning that members of the Congress did not know, the president had already issued secret orders on April 1, to send a fleet of ships to Fort Sumter in order to provoke the South into firing the first shot in order to start the war. (For more details see my chapter "Lincoln and the First Shot: A Study of Deceit and Deception" in the book Reassessing the Presidency.) Lincoln stated that he could not wait until the seceded states decided what to do and added:

"But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?"
Baldwin replied:

"Yes sir, until they can be peaceably brought back."
Lincoln then replied:

"And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten percent tariff . . ." (as opposed to the much higher forty percent Federal tariff). "What then would become of my tariff?" (For more details on this meeting and a subsequent meeting with President Lincoln by other delegates of the Virginia Secession Convention, again see my chapter "Lincoln and the First Shot")
The original Constitution, still in effect before the war, prohibited all "direct" taxes on the people, i.e. income, estate, gift, etc., so almost all the revenue to operate the Federal government in Washington was derived from an "indirect" tax on imports. The South, being agricultural, had to import almost all manufactured goods from Europe (primarily England) or buy the products from the North. The higher the tax on imports, the more protection the North got to raise its prices for its manufactured goods and for this reason a high import tax was called a "protective tariff." As long as, the import tax was ten percent or less it was classified as a "revenue tax" to which the South did not object. In fact, the new Confederate Constitution adopted in March of 1861 endorsed a revenue tax on imports but opposed a protective tariff. When an import tax or tariff exceeded ten percent, it became known as a "protective tariff" for the protection of domestic (Northern) industry. Shortly before the war, the Chicago Daily Times was only one of many newspapers predicting a calamity for federal revenue and business in the North if the South was allowed to secede and place a ten percent limit on import taxes which would attract trade, especially from abroad, to the South rather than the North. In an editorial it stated:

"In one single blow our [Northern] foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade will pass into other hands . . . We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories will be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue (ten percent or less), and these results would likely follow."
In a debate in England, two notable British citizens, Charles Dickens and John Stuart Mill, took opposing views on the cause of the American War Between the States with Mill stating that the purpose of the war was the abolition of slavery and Dickens maintained that "The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."

The meeting at Hampton Roads in 1865 and the meeting with Colonel Baldwin in 1861 both showed that President Lincoln’s concern was preventing the secession of the South in order to protect Northern manufacturers and to retain the tax source for the Federal government. The abolition of slavery was not the purpose of the war. In his Inaugural Address he promised he would invade the South for the purpose of collecting taxes and recovering the forts but he would support the first 13th amendment which protected slavery in the states where it already existed.

The War Between the States was not a noble war to abolish slavery, but instead was a war of conquest to require the Southern states to continue paying the taxes which paid for the federal government and to change the system of government given to us by our Founders and instead replace it with a strong national government thereby removing most of the political power from the states and the people. When the famous British historian, Lord Acton, wrote to Robert E. Lee after the war, in a letter dated November 4, 1866, he inquired about Lee’s assessment of the meaning of the war and the result that would follow. Lord Acton’s letter stated, in part, that:

"I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy . . . . Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."
Lee replied in a letter dated December 15, 1866, and stated, in part, what the result would be:

" . . . [T]he consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of the ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it." (emphasis supplied).
Never have truer words ever been written or spoken.

Rarely do any governments, or the politicians, intellectuals and news media who support their wars, tell the truth about the real motives for the wars. After all, the citizens must be convinced either that their safety is being protected from an aggressor or that the war serves some noble purpose, because it’s the citizens who fight, die and pay the taxes. The Orwellian historians have falsified the true purposes or motives behind most of America’s wars, and have instead given us glorified accounts designed to mislead the public in order to justify the sacrifices the people have made. All wars, whether won or lost, tend to centralize and increase the power into the national government, increase the debts and taxes and diminish the civil liberties of the citizens. It is time we begin to see through the myths and false propaganda about American wars so that we can prevent future wars. Americans have a strong tendency to accept as true the false wartime propaganda which now appears in the history books and which is repeated by politicians and intellectuals to the effect that all of America’s wars have been just, necessary and noble. This tendency of the Americans to accept this false propaganda tends to prevent them from questioning the alleged reasons for current wars. There is also a strong tendency by Americans to measure a person’s patriotism by how much that person supports an American war rather than how much the person supports the concept of American freedom and the ideas of our Founders, which includes a noninterventionist foreign policy

[Elihu]

apologies for continuing the weariness, but since he's a barracuda i know he can handle it.

Quote:
This is one of the problems within the Constitution as it is framed: there is no mechanism to dilute or supercede the power of the largely identical super-parties which have come to dominate national politics.
----

Quote: on the contrary. as i understand the odious amendments, senators used to come from state legislatures and could be recalled at any time.

further explaining the rise of identical super parties and the rise / demise of national vs local politics and the concentration of power and policy in DC: the left hook of the coup was and is the gerrymandering of house districts. this is the most transparent fraud in broad daylight. those are drawn to represent people? or corporations? heaven forbid and aspirant to office would have to get off his butt and travel a square district, find out who lives there and what they want. instead gerrymander a district around the monied interest, ensconce yourself in an ivory tower office and work for your paymasters. there is a difference between business donors and citizen donors. the purpose of business is to fend off competition (or combine) and increase market share. obviously incompatible with "all created equal", "life, liberty, etc.". the house whacked and the senate whacked.

so the pieces fit. it has been a progressive departure from the original construction. and in a systemic manner. what gives? stripped of the bogus religious patriotic economic ephmeral ideas of the american past, the situation is quite practical. to quote jeff again, crimes aren't how dunnits, but who dunnits. in the corollary if it's on-going and the who dunnit is unfruitful, do something about the ongoing how dunnit. for gosh sake. before it's too late. i'm open to convincing that the constitution is a failure but imo we failed the constitution and not the other way round. imo...

[publius]

More from the previous source-Hampton Roads post:

The Confederate delegation showed no interest in protecting slavery in the Confederacy with their only interest being independence from the Union and the protection of the right to secede, which raised the subject of West Virginia. Mr. Hunter asked President Lincoln whether West Virginia, which had seceded from the State of Virginia, would be allowed to remain a separate state and President Lincoln stated that it would. Lincoln had once been a strong proponent of secession, and as a first-term congressman from Illinois, he spoke in a session of the House of Representatives in 1848 and argued that:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world." (emphasis supplied).
===
Again Left and Right converge on the Civil War. My thesis is provovative, and marches from the civil War to the creation of a CORPORATE UNITED STATES. I present evidence and you are free to disagree. However, as we go deepr into that history the question is forced-is there really a new nation or is it seemingly a new nation? I think it is a new nation that comes from the Civil War and surely by the creation of the CORPRATE UNITED STATES the new nation is now starting to walk and wobble. I realize others shall disagree. Still it offers such powerful explanatory power, and so swiftly upon the creation of this new order we have corporate personhood, it is worth th' cost of the candle to study the idea carefully and consider how we know what we know. As history is written by the victors it is typically a triumphalist history presented to us. Howard Zinn in his People's History of the United States provides some correctives for our Whig history. Economic writers of a libertarian slant provide others. Orthodoxy in history is falling to better sources. As Andre Breton says in Arcanum 17, we have no history until all sit down and agree as to the facts-surely if this true in world history, national history also must needs be re-written to reflect other viewpoints than that of the MASTER CLASS.
===
Ron Paul again comes from this interesting outcome of history. His appeal is to right the wrongs of the past, but he does not articulate those wrongs exactly, carefully, or precisely,-nor need he-as a political animal- other perhaps than to be a new populist, anti-William Jennings Bryan who seeks to nail everyone to a cross of gold.

[eyeno]

Even though the manufacturers of the glass deny it, the windshield repairman owns a BB gun.

[compared2what?]

what is it with these sovereign city - states? london's city, the vatican, etc. i only vaguely understand them. their sovereign territory, their own constitutions, their own police, banks etc. what's up with the 10 square mile DC? you know, the one with the egyptian oblelisk, the masonic halls, the pentagrams, etc. why did we need that? who and what was the impetus behind it? it cannae all be benign. a mystery in a riddle in an enigma. the stars might lie but the numbers never do. looking at the books, it certainly has bank-rupted this nation. alot of anonymous international bankers hold t-bills. heck they've even got a temple out-post there. might lead one to form all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories ???

Vatican City is a sovereign city-state, but DC and the City of London are just municipalities and do not operate in a state of absolute sovereignty that's fully independent from the rest of the apparatus of the state as a whole.

Except on a municipal level and wrt municipal affairs, in the usual, locally idiosyncratic way. Obviously.

[compared2what?]

More from the previous source-Hampton Roads post:

Orthodoxy in history is falling to better sources.

You got an internal contradiction going on there, publius.

[Sounder]

I have to go with tariffs as being primary to slavery as a causal factor leading to the war of northern aggression.

All the talk of principles is to cover for the true motive- money, same as it ever was.

The folk back then could have bargained for a number between the 10% and 40% tariff positions. Nah, fuck that, lets all have a war instead.

Thanks publius for bringing us this material.

[eyeno]

Title 28 3002 definitions

(15) “United States” means—
(A) a Federal corporation;
(B) an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or
(C) an instrumentality of the United States.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/ ... -000-.html

[JackRiddler]

.

publius, this tip is friendly and goes out to everyone in general: You probably want to re-format your posts so that readers can tell readily what's you and what's quoted, and who's speaking. Then at least it won't look crazy.

Sounder: The "war of northern aggression." Really now? As if the southern states just wanted to remain free; not only free to keep human beings as chattel slaves, but also free to expand slavery into other territories. Free to send armed gangs into Kansas to make it into a slave state. For decades northern states had been forced (by the federal system, one should note) to act as enforcers for the southern slave system, and to tolerate the incorporation of new slave states. The election of Lincoln prompted southern secession, not because Lincoln intended to free the slaves in the South, but because he had pledged to oppose new slave states. For this, the Confederacy was willing to go to war, and if the war had not started in 1861, it would have started soon after with a renewed conflict over western territories. Do you really think the Confederacy would have tolerated keeping slavery limited to its own borders? The threat to tariff collection arose as a result of secession, and tariffs were not the cause for secession. The long-standing southern drive to expand chattel slavery into new territories was the cause. On some level they understood that the obsolescence of their economic system was inevitable, and preferred starting a war while they still had a chance to win rather than allowing the peaceful bankruptcy of the slave system not much further down the line.

.

[JackRiddler]

Title 28 3002 definitions

(15) “United States” means—
(A) a Federal corporation;
(B) an agency, department, commission, board, or other entity of the United States; or
(C) an instrumentality of the United States.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/ ... -000-.html

You're not really this stupid, are you?

.

[Sounder]

Jack, that was a 'joke' and/or a personal reflection on the power of language. I enjoy having information coming at me from different directions, and I really must say that your analysis has recently been most cogent and enjoyable. So thanks. It may be true that I hold to pretenses where money seems to always dominate principle, yet I remain open counter arguments.