2nd Amendment - Agency Gone Wild, US Officers Murdered (NAGR)

From: Dudley Brown, www.NationalGunRights.org Sent: Thursday, June 23, 2011 Subject: Agency Gone Wild

     Attorney General Eric Holder and his anti-gun cronies at the Justice Department are starting to realize they may be in some hot water.

     But, as was to be expected, they are going to throw someone else under the bus and hope it all goes away!

     After a revealing week of hearings on the horribly corrupt "Project Fast & Furious" -  the BATFE's attempt to create crime in order to make themselves relevant - the head of the ATF, Kenneth Melson, is getting ready to take the fall by resigning.

     I guess Eric Holder still refuses to take any responsibility and is placing all the blame on his subordinates.

     As you now well know, courageous agents within the ATF have been testifying before Congress that senior leadership at both the ATF and the Justice Department forced gun shops to sell firearms to known smugglers who sold the guns to drug cartels in Mexico.

     This disastrous plan resulted in multiple federal agents being shot and killed with weapons that were allowed to "walk" into Mexico.

     And this happened even after agents working on the case warned their superiors that it would happen.

     The response from ATF/Justice Department leadership?

     That a few "eggs" have to be scrambled to make an omelette.

     Now, in light of all this controversy, the acting director of the ATF is trying to take the fall by resigning.

     But this is where it gets really shady.

     Guess who his replacement is supposed to be?

     A man I've been keeping my eye on for a while - Andrew Traver.

    You see, Andrew Traver has been an enemy of gun owners for quite some time.

     As head of the Chicago division of the ATF he has advocated nearly every gun ban you can think of.

     And even some you haven't.

     To give you an idea, he's been Obama's number one choice to head the agency since last year.

     The simple fact is: "he's worse than the guy he's replacing."

     And what's more is that, because he's been the one Eric Holder wanted for quite some time to step in as the director, it is inconceivable that he was not briefed at some point on Project Fast & Furious.

     They've been talking about Traver taking the helm of the BATFE for at least 6 months (that I know of.)

     Do you think that a guy being groomed for that position wouldn't be briefed on the agency's biggest operation?

     I think you know where this is going!

     While it is certainly clear that ATF leadership needs cleaning out, to replace the current director with one who is admittedly anti-gun and clearly involved in what his boss is already in trouble over!

     Well, that's unacceptable in my book.

     I called my Congressman and told him that replacing one leader who has no respect for my rights with another one doesn't "fix" the problem.

     It's an attempt to pacify the public.

     They know it, but they're hoping you don't.

     Give them a call and tell them you know what the Justice Department is trying to do and you're not falling for it.

     Call your Congressman at (202) 224- 3121 and tell them that the ATF needs a serious overhauling and that the Attorney General needs to be held responsible for this flagrant abuse of the law.

     Make sure they know that your Second Amendment rights are more important than funding some rogue Agency Gone Wild.

     I know I'm going to call everyone I know in politics and make sure this doesn't go unnoticed.

Do the same for me.
   For Freedom, Dudley Brown, Executive Director

P.S. After you've called your Congressman and told them to hold Eric Holder's anti-gun Justice Department accountable, click on this link to send a few bucks to the National Association for Gun Rights.  I have to keep this place growing to fight these gun-grabbers who think we aren't looking.  I have to let them know that yes, we are. And we won't stand for this kind of behavior.
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The National Association for Gun Rights is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, single-purpose citizens' organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the Constitutionally protected right-to-keep-and-bear-arms through an aggressive program designed to mobilize public opposition to anti-gun legislation. The National Association for Gun Rights' mailing address is P.O 7002, Fredericksburg, VA 22404. They can be contacted toll-free at 1-877-405-4570.  Its web address is www.NationalGunRights.org -- Not produced or e-mailed at taxpayer expense.

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bcc'd "red diaper babies" & RINOs

Motor Trend Bitch-Slaps Lush Rimbaugh

¡Hola! Everybody...
If I don’t get a chance, and for those leaving out early... may you have a holiday full of good cheer in the company of loved friends and family. Please (!!) be careful and don’t drive drunk!

Felicidades!

* * *

-=[ Rush Breathes Fumes ]=-

It is clearly apparent with anyone with a relatively functioning pre-frontal cortex that Rush Limbaugh is so dedicated to destroying Obama at any cost that he is doing everything he can to undermine the prospects for GM’s rebirth from the ashes of bankruptcy. The reality is that General Motors is gaining business and reducing the government ownership share. Nevertheless, that hasn’t deterred the Lush from beating the war drums against “Obama motors.” Politico reports:

Limbaugh told listeners that his radio program last year canceled an advertising campaign with General Motors because he “knew this was coming.”

Wow, Rush! Why not just actively discourage companies from hiring people, since that would help destroy what’s left of the middle class.

The fact is that GM’s plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, has been rolled out to rave reviews by car magazines across the board and was named 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year. Motor Trend raved:

This is a fully developed vehicle with seamlessly integrated systems and software, a real car that provides a unique driving experience. And commuters may never need to buy gas!

… This automobile is a game-changer.

Now, you know this shit got the prissy-assed conservatives’ panties in a collective wad. In fact they went into their patented, feces-flinging act. This also forced Limbaugh to expand his attack to include the respected car enthusiast magazine. ThinkProgress has the story (and Motor Trend’s too-pretty counterpunch):

... Motor Trend announced that it had named the breakthrough plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt as its 2011 car of the year. Conservatives immediately picked up on the story and attacked Motor Trend. The magazine “awarded the Obama-approved, government-subsidized Chevrolet Volt its annual ‘Car of the Year’ appellation,” the Weekly Whore Standard whined. Referring the federal government’s auto bailout -- which turned out to be hugely beneficial for GM and the ailing industry -- conservative Washington Post columnist George Will complained about the government “spending some of your money” to produce the Volt. But right-wing radio blow-hard Rush Limbaugh was perhaps the most vocal critic. The Volt has been in Limbaugh’s sights for quite some time. His campaign against the innovative car was launched last August (!!). Staying completely in form, Limbaugh said of the Motor Trend award this week, “[O]f all the cars in the world, the Chevrolet Volt is the Car of the Year? Motor Trend magazine, that’s the end of them. How in the world do they have any credibility? Not one has been sold [and] the Volt is the Car of the Year.” Last week, one of the magazine’s editors, Todd Lassa, shot back at Limbaugh, noting that GM hasn’t sold any Volts “because it’s not on sale yet”:

So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since… I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person? [...]

All the shouting from you... can’t distort the fact that the Chevy Volt is, indeed, a technological breakthrough. And it’s more. It’s a technological breakthrough that many American families can use for gas-free daily commutes and well-planned vacation drives. It’s expensive for a Chevy, but many of those families will find the gasoline saved worth it. If you can stop shilling for your favorite political party long enough to go for a drive, you might really enjoy the Chevy Volt. I’m sure GM would be happy to lend you one for the weekend. Just remember: driving and Oxycontin don’t mix. [emphasis added]

That was a bitchslap if I ever saw one... LOL!

Lassa also noted that the Volt isn’t some left wing “tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors” conspiracy, but was in fact conceived of well before Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006 and well before Obama began his campaign for the presidency. Lassa even points out that former GM executive “Bob Lutz, who famously decreed, ‘Global Warming is a crock of shit’ introduced the car two years before Bush gave GM its first bailout from TARP pocket change.” [emphasis added]

“Limbaugh’s beef with the Volt isn’t a question of automotive aesthetics or engineering,” MLive.com’s Jeff Wattrick notes. “He just doesn’t like the Volt because it’s one of them librul eel-eck-trick cars that Muslim-Socialist Obama forced on the real ‘Mericans in Detroit.”

Bingo! I give major props to Motor Trend for standing up to and deflating the hypocritical right wing draft-dodging, chickenhawk, dope fiend.

Finally, many other independent reviewers are raving about the Volt. Here’s Pulitzer prize-winning automotive columnist Dan Neil, writing in the (Murdoch-owned) Wall Street Journal on the Chevrolet Volt:

A lot of people don’t like GM because: 1) the bailout, or 1a) Obama; or 2) the United Auto Workers; or 3) because some Monte Carlo or Cutlass Sierra or deuce-and-a-quarter left them walking a long time ago. That’s understandable. These are sour times. But for the moment, we should suspend our rancor and savor a little American pride. A bunch of Midwestern engineers in bad haircuts and cheap wristwatches just out-engineered every other car company on the planet. And they did it in 29 months while the company they worked for was falling apart around them. That was downright heroic. Somebody ought to make a movie…. [emphasis added]

... it works like a champ. Actually, it’s extraordinarily efficient...

USA Today notes, “Chevy’s easy-driving Volt could be your only car”:

Most impressive, though, is that the Chevrolet Volt is a premium execution of a pleasant-looking, easy-driving small car -- one you’d probably be satisfied to have as your only vehicle (assuming you don’t need a big car or roomy back seat)...

Instant torque of the electric motor made the car quick in traffic, less so at highway speed.

Volt lacked the road racket and wind noise that mark some small cars. The drivetrain was quiet, free of the whine and other faint, unpleasant noises that accompany some electric machines. Smooth, too -- electrics inherently are….

CNN/Fortune/Money’s judgment from “Chevy Volt can go the distance”:

The Volt, it turns out, is a really good, fully functional automobile that could just save you a lot of cash on gasoline, too...

The Volt has a sophisticated, almost luxury-like, feel over the road. The steering is very responsive and the battery pack, which runs down the center of the car and across the back, provides a nice weight balance. Braking, often a weak point in hybrid and electric cars, is also smooth and predictable. The Volt’s interior is trimmed out in a way that makes it look appropriately high tech. It has few buttons or knobs, mostly touch-activated bumps. It all works pretty nicely.

I could list tons of examples of rave reviews of this car from a wide range of magazines. The bottom line? The Volt is a very good car and oh, it can drive for 40 miles without using any gasoline. This should be good news and applauded, but apparently anything that makes Obama look good, even if it’s beneficial for the nation a s a whole, will be torn apart by corporate cocksuckers like Rush, Beck, George Will, and the rest of the hyenas.

Eddie

(h/t to Climate Change and ThinkProgress for the original reporting)

Voodoo Economics

¡Hola! Everybody...
I wrote the following some time ago and thought it needed some dusting off.

* * *

-=[ Of Laffer Curves, Cults & Crackpots]=-

What we might call, by way of eminence, the Dismal Science.

-- Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher on economics

One day, spurred by a comment left on my blog, I called my friend who works on Wall St. My friend is a staunch conservative who majored in economics. His wife, bless her soul, doesn’t like me too much and thinks I should be excommunicated for my sexual views. LOL!

Anyway, I’m not very bright when it comes to economics and finances, I believe my ex-wife is correct in her observation that I should never be allowed to handle my own finances, let alone talk about them. Whenever I have a question on economics, I always call my Wall St. friend. Lately he hasn’t been returning my calls, but I was able to reach him yesterday and he agreed to talk to me on condition that I would never tell his wife we met and if I didn’t interrupt him with my “radical” views. I agreed and even offered to buy him lunch considering the market is right now more radical (anarchy!) than I could ever dream of being. LOL

We met at a popular eatery near Wall St and when we sat down, I immediately blurted out, “Laffer Curve! Tell me about it!” That prompted a hush over the mid afternoon crowd -- nervous glances from others in the restaurant. My friend begged me to lower my voice, “Eddie, things are pretty much volatile around here these days, please don’t start a stampede.”

I promised to be quiet and he began to tell me about this mysterious, all-knowing talisman -- the Laffer Curve.

Now, keep in kind my friend, though a conservative, believes supply-side economics to be the biggest con ever perpetrated on the American people. He’s an “old school” republican: republicans that concerned themselves mostly about such things as deficits, inflation, and excessive spending; republicans who didn’t care much about cutting taxes and were quite willing (like Eisenhower and Ford) to raise taxes in order to balance the budget.

I laugh and and my friend assures me that such men existed, but that they have become an endangered species (extinct?) as the GOP has essentially been hijacked by a cult.

“All sects have their founding myths,” my friend assured me, and the cult in question can trace its roots to a Holy Trio (like in Christianity!) that met in Washington, DC in late 1974. That trio consisted of Arthur Laffer, an economic consultant, Jude Wanniski, a high-strung Wall St. Journal editorial writer, and, yes, Dick Cheney, who was then Ford’s chief of staff.

Wanniski had no formal training in economics, but he had taken Laffer as his mentor. His choice of tutelage was curious. Laffer had been an economics professor at the University of Chicago since 1967. In 1970, a colleague brought him to Washington to serve as a staffer in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). There he quickly distinguished himself by making a wildly unconventional calculation about the size of the 1971 Gross Domestic Product. President Nixon, ever the craven opportunist, jumped on Laffer’s number because it was far more optimistic than other estimates and suggested an economic boom under his watch. It was discovered that Laffer had used only four variables to arrive at his figure. My friend tells me that most economists used hundreds if not thousands of variables -- inputs.

When his calculations turned out to be horribly wrong, he became the laughingstock of Washington. He left government in disgrace facing the disdain of his academic colleagues. Still, he stayed in touch with Wanniski, the two having met in Washington, and continued to tutor him in economics.

At this point, I gave my friend a patented Eddie ::blank stare::

My friend shrugged as if to say that no one can ever understand the underpinnings of human motivation.

In 1972, Wanniski had an epiphany that led him to believe Laffer was a brilliant economist who had developed a blinding new insight that would turn the economic establishment on its head. Wanniski and Laffer believed that it was possible to simultaneously expand the economy and hold down inflation by cutting taxes, especially taxes for the wealthy. Respectable economists -- even conservative ones -- considered this laughable. Nevertheless, Wanniski was convinced of its truth. He promoted the doctrine through his high perch on the respected (and uber -conservative) Wall St. Journal Editorial page and in articles in the equally conservative Public Interest (published by the Godfather of the NeoConservative Movement, Irving Kristol). Both were highly influential media outlets.

Still, Wanniski’s new doctrine, later to be called supply-side economics, failed to catch on beyond a few loyal devotees.

Then came that fateful Holy Night. Wanniski and Laffer were working hard with little success to explain the “new” theory to Cheney. At this point, Laffer pulled out a cocktail napkin and drew a parabola-shaped curve on it. The premise of the curve was simple. If the government sets a tax rate of zero, there’s no revenue. And if the government sets the tax rate of 100 percent, the government will also receive zero tax revenue, since there will be no incentive for anyone to earn any income. Between these two points -- zero taxes and zero revenue, 100 percent taxes and zero revenue -- Laffer drew an arc (“The Laffer Curve”). The arc suggested that at higher levels of taxation, reducing the rate would produce more revenue for the government.

At this point, Cheney could have raised several questions. First, he could have noted that the Laffer Curve was not... ummm ... correct? Yes, a zero tax rate would obviously produce zero revenue, but the assumption that a 100 percent tax rate would produce zero revenue was categorically false. I mean, c’mon, I tell my friend, Cheney had to be familiar with communist Soviet Union, with its 100 percent tax rate.

My friend sighed, patiently trudging on. While he assures me he’s no socialist, the soviet revenue scheme may not have been the model of efficiency, but it still managed to collect enough revenue to maintain an enormous military, enslave half of Europe, fund ambitious projects like Sputnik, and so on. Second, Cheney could’ve pointed out that even if the Laffer Curve was correct in theory, there was no evidence that the U.S. income tax was on the downward slope of the curve. My confused look prompted my friend to explain: there was no proof that rates were then high enough that tax cuts would produce higher revenue.

But Cheney didn’t do any of these things. Perhaps, in looking back, like most conservatives, he likes theories that confirm his ideological stances. You can almost picture Donald Rumsfeld drawing a Laffer Curve showing that only a small number of troops would be needed to occupy Iraq.

I digress, but whatever the case, Cheney saw the light and became an immediate convert. For Cheney, the Laffer Curve provided an easy to understand frame for the messianic power of tax cuts. The significance of that Holy Night wasn’t that Cheney was converted, it was the creation of a powerful symbol with which to spread the gospel of supply-side economics. The mantra was irresistible:

Lower taxes! Higher revenues!

The Laffer Curve swept through the republican ranks like wildfire. Kristol would write later, in almost theological terms, of the conversion of Ronald Reagan. And in that way, the totally untested and utterly ideological notion that cutting taxes for the rich is always a good idea came to life. Call it an economic Immaculate Conception.

That is how what Bush the Elder rightfully called “Voodoo Economics” came to being and it would go on to dominate U.S. economic policy for the next 30 years.

So, my friends, the next time one of the goober zombies start blurting crap about the Laffer Curve, or how tax breaks for the rich is a good idea, please know it was something that was literally pulled out of a failed economics professor’s hairy anus.

There’s more to this story, but this is already too long, but I love stories -- especially myths. More to come...

Love,

Eddie