I went to the Starbucks in our Safeway store to get my free coffee after I voted. While I was standing in line, I looked over at the kiosk that has all the Safeway coupon fliers on it. There was a sign on the side correcting a mistake in the ads. It said, in effect:

The club card price of Lucerne milk was incorrectly advertised this week at $1.99. While that price is available in Washington, state law in Idaho prohibits us from selling it for $1.99 since it’s below Safeway’s cost. Thus, Idaho club card price is actually $2.19. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Mmmm. I love a little price control with my coffee, don’t you? Well, get used to it.

DOOM.

I know you’ve probably all seen/read this, but READ IT AGAIN:

“But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that.” - Barack Obama

Did you catch that? Did you REALLY catch that?

“It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution…”

As the cartoon says: THAT’S THE POINT. I just… I don’t even know what to say. This guy is openly advocating defiance of the Constitution AND PEOPLE ARE VOTING FOR HIM.

Contrast what he says laments:

“It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.”

With what the 10th Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Again: THAT’S THE POINT.

Then, after claiming redistribution of wealth will make us all richer (hat tip to Karen on this one), he said:

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic,” Obama continued. “You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

They’re calling it socialistic because it is socialistic, Barack. Taking money from somebody who earned it - because they have more - and giving it to somebody who did nothing to earn it - because they have less - WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU CALL THAT!?

And riddle me this, Barack. Let’s say I earn ten dollars, and I’d like to spend five of those dollars on some candy, and give the other five in the offering plate at my church. Except you think you know better what to do with my money, so you tell me I have to give five dollars to the government so you can give it to those you’ve deemed worthy of receiving “charity.” I say no, and you say tough, and send IRS agents backed up by people with guns to take it from me. And if I won’t give it, they’ll just take my stuff and throw me in jail, instead.

And I’m selfish? You - who voluntarily gave LESS THAN 1% of your (considerable) income to charity for several years running - want to call me selfish because I don’t believe in doing my giving at the point of a gun? Because I can give more when you leave me alone with my ten dollars, instead of leaving me with only five? Because I believe I should have freedom to choose what constitutes a cause or person worthy of my freely-given, hard-earned dollars?

We pay a private health insurance premium every month. We’re paying for our child’s birth out-of-pocket because that insurance won’t cover the midwife I’m seeing. We have not made a poor investment in a home we can’t afford, so we aren’t receiving any bailouts. We are not applying for WIC. Oh - and we could certainly qualify for all of the above. We could easily roll over and suckle at the taxpayer’s teat, and probably be living far more comfortably than we presently do. But we believe in personal responsibility, so we don’t. And that’s why this is personal to me. We have too much respect for our fellow man and his hard work to demand our fellow taxpayers foot the bill for us. All we ask in return is the same courtesy - to be left alone to enjoy what our hard work brings us.

And this is personal because, if you’re voting for Barack Obama, you are condoning the initiation of force against other Americans to confiscate their earnings and redistribute them. Today I may not be in the tax bracket most affected - but a few years from now, I certainly hope to be. So, if you’re voting for Barack Obama, you are signing off on use of force by the United States government to confiscate wealth Mike and I will earn, to give “back” to people we never took anything from.

Yeah, this is damn personal.

I’m not asking anyone to vote for John McCain, honest to Pete. This isn’t a partisan issue - it isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats. I’m just asking you not to vote for Barack Obama. Vote third party. Vote Ralph Nader for all I care! Write in Ron Paul. Stay home.

I - and many fellow Americans - are asking you not to initiate that aggression against us. Mark my words: It will not end well for the Republic.

We’re three days from doomsday. Even if Obama loses, we still get The Lesser Evil, and that makes me sad.

At this point, I feel like somebody who votes for Obama is very deliberately attacking my way of life.

Time and again I’ve heard leftists say “Nobody is trying to take your guns.” And maybe this year, for a lot of Americans, that’s true. But it’s not true for me. I own the exact guns they want to take. And even if they don’t come knocking on my door for them this year, they’ll certainly do their best to ban spare parts, and magazines, and ammunition. So yes, liberals, you are trying to take my guns - first by destroying the industry that allows them to exist, then by destroying my ability to maintain them, and eventually you’ll get around to kicking down my door for the hunks of metal themselves.

Obama has said a lot of mealy-mouthed things lately about the 2nd Amendment but his record and years upon years of past statements indicate he is, without a doubt, my enemy. And even if he isn’t actively pushing for anti-gun legislation, you cannot look me in the eye and tell me the man would veto an assault weapons ban.

And you cannot look me in the eye and tell me the man has any interest in appointing Supreme Court justices who are good judges. That’s the qualification John McCain cited in the last debate - good judges, not idealogues. No, Obama thinks the court should be engaging in redistributive politics and the Warren Court didn’t go far enough.

If Obama is allowed to nominate the next Supreme Court justices - with Democrat majorities in Congress backing him up - it’s game over. That court is the only thing standing in the way of the complete destruction of the Constitution.

And what, you really think the government will roll back the clock on wiretapping, that it’s all going to be hunky-dory as long as the Republicans aren’t in charge anymore? No - as I’ve said all along, the thing that scares me most about what Bush has been up to isn’t what is happening with Bush at the helm… It’s what will happen with that precedent and somebody like Obama at the helm. Now, instead of wiretapping to advance the War on Terrah, we’ll get Obama’s goon squads wiretapping you and me because I dared to speak out here. Because I have black rifles. Because I’ll be protesting wealth redistribution.

I can’t understand how anyone can listen to that man and hear the American dream. He’s talking about actively destroying the American dream, punishing those who are most successful and rewarding those who do least. He wants to destroy the incentive to achieve, to what end? So everyone feels good about themselves? So we can all starve together, instead of having any haves and have-nots?

So yes, while I fear a McCain presidency will perpetuate ass-backwards foreign policies and continue to expand government in ways a Republican administration never should, I at least don’t feel like he’s gunning for his fellow Americans.

Now, all that said: I don’t really think appropriate voter behavior is a black-and-white issue. Here in Idaho, McCain is projected to win by about 30%. That gives us the luxury of making a statement without directly contributing to an Obama win - so I’ll most likely be writing in Ron Paul. If I were in a swing state, I’d probably vote for McCain. While the lesser of two evils is still an evil, in this case the potential to prevent Obama nominees on the SCOTUS is worth damn near any cost.

I think the worst part of this, for me, is feeling so powerless. My way of life will be under seige, and I have but one vote in a state with four electoral votes. I don’t want his healthcare. I don’t want his welfare. I don’t want his tax plan. I certainly don’t want to be protected from my own firearms. I just want to be left alone, to own my guns, to advance my socioeconomic status as I may, to raise and educate my children without government oversight, to speak freely on my silly little blog, and to get where it’s possible for me to get without either government handicap or handout.

House of Representatives Comprised of Spineless, Pandering Boot-Lickers;

also Germany Loses World War II.

Oh… you already knew?

EDIT: Bill Sali for the win!

I love my state. Senator Mike Crapo voted no on the bailout.

Ol’ Senator Larry “Wide-Stance” Craig voted yes, as I was pretty sure he would. Thanks, you idiot. I can certainly see how the need for “Main Street” to be able to buy refrigerators on credit trumps your espoused conservative aversion to federal government interference in the market. Oh well, I figured you’d be a chump since you’re out of a job in a month anyway.

I’m on hold with CapitalOne. I’m calling to close a savings account, as recent economic events have prompted me to decide I’d rather have my money in a local bank (or, y’know, under the mattress).

When I pushed the button to be transferred to a representative, I got an automated message: “Thank you for your patience. We’re currently experiencing high call volume…”

Yeah, I BET!

Ron Paul is mad. You should be, too. I’m posting this in its entirety - apologies for length, but it’s worth reading.

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market’s attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I’d only be repeating what I’ve been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration “is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets.” Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that “low interest rates” led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or “wildcat capitalism” (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: “Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.”

Doesn’t that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn’t that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn’t the federal government shown that the “many” who “believed they were guaranteed by the federal government” were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don’t give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary “the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet.” Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It’s the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end… It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a “rescue plan”? I guess “bailout” wasn’t sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you’re supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,
Ron Paul

I was just checking out a forum that is populated primarily by crunchy parents, mostly women. Depending on which sub-forum you’re in, they range from raving Obama liberals to preparedness homesteaders. Anyway, I was perusing the financial forum (which seems to lean toward the conservative prepared types), and came across a thread about buying gold. The author was asking whether it’s better to save money by buying in 1-ounce increments, or spend extra to get 1/10 ounce coins that would be more spendable in times of need.

Someone replied:

“In an economic depression, you are better off having goods to trade (food, clothing, gas/oil, etc), and weapons to protect your cache of goods. If people are starving, it won’t matter how much gold you have on hand - people can’t eat gold.”

Then the original author replied, and here’s part of what she said:

“thanks for the heads-up guys!! good point about stockpiling other goods! we’re not allowed to bear arms in australia… “

As the title says: Count your blessings… and keep your powder dry.

John Stossel has a great article up on Townhall.com about the importance of the oft-misunderstood speculator in the economy.

An excerpt:

The prices of commodities often change unexpectedly, making business risky. The speculator brings a degree of certainty to otherwise risky ventures. When supplies of a commodity are plentiful and prices low — but speculators expect the price to rise later — they buy — cushioning the collapse of prices. When supplies become scarcer and prices rise, they sell — easing the shortage and lowering the price. Also, speculators may agree to buy a commodity in the future for a price locked in today. This reduces the risk for an oil producer or farmer who fears investing because he doesn’t know what price his product will sell for next year.

Make sure to read the whole thing - it highlights John McCain’s admitted lack of understanding of economics, which scares the hell out of me. 

US Dollar Goes to Pot

A choice excerpt:

Second, it is essential that we peg our currency to some commodity that is universally recognized as valuable. Sure, gold or silver would work, but the fact is that precious metals are a little old school. After all, we’re running a 21st century economy here, not a pirate ship. We need a commodity that is sufficiently rare, and yet considered valuable by today’s sophisticated and educated citizenry. We suggest marijuana.

I LOL’ed at the pirate ship part!