Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal Plan Calls for Drawdown on August 31, 2010

Obama's "Iraq withdrawal plan" calls for a pull out of the 142,000 U.S. forces (comprising of Marines and Army personnel) on August 31, 2010.

Here's the Fox News story which, in part, describes the unveiled plan to congressional lawmakers yesterday:

The Iraq war will come to an end on Aug. 31, 2010, senior officials said, following President Obama's decision to end all counter-insurgency missions by that time.

Obama told top leaders in Congress on Thursday that he will transition the mission in Iraq to training, advising and engaging in limited counter-terrorist operations, according to congressional sources.

The president is expected to deliver a speech Friday at the Marine base in Camp Lejeune, N.C, in which he will order the immediate drawdown of the 142,000 Marines and Army personnel in Iraq.

Obama's decision reflects his belief that "there have been real advances" in the country and, as result, the U.S. military should now be ordered to carry out "a fundamental change in mission," senior administration officials said.

With 142,000 U.S. forces in Iraq now and counter-insurgency operations conducted on a near-daily basis, "it is a war, no question," a senior adviser said.

And this war, senior officials said, will officially come to an end on Aug. 31, 2010, when the president orders all U.S. troops to focus their efforts on advising, equipping and training Iraqi security forces as well as assisting in reconstruction and political reconciliation.

"This is a plan that responsibly ends the war in Iraq," said a senior official who participated in the deliberations. "He is living up to a commitment he made as a candidate but is doing so in a way that has the support of the inter-agency task force on Iraq."

The president will order U.S. military commanders to leave a residual force of between 35,000 and 50,000 troops in Iraq. Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, the U.S. must remove all military personnel by Dec. 31, 2011.

This is going beyond the 16-momth plan that Our Great Leader set forth throughout his campaign and even after he was elected to and inaugurated into office, even though some thought it would be "difficult" to implement it. 19 months? It's no secret that he had soft pedaled and somewhat backed off from his plan in the beginning of his term last month, despite what the Obamameter on PolitiFact.com shows.

I'm not confident that the war in Iraq will end or that Obama will pull the troops out. Perhaps he'll prove me wrong in the final analysis, but I'm not counting on that.

[Cross-posted to The Freeman Chronicles.]

Tucker Carlson Joins CATO

It's official: conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, former host of CNN's now-defunct "Crossfire" and his failed MSNBC show "Tucker," has joined the CATO Institute. Carlson, who briefly flirted with a presidential run by running for the presidency under the Libertarian Party's banner and then decided against it, will be serving as a senior fellow at the think tank.

According to a press release on CATO's website, Carlson will do the following:

Carlson will use his initial time with Cato to focus on writing a book on the state of the American polity. Through other writings as well as media and public speaking appearances, he will also seek to educate the broader public about how the libertarian philosophy differs from the standard liberal and conservative orthodoxies embodied in the two main U.S. political parties.

The next paragraph of its press release caught my eye, enabling me to shake my head in disbelief:

"Tucker Carlson is one of the most effective communicators of libertarian ideas in the nation," said Cato founder and president Ed Crane. "We are delighted to have him associated with Cato as a senior fellow."

First of all, Carlson is not "one of the most effective communicators of librtarian ideas." He's not a libertarian; he's a conservative. He may have a libertarian bent in his conservative thinking, but he's a conservative. It is true that he has come out against the war in Iraq and the War on Drugs, but he's not a consistent defender of liberty. He's not even a radical. Sure, he has expressed his admiration and respect for Ron Paul many times (he had Ron on his show during the course of his presidential campaign) and had been involved with his campaign. (Interestingly enough, one MSNBC toadie who had filled in for Carlson on his old show bashed Paul on December 27, 2007 for openly and truthfully declaring that the United States didn't need to have its own civil war to end slavery.) But he is a conservative of the Barry Goldwater-style variety. His view on independent migrants a.k.a. "illegal aliens" epitomizes my point.

Second, why CATO? Why not the Ludwig von Mises Institute? CATO serves the interests of the beltway "cosmopolitan" libertarian crowd that embraces Milton Friedman's Chicago school of thought. CATO is not truely liberarian; it's libertarian only when a Democratic government and a Democratic president are in power. They were neither libertarian nor attempting to be libertarian when Bush was in power for eight years. In fact, many of its key personnel were (and still are) big supporters of the Republican Party, including Bush. Not a single peep came from them (with the exception of a very few) when Bush dragged us into Iraq, called for and launched the U.S. Department of Homeland Stupidity (I mean, Security), and signed into law the Military Commission Act, the Patriot Act, and the REAL ID Act (among many draconian and pro-state bills).

Carlson may be feeling at home in the think tank's D.C. offices, but CATO's Ed Crane calling him an "effective communicator of libertarian ideas" hardly passes the ideologically pure smell test.

[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles.}

Boston Tea Party Founder and At-Large Member Tom Knapp Introduces Pro-Second Amendment Resolution to the BTPNC

Boston Tea Party founder and At-Large Member Thomas L. Knapp has introduced an excellent pro-Second Amendment resolution to the party's own National Committee discussion list on Yahoo Groups. Seconds later, he issued an amendment to his resolution removing the word "both" in the phrase "it is both the constitutional obligation." I seconded this revised version of the moved resolution just seconds after he sent it to the list.

Here are the original and amended versions of the resolution. Either way, it's an outstanding one, given Attorney Generalissimo Eric Holder's promise to restore the old, god-awful 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. (Here's former BTP Chairman Jim Davidson's assessment of Holder's plan to revive the expired gun law.)

Here's the original version of the resolution:

Whereas, every man, woman, and responsible child is possessed of a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machine gun, anything -- any time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission; and

Whereas it is both the constitutional obligation of government to respect and defend, rather than suppress, that right; and

Whereas all attempts by government to institute measures of victim disarmament, a/k/a "gun control," are illegal, unconstitutional, subversive of public safety and morally repugnant;

Be it resolved that the Boston Tea Party opposes all new victim disarmament legislation and all attempts to re-impose past victim disarmament schemes, including but not limited to the Obama administration's contemplated re-introduction of an "assault weapons" ban.

Here's the revised version that's currently pending and is to be discussed later today:

Whereas, every man, woman, and responsible child is possessed of a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and constitutional right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- handgun, shotgun, rifle, machine gun, anything -- any time, anywhere, without asking anyone's permission; and

Whereas it is the constitutional obligation of government to respect and defend, rather than suppress, that right; and

Whereas all attempts by government to institute measures of victim disarmament, a/k/a "gun control," are illegal, unconstitutional, subversive of public safety and morally repugnant;

Be it resolved that the Boston Tea Party opposes all new victim disarmament legislation and all attempts to re-impose past victim disarmament schemes, including but not limited to the Obama administration's contemplated re-introduction of an "assault weapons" ban.

Any BTP member and liberty lover is encouraged to spread this far and wide as much as possible.

[Cross-posted to The Freeman Chronicles.]

It's Official: I'm the Boston Tea Party's Newly-Elected Secretary

It's official: I'm the Boston Tea Party's newly-elected secretary on the National Committee. The special election for the seat ended on Tuesday, February 23, and all the votes were finalized by the party's own chair on the same day.

I will be -- and have already started being -- faithfully aggressive in fighting for transparency on the board, as I have promised my voters in the Party. And I've already started my duties after having immediately taken the Secretary seat.

Any loyal BTP member who wants any pro-freedom resolutions or would like to offer pro-freedom motions to be put on the table, please feel to let me know at my email addy here.

[Cross-posted to The Freeman Chronicles.]

Ron Paul Calls for the Abolition of the Federal Reserve on Glenn Beck

Ron Paul on Fox News' Glenn Beck, making an outstanding and purely moral, philosophical, and financial case for the abolition of the Federal Reserve system. More than that, he calls for a new monetary system.



It's nice to see conservatives like Glenn Beck coming around to the good side, even though Beck, during Ron's presidential campaign, called Ron Paul supporters "terrorists" and accused them of advocating "blowing other people up." Here's an old clip of Beck on his old CNN show back in December 2007 after Paul's money bomb resulted in $4 million raised on December 5, commemorating Guy Fawkes Day:



After 8 years of conservatives supporting a diabolical "compassionate conservative" presidency plagued with igniting a war in Iraq, huge spending deficits, abuses of civil liberties and powers of the Oval Office, and other vile acts associated with the Bush administration, it's amusing that many of them are now turning on the Barack presidency after briefly being chummy with him. Watching them squirm and seeing the errors of their evil ways have been quite interesting, to say the least, although not necessarily enjoyable in any way.

Chrystia Freeland: Economic Activity "Will Ground to a Halt"

Bill Maher, whose show Real Time debuted its seventh season on HBO last night, had three panelists - Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times, Tina Brown of The Daily Beast, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters -- who took issue with Dr. Ron Paul's argument against the Federal Reserve and the socialist view that the laissez-faire capitalism is the root of the U.S.'s economic and financial woes.

Here's the clip of the first part of the panel discussion. However, watch it from 1:14 to 2:41, where Freeland and Waters criticize Ron Paul's "extremist economic view" that we must reject the "too-big-to-fail" doctrine and that there should be no regulations on the banks:



Maher asserts to the women on the panel that they are "well-versed in economics." Freeland, talking about the Austrian/freedom lovers, says that she "wouldn't want to live in a country that tried that experiment." She goes on to make this ludicrous yet misguided statement that is the central thesis of this blog post:

I mean, there is this sort of very extremist view called the Austrian school that says what Congressman Ron Paul was saying...that, you know, absolutely these companies got themselves in trouble. We should be absolutist free marketeer; let them all go broke. But would you like to live in a country where economic activity grinds to a halt? I think it's too risky an operation to try."

And, as Brown asks whether economic activity will grind to a halt, Freeland then naively states:

No, no, it would be, it would be a lot worse. If, if you let the banks go broke, imagine what would happen."

Then Waters chimed in with her nonsensical tripe, saying that she likes Ron Paul and has "shaked up, ya know, the Congress," but he is a "true believer" (after Maher says it). But then she really "parts" with him on his view that there should be no regulation. Yet ths is the same Congresswoman Waters who supported the government-propped up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac institutions -- yup, that's right; the New Deal programs that Democrats love and want to preserve -- that encouraged the reckless "no-money-down," overextension of the housing market/bubble that burst within the last couple of years. These are the same institutions that purchased malinvested "bad" loans and resold them to banks that would lend them out to credit-risky home buyers. These same home buyers would put "no money down," accruing interest while their loans were deferred and would end up paying high mortgage payments that they knew they couldn't afford.

Waters, Brown, and Freeland are wrong about Ron Paul, the Ausrian school of economic thought, and the "absolutist free marketeer" position on the "too-big-to-fail" doctrine and the regulatory state. Big banks like Citigroup and Bank of America can get past these regulations (they are supporters of the corporatist state as well, as they have lobbied for banking and other financial service regulations), and the smaller banks that are even nationalized as well as the big ones have a difficult time getting past the regulations. No one person can simply start up a new bank without reviewing and agreeing to abide by a myriad and a web of regulations that make it cost prohibitive to do business in the U.S. And the big banks get corporate welfare because they have become insolvent and are unprofitable ventures (although the executives are profitting from the taxpayers at their expense). Those business' losses are heavily socialized, thus cementing a future where today's generation will face their future being heavily mortgage that they will be stuck paying all the way to their own graves.

Isn't socialism grand?

[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles.]

Ron Paul to Bill Maher: "You're Listening to the Wrong Economists!"

Ron Paul was featured on Real Time with Bill Maher tonight, which premiered its new season on HBO tonight. Paul, who appeared on the show to Maher in his one-on-one interview, said that the real problem with the state of affairs in the U.S. is we don't "do a lot less" and that we "should hardly be doing anything in Washington." He notes that it's "politically unacceptable" and yet "that's the right thing to do." He nailed it on the head with the fact that, when you have too much investment and there is too much debt and malinvestment and too much malvestment, you "have to liquidate it." After Paul provides his well-thought out example of what happened in 1921 when we were in a depression (which lasted a year because the government wasn't involved) and then we got into another depression in the 1930s (which was pro-longed by the U.S. federal government's intervention), Bill Maher asks:

But if that's true, why do so many economists say we should do the opposite?

Paul responded with the following:

Well, you're listening to the wrong economists if you think they're serious. All Keynesian, socialist welfarists will say you have to do something. If you believe in the free market and you understand the business cycle, the business cycle was caused by the Federal Reserve system, you know that you have to get rid of the mistakes that were building the system. The real cause is created by the Federal Reserve, and yet very few people are talking about the Federal Reserve.

Here's a clip of Paul's appearance on Real Time:



After Paul's appearance on the show, Maher and his Keynesian, socialistic guests kept shilling for the banks. Panelist Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times took potshots at Paul's Austrian views, saying that she wouldn't want to live in a country where there's "no economic activity" if we didn't bail out the financial services (banking) industry. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (an airhead socialist if there ever was one) made some glowing praise about Paul, but "parted with him" on the need to get rid of regulations (which Paul didn't even bring up on the show and wasn't the point on the show to begin with).


[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles.]

Change Is Here

I wrote a parody of the old, classic children's song "If You're Happy and You Know It," which is about our new killer-in-chief.

Please let me know what you think. It's got a libertarian streak in it, although it is meant to generate a couple of chuckles or two.

Change Is Here
(Sung to the tune of “If You're Happy and You Know It”)
By Todd Andrew Barnett



If you voted for Obama, change is here
If you did it for your mama, change is here
If you went to pull that lever
To vote for the man you ever,
Never think again forever change is here

He ordered no lobbyists, change is here
And he’s just an opportunist, change is here
If taxes just keep on risin’
Sinking us in the horizon
Though his people keep advising, change is here

Times are gettin’ harder, change is here
Recovery is farther, change is here
Economy is in the shitter
Though the boy is not a quitter
Even though many are bitter, change is here

Did you hear about his murder? Change is here
Pakistan’s attack is furthered, change is here
The damage is quite collateral
Hey, these things are unilateral
They’re never multilateral, change is here

One promise of his broken, change is here
There’s no good will as a token, change is here
If these times don’t get quite better
It’s not ‘cause you’re no go-getter
You follow it to the letter, change is here

[Cross-posted at The Freeman Chronicles.]