Podcast 365

Protecting Your Rights. One example of how the government protects your rights (which is what it is supposed to do) and one example of how government tramples your rights. Ok, maybe more than one example of government trampling your rights. In Garland, Texas, extra security and police at a ‘Draw Muhammed’ contest protected the rights of Americans to think and express what they feel so well, two knuckleheads who called themselves ‘terrorists’  and warriors’ are dead. The mother of one of the dead ‘terrorists’ said, “He wasn’t violent” and, “He wasn’t a terrorist”. Unfortunately mom, he was. Good riddance. God’s work. The officer who took on the two ‘terrorists’ with rifles, with his pistol has not been identified. The Islamic State has ‘claimed’ the bungled attempt at a mass shooting. Beware though, these kinds of attacks may become common. IS claims to have 71 ‘warriors’ ready to go in the US. All the more reason businesses in Minnesota should remove those stupid, so and so “bans guns in these premises” signs. They should say, “Carry Permit holders welcome”. In the case of Garland, Texas … the government protected our rights. The Trans Pacific Fast Track Trade authority republicans want to grant the President is another thing entirely. It is reported that only members of Congress can read the trade agreement, and at that a page or two at a time, in the basement of the Capitol and that it is being considered in secret. No republican or democrat should support anything congress is asked to pass without the American people being able to see and read what it is beforehand. Mitch McConnell should be ashamed. No one likes the IRS these days, but we can all stop beating this dead horse, or so the alternatively whiny and arrogant IRS Head John Koskinen says. Nothing to see here, people. New measures have been put in place to see to it that the agency will not be used as a political cudgel against groups, um, someone we will not name, doesn’t like. This is not an admission we did such things before, you understand. Or is it? Is it a coincidence they found a bunch more emails from Lois Lerner? Why weren’t these kinds of controls put in place decades ago? The answer is, the IRS has been used as a kind of political praetorian guard for the White House since God was a boy. It’s time for a simple, flat tax with no loopholes for individuals and corporations, so simple that John Koskinen and a coffee maker can collect taxes and that’s all they do. Finally, do you like Christmas? Apparently the federal government is very concerned that your crazy uncle, who puts Santa and the Reindeer up on the roof of the house in Saint Louis Park every December could hurt himself and we wouldn’t want that would we? Well, now Christmas decorations will be regulated by the Consumer Protection Agency, since there have been two hundred some deaths from such things since 1980. What about Roller Coasters and Power Drills, or for that matter, treadmills? Yet another example of how the government does not protect our rights. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Podcast 292

Free Speech. The founding principles of the US Government guarantee freedom of expression, without qualification. Americans have gone to war to protect their rights, and to fight for the same kinds of rights for the people of other countries. It might be said, at the very least Liberty is the main tenant of Western Society. Why then do we tolerate ‘leaders’ who insist on qualifying these unalienable rights? The White House has qualified its assertions of freedom of expression and this was a week in which President Obama was shamed for not showing unity with our French allies in their time of need. But, Pope Francis didn’t attend the massive march in Paris either. While both President Obama and The Pope initially condemned the Paris attack on Charlie Hebdo, they seem to be back pedaling their remarks. The Pope, in his shiny big airplane, on the way to wave his scepter at the dancing peasants in the Philippines, says Freedom of Expression has limits, echoing similar statements from the White House. The Pope says killing in the name of God is an ‘aberration’; a factually incorrect statement since the Church has advocated and killed quite a few people in the name of God over the years. In the next breath the Roman Prelate asserts there are limits to free speech. Um, no your communist Holiness, actually, there aren’t. And to the qualifiers; Please stop comparing Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons to yelling fire in a crowded theater. The idea of free expression was made for just this kind of thing. If our leaders won’t stand up for core western values without qualification, what is the point of western civilization? If protecting unalienable rights is in fact virtue in its purest form, and the reason for the existence of our government, and our leaders won’t protect our rights, or are afraid to stand up for them when we are threatened, where is virtue? What, then, is the purpose of government? Let’s put it this way; The Pope is certainly no Winston Churchill. If he isn’t confusing economic philosophy, jumping on board with Global Warming Believers (a religion in itself), now he’s exhorting supposedly free people to act as though they are actually not free at all. Is the Pope morally bankrupt? Sponsored by X Government Cars. (Editor’s Note: I may have referred to Pope John Paul II, in this podcast as Pope John Paul the 23rd, which of course is a mistake. I hate when I make mistakes!)