Barack Obama for the Heisman

What's a man to do after winning a Nobel Prize? Why, turn his eyes to the future of course!

Help our President win the Heisman Trophy!

Nissan has a promotion through ESPN that will create a "people's vote" for the Heisman Trophy. You can write in Barack Obama and give him a vote.

Fire away!

Hat Tip: Freddoso

If You Don't Deserve It, Why Accept?

Today, President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. The reaction around the world is mixed, at best. For many the question is simply, "What has he done to deserve it?"

I've waited until the President could address the issue in his own words to comment. Now that he has addressed the issue, I am furious.

Obama himself sought to put some distance between himself and the ward, saying, “I do not view it as a recognition of my own acomplishments, but a recognition of the role of American leadership” in the world.

“To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures” who won in the past, Obama said at the White House.

My question goes directly to the President's credibility after this statement, directly to his honor. It is simple. If you don't feel you deserve the award, why are you accepting it?

If you don't feel like you've accomplished anything that deserves reward, you should step aside from accepting the award. After the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Al Gore for tenuous reasoning, at best, many around the world began to view the award as having lost its credibility. This award has long stood as the highest honor a man or woman could receive for either a lifetime of hard effort toward promoting peace, or a monumental achievement in promoting world diplomacy.

Woodrow Wilson won the award for leading the establishment of the League of Nations, and shaping the Treaty of Versailles. Teddy Roosevelt won the award for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War. The Dalai Lama won the award for a lifetime of promoting Tibetan freedom through peaceful resistance to the iron fist of an oppressive government. These are all phenomenal accomplishments that were capable of carrying the weight of one of the highest honors in the world.

If the man selected to win the award cannot reasonably conceive of any reason that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the only reasonable thing he can do to allow the award to hold its legitimacy is to graciously refuse to accept the award. There are surely other people who have devoted themselves to promoting peace around the world through major accomplishments. Two better qualified candidates listed by the Globe and Mail come to mind:

Denis Mukwege, Medical doctor

Seeing pregnant women arrive at the hospital on a donkey and dying during childbirth encouraged Mukwege to study gynaecology and obstetrics. Noticing that so many women had been sexually abused, he later founded the Panzi hospital in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of female sexual violence victims have been helped so far.

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition

These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon. Thirty-four nations are known to have air-dropped cluster bombs from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The President giving up an award he himself does not feel he deserves, for the sake of allowing it to be awarded to a person or group far more deserving would not only restore legitimacy to the Nobel Peace Prize, but would also shine a glowing light on the works of many other individual candidates and groups who are working every day to promote peace world wide. His rejection of the award would do more for these organizations in one fell swoop in terms of them receiving new volunteers or donations than they might ever expect otherwise.

Unfortunately, it appears he will accept anyway, as he spews more useless rhetoric.

“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st Century.”

Infiltrating the Duopoly: Why It's Not Compromise

Over the past several days I've taken on the exercise of examining our two-party system of electing our representatives. I first responded to a discussion point at the Humble Libertarian with a brief thought on challenging the two party system, after which I was rebutted by Damon Eris at the blog, Poli-Tea who warned that we not get fooled again. From there, I've gone on to begin something of a debate with Damon. I began the other day by analyzing the option of libertarians infiltrating the Republican Party as a method for more quickly affecting a corrective change to our political system.

When men and women with sound, attractive political philosophies begin coming to the forefront, and infiltrating the major parties, once again giving people something to vote for, rather than against, we will find the parties moving again more toward respectability. Pragmatism for infiltration seems paramount for moving the country forward in a realistic manner. While fragmentation appears attractive, infiltration practiced by men and women of principle will get the job done much more quickly.

In his follow up, Damon responded that if you compromise from the outset, you'll be compromised in the end.

The aim and goal of third party and independent activism is not fragmentation as such, but more effective representation. Arguably, the
two-party system is structurally incapable of representing the diversity of interests to be found among the people of the United States. If "fragmentation" is what results from the smashing of the two-party state, then everyone should have a sledge hammer.

On the way to arriving at his summation, Damon examines my arguments that we are seeing somewhat successful campaigns from the likes of Peter Schiff and Rand Paul, who are opting to run very libertarian-minded campaigns by going for their respective Republican nominations. His argument against them running for Republican nominations is where he arrives at his idea that the two-party system is structurally incapable of representing the diversity of our interests.

Finally, the infiltration strategy usually entails running an insurgent primary campaign, likely against the candidate favored by the party establishment, who will seek to marginalize such upstarts in any way possible.

...

Though he's working "within the system," his effort is still marginalized as if it were a third party or independent campaign. Further, Rand Paul has demonstrated that he is capable of raising tons of money independently of the Republican Party fundraising apparatus. What were the advantages of working within the GOP again?

...

In his argument in favor of infiltration, Paul at OE remarks that: "The majority view of third parties in general remains that they are full of cranks who bring nothing of substance to the table." The same could be said of the majority view regarding the Democratic and Republican Parties, and that would be a particularly nice way of putting it.

Damon argues that, in this case, these libertarian candidates running as Republicans are marginalized by the likes of the RNC as the cranks they would be marginalized as anyway. The article he cites regarding Rand Paul's campaign goes on at length about how Rand Paul needs to better "get with the program" if he wants to be accepted by the GOP. He argues that he is therefore being marginalized even in competing for the position he seeks, that this does no good since while he may win the position, he will not really be accepted by the party. He also argues in going against my position that the likes of Paul and Schiff find their funding outside of any party affiliation anyway, so that my point about more readily accessible assets in joining ranks with the GOP is moot.

First, pertaining to access to financial assets, let us remember that the examples of Peter Schiff and Rand Paul are outside of the ordinary. Peter Schiff has become a star of the economy on television and Youtube. Rand Paul is Ron Paul's son, and therefore has instant notoriety. Not to say that he is not his own man, but needless to say, there are thousands of doctors or lawyers (ugh) or businessmen, I'm sure, with political aspirations, who have not had the inside track to political notoriety that he has had. These are the candidates, without an inside track, that would find better access to financial resources by infiltrating an existing major party.

Moving on to the argument surrounding potential, let's call it crank-ism, I believe Damon has essentially argued the point to a standstill. His argument in this aspect is resource-based, resources being people. He argues that in order to strengthen a third party, all available resources should be thrown into that third party's efforts. He argues that since these people are going to be marginalized as cranks anyway, they may as well be marginalized as cranks while moving a third party forward, by allocating all resources to the third party. The obvious question to follow with, then, is if they are cranks in both cases, and their objective is to best represent their constituents, why not chase the opportunity that allows them to achieve some progress once elected?

Now, given Damon's previous arugments, he will respond with something like "they will just become subjects to the parties' pay masters at some point anyway; big labor on the left, or big military business on the right." He will relegate their campaigns to being mere rhetoric to mask their subjectivity to said pay masters, as he has regarding even the likes of such movement figureheads as Reagan, Goldwater and McGovern.

I don't think this argument holds water. I think people of principle will act on their principles no matter their party. Similarly, men and women lacking in character to such an extent that they would abandon their principles and fall into corporatist corruption would do so no matter their party. While more parties would theoretically make it harder for corporations to influence politicians via influence over parties themselves, the politicians are ultimately responsible for their own actions. Sell outs are going to sell out no matter what. Likewise, men and women of principle will hold fast to their principles no matter what. I don't envision someone like Peter Schiff, if he's elected, becoming subject to anyone, for example. While he is already famous the world 'round with regular people, we should remember that nobody in Washington cares. His access to the Republican machine would immediately give him easier access to committee functions in the Senate than he would have from a third party standpoint, where he would no doubt be ostracized. He would then be able to work and act on his principles, without compromise.

Now, my initial theory was that it would be possible to infiltrate both parties, while creating a third that would ultimately become a fallback for a fragmentation of a major party. I am working on elaborating this argument, and should have a follow up in a few days. Until then, feel free to comment. And check out Poli-Tea. Damon has some fantastic thoughts. And the debate is back in his court.

Demise of the Dollar

Yesterday I posted a great video of an interview with Jim Rickards on CNBC where he talks about the US being stuck between a rock and a hard place, with the possibility of a dollar implosion.

Today, Peter Schiff posts a great video that helps to clarify a lot of the why's behind the demise of the dollar. Enjoy!

Indecisive...Even In His Artwork

The critique of this artwork hanging on the walls of the White House is succinctly put by Nick Schultz at The American.

"Indecision and Obama. You don’t say."

A Dollar Implosion?

Jim Rickards, Senior Managing Director of Market Intelligence for Omnis, appeared on CNBC to discuss what the recent developments at the G-20 mean for the US Dollar. Among the items he discusses are the UN's call for moving away from the dollar as the world's reserve currency, which comes alongside Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh's Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled The Fed's Job is Only Half Over. Warsh's piece was published as the G-20 was in session, and Rickards argues that it could not possibly have been coincidence.

Rickards discusses the idea that we, as a world economy, will likely be moving to the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights as a the reserve currency. Pay particular attention to his explanation of exactly why this is necessary. Basically it boils down to the fact that the Fed as inflated us to such a great extent, that we have no option but to go broke as a country. Pushing our inflated dollar off onto the IMF is the only possible option the Fed has to deflate the dollar quietly enough in the background to avoid completely destroying the economy. There is no heed paid to the notion that the IMF will use SDR's, backed by nothing, printed out of thin air, to run the world economy. Sound familiar?

The only other option he feels the Fed has is to further inflate the dollar by another 50% over the next 14 years. That means if you have a dollar today, it's only worth 50 cents fourteen years from now. The problem with this is that if the market gets ahead of the inflation, and people begin buying commodoties like gold, it could cause a full on collapse of the dollar.

Will we risk destroying the dollar and our economy, or will we trade our nations sovereignty for stability? I think that's a question that's easily answered. We have yet to see anybody with our government or the Federal Reserve make the hard decisions and carry them out correctly since Volcker presided over the last deflationary Fed. I doubt we'll see the hard decision made now.

Remember this video, and remember these upcoming events happening around the dollar. We are in the process of trading our country's sovereignty for the comfort of the world's banking elite.

Don't Be Gay. Don't Smoke

On the heels of Michael Schwartz declaring that pornography can be curbed by telling young boys it will make them gay, comes the revelation by the anti-smoking crowd that smoking will do exactly the same.


New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens 'It's Gay To Smoke'