UPDATED: Fiscal Cliff Cadenza* Simplified (‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases)

Conflict, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Law, Republicans

Cuts to designated increases in federal spending: that’s all the “spending cuts” or “budget sequestration” portion of the fiscal cliff cadenza amount to.

These cuts were mandated by a law, The Budget Control Act of 2011, enacted by our miserable legislators. They now refuse to abide by this meager law.

The media, lying simpletons that they are, are framing the government-cutting component of the fiscal free-fall as a catastrophe.

Whoever believes that cuts to the rate of government growth would be catastrophic should fry.

For good measure, the same mind-fucking media are using phrases such as “Congressional stubbornness” as proxies for Republican recalcitrance.

The next component in the fiscal-cliff equation, or The Budget Control Act of 2011, are tax hikes. The Bush tax cuts will sunset, as will the temporary payroll tax cuts and certain tax breaks for businesses. Also to take effect are taxes tied to President Obama’s health-care behemoth.

As I understand it, in addition to their refusal to consider any cuts in spending rates, Democrats are insisting on replacing the tax raising provisions of the law with tax hikes on The Rich.

The mindless masses (and the pea brains of Hollywood), however, are already against Congress, which, for all its timidity also stands accused, preemptively, of failing to raise “the national borrowing limit.”

What are the Democrats doing? Put in Charlie Sheen speak, they are “Winning.”

* Cadenza: South African informal for a fit or convulsion

UPDATE (12/29/012): ‘Cuts’ In Spending-Rate Increases.

Finally, Republicans and a couple of Democrats and their anointed experts are framing all budget proposals out there as they should: “cuts to designated increases in spending.”

Via Bret Baier:

With the government spending roughly $10 billion a day, the cuts that are being proposed wouldn’t even cover the interest on the debt.
Spending is not projected to go down. At best, the rate of growth in spending would slow.
“The word ‘cut’ is what government statisticians and budget officials call it — but in fact it’s just really a slowing of growth, and sometimes the growth is still quite high even after it’s slowed down,” said John Taylor, a Stanford University economist.
“They assume that if this year we spend 5 percent, next year we’re gonna spend 8 percent, and the year after that we’re gonna spend 10 percent. And they say ‘well I’ll tell you what, why don’t we cut a percentage point off each one of those rates of growth?’ … Well, that’s not a cut.”
Former Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh noted that “no family, no business, no philanthropy” would operate that way.
“I think there are some passages in Alice in Wonderland that must have dealt with this, because in Washington less of an increase is considered a cut, even though it’s more money…”

The Goods on Grain and the Big Agra-Government Alliance

Addiction, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Propaganda, Regulation, Science, The State

Here’s an excerpt from part II of my conversation with Karen De Coster, CPA. “The Goods on Grain and the Government-Big Agra Alliance” is now on WND:

KAREN DE COSTER: … It’s … amusing to see how often “essential” and “grains” are used together, and no, grains aren’t essential for robust health. For starters, they are not nutrient dense. Additionally, they are loaded with carbohydrates, hence their addiction. For many people, it’s not much different than eating sugar. When considering the importance of the three macronutrients – carbohydrates, protein, and fat – carbs are the only one not essential to sustain life.
Yet grains are cheap thanks to the existence of powerful political-business alliances robbing taxpayers to redistribute booty to Big Agra. To counter the anti-white attack of earlier years (white potatoes, white flour, white rice), the whole grain campaign was created. The government and its assorted offshoots – grain lobbies and national nutritional organizations in cahoots with the medical establishment – ramped up the crusade to brainwash consumers on the whole grain question. The Whole Grains Council still uses the slogan “Eat Grains at Every Meal.”
Unfortunately, people are still walking around in the fog of the unknown, believing that whole grains are, as you noted, “essential” for life and health. The government-Big Agra alliance established grains as the foundation of the federal food pyramid, and since that time we have witnessed 30+ years of mounting obesity and the prevalence of modern disease. The industrial food system is churning out a zillion gimmick products to leverage the pro-grain propaganda, and the marketing whizzes excel at throwing simplistic slogans at consumers through advertising channels. Still, people order wheat bread in restaurants, and most of it is nothing more than white bread with caramel coloring added. And they don’t have a clue! They think they are making the “healthy” choice. Other breads are labeled “whole grain,” but they only contain a portion of whole grain flour. Understandably, people are confused by the terminology of wheat, whole wheat, and whole grain. Most of this market is very deceptive.
Not only are grains not essential, but it’s also important to remember that grains can be destructive to some people. We have not evolved to eat grains, and some people cannot adapt to grains without suffering adverse health effects. Furthermore, grain eaters become sugar burners instead of fat burners, and then they can’t understand why they keep getting fatter on their “healthy” diet. Another point that most people don’t understand is that modern wheat is not your grandfather’s wheat. Modern wheat has been cross-bred and hybridized many times through the years, so its molecular structure has taken a drastically different form.
Grains contain anti-nutrients (gluten, lectin, phytic acid), and our bodies cannot break down these anti-nutrients. That is why many traditional foodies will soak, sprout, and ferment grains, even though those traditional methods don’t necessarily make grains a whole lot more digestible.

MERCER: What did you cook for your Christmas feast?

DE COSTER: Pastured ham from a half hog that came from Melo Farms, my pork/chicken farmers. The pig led a happy pig life, spending her days foraging the pasture and eating organic supplements. Probably something made out of fresh-grown yams, too. I get them from a local farmer who is not a big government certified organic, but he doesn’t spray and he applies organic methodology. Lastly, Brussels sprouts are a great early winter vegetable here in Michigan. I have a huge stalk fresh-picked. For drink, I get fresh-made Michigan apple cider (Honeycrisp apples) from Hy’s Cider Mill. I make drinks with the cider, local honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and perhaps something to “spike” it up.

Part II of my conversation with Karen De Coster is “The Goods on Grain and the Big Agra-Government Alliance,” now on WND. (Read Part I on LewRockwell.com.)

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The Gipper’s Penchant For ‘Gargantuan Government’

Conservatism, Government, Intellectualism, Israel, Liberty, Music, Republicans

At Beliefnet.com, Jack Kerwick rips into a certain elephantiasis to have plagued Ronald Reagan—the Gipper’s penchant for “gargantuan government.” So far, I have only 4 comments, all of them positive, on “The ‘Reagan Revolution’: A Myth Exploded” by Jack Kerwick:

With rare exception, virtually every “star” in the movement is a neoconservative. From the personalities on Fox News to the shining lights of “conservative” talk radio, from “conservative” politicians to the most well known “conservative” writers, there is scarcely an intellect to be found that isn’t indebted to the neoconservative worldview.

[Jack Kerwick, Dec. 26, 2012]

1) Technically, Jack may be right to invoke the word “intellect” with respect to the perpetual parade of mega mouths seen on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, etc. But there must be a better way (a word combination that triggered my musical memory: Watch what passes for pop music in Israel. It’s v e r y g o o d. More solid stuff from “Noa” here. And more about Mira Awad here).

How about “intellectuals who are not intelligent”?

2) Republican Ann Coulter has fleetingly voiced this “Reagan Epiphany,” saying that “Ronald Reagan should not be held up as ‘the touchstone for every [other Republican] candidate.’” But that’s as far as Ms. Coulter’s philosophical integrity went.

3) In fairness, and unlike almost all other Republican candidates, Reagan had the ability to brilliantly enunciate the principles of liberty. Judging from his soaring rhetoric about our (small “r”) republican liberties, Reagan understood these freedoms both viscerally and intellectually. This goes to the Gipper’s innate intelligence, which is forever disputed by the pinko pukes on the left. Intelligence why? Because the argument from liberty is a rational argument; the argument for collectivism an emotional one.

4) In some measure, Ronald Reagan’s affinity for freedom in words but not deeds bolsters another of Jack Kerwick’s brutally honest observations. This one pertains to the “inexcusable” nature of any “ignorance of the immensity of our national government, say, and ignorance of the sheer powerlessness of any one person or even group of persons to scale it back to so much as a shadow of its counterpart from the eighteenth century. …”

Diagnosed With … Gun Incompatibility Disorder

GUNS, Individual Rights, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Regulation

Scarcely had the cowardly attack on kids in Newtown, Con., transpired than forces on the left and right began clamoring to restrain “predisposed” individuals before they transgressed.

Any sweeping prior-restraint legal efforts will have “unintended” consequences. Since undesirable outcomes will follow such laws as night follows day—one wonders why they’re considered “unintended” or unforeseeable.

Expect a reduction in the use of counseling services among gun owners. If he thinks that his doctor is likely to pass on information about his mental state to federal or state authorities, how likely is a gun owner to seek help for psychological/marital/familial problems?

Not very likely.

The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the Rosetta Stone of the profession, has grown since its inception in the 1950s from 60 categories of abnormal behavior to over 410 diagnostic labels and counting. Many of the disorders described in it are more about trend and niche than science.

In the late 1990s, I told readers of my Calgary Herald column about one Dr. John Ratey, a Harvard associate professor and a well-respected, prominent psychiatrist, who claimed, in his 1997 book Shadow Syndromes, that quirky behaviors were actually mild mental illnesses resulting from brain dysfunction.

The lout who is appropriately obsequious with the boss because he knows where his bread is buttered, but who is less dainty with the wife, even thumping her occasionally, would be a candidate for compassion. He is after all doing battle with what Dr. Ratey terms “Intermittent Rage Disorder”. And the dad who dotes on his children while they are with him, but fails to mail them child support money as soon as they are out of sight, is simply afflicted with “Environmental Dependency Disorder”: He remembers his kids only when they are around. Is there proof for these sub-rosa disease categories? None whatsoever, although this has not prevented Ratey and many like him from coating their pronouncements with a patina of scientific respectability—and then cashing in.

Given the tenuous ties between psychiatry and science, how likely is it that “evidence” for new diagnoses will be marshaled in order to keep more people from being able to defend their lives and loved ones with guns?

Very likely.