Saddam is no more

Late last night/earlier this morning, Saddam Hussein has met his maker. He was hanged in Baghdad. Saddam had been sentenced to death for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. Mission Accomplished!! Now let's go home.

The U.S. military reached another milestone

As of today, the American deaths in Iraq exceeds the American deaths on 9/11. According to the AP, "The U.S. military death toll in Iraq has reached 2,974, one more than the number of deaths in the Sep. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States". And the American death count in Iraq keeps growing and growing.

However, the American deaths in Iraq is minuscule as compared to the Iraqi death count there. Now, there is a difference of opinion about the number of Iraqi soldiers and civilians killed in Iraq. But according to former General Tommy Franks, "We don't do body counts." The lowest count is from George W. Bush--30,000. The highest count is from Johns Hopkins University--655,000. Pretty wide count margin, indeed! But, let's take the conservative count: the Iraqi deaths are 10 times more than the American deaths.

And to think; the Iraqis never attack the United States, or even threaten to do so. That means the U.S. is the aggressor, and Iraq is the defender: there is no way getting around it. And the war keeps going, and going, and going. I said this before, but it bears repeating: I love my country, but I don't trust its government. And listen Nancy Pelosi, Bush is nothing more than a war criminal, and at least he can do is get impeached.

The United States is insolvent

America is headed down the crapper. That's what Dr. Chris Martenson of Financial Sense University said. And it is not good.

I take issue on what Martenson said. Although my outlook isn't any better, I have a different philosophy.

The United States has what Martenson missed: the Federal Reserve. Although Martenson did mention this in the latter letter, he didn't mention its name. The Federal Reserve is a semi-private, semi-government system who makes the country's money. The private side, the Federal Reserve is a cartel of private, for-profit banks who works for the owners, not the people. The government side, the government makes Federal Reserve notes (FRN) "legal tender" and crimes will occur when using the notes illegally (e.g., counterfeiting). The banks and the government officials have a system.

When the bureaucrats spend more than the government takes in through taxes, the Federal Reserve borrows the rest, and the government has to pay the Federal Reserve back, with interest. When government can't pay, that is a debt--the national debt. All the income tax will do is to pay interest on the national debt, as the Grace Commission reported.

When the Federal Reserve floods the market with money, inflation occurs, and the value of the dollar is lowered. When foreign markets find out the U.S. dollars is worth less and less, they will finally dump the the FRN and go to a different money (e.g., euros). When that happens, the dollar will collapse, like the Soviet Union in the late '80s/early '90s.

However, there is a chance that the amero, a North American currency, will replace the dollar. Like the dollar, the amero is nothing more than a worthless fiat-paper money, and this will ultimately end up like the dollar. The only difference is the U.S. dollar is strictly for America, while the amero covers North (and maybe South) America. This is one step closer to a New World Order. Like I said, the future is not looking too good, if we don't do a 180-degree turn, and fast--or get out completely.

The real meaning of the 2nd Amendment

The town council of Cherry, Pennsylvania is considering enacting a law asking all of its residents to own guns and train themselves on how to use them.

This, of course, was the original idea behind the 2nd Amendment. The United States was designed to be a society in which "the militia" was not a governmental unit such as a National Guard but rather one in which well-armed and well-trained citizens could protect themselves not only from violent criminals and foreign invaders but also from the tyranny from their own federal officials--a society in which the federals would be prohibited from interfering with this critically important prerequisite to a free society.

Of course, the gun-control crowd would argue that the 2nd Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, is an outmoded relic of the horse-and-buggy era.

Meanwhile, given that today is the anniversary date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we would be remiss if we didn't remember that during World War II the U.S. government rounded up thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent and place them in U.S. concentration camps for the duration of the war.

Why is this important today? Because that power to round up citizens and put them in concentration camps--say, Americans of Muslim faith--still exists. The Supreme Court decision (Korematsu v. U.S.) that upheld the power of the federals to do this, while largely condemnded in legal circles, has never been overturned. It is still the law of the land.

Don't forget also the federal position today, as ludicrous as it is, is this: we are at war, just as Americans were at war after Pearl Harbor--only this time against "the terrorists" rather than the Japanese--and this war will last indefinitely.

Don't forget also the Padilla doctrine, in which the federals now wield the power--today--to send military units across the land, arresting people off the streets as "enemy combatants", torture them, and hold them in isolation for years incommunicado and denied trial and due process of law.

Now, add the Padilla power to the Korematsu power and you might start to get a sense of how different and dangerous a society in which we now live, as compared to our American ancestors, who never would have permitted an omnipotent federal government with Soviet-like powers over the citizenry.

While the people of Cherry, Pennsylvania, might be thinking about protecting themselves from burglars by asking everyone to arm themselves, we should never forget the true underlining purpose of the 2nd Amendment: its purpose is not to enable Americans to shoot deer or burglars, but instead to ensure that U.S. officials think twice about becoming oppressive here at home.