Rational Nation USA

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Rational objective ethics, or the lack thereof plays a great part in one's life, and by extension their success and happiness. However they define these two terms. I post this not to make a statement in support of Objectivist Ethics, although I personally subscribe to them, but rather to expose the individual reader to the concepts and leave it up to them whether to consider the validity or lack thereof.. Via: Ayn Rand Institute

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Great work Fox News, specifically Fox and Friends. With Wednesday's video, a "attack ad" on Obama's first term record, the network has been damaged as a credible news organization. It is the function of news organizations to responsibly cover the campaigns of politicians, not shill for them. That is the purpose of declared opinion columnists and commentators. While I happen to personally concur with the content of the video I certainly do not want news agencies to politicize their reporting. Just give be the facts and give them to me balanced. I'll take it from their. Video - h/t HOT AIR Ed Morrissey's spot on must read commentary. Via: Memeorandum

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny President Obama has awarded the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dolores Huerta. Ms. Huerta, co founder of the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez , and a Honorary Chair of Democratic Socialists of America was also given credit by the President for his 2008 campaign slogan, "yes we can." The Heritage Foundation - President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.” Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela. Some of her more radical comments were captured in

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Rational Nation has recently come under vicious attack. Because of the magnitude and viscous nature of the attacks this site has been forced to resort to comment moderation, a practice that heretofore I have been adamantly opposed to. It has been difficult to determine the individual most likely responsible for these attacks because of 1) my trusting nature, and 2) my relative lack of computer savvy. However, following a weekend of investigative work and logical analysis of the evidence it appears to have been a "inside job", a attack plan designed to discredit me and destroy my integrity for the simple and only reason I dared to visit and comment on liberal blogs. In other words I "strayed off the rightist plantation" and therefore must be punished. While I initially believed the individual harassing and stalking me was a left wing blogger (and it may be so) the evidence overwhelming points otherwi

by Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny George Will hits the nail squarely on it's head. ABC - This morning on “This Week,” ABC News’ George Will called Donald Trump a ”bloviating ignoramus,” questioning why presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is associating with the real estate mogul, who once again falsely questioned President Obama’s birthplace this week. “I do not understand the cost benefit here,” Will said on the “This Week” roundtable. “The costs are clear. The benefit — what voter is gonna vote for him (Romney) because he is seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious it seems to me. “Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics,” Will added. “Again, I don’t understand the benefit. What is Romney seeking?” Fox Business Network anchor Liz Claman agreed, adding “it’s a dangerous

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Tomorrow is Memorial Day and it is only fitting that we think about the concepts of Freedom and Liberty. Especially so with respect to political freedom and liberty as the United States of America was the first place to give birth to a nation wherein self government was given a fighting chance at success. The three branches of government, the executive, legislative, and judicial, with the checks and balances the founders built in was designed to insure that the Federal government itself was limited and would be held in check so the people would not become servants to a tyrannical ruling class. More on this later. So as we honor those who have guarded our freedom and liberties, both past and present I leave you with the following to contemplate. Freedom Select quotes from the Ayn Rand Lexicon - What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of volu

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Heading into the long Memorial Day weekend as I scoured Memeorandum for some pertinent and pressing noteworthy news, of which there is little really, I thought what the hell just go for the most absurdly unimportant. Because I have little passion for writing commentary on the absurd (absurd IMO anyway) links rather than commentary is the order of the day. A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama Unions angry with Democrats over lack of help in Wisconsin governor's recall Female Juror Flirts With John Edwards Democrat compares Romney's “Latino problem” to alcoholism Porn stars: Clinton called us over Berlusconi party girl says masqueraded as Obama Is the Constitution a Republican Plot? Wisconsin recall: DNC's Debbie Wasserman Schultz sees no national impact if Democrats lose Back to the important Sunday evening upon returning from a short break. Via: Multiple Memeorandum Feeds -

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny It keeps getting more intriguing all the time. With only six months until the election this one could prove to be a real "barn burner" folks! The Daily Caller - One of President Barack Obama’s top campaign spokesmen is a private equity manager whose firm has shut down several factories and laid off hundreds of people amid a stalled economy. Federico Pena’s role at Vestar Capital Partners has emerged as Obama’s aides and deputies continue their effort to portray former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s investment career as ruthless, job-destroying, profit-maximizing “vulture capitalism.” Pena has been a partner at Vestar since 2000. Pena is a former mayor of Denver in swing-state Colorado, a former cabinet member for President Bill Clinton and one of 35 “national co-chairs “ of the president’s 2012 campaign. The news will likely further undermine the Obama campaign’s effort to focus on Romney’s busin

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Spending has increased significantly during President Obama's tenure. To argue this reality is a exercise only the most partisan will engage in. But as one would expect that is exactly what the left has been doing. The graph below displays the real percent growth in federal spending under each president beginning with Reagan. It is a fact that numbers don't lie. Unfortunately liars dabble in numbers and the Obama supporters are quite adept at massaging the numbers to make Obama look as favorable as possible. Rex Nutting writing for Market Watch gives a clear demonstration of exactly my point. Reality is what it is, and rational people understand this. So while the numbers speak for themselves, and don't need massaging, the larger issue is... What are our elected officials (think Congress as they control the purse strings) going to do to straighten the mess out? I might suggest Mr. President g

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Was feeling a bit nostalgic today, especially in light of the current political climate and the obvious dumbing down of our national politicians and their superficial rhetoric. Since I find myself underwhelmed by the shallowness of Mitt Romney's utterances, and scratching my head at Barrack Obama's audacity a stroll back in time to find a politician of substance just seemed to me what the doctor would order. And so I did. Note the relevancy to today beginning at approximately the 7 minute mark. Being old enough to remember JFK I recall having been impressed by him even at a young age. As I now reflect back on those days I wonder if America will ever see another President from either major party who will comport themselves with the dignity and stature JFK did. One with a vision that can take us to the moon and beyond.

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Political hypocrisy has a long reach and is certainly not a lonely child. Power Line - The Budget Control Act is the compromise on federal spending that the Republicans and Democrats entered into last summer, as part of the deal whereby the Republicans agreed to increase the federal debt limit. That increase was conditioned on spending restraint that was spelled out specifically in the BCA. Thus, for the current fiscal year, discretionary spending was capped at $1.047 trillion. That couldn’t be any clearer. But when Kent Conrad, outgoing Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, forwarded the Senate Appropriations Committee its spending authority, the number was higher by $14 billion–$1.061 trillion. This is a clear violation of the Budget Control Act. But the Democrats’ number is by no means random. On the contrary, the $14 billion that Conrad added is enough to match the discretionary spending that was called for in

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Societal norms, and our understanding of the meaning of words have changed since the Bill of Rights amended our Constitution. One vivid example is our modern understanding of the first amendment which guarantees freedom of political speech, most specifically that which is the minority view. In other words it gave the people of the United States the iron clad right to speak, via their own mouth whatever political views may be on their mind. Of course as we all know modern society has expanded the right to freedom of speech and it's meaning to include freedom of expression, whatever that expression may be in so long as it does not slander or result in physical injury to someone. In a free society, governed by the rule of law this is as it should be. It is in fact precisely how our founding fathers, as well as all American patriots in 1776 intended it to be. South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt recently enjo

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Interestingly enough we have new studies out that rank not only congressional speaking levels but Presidential speaking levels as well. I am quite certain the conclusions drawn from both studies will be disputed by many on either side of the political spectrum as they rush to put some sort of spin on the results that are unflattering to them. After all no one wants to be considered in the class perceived as being the most "dumbed down." Do they? Rather than attempting to summarize each study, which would likely carry some personal bias no matter how much I tried to avoid it, I will leave you with a couple of teasers. First the study on Congressional speech followed by the Presidential study. The rest is up to you to sort out and draw your own conclusions. Sunlight Foundation, The changing complexity of congressional speech - Congress now speaks at almost a full grade level lower than it did just seven year

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny As President Obama is hosting a summit with G8 leaders at Camp David this weekend to discuss nothing less than "economic growth" I couldn't help feeling just a bit cynical. it's probably just me, nonetheless being the skeptic has become normal for me over the last eight years. I mean there are these, just a few select examples from yesterday's The New York Tines ... Leaders of the world’s richest countries banded together on Saturday to press Germany to back more pro-growth policies to halt the deepening debt crisis in Europe , as President Obama for the first time gained widespread support for his argument that Europe, and the United States by extension, cannot afford Chancellor Angela Merkel’s one-size-fits-all approach emphasizing austerity. So, what the other leaders are really going to do is to pressure Germany's Chancellor to fully adopt the Keynesian economics that apparently all socia

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Moderates seem to have a particular balanced sense of reality that is often lacking in the hard left or right. David Brooks is one of those reasoned moderate journalists that while not always agreeing with his positions I do find him often making lots of sense. His recent New York Times article entitled The Age of Innocence is a statement on current political realities and how far we have regressed from our founders vision. Following are what I consider to be the highlights of his article. I also note that where you see ... indicates references to Europe have been omitted, temporarily. The people who pioneered democracy in... the United States had a low but pretty accurate view of human nature. They knew that if we get the chance, most of us will try to get something for nothing. They knew that people generally prize short-term goodies over long-term prosperity. So, in centuries past, the democratic pioneers built a

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny I found myself thinking about Leviathan (government) and oppression today. Confusing to me so I'm guessing it is the same for most working Americans trying to support their family in the immediate as well as formulating plans to achieve their dreams for a better tomorrow and ultimate retirement. Pretty common thoughts for most Americans don't you think? Once upon a time, say approximately 235 years ago, Americans believed in self reliance, hard work, and that if you kept your nose to the grindstone anything was possible. Sometime later the aforementioned ethic became known as the Horatio Alger, Jr. theory. . The American spirit and work ethic that gave rise to the greatest and most prosperous nation on earth has somehow come under attack. An attack from two fronts. Both the progressive left as well as the reactionary right preach a dogma that carried out to their natural logical ends will result in oppression

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Our American culture is changing, has been for some time. With the newest data showing "minorities" are becoming the new majority the political landscape of our nation will be forever changed. The Washington Post - For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation’s babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority. Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups. That’s almost a full percentage point higher than the 49.5 percent of minority babies counted when the decennial census was taken in April 2010. Census Bureau demographers said the tipping point came three months later, in July. The latest estimates, which gauge changes since the last census, are a reflection of an immigration wave that bega

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Ayn Rand Lexicon - Theory : Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. “ The Objectivist Ethics : The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny The Washington Times : President Obama's budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it. Coupled with the House's rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama's budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year. Republicans forced the vote by offering the president's plan on the Senate floor. Democrats disputed that it was actually the president's plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn't actually match Mr. Obama's budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president's numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan. Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up. "A stunning development for the president of the United States in his fou

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny It seems there is a " family feud " going on in the Obama clan. On the one hand we have President Obama, and on the other we have his cousin Milton Wolf, MD. Everything I have heard or read leads me to believe the President's cousin has the upper hand in recognizing objective reality. While the inquiring (and objective) mind waits for Milton's upcoming Daily Caller series much more can be found at Milton's website, the Wolf Files . h/t: Left Coast Rebel

The left has been playing games with income inequality FOR DECADES. a) The income that they talk about is always of the pre-tax variety. The wealthy pay the bulk of federal and state income tax and local property tax. The actual disposable income is obviously considerably less. b) The income at the bottom rung is almost always calculated absent the plethora of transfer payments that the poor in this country frequently receive. When you factor in the value of the food stamps, the housing and energy assistance, the earned income tax credit, etc., the disparity once again is lessened. c) The left almost always cites statistics relative to household income. This is highly deceptive in that the number of workers per household in the upper quintile is roughly 4 times the number of that which exists for the lowest quintile (an average of 2 earners per family in the upper quintile and .5 in the lowest quintile). Obviously they're going to have a SIGNIFICANTLY higher household

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla, who served on the Simpson-Bowles commission , and is a member of the Gang of Six has a new book out entitled The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America . Senator Coburn recently was interviewed by Ezra Klein of The Washington Post To discuss the nation's growing debt and economic growth problems. The following excerpts are from the first of what is to be a two part series. The second part will be coming out later this week. For those truly interested in solutions to our crushing fiscal problems this is a series you will want to follow. While you may not agree with everything the Senator has to say it is difficult to find a more reasonable, and reasoned voice amidst today's super heated rhetoric. Ezra Klein: So ‘taxmageddon’ is coming at the end of the year. Depending on how you look at it, it’s an opportunity for Congress to trigger a massive and unnecessar

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty - vs- Tyranny Yeah, Right, fer Sure- Not When Obama changes his mind it's evolving. Whenever anybody else does it's flip-flopping. At least that is how the left sees it. Yahoo News - Scooping up dollars for his campaign at a New York fundraiser, President Barack Obama told supporters on Monday that "the American people are on our side" when it comes to issues like same-sex marriage. The president spoke at an event hosted by openly gay singer Ricky Martin, the LGBT Leadership Council and the Futuro Fund, where he tied his announced support for gay marriage last week to past civil rights struggles. "We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody," the president said to cheers from the audience. "That doesn't weaken families, that strengthens families. It's the right thing to do." His comments came after presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney

 The discrimination theory relative to African-American underachievement is an exceedingly flawed one, and all that you really need to do to see this is to look at just how well that West Indian blacks (who were also the victims of slavery) and African immigrants do by comparison.....................................................................................................I mean, think about it here. For the discrimination theory to be even remotely logical, the following in fact would have to take place: A West Indian black or an African immigrant goes into into a company and applies for a job. The white manager sees the dark-skinned person come onto the room and right off the bat starts thinking to himself, "Alright, this is a dark-skinned person. I'm going to have to try to give him the 1,2,3,4 and get him the hell out of here." But THEN the dark-skinned person speaks and once the white manager hears that the individual speaks with an accent, his men

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny There is a lot of attention being given to the issue of gay marriage. Why I didn't really understand, until today. Sure, I did a post at RN USA that was published in the Daily Caller in 2010. Certainly the DC is far from a liberal publication, nevertheless they ran my article. My article was essentially in support of the rights of LGBT individuals to be treated equally. The basis of my arguments can be found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America . Positions that I now hold with even stronger convictions. However, until today I argued that same sex unions should not be considered marriages. Like so many I felt that marriage was between one man and one women, the traditional concept of marriage. So you may be asking, what made this day different enough to change your position? Really it is quite simple. I was wrong. After talking with a friend today that hap

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny President Obama and the Occupy Wall Street crowd has succeeded in turning the nation's focus increasingly to the idea of wealth redistribution. This of course is allegedly to make things a bit more "fair", to use one of my favorite anti-concepts . Recently thinking about this my mind turned to the concept of property rights . While I knew the framers of our Constitution were advocates for individual property rights and set themselves to the task of insuring their protection I went searching for some on line reference material to help put things in proper perspective. I found it at the National Center for Constitutional Studies . Below is from the Center's front page. I encourage everyone concerned with the present day trend towards wealth redistribution and its cousin, collectivism to visit the Center . Protecting individual property rights is critical to protecting freedom and individual liberties.

by: Les Carpenter Rational Nation USA Liberty -vs- Tyranny Submitted by a regular visitor the following "fum facts" or "trivia", however you view them, are telling. There are actually two messages here. The first is very interesting, but the second explains a lot. A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization. Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis: U.S. 65% England 46% Canada 42% Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months: U.S. 93% England 15% Canada 43% Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months: U.S.