Hipsters are killing American razor sales

Hipsters are killing American razor sales

I had to blog about this. I too don't buy as many razors now-a-days. I prefer facial hair and have attempted a beard a few times. I'm not a hipster but this story is quite compelling on our current culture in America. The hipster phase has certainly settled in and there are some hipster things I do gravitate towards. Alas! The razor industry! We should also ask. What about the shaving cream industry?

Violent Crimes Don't Depend on Guns but on the Heart of the Person: US vs UK Crime Rates

This is an excellent fact based video that destroys the anti-gun argument that more guns equal more crime and less guns equal less crime. It is a brilliant response to Piers Morgan's claims.

Beware of the Farmer

You remember our number one threat according to Stephen Colbert?

BEARS!!

There's a new threat and bears have been surpassed by the farmers. Our brilliant federal and state authorities certainly think so. Not only are farmers dangerous with their deadly raw milk but also they may be hiding dangerous things on their farm. You know, things like tomatoes or pot. Well, in this article by Reason.com, it turns out it was just the tomatoes.

The owners of a small organic farm in South Arlington are demanding an apology from police who raided the property in early August in what amounted to be a fruitless search for marijuana.

It wasn't completely fruitless though. Tomatoes are technically a fruit and the brave police found them. This is another example of failed prohibition and destructive aggrandizement of government power. Whether it's raw milk or Cannabis, prohibitory measures enforced by an ever expanding police state have proved to be the true danger-danger to our liberty. We have such devices as drones are in our skies to keep a creepy watchful eye on us. This invasion of privacy and scary expanse of government surveillance has even brought people to consider hunting drones in a Colorado town. Hunting permits will be available. You might laugh but I would be the first in line. I digress.

So, let's congratulate the police in South Arlington for ridding the streets of organic tomatoes.

New Iranian President's Hollow Promises

A new president but the same old tyrannical lunacy. 

I was reading articles on the Guardian today and came across this. The new president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, was sworn in. He offered surprising promises of "moderation and respect." He even promised to "protect individual rights." Here is an excerpt below from the article discussing his speech:

"People want change," said the new president, who described himself as the representative of all Iranian people and not only those who voted for him in the election. "People want to live better, to have dignity as well as a stable life. They also want to recapture their deserving position among nations," he said.
He also pledged to promote women's rights and advance equality for women in society, despite proposing a cabinet of all men. 

Now, I left out the part when he talked about foreign policy, peace talks, and interventionism. I want to focus on his sketchy promises regarding individual rights and women's rights. I literally started laughing when I read this. Here are actual word for word excerpts from the Iranian Constitution.

Article 20
All citizens of the country, both men and women, equally enjoy the protection of the law
and enjoy all human, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, in conformity with
Islamic criteria. 

Article 24
Publications and the press have freedom of expression except when it is where there is
infringement of the basic tenets of Islam

Oh that's not all. I just don't want to continue to read this piece of trash constitution. Here's the thing about a theocratic tyrannical government, it's theocratic and tyrannical. The Iranians "rights" are subservient to the Quran and the tenants of Islam enforced by the government. You can forget about freedom of religion as Islam is the national religion set forth by the constitution.

The whole women's rights thing is also a sham. They still stone women and public lashings are used to punish women for immodesty. Women are limited in what to major in and what classes can be taken. They can't even travel outside the country or get a passport without their male guardian to approve it. The Guardian smartly points to Iran's "all men cabinet" in the article to critique the promise of women's rights. Here is a human rights report for 2012. Homosexuals are also put to death.

How people, especially women are stoned in Iran.

A new president spewing hollow promises for protection of individual rights is just pathetic. It's a like a new boss of a mafia organization promising more "moderation and respect." They have their well entrenched Islamic laws and a government that puts itself first before its people. This new president is no Nelson Mandela. He is no Pope Francis. He is another tyrant to impose the anti-liberty, anti-woman, and anti-gay laws of Iran.

The human rights situation in Iran continues to arouse concern from the world's leading watchdog groups, with reports of ongoing abuses since the disputed 2009 presidential election provoked mass protests. A March 2013 report by a UN Special Rapporteur cites "widespread and systemic" torture, harassment, arrest, and attacks against human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists. 

Under an increasingly repressive regime focused on survival amid internal strife and external pressures, experts say prospects for reform are bleak, and urge the international community to keep the spotlight on Iran's human rights violations. Jayshree Bajoria, and Robert McMahon, Editor, Human Rights in Iran, http://www.cfr.org/iran/human-rights-iran/p26380 (accessed 8/5/2013)

From Russia with Love

I think it would be more correct if I said, "To Russia with Love." However, I love James Bond and it's staying.

Alright, Snowden update is here. Russia has granted the infamous NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, a year of asylum.  He was in the Moscow airport for six weeks until being allowed to tiptoe into the foreign country ever so tacitly.

This is a blog and not a newspaper. So, I will give you my opinion. I am so excited and relieved he got asylum. Unlike our current liar-in-chief, I support whistleblowers. Obama ran on protecting whistleblowers back in 2008 but has flopped on the issue. Obama and his administration are "very disappointed" according to news reports over Russia's decision. I am very disappointed in the political leadership in Washington that are vehemently slandering Mr. Snowden as some malevolent traitor. He's not. The traitors are those in power in our Government. They betrayed the American people and violated their 4th Amendment rights. This was revealed to us by a true patriot.

Snowden's lawyer assures the media that he "is in a safe place." Whatever place that Edward Snowden is, we must remember that he has a place in our hearts and mind. He exposed corruption and reckless disregard of our Constitutional rights.

Are we still as a people still independent?

As Benjamin Franklin said and our Founders knew, those who trade liberty for safety get neither.
 by John Heckel.

Our Founders did not fight a revolution against tyranny simply to institute a similar government on their own soil. It’s been 237 years since they declared not only their independence but their rejection of a long train of abuses and tyrannies. Reading the Declaration of Independence today I find that their concerns still resonate as government insists that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, and pat down any individual at any time.

As Benjamin Franklin said and our Founders knew, those who trade liberty for safety get neither. This is not simply a Republican versus Democrat issue. It is about people who believe in the Constitution and individual rights versus politicians in both parties who don’t. This isn't about party, but about people who believe in limited government against those who think it is unlimited.

We should heed the Founders’ warning: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” Today’s government is one that our Founders warned us about.

[I had this published in the Pensacola News Journal on Independence Day 2013]

Obama's Insensitivity to Blacks?

What if I told you that a (gasp) White president has done more for Black people than our savior, Obama?

Well, I would first most likely be called a racist . Others would say that I am a Fox News Obama hater just saying nonsense. Then there are those who really don't give a damn.

I will speak to all three of you. I came across this brilliant article from the Cato Institute. This will pierce the proverbial bubble of the regular Obama drone.

Richard W. Rahn started his important article with this:

If you knew nothing else about President Obama other than looking at the data, you might conclude that he was insensitive to blacks, given that they have done far worse economically under his administration than Hispanics or whites. What is striking is that the president and his advisers still seem to be clueless about which economic policies work and which don’t work. 

Obama has made an effort to compare himself with former President Ronald Reagan and has done so in too many speeches. I won't supply all the links but you can perform a Google search to see the speeches. He should stop this though because it is so far beyond the truth. Unlike Reagan, Obama has failed in helping minorities especially Blacks. With an average of 93% of Black Americans voting for Obama in both 2008 and 2012, he had the confidence of the Black community that he would help them reach new levels of economic success. Sadly, the facts paint a more bleak picture and his laughable comparison to Reagan sheds the light on The Gipper's more impressive accomplishments for Black Americans.



Let's start with the first step of how to improve the lot of a group of people which are with taxes. Simple economics will teach you that how Government treats job creators will determine a healthy economy. In turn, a healthy economy that bolsters job creation will help minorities.

President Reagan reduced the maximum tax rate on job creators by 60 percent; Mr. Obama increased the maximum tax rate on job creators by 17 percent.

That's right. Obama has raised the tax rate on job creators while Reagan reduced the maximum tax rate by a stellar 60%.

Second step is federal spending. Under Obama, spending has only increased while Reagan cut non-defense spending by a third of the nation's GDP.

Third step is federal regulations that can often stifle business which in turn limits job creation for minorities. You guessed it. Obama has only increased regulations while Reagan cut them.

Moving on from the economic actions that differ from our current Progressive Fabian Socialist President and Ronald Reagan; let us delve into how exactly Black Americans did under Reagan as opposed to Obama. Through solid research by the Cato Institute, Rahn writes the following:

• Under Reagan, adult black unemployment fell by 20 percent, but under Mr. Obama, it has increased by 42 percent.
• Black teenage unemployment fell by 16 percent under Reagan, but has risen by 56 percent under Mr. Obama.
• The increase in unemployment rates has been far worse for blacks under Mr. Obama than for whites and Hispanics.
• Inflation-adjusted real incomes are slightly higher for Hispanics and whites than they were in 2008, but are lower for blacks.
• The labor force participation rate has fallen for all groups, but remains far lower for blacks than for whites and Hispanics.

Now, as you take in the facts above, I want you to ponder on how our President handles his failures. He not only dodges and reflects, but he also pushes his failed policies. He's like one of the crazy British generals in WWI who kept sending men over their desert trenches to certain death in Gallipoli. The policy was to keep charging and advancing against heavily entrenched Turks and their hundreds of machine guns. 

A failed policy is not a failed policy to the minds of extremists like Obama. The people he says he is standing for are hurting and not advancing.

Obama's failures are based on an erroneous theory that I discussed in a past blog called the Zero Sum Fallacy. Basically, it is the theory that in order for an individual to have success it must be off the back of another individual. Rahn delves into this and gives background below:

Adam Smith was one of the first to understand that as a result of new technologies and better political and business institutions and organizations — and, most important, the rule of law and proper incentives — everyone could become better off without taking anything from anyone else. Despite the empirical evidence of the past 200 years that Smith and all of the clear and rational thinkers who followed him were right about economic growth, there is still the widespread belief that for one person to prosper someone else needs to suffer. It is this mindset that serves as the basic rationale for socialism and the state as an instrument of income redistribution. One would think that only the uneducated still would have this mindset, but it is most prevalent in universities.

Obama, his drones, his Advisers, Progressive Statists, and especially the Academic Intelligentsia, are all of a different school of thought. Kahn further elaborates on America's educators and states they are

so dense when it comes to productivity increases and the resulting economic growth, and real rise in living standards is that most classrooms are not much more productive than they were when Aristotle was speaking to a dozen or so students 2,500 years ago. By contrast, entrepreneurs see better ways of producing more for less and visualize and create things that never existed (i.e., the automobile, the airplane, the iPad, etc.) — and they create wealth and jobs. Mr. Obama comes from the government/academic class rather than the entrepreneurial class and has a much more static view of the world.

The more static view of the world is anti economic, entrepreneurial, productivity, and wealth creation. Slow growth and stagnation are the current policies.

He wants you to believe he is like Reagan; but Reagan stood for the direct opposite policies that actually helped the poor and minorities. Kahn sums it most eloquently and effectively:

Reagan thought like an entrepreneur, and thus intuitively understood that economic growth creates opportunities for everyone — most important, for those who have the least. Mr. Obama has fewer senior advisers and top officials in his administration who have had significant private-sector experience than any previous president; hence, like all too many of the European statists and socialists, they think in static terms.

The unfortunate irony is that America’s first black president seems bent on continuing a set of policies that can lead only to continued slow growth or stagnation. The ones who are and will suffer the most from these policies are those who have the least. Mr. Obama no doubt has real compassion for the poor, but until he can begin to understand the destructive second-order effects of his policies and see that getting the foot of government off the forces of economic growth is the only real way to make life better for most of them, all too many will continue to suffer unnecessarily.