By Nathan Barton

If you haven’t had one yourself, you know someone who has: an old clunker that just keeps breaking down, one thing after another, and always a bit more expensive. Finally, you give up and decide it is time to junk the thing.

Government, assuming we have to have it, is like that old clunker. Except we have been stupid the past several decades and refused to read the writing on the wall. The thing is past the point of economical repair.

Case in point: Mama Liberty asks, “Did you read about Obummer wanting to get more ice breakers” for the arctic? You know, where all the polar bears have died because there is no more ice… or something.”  It is showing up in Military Times.  She adds, “I suspect that the “new world order” will be very confusing. If it gets off the ground, of course. At this rate, may just crash and burn.  Well, not BURN maybe: just freeze solid.”  This is just another indicator that government is getting increasingly cranky and hard to keep running: the right hundred hands don’t have the foggiest idea what the left hundred hands are doing.

Government is not the only institution we need to junk: others are showing signs of seize-up or permanent deadlining.  According to Joe Kovacs over at World Net Daily the insider magazine “The Hill” claims that many GOP “establishment” types are thinking of funneling millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton for the presidential race, if Trump gets the GOP nomination.  Which does make a very strong argument for what a LOT of us have been pointing out for decades: there really is not any significant difference between the two old parties: the lust for power by the establishment 1/10th of 1% is far stronger than any ideological difference between them.

Mama’s Note: There is no real difference between any political party, or between politicians of any kind. They have one thing, the most important thing, in common. They ALL want to control the lives and property of other people, with or WITHOUT their consent. Anything else is mere window dressing.

Now that Thanksgiving and Black Friday AND Cyber Monday are (technically) past us, it is time for the hardcore Christmas sales season to kick in. Big on this year’s “traditional sales” is the new face of Big Brother, otherwise known as “Santa’s Scout Elves,” as featured in adverts and e-mails from Hastings. (Hastings is a book store chain in the Southwest.)  Yes, it is now part of Christmas tradition to gleefully welcome your own little Stasi agent into your household, in the form of a “scout elf” who reports to Santa on everything you do or don’t do.  What a PERFECT way to indoctrinate children into the realities of a police state in which every television, every computer, and every phone records and reports everything but your thoughts to some authority (and they are working on the thought part).

Somewhat facetiously, I wonder if there is any connection between this advert and the official “end of bulk phone data surveillance” by NSA, which took place on Sunday the 29th as well? As AntiWar.com points out, the “end” is at best a cruel joke – the congressional bill to “end” this in reality just replaced it with a different scheme.  It let too many so-called liberal and conservative lawmakers claim they were in support of freedom while ensuring that the police state continues to grow.  So although the NSA really doesn’t need Santa’s scout elves, they will have them AND their “new” bulk data collection in place.  (I should point out that my son believes that the NSA programs are collapsing of their own weight; that it is ultimately impossible for systems to collect and process all the data regardless of how good their AIs are, as the total data will always grossly exceed the processing power and time available. In other words, the NSA is just going to seize up and stop working, even if they get the phone companies to do a lot of the work.)

Mama’s Note: I agree with your son, but I also know that NO government program or scheme ever truly dies. Even when their function is legislated out, they continue to spend the money and throw monkey wrenches in the works whenever possible. It is up to us, obviously, to create so much noise that they continue to have difficulty finding the “signal” they search for. Even better, ever improving encryption and anonymous sending/receiving can only add to the itch they can’t figure out how to scratch. 🙂

Sadly, as Jacob points out over at the Future of Freedom Foundation too many people WANT this kind of surveillance, and outright slavery (as long as we don’t CALL it that) to “protect” them, as we see in France after the Battle of Paris. Jacob points out correctly that this is NOT the first time a French government has done so and IS the reason we have a fourth amendment to the US Constitution – not that it seems to have much force these days.  Still, I would like to think that the first dozen or so cops or DHS agents or National Guard troops who try to do what French “Security Forces” are doing would be met with a fatal hail of gunfire, even if it IS Caliphate supporters who are in the US firing those shots – or not.

To wrap up my theme, let me go back to yesterday’s commentary, about the killings at Colorado Springs. Even (or especially) local governments are as much past the point of economical repair as the FedGov. It is past time to junk them. C-Springs is an excellent example of this. It is a large city (2nd or 3rd in Colorado) with a supposedly highly professional administration, police force and first responders in general. It has its share of crimes; because of the heavy military presence in the area, it has both the good and bad; good quality people and equipment available, and unfortunately the need to deal with soldiers and airmen gone bad. But in this incident it did not acquit itself well. The first cop on the scene wasn’t even CSPD: he was a policeman from a nearby college campus (and a preacher, to boot). And he was killed for his trouble. At least four other police were shot and wounded – which at least indicates that they were willing to take risks to resolve the situation. And the standoff lasted for four or five hours before an MRAP (an armored wheeled Sheriff’s vehicle) showed up on site, and almost immediately the guy surrendered. Even in the snow on Black Friday, it should not take that long to deploy that vehicle. I’m familiar with C-Springs, and it just is NOT that big or that crowded. Might have helped PP and the other businesses in the strip mall to have had a contract with a decent PrivPol (Private Police) outfit like Griswold’s, out of La Porte. (Unfortunately, while only about 110 miles away, it is also several timelines over: see L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach.)

Just another quick point to make, regarding C-Springs and the gun battle there. Apparently, Colorado thug-in-chief Chicken-looper (a Dem) has blamed the battle on talk show radio and others against abortion. Never mind that the cops and investigators don’t know why Dear is such a nutcase. Because _I_ have spoken against and written against abortion, _I_ am responsible for this Carolina expatriate from Hartsel going to C-Springs and killing these three people and wounding nine more?