Shepard on Politics
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot." - Mark Twain
Saturday, January 28, 2012
"The End of Liberty" Movie
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Liberty Political Systems Announces the Advanced PAULBOT 2012!

Liberty Political Systems of America has announced it's latest amazing piece of engineering. The Paulbot 2012.
The "Paulbot" has an advanced operating system that replaces the old "Garbage In / Garbage Out" (GIGO) problem of information processing with an advanced "Knowledge In / Liberty Out" (KILO) software system. It is a much more advanced system as the 'Bot is specifically programmed to question and analyze all data fed into it rather than to just accept that data which leads to incorrect answer formulation. The 'Bot also seeks to maximize its operating environment with special Anti-Tyranny, Anti-Central Planning and Advanced Freedom sub-routines.
The Paulbot can have trouble interfacing with other company's products because the Paulbot has Advanced Foreign Policy Subroutines that require a very large database. This can cause buffer overflow and seg-fault in most other company's 'bots. Those 'bots can generally only database events back to 2001 or sometimes 1979 whereas the Paulbot has massive capacity allowing its special Middle East database tables to be indexed back to at least 1953 and in many cases the 1920s or earlier.
The Paulbot is economic too. Advanced cost reduction processes allow LPS to provide the Paulbot at a lower cost than any of the other, less advanced, political 'bots.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Tired of Being Told You "Blame America" ?
So, the next time this comes up with a so-called Conservative ... ask some simple questions. Maybe like this.
You suggest I blame (the) America(n government) for a lot of our trouble with overseas nations and people. So, let me ask you ...Do you "blame America" for high taxes?Do you "blame America" for high regulation?Do you "blame America" for ignoring its own Constitution?Do you "blame America" for our sour economy?Do you "blame America" for our jobs going overseas?Do you "blame America" for theft to bailout corporations like banks and auto companies?Do you "blame America" for its $15 trillion debt?Do you "blame America" for threatening your right to self-defense?Do you "blame America" for crony capitalism?Do you "blame America" for screwing up the healthcare system?Do you "blame America" for dishonesty in government?Do you "blame America" for electing idiots, socialists or worse?Do you "blame America" for insecure borders?Do you "blame America" for not drilling for oil?Do you "blame America" for the welfare state?Do you "blame America" for lots of other of things?Do you "blame America" for Fannie and Freddie?Do you "blame America" for ignoring state's rights?So, let me get this right ... you are upset with me and call me anti-American because I "blame America" for just one more thing than you do?
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Root Of The Issue - Government Smoking Bans On Private Property
Since people voluntarily work at places that allow or don't allow smoking and individual consumers patronize places, voluntarily, that do or not allow smoking than this is the smoking ban issue, in a nutshell and it is arrogant and selfish. It is one group of people trying to use the government to force THEIR OPINION on everyone else.
That's it. People do not care who owns the place or what clients that owner may or may not want to serve. As with so many liberal, nanny-state causes, they want YOU TO DO WHAT THEY WANT rather than just take their business elsewhere or themselves create alternatives in the market.
And, once again, it seems we have those that the typical Conservative elects to protect us from this kind of authoritarian, anti-rights garbage helping make it happen. Apparently, they're afraid they'll be embarrassed if out-of-towners come to Indy for the 2012 Superbowl and see anyone smoking. And, don't think for a minute, that ticket scalping legislation wasn't also about trying to polish up the city in advance of the Superbowl. And one even wonders about the panhandler ordinance of a couple of years ago that made it illegal to even hold a political sign on a street corner.
I shudder to think that the elected city overlords are really willing to trade away freedom, rights and free market principles in exchange for a football game. And people wonder why the Libertarian brand is increasingly popular. Of course, it is because of consistent principles and ideology.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Conservative Intellectual Dilemma Over Who Has Rights
There is an excellent write up at The Objective Standard regarding the nature of rights that I highly recommend reading, especially since it offers up a theory that does not depend on the existence of God. This is important, because if God cannot be proven than your rights cannot be proven if you solely rest the existence of them on its existence.
But, back to the point. Certainly, nobody in the United States would support kidnapping someone off the street, failing to give them due process, failing to find them guilty in any kind of trial but instead just sticking them in a secret room and torturing them just in case they might know something useful. This would be such a vast violation of rights and the character of who are SUPPOSED to be as a nation.
But, it did prompt me to post my comment from Brian's thread on a broader topic of the nature of our rights and why I think the typical Conservative has an intellectual dilemma that they either must resolve by becoming more authoritarian and deciding that we only have the rights our respective governments grant to us OR that all human beings have rights that come about by way of our existence as sentient, self-aware beings.
Brian - regarding torture. Conservatives have an intellectual dilemma that they must resolve.
Most Conservatives would argue that our rights come from our creator (God, the creative force of the universe or whatever mechanism by which we are sentient, self-aware beings). This is clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence as a founding principle of our country. That we have rights (life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness) that nobody, not even government - except as compensation for a harm done to another - can take away.
BUT THEN, in the same breath, they would suggest that immigrants, accused terrorists or other people not born here don't have the same rights.
This is intellectually inconsistent. Either our rights come from the creator OR they come from government by nature of which borders we are unlucky enough to be born between.
They must decide. And I appreciate Ron Paul consistently showing intellectual honesty in all matters, including torture as I very much appreciate you pointing out.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Two Down.

After Rick Perry's horrendous debate performance tonight, that should be about the last we hear from him. And I'm pretty sure Santorum and Bachmann can give it up now too.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
One Down
Friday, August 12, 2011
National Debt After Each Administration - 1976 to present
(figures are approximate)
1976 After Gerald Ford - $2,844
1980 After Jimmy Carter - $4,352
1988 After Ronald Reagan - $12,000
1992 After George HW Bush - $15,875
2000 After Bill Clinton - $20,121
2008 After George W. Bush - $31,600
2011 After Barack Obama - 46,326 [and still counting]
The debt debate is nothing new. It is not an Obama problem. It is not a Democrat or Republican problem. The two major political cults (parties) have held hands in the spirit of "compromise" for decades to send us over this cliff.
And "compromise" is a code word that a lot of people like but it really means that both sides will "compromise" the principles of those that elect them in order to say they accomplished something.
Dave Ramsey was recently quoted in a snippet that went viral on Facebook, ""If the US Government was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year & have $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can understand."
I think it is important to point out that Dave left out the $2,000,000 mortgage that this family has (we get this by looking at the additional $90 trillion in "future obligations" that our government already calculates it has committed to).
Interest on the Debt Consumes Almost HALF of Personal Income Taxes
He made a statement basically saying that interest on the debt consumed 46 cents out of every tax dollar and that they then had only around 54 cents to spend on everything else like the military, social security, etc... Immediately this struck me as untrue but I knew he likely didn't pull that number out of thin air. But, it did get me to thinking and I worked out the math on the back of one of his political flyers.
We are quickly approaching the point where annual debt service is around $500 billion (one half trillion dollars).
The Federal government budget is around $3.6 to $3.7 trillion.
Federal tax receipts are in the $2.15 trillion area.
Of that $2.2 trillion, a little less than $1 trillion is Personal Income Taxes.
So, interest payment on the debt, will likely run well over $450 billion for the current fiscal year.
$450 billion is:
...about 12% of the total Federal budget.
...about 21% of all expected 2011 Federal tax receipts.
...about 46% of all expected 2011 Federal PERSONAL INCOME taxes.
So, there you have it. Out of every dollar in PERSONAL INCOME TAXES almost half of it now goes solely to pay interest on the national debt. So, the only error the Congressman made was in not being specific enough in his language. He was, basically, correct in his statement. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together still need a wake up call?
The Federal Government is too big and it costs too much. Repeat until it sinks in.
