Finally vetting our racist president?

Read here at BigGovernment.com

I have to wonder how long the MSM will continue to ignore and refuse to finally vet this guy.

Big Government’s Ron Futrell uncovers the true Weiner hacker

This is an absolute must read!

And those of you who are from my part of the world – yes, that’s the same Ron Futrell who did sports on Denver TV.

Atlas Shrugged – My review so take it for what it’s worth

My card carrying capitalist son Michael and I went to see Atlas Shrugged last night. I went in with fairly low expectations and came out feeling like I’d gotten my money’s worth and then some.

I’d waffled for the last 2 days on whether I’d make the 100 mile trip to Las Vegas or not. First I was going and probably alone. Then I wasn’t going. Yes, I’d go. Then, nah, I’d wait for the DVD. And finally, I decided to go and take my son with me. His weekend (his days off) are Thursday and Friday, so I’d hoped that he had no plans tonight after work and he had none.  I knew that he’d like this movie even though he’d never read the book and really didn’t have a clear idea what it was going to be about. On our way to the movie, I gave Michael a quick synopsis.

The reviews that I’d read by the so-called professionals who review movies, panned it. The dialog was contrived, they said, although it was pretty much verbatim Ayn Rand. They criticized the low budget effects and scenes. Yadda yadda yadda: elite critiques from the nose in the air “professionals.”

Honestly, I rarely go by what these guys call good or bad. They don’t live in the same world that I do so they have no basis to make judgements for me.

Early yesterday I wandered over to BigHollywood and read the reader comments to John Nolte’s blog about the movie. (Had I not done so I wouldn’t have known that Andrew Breitbart was an extra in the Reardon’s anniversary party scene. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, watch for him – he’s there standing with 3 other men by a small stairway with a lamp post on it.) But the readers are the critics that I’m going to trust.  Hands down, they liked the movie. And when I read 3 different posters comment that the audience applauded at the end, I’d read enough and the plan was set that I was going to see this movie after all. Really, how many movies have you seen lately that the audience applauded when it was over?

We went to the 9:30pm show because Michael doesn’t get off work until 8:30. The theater was half to 2/3 full and to my happy amazement, they were all young people.

As far as the movie goes, I’ve seen lots worse out of the mega Hollywood studios (I walked out of Independence Day- it so sucked.)  And for a low budget movie, it was damned well done. And they were pretty faithful to the book. I didn’t find the dialog goofy (again, I walked out of Independence Day) but then I’ve read and listened to the book so I knew what to expect.  The movie never dragged. The director and producers laid down the foundation for the next 2 episodes very well and ended with a great cliffhanger. When the DVD is released, I’ll be buying it.

I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars.

And this audience too, applauded at the end.

Powerful government versus a large one

We often focus on the size of government, as measured in percentage of GDP taxed and spent by the government, which is an important and measurable concept. But our real concern is power. What kind of power does the government wield over the people? Powerful state institutions tend to be large, but that doesn’t mean that a larger state is necessarily exercising more power. Imagine a small town that adds two officers to its police force. Now it has more police officers, and that costs more money; the government is “larger.” But if the officers now do a better job of arresting violent criminals and protecting the lives and property of the people — and refrain from arresting or hassling non-criminals — then the government has not expanded its power. Indeed, better eight officers protecting lives and property than six officers enforcing drug laws and blue laws. We should focus on what is actually important — the exercise of arbitrary power over others.

David Boaz/The Cato Institute

He’s right. Big government is not necessarily a bad thing, if the people choose to enlarge it and if the people choose to fund it. But I don’t think, for instance, that the Founders had a Department of Education in mind when they wrote the Constitution. (You can replace that department with Health and Human Services, Agriculture or any other big government department of your choosing.) The Founders believed that those “services” would best serve the people at the local level. The people would decide how much government they wanted and how much they would be willing to fund. And those departments, because they were local, would be accountable and responsible to the people who chose to fund an enlarged local government.

The seal with branches that resemble sinister tentacles entwined in the leaves and an acorn, which now has an entirely new meaning in our society.

At some point though, this big federal government power grab took place and some do-gooders and greedy elected politicians in Washington, DC determined that the people weren’t smart enough or capable of determining the appropriate curriculum their children needed. They believed that people needed Ivy League academics, primarily from the Left Coast, to make the rules and determine the curriculum for students in Rock Springs, Wyoming and San Diego, California.

Isn’t it more sensible for a citizen to call their school board member or attend a meeting to voice concerns than give it all up to some bureaucrat in Washington, DC? How can an elite academician in Washington know what the needs and desires of students and parents in Butte, Montana are? What gives them the right to mandate rules and regulations on people 2000 miles away?

Departments like education should only exist on the county and state levels and by the decision of the local citizens to determine their existence or not. It would be then responsive and responsible to the citizens who are funding them with their own tax dollars. The people would be able to determine what and how their children are being taught. And people would be able to decide if those school districts were places they wanted their children to be educated in.

Education is a prime example of a state’s rights issue, as is abortion, the death penalty and other areas that the federal government has imposed themselves in.

As Ronald Reagan said, Americans have the freedom to vote with their feet. If a person doesn’t like the government, rules, laws and regulations in one state, he can move to another. Mark Levin, in his book Liberty and Tyranny, said that the mobility of Americans to relocate to areas that are more compatible to their beliefs and desires is what the Founders had in mind and that this diversity in states is what created a more “harmonious union.” I agree and believe that this is what the Founders believed, too.

Instead, what has evolved from the Founders original vision is a one-size fits all kind of government – a socialist government – where the needs and desires of the individual is trumped by the collective majority and power-hungry big federal bureaucracy.

The Founders had faith and trust in the intelligence of the people to govern themselves. We have gone 180 degrees from that and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever return to what they had in mind.

I am the egg-man… koo koo ka chu

from TheDailyCaller.com

And more from Andrew Breitbart at BigGovernment.com