The idea that a guy who was in Congress for 20 years, reached the Speaker’s chair, then was ousted is somehow an “outsider” is ludicrous, as is the notion that it would upset a liberal — other than he doesn’t have a “D” after his name; he’s a full-on big-government, big-warfare spendthrift with his eye on your money.

That “Mama Grizzly” is throwing her political weight behind him shows that the country girl has seen the lights of Paris…and she ain’t going back to the farm no more. That she was hired on by FoxNews, as many of the failed GOP contenders over the last fews have been is also instrumental: the media giant was once a solid news purveyor that gave a needed balance to the left-end of the Progressive news industry…but since the 2006 elections, Fox has increasingly created media spectacle to push an agenda that is just as Progressive as the “liberals”…just with a conservative spin.

They created spectacle with the 2008 elections, and made Palin a media darling — even those that hate her can’t get enough of her — and they turned the honestly fed-up movement of libertarians and real conservatives of the Tea Party into a sideshow. The station continues to pursue flashy, ratings friendly scandal in this election — both shilling for the GOP establishment’s Mitt Romney while pushing anti-Romneys to the forefronts on a monthly basis…but never, you might notice, the actual anti-Romney, Ron Paul or Gary Johnson.

Media Matters — never a reliable source, itself — has put out an intriguing piece pushing the idea that FoxNews and Roger Ailes have destroyed the GOP leadership and coopted the party; I would suggest this is wrong. FoxNews is pursuing what media conglomerates do: ratings. Their seeming push to control the party’s nomination is less an attempt to place a candidate, than it is to keep up the drama of a rough-and-tumble primary…when the time comes, Fox will push the GOP candidate, just so long as he’s a big-government pro-warfare progressive like Romney or Gingrich.

The mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, attempted to let the “movement” off the hoko by blaming the violence on a “splinter group”, instead of calling them what they are: a bunch of spoiled brats who want everyone else (but especially the “rich”) to pay for their overpriced, underperforming college educations (maybe you should have gone into engineering instead of psychology or media arts), want jobs given to them they haven’t earned, and of course, government intervention in anything they see as unfair. And when they don’t get what they want, like children, they throw a tantrum and pick a fight…with a police state their precious government saviors have created.

The Occupy bunch started off, like the Tea Party, railing against the cronyism of big bank bailouts and political corruption. Like the Tea Party, which originally just wanted the government to stop out of control spending and adhere to constitutional limits, Occupiers have been coopted and corrupted — the Tea Party lost it’s small government libertarian quality to the Freedomworks types that are pushing a social conservatism, and the Occupiers are now full-blooded (and bloodied) socialist/communist agitators. And neither the the groups appear to realize they’ve been had — that’s why the Occupiers can talk a big game about the poor and the working class, yet expect free stuff from vendors they were driving out of business at Zuccotti Park, or block people from getting a days work done so they can get paid; the Tea Party people who were drawn by Browcoat sensibility about government encroachment on their lives, and corrupt spending are now shilling for a big-government, authoritarian hack in the form of Newt Gingrich — the poster child for Republican cronyism and corruption (so much so that Duke Cunningham, the felon and disgraced congressman, has endorsed him.)

It’s time these folks — Tea Party and Occupiers alike — realize that they have become a sideshow to distract from the political class machinations for the elections this year. We being offered no choice — it’s the same pandering cowards on both side of the aisle who want big-government progressivism not to help you, but secure their positions and power so they can continue to siphon your money off in taxes to their friends and families.

Random displays of pique aren’t going to change anything. Only a concerted, clear-headed pushback at what the actual problem is, by both political sides, will: the corrupt buggers in power need to go. Elected them out where you can, expose them where you can’t and push them out.

Thanks in advance!

The only person consistently talking about the Constitutionand constitutionality: Ron Paul. The deficit, spending, and how to fix it: Ron Paul. The others — what you can get from government.

Just remember — those “favors” always come with a price.

It will remove legal safeguards for internet providers, big pharma will be able to knock generic drugs out of the running and keep prices artificially high, and big media will be able to do the same with small media providers. It’s cronyism and monopolism on a global level, and yet another excuse for a massive, bloated, overpowered supranational bureaucracy. And it’s no surprise the law originated in the United States and Japan.

To be fair, the pharmaceutical industries are most healthy in these two nations, where there is enough of a profit margin to develop new drugs, but where the most intrusive, convoluted, and abusive regulations keep their products from getting to the market in a timely manner. Often European markets see the roll out of these products before the US and Japan ever do, but they are also price fixed — another drain on the profitability of creating medicines. I can see why they are looking to protect themselves, but I would rather see a streamlining of FDA rules and the end of price fixing in other nations. We could see a quicker adoption and recouping of the massive investment it takes to get a drug to market (and that doesn’t touch the hundreds of medicines that either fail or never get through testing.)

Drugs are an interesting problem for intellectual property laws — there is a manifest product that comes out of them; I would think defending a patent on the physical product is more appropriate than to tie it to IP legislation.

This is an infinitely more aggressive and dangerous bit of legislation, and people need to come together to stop it.

“If [copyright infringement] was theft and it was property, we wouldn’t need a copyright law, ordinary property laws would suffice,” founder Rick Falkvinge told the Guardian in a recent interview. He is partially correct — intellectual property is a slippery thing; once an idea, invention, orbit of art is out in the public sphere, it is no longer exclusively the property of the artist, his estate, or the big conglomerate that probably claims ownership (worse, they have begun trying to snap up IP that is not theirs, including material already in public domain [spurring a recent court case where the Supreme Court found public domain works could be recopywritten.])

Here’s the problem: once an idea is out in the public sphere, people will use it as they wish. You cannot, for instance, control the use of a popular song — once people can hum, play, or sing it for themselves, it’s not really property anymore. You hope people will be honest enough to attribute the work to the proper folks, but as someone who has had my material show up — uncredited — on the internet, you can’t do too much. I recognize that anything I throw up on the web is no longer mine.

More important than the copyright issue, the Pirate party shows a trend that I’m seeing in young folks here in the United States, and in other countries: pirates are part of a greater struggle — the main ideological struggle of the 21st Century, I would suggest — between crony-authoritarianism and individual freedoms. We see it in the libertarian-based arguments pushing the Republicans (unwillingly) toward fiscal conservatism over the central planning of Progressivism. We see it in the SOPA/PIPA fight. We see it in the vast pushes in the US for more self-defense rights over the British “wait for the police and hopefully we’ll get there before you bleed out” model. We see it in the youth movements in the Middle East which are being perverted by authoritarian religious fanatics. Most especially we see it in the battle for free use and speech on the internet — perhaps the most liberating, democratizing, and for that reason, dangerous to centralized authority (be it corporate or governmental) technology since the printing press.

1) Obama has learned nothing. Bill Clinton got spanked in a mid-term election and realized that his mandate was razor-thin. Obama has learned nothing: he intends to continue poking Congress with governance through executive order (a direct attack on Congressional power which was purposefully designed to stop royal dictates from the Oval Office), he wants to continue with cronyism in green energy — and apparently wants to expand it to the military, he cannot see any of the mistakes he has made. In short, he is the typical bureaucrat: full of conceits — believing his intellect is great, his wisdom more powerful, and his plans incapable of failure (and when they do, it’s the subject in question’s fault.)

2) Cronyism and corruption will remain enshrined in the administration. The president gave us the same speil on degrading infrastructure — (You borrowed trillions of dollars…did you spend any of it on rebuilding roads and bridges? All we saw in New Mexico were signs declaring the still-degraded road was part of the federal reinvestment.) We heard about green energy and a “we don’t have enough oil” toss off line. (Incorrect, more oil is being found all the time.) Federal-backed mortgage refinancing. Because we haven’t lost enough money on Wall Street, GM, and green energy companies…now we’re going to lose money on over-priced houses that people were stupid enough to buy. And he still wants to tax millionaires and higher more…because taking more money from the people that use it to hire people is a great idea. But hey! he’s going to cut regulations! We’ve heard this before and the new regulations cost about $230 billion. The cuts will take $2 billion in BS red tape out of the way. That’s equivalent, right..? At least in bureaucratic math (zeros count for nothing, right?) Oh, and we’re going to go after banks for predatory lending…that’s sure to loosen up the money supply. And, of course, they won’t go after the banks they bailed out (the worst offenders); it’ll be that neighborhood bank that is doing well and it managed honestly.

3) They still don’t understand economics at the White House. Paraphrased: The tax code is too complex! So let’s add another rule to the tax code to stick it to those people who were successful! Worse — he has a “blueprint” for the economy. Blueprints are for building static objects. The market and economies are living things that change quickly, based on the needs, wants, and innovations of those millions involved in it. At every attempt, economic planning has failed. Look at Europe now. Look at the Soviet Union, China prior to unleashing their economy, the mercantilism of Spain in the 16th Century and forward.

It does not work. Politicians do not know better. Even the few that are smarter than a mushroom cannot plan the interactions of 307 million people.

4) The president really like imperial power. He complained about Congress and gave us statements like, “With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions…” He love those executive orders. He killed a massive construction project (you know, the ones he keeps touting as our salvation, economically) with a stroke of the pen, as well as denying Americans more and cheaper fuel. But hey, that means Warren Buffett’s railroad gets to keep moving oil more expensively. Even more chilling to me is the president’s implication at the beginning and end of his speech that the military is a good model for the nation.

Mussolini thought so, as well. So has every dictator. The military is a centralized, top-down arrangement that seems very efficient from the outside. That’s because it has one purpose: kill people and break their stuff. The people in the military have no right to speak against the chain of command (politicians included.) You have no freedom of movement, no ability to call out sick, crappy health care (no dental, practically, when I was in) — you are property of the state.

The SOTU speech gives us a glimpse into the authoritarian, conceited, and myopic thought processes of the Progressives (in both parties.) It’s not a pretty picture.