NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.

This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth’s.

For years, researchers debated whether sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active. In the past two years, researchers using images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera have detected and reported sand movement.

CONTINUED at Science Daily.

OBO, Central African Republic (AP) — Deep in the jungle, this small, remote Central African village is farther from the coast than any point on the continent. It’s also where three international armies have zeroed in on Joseph Kony, one of the world’s most wanted warlords.

Obo was the first place in the Central African Republic that Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army attacked in 2008; today, it’s one of four forward operating locations where U.S. special forces have paired up with local troops and Ugandan soldiers to seek out Kony, who is believed likely to be hiding out in the rugged terrain northwest of the town. For seven years he has been wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity after his forces cut a wide and bloody swath across several central African nations with rapes, abductions and killings.

Part of the LRA’s success in eluding government forces has been its ability to slip back and forth over the porous borders of the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Congo. But since late last year, U.S. forces have been providing intelligence, looking at patterns of movement, and setting up better communications to link the countries’ forces together so that they can better track the guerrilla force.

Sent by President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, the 100 U.S. soldiers are split up about 15 to 30 per base, bringing in American technology and experience to assist local forces.

[Related: 'Kony 2012' audience dips 98 percent for part 2] 

Exact details on specific improvements that the American forces have brought to the table, however, are classified, to avoid giving Kony the ability to take countermeasures.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.

Almost as quickly as the “KONY 2012″ YouTube video became a viral hit, the reputation of the 30-minute documentary about Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) strongman Joesph Kony crashed. And now “part II” of the story has attracted just 2 percent of the project’s original audience.

The Internet phenomenon that attracted tens of millions of viewers was marred by reports that the non-profit advocacy organization Invisible Children oversimplified the war in Central Africa and failed to acknowledge a crucial fact: Ugandan forces pushed the LRA out of that country six years ago.

Ugandan Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi responded with a taped response on YouTube. AndUgandans started their own movement to counter the KONY 2012 campaign and tell their own story.

Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey said his group’s motives remain the same. They won’t stop until Kony, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity, is captured and tried.

Meanwhile, the group’s second Kony-related video, posted earlier this month, addresses some of the nagging issues left over from the first — and tries to bring a dwindling audience back into the fold.

Source: Yahoo News. Video at link.

The tea party seems to be on its last legs in a state where two years ago the movement was as energized as anywhere in the country.

In a Winthrop University poll released on Tuesday, just five percent of South Carolinians consider themselves a member of the tea party. More surprisingly, just 11 percent of state Republicans and independent voters who lean Republican consider themselves part of the movement.

A year ago, over 28 percent of Republican voters and independent-leaning Republicans identified themselves as part of the tea party.

“I’m not surprised,” said Allen Olson, founder of the Columbia TEA Party. “We’ve pretty much been maligned. We’ve been attached to the libertarian faction, so-to-speak, and they’ve been trying to use the tea party to push their agenda.”

Olson still considers himself part of the movement, but he left the group he founded and endorsed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich after being disappointed with Rep. Michele Bachmann, the presumptive tea party candidate.

The state’s “real” tea party, Olson said, differs with the libertarian faction on property rights, police protection and laws against drunk driving.

“Their agenda has absolutely nothing to do with the tea party,” he said. “They are being branded as an extremist organization, which they are, but that’s not the real tea party.”

CONTINUED at The Daily Caller.

Kony 2012, hyped on the backs of celebrities and do-gooders, is revealed for what it is– a propaganda salvo for a continent wide invasion of Africa. Yes, the mantra War is Peace is once again drumming U.S. soldiers into further conflict.

Research makes clear that KONY is a sophisticated psy-op to muster popular support for what is, in reality, nothing more than a geostrategic positioning vis-a-vis China for oil and mineral resources, as well as an effort to legitimize the U.S. military’s AFRICOM unit in the region through newly-branded “humanitarian” interventions.

It is not only War in the name of “Peace,” but an attempt to empower the International Criminal Courtunder the influence of NGOs and other related globalist corporate interests.

Nobel Peace Prize “winner” Barack Obama has already deployed 100 special forces troops to the central African region back in October 2011, and a resolution in Congress– on the heels of KONY 2012′s viral views of at lest 80 million– seeks to send more forces there for an all out invasion on the pretext of hunting down a shadowy warlord with less blood on his hands than an average African despot.

Top celebrities vying for greater power including CFR member and UN goodwill ambassadorAngelina Jolie, actor George Clooney, media baroness Oprah Winfrey, as well as Africa-obsessed Bill Gates and Bono, have all come out in front of this issue.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

Transparent ploy to legitimize US military invasion of Africa.

The viral Kony 2012 propaganda film has stoked anger amongst those it was ostensibly designed to help – Ugandan citizens – who see through the movie as a transparent ploy to legitimize a US military invasion of Africa.

During a screening of the documentary in northern Uganda, the area that was worst affected by Joseph Kony’s LRA, crowds reacted with confusion, anger and eventually violence, throwing rocks at the screen in protest against the underhanded motive behind the film.

“There are some kinds of people, some kind of NGO who are trying to mobilize funds using the atrocities committed in northern Uganda,” said one Ugandan.

Another expressed the opinion that Kony 2012 was a bunch of white Americans exploiting the suffering of black people on a different continent for their own ends.

As the rocks begin to be pelted at the screen, the Al Jazeera reporter notes that the film “clearly doesn’t resonate with many of the people it claims it’s meant to help.”

Ugandans also expressed disgust at the notion that the face of Kony was being used to adorn t-shirts, a display that they feel belittles their suffering. Of course, the fact that the Invisible Children organization behind the Kony 2012 film is a business empire posing as a charity that spends the majority of its expenses on lining the pockets of its owners explains why the merchandise is just as important as the message.

Americans of Ugandan origin have took to You Tube to express their suspicion and confusion about why a shadowy western organization is whipping up support around using US military forces to hunt down a man who has not even been in Uganda for six years, no longer holds any influence in the region, and is even presumed dead by some observers.

There has also been a massive backlash against the fact that the Invisible Children organization openly supports the 30-year dictator of Uganda Yoweri Museveni, a man who resorted to election fraud last year to hold on to power and has been implicated in murders and acts of genocide against his own people.

“If Invisible Children was in fact a serious organization that has not been co-opted by the Museveni regime and the U.S. foreign policy agenda, the organization would inform the world that General Museveni, who has now stolen three elections in a row in Uganda is the first person who deserves to be arrested,” writes Black Star News.

Ugandan journalist Rosebell Kagumire, who worked directly with victims of the civil war in Uganda, has also questioned the motives behind the film, pointing out that Uganda is now a relatively stable country and that Kony has not even been present there for six years. Kagumire rejects the idea that outside forces should use Kony’s past atrocities as an excuse to interfere in Uganda.

Ugandan-American journalist Phillip Martin also labeled the idea of “making Kony famous,” a key facet of the rhetoric behind the Kony 2012 campaign, as “one of the most disrespectful things” the film makers could have done.

Another backlash video going viral uses the medium of rap to stress the point that Joseph Kony is merely the latest dark-skinned bogeyman being waved in front of a global audience to legitimize western hegemonic interests as part of the contest with China to swallow up Africa’s natural resources.

Commentators have compared the whole episode to the 1997 political comedy movie Wag the Dog, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, the plot of which revolves around the need to start a fake war to distract from genuine events.

An Al-Jazeera tool that tracks reaction to the film from people in Uganda shows that the majority are against the Kony 2012 campaign.

The role of Kony 2012 in greasing the skids for a US military invasion of Africa to further the agenda of Africom is already bearing fruit, with a resolution introduced in Congress yesterday that seeks to expand the “number of regional forces in Africa to protect civilians.”

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Source: Prison Planet.

Joseph Kony has become newly infamous in the United States since a viral video focused on his crimes, spotlighting the notorious Ugandan militia leader for kidnapping children and forcing them to serve as soldiers.

In the controversial video, a father describes Kony to his son as a “bad guy” who must be stopped.

Who else is wanted by the International Criminal Court? Here are the other men on the list:

Ahmed Haroun

Haroun allegedly recruited and armed some of the notorious militias known as janjaweed in the Darfur region of Sudan while working at the Interior Ministry. The militias are known to have killed, raped and tortured civilians. Last year, Haroun was elected governor of the Sudanese state of South Kordofan in an election opponents said was rigged. Haroun has said he did nothing illegal in Darfur.

Ali Kushayb

Kushayb was alleged to be one of the most senior leaders in the janjaweed. The warrant for his arrest five years ago says he personally participated in murder and rapes of civilians in 2003 and 2004 in Darfur. He is also accused of attacking civilians and forcing thousands of people out of their homes.

Abdel Raheem Muhammad Hussein

Hussein is Sudan’s defense minister. He is accused of indirectly perpetrating a long list of crimes in Darfur, including murder, rape, inhumane acts and torture. A warrant for his arrest was issued last week. The Sudanese government said the court decision didn’t matter to them, Al Jazeera reported.

Bosco Ntaganda

Ntaganda, an army general in the Democratic Republic of Congo, used to be a rebel leader. He is wanted for forcing children younger than 15 to fight in 2002 and 2003. Besides those ICC charges, Ntaganda has also been accused of overseeing two massacres that killed nearly 1,000 civilians. He lives openly in  eastern Congo.

Abdullah Senussi

Senussi was the brother-in-law and security chief of the late Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. He is wanted as an “indirect perpetator” of murder and persecution. Reports of his capture in November were later disputed by the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor.

Okot Odhiambo

Odhiambo is alleged to be a senior leader in the notorious militia led by Joseph Kony, the Lord’s Resistance Army. He is wanted for murder, enslavement, leading attacks against civilians and forcing children to enlist. His warrant says other commanders called him “the one who killed the most.” Three years ago, he said he was defecting to get safe passage to Uganda, but only if he was given a guarantee that he would not be turned over to the international court, Agence France-Presse reported.

Dominic Ongwen

Ongwen is alleged to be a Lord’s Resistance Army brigade commander. He has been accused of crimes that include murder, intentionally directing an attack against civilians and “inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering.” Ongwen was reportedly abducted when he was a boy. “He was forced to do those crimes,” his former caregiver argued in a 2007 documentary.

Source: LA Times.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Super Tuesday came and it went and we really aren’t any better off because of it. Going into the big day, the delegate count was as follows: 207 for Romney, 86 for Santorum, 46 for Paul and 39 for Gingrich. After Super Tuesday, the delegate count swelled to 429 for Romney, 169 for Santorum, 118 for Gingrich and a dismal 67 for Ron Paul. Out of the ten states, Romney walked away with six wins, Santorum with three and Gingrich with a win in his home state of Georgia. Ron Paul didn’t win a single state and is the only candidate left in this race that hasn’t gotten a first place victory, at least officially – considering he was screwed out of Maine. At this stage of the race, Dr. Paul is 0 for 23 in winning over states. I don’t think I am being pessimistic or disloyal here when I point out the fact that Paul’s efforts to win this primary have been seemingly all for naught. Then again, his message has reached more people than it ever has before – in that, there is a very solid victory.

Mathematically, Ron Paul is still technically in this thing but he’d have to string together about two dozen miracles over the next month or so to eclipse Mitt Romney in the delegate department. Hell even that piss midget Rick Santorum is way ahead of Dr. Paul now. Gingrich who fell to fourth place behind Paul last week, is now back up in third and after his Georgia win, is now ahead of Paul pretty significantly. Now the Paul campaign keeps telling us that the delegates that the media is reporting on don’t matter and that it really comes down to the amount of “secured” delegates. While they continue to claim that they are incredibly successful in the secured delegates department, I don’t know if their numbers are skewed or if it’s just a pile of giant bullshit. I don’t want to call out the Paul camp for misleading their supporters but all these mystical revelations and inspiring speeches can’t discount reality and reality is that the Paul campaign is suffering horribly.

I’m not going to sit here and type away telling the Paul camp to walk away. Hell, I want to see this thing through to the end, no matter what the outcome is. However, ignoring the fact that this is certainly not working out in Dr. Paul’s favor really needs to be addressed. It needs to be touched on because the strategy, as good as it is at throwing rallies and raising money, somehow cannot turn that passionate support into votes. Where it really counts, this amazingly run campaign is falling flat. I don’t know if there is a way to turn this thing around. The most logical way of doing so would be to continue to educate the fickle and fair-weather Romneycons, Gingrichers and Santorumites. However, these people seem to greatly outnumber the Paul supporters and their brains are nothing more than a thick pile of coosh suffering from decades of indoctrinated neocon rhetoric from soulless bastards pontificating from boutique soap boxes wrapped in soft Corinthian leather stitched with golden thread paid for by Goldman Sachs campaign contributions.

The truth is, that it is the young generation that is getting Dr. Paul’s message and it will ultimately be up to them to turn things around. The true positive of all this is that the old guard is decaying, albeit slowly. It may take years for them to all keel over and die but their message and their rhetoric doesn’t seem to be penetrating the minds of most of the conservative and libertarian people under the age of thirty. The unrelenting truth however, is that even though this message is spreading like wildfire, by the time that this young generation grows, has children and goes on to educate them and teach them these principles, it might be too late. However, a little anarchy and total collapse may be what’s necessary at this point. Maybe the country needs to fall like Rome so we can wash our hands with it and build up something more solid and sustainable. Maybe that’s what needs to happen for these neocons and progressives to finally accept the fact that they’re sick and that their disease has killed a once great nation. Then again, we all know that they’ll just continue to point the finger, divide the masses and pimp out their consistently disastrous formula that they refuse to see as economically genocidal. We have a choice however, we don’t have to listen to them.

I know, this article really isn’t about Super Tuesday, it is about trying to find a shred of hope and promise after living through another dark day in American history. We have to accept the fact that Ron Paul is not going to win this election and he also isn’t going to return to his seat in Congress. We only have a few months left with this man in office fighting for us. So what’s going to happen when he takes a step back and hands the reigns of liberty over? Will Rand Paul or Justin Amash take them and lead us towards the promised land that those of us that understand the mechanics of this twisted game are trying to find? Or does this movement and this mindset die with this election? I am trying to stay motivated and positive and continue the fight for all that’s right from a journalistic standpoint but it is incredibly hard. I know you all feel my pain and my dissatisfaction but we need to turn these negative emotions into fuel. Yes we are all tired, we are all at our wits end and every time Ol’ Mittens or that bag of dicks Mr. Santorum give us another victory speech we want to smash our television sets with our passionate and loud voices. This is why we can’t give up, this is why we have to push forward through thick and thin, this is why our voices MUST BE LOUDER!

We don’t need to look for someone to lead us. We are the leaders! We are the revolution and the resurgence that this country needs. No, I don’t have all the answers and I can’t tell you what must be done next but if we are vigilant, never let up and march forward, the ideas and the action will come. Mankind is smart enough to fix their own problems and to take responsibility for itself, contrary to governmental rhetoric, as they would rather see us dependent on them – remaining zombified and subservient to no end. That’s all bullshit. We are human beings, which is the greatest force this universe has ever created! We have what it takes to lead ourselves again and to defeat this two-headed mastodon. We’ve done it before and we WILL do it again! There really isn’t any other option, is there? We have to want it, we can’t settle for less, we have to see the evil bastards for what they are and not take their lies and deceit at face value. Where is the rage in America? Where is that pure and refined anger that we used to aim at those who tried to oppress us on every level? When did we become such big pussies, afraid of our own goddamned shadows? We’ve become a nation of obedient toddlers that can’t change their own diapers. The cure to this statist addiction is to quit it. There is no rehab, we must quit cold turkey or there isn’t a chance for us. We have to face the fact that there’s no better time to make this shift than now!

Often times, positivity is created by staring into the face of negativity and committing oneself towards making a change.

So the question I asked was, “Who is going to take the reigns from Dr. Paul?” Well, we are.. ALL of us!

When a presidential candidate declares, as Ron Paul has, “We’re all Austrians now,”  it’s inevitable that his critics would try to discredit him—whether they understand what he’s talking about or not. That’s what Matthew Yglesias does in his Slate piece “What Is ‘Austrian Economics’?”

I recommend the piece because it’s highly informative—about what Austrian economics is not.

We’re off to a rocky start with this: “The Austrian school originally referred to a set of classical liberal thinkers with diverse interests who came out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”

The earliest Austrian economists did not make their mark by advocating free markets and other classical-liberal ideas. They did so by proffering a revolutionary positive (not normative) theoretical approach to understanding how markets work, focusing on value, price, and capital, theory. What Wikipedia says is consistent with my understanding of the matter: “When Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and [Friedrich von] Wieser began their careers in science, they were not focused on economic policy issues, much less in the rejection of intervention promoted by classical liberalism. Their common vocation was to develop an economic theory on a firm basis.”

Economics vs. Politics

Yglesias thus conflates Austrian economic theory with libertarian political theory. In fairness, he is not alone in committing this error. Many libertarians do the same, which is unfortunate. Austrian economic theory describes how purposive action by fallible human beings unintentionally generates a grand, complex, and orderly market process. An additional ethical step is required to pronounce the market process good. Economic theory per se cannot recommend but only explain markets. This is what Ludwig von Mises meant when he insisted that Austrian economics is value-free. Anyone of any persuasion ought to be able to acknowledge that economic logic indicates that imposing a price ceiling on milk will, other things equal, create a shortage of milk. But that in itself is not an argument against the policy. Mises assumed the policymaker would have thought that result bad, but the economist qua economist cannot declare it such. As Israel Kirzner likes to say, the economist’s job in the policy realm is merely to point out that you cannot catch a northbound train from the southbound platform.

Yglesias writes: “Austrians reject the idea that there is anything at all the government can do to stabilize macroeconomic fluctuations.” It’s odd to say this without also pointing out that Austrians believe that government causes the instability of inflationary booms, recessions, and depressions. In light of that point, the suggestion that government is capable of stabilizing the economy may be seen in its proper light.

That said, Yglesias’s statement is not quite right. Some prominent Austrian macroeconomists think that in a second-best world, the central bank (which of course wouldn’t exist in a first-best world) should counteract a sudden and substantial monetary contraction. In other words, deflation is not necessarily a cure for inflation. Mises made the point metaphorically in 1938: “If a man has been hurt by being run over by an automobile, it is no remedy to let the car go back over him in the [opposite] direction.” (See Steven Horwitz’s “Deflation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” )

Distorts Markets

“In the view of the Austrians,” Yglesias goes on, “practically every economic policy pursued by the federal government and Federal Reserve is a mistake that distorts markets. Rather than curing recessions, claim Austrians, stimulative policies cause them by producing unsustainable bubbles.” Well, yeah, and it’s amply demonstrated by George Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White in“Has the Fed Been a Failure?” (See my summary, “‘F’ as in Fed.” ) As they put it:

Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.

Yglesias understands that the Austrian theory of the business cycle has something to do with artificially low interest rates breeding malinvestment, but he thinks it can’t be right because “it’s hard to understand why business people would be so easily duped in this way. If Ron Paul and Ludwig von Mises know that cheap money can’t last forever, why don’t private investors? Why wouldn’t firms avoid making the supposedly dumb investments?”

Gerald P. O’Driscoll and Mario Rizzo addressed this long ago in The Economics of Time and Ignorance:

[T]here are profits to be made from exploiting temporary situations. . . . Though entrepreneurs understand [the macro-aspects of a cycle] they cannot predict the exact features of the next cyclical expansion and contraction. . . . They lack the ability to make micro-predictions, even though they can predict the general sequence of events that will occur. These entrepreneurs have no reason to foreswear the temporary profits to be garnered in an inflationary episode. . . . From an individual perspective, then, an entrepreneur fully informed of the Austrian theory of economic cycles will face essentially the same uncertain world he always faced. Not theoretical or abstract knowledge, but knowledge of the circumstances of time and place is the source of profits.

Spending Shifts

Puzzlingly, Yglesias also thinks he can refute the Austrian theory by noting that “[s]pending patterns shift all the time without sparking a recession.” To which, Peter Klein replies, “Of course, Yglesias’s breezy summary of the theory skips over the time structure of production, the difference between consumption and investment, the role of interest rates in securing intertemporal coordination, the problem of expectations, and the other basic elements of the theory, which ten minutes of Wikipedia browsing could have explained.”

Yglesias reveals his unfamiliarity with the Austrian literature when he writes, “Many of the original Austrians found their business cycle ideas discredited by the Great Depression, in which the bust was clearly not self-correcting.” Considering that Herbert Hoover’s and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Dealimpeded the market’s correction process, one wonders how the 1930s could possibly have discredited the Austrian theory of the origin of recessions.

Finally, Yglesias contends that “the Austrian school . . . preaches despair and demands no action at all.”

Balderdash. Since it explains that busts are central-bank-caused and hence avoidable through market-based money and banking, its implicit message is one of hope and optimism. And as for demanding no action, on the contrary, it puts forth a long list of actions for those who want stable economic growth—all of them designed to dismantle the interventionist state.

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, where this article originally appeared.

Source: Reason.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I’m sitting in my room with the Depeche Mode music video anthology in the DVD player blaring through my television speakers. After a week of not drinking, as I’m taking a break after my two week birthday and holiday binge, I find it almost necessary to pour myself a bourbon and light up a cigar in an effort to center my thoughts. But as the music blares and my mind races, I feel the need to just get right into this and just crank it out. Trust me, there are more productive ways I could be spending my Friday night. Last week, I drank eight shots of Kentucky Gentleman on the beach, which were chased with three or four rather large tropical drinks, a few other shots, a couple of beers and half a bottle of Old Crow. My friends and I are pretty sure we saw a UFO over the Gulf of Mexico. Anyway, maybe I can get into all that again once I type up these thoughts. I should probably stop procrastinating through words and get to the point of this piece. So here we go..

There are several reasons why I am not a Republican and can’t really ever see myself as being one. Technically my voter registration card has an “REP” on it but that is only there for about another month. Once the Republican primary for president is over, it is going back to “IND”. You see, I always used to be of the belief that I could be involved with the party and like some of the great organizations within it, such as the Republican Liberty Caucus or RLC, I thought I could somehow work within it to change it and shape it so that it went back to resembling what it once was. I thought that in time and through the hard work of several people, the Republican Party could return to being fiscally responsible and pro-Constitution. Over the last year or so, I have come to the realization that this just isn’t possible.

When the Tea Party came along, everything changed. The rhetoric was different and not just Republicans but people from all different walks of life with varying ideologies banned together because they were tired of the careless spending in Washington and extremely sick of being taxed to death. I never really considered myself a Tea Partier but I did have a lot in common with them and frequented several events. The reasons I attended were to experience the movement and to talk with the people there. Another reason why I went was because the energy was incredible and everyone seemed to truly be in unison. It’s as if people were waking up to a lot of the tyranny and finally banding together to vote the bastards out and put a stop to it all.

Realizing that the Tea Party was pretty much a movement stolen from Ron Paul supporters, who were having their own Tea Parties in 2007, I should have realized what was going to happen. Suddenly, Sarah Palin showed up and the Tea Party people welcomed this big government “mama grizzly” with open arms. Hell, it’s like the Tea Party was a pageant and she was immediately awarded the crown. Then people like Michele Bachmann came along and sunk their talons in. The Tea Party then got in the business of backing candidates because the 2010 midterm elections were on the horizon and guys like Marco Rubio and Allen West seemed like real fiscal conservatives that were going to change things on a real level. This is when I started to see that the Tea Party had been hijacked by the Republican Party and I didn’t like where things were going. Unlike Occupy Wall Street, who successfully kept themselves separate from party politics, the Tea Party was co-opted and turned into the greatest grassroots force the GOP has probably ever had.

Going into the 2010 midterm elections, it wasn’t a big surprise that the Republicans were going to win a shitload of elections and take the House of Representatives back. They did, people cheered, everything felt kind of good at the moment and those of us who are conservative or libertarian had a lot of hope for what was seemingly on the horizon. Believe me though, I was ready and willing to put every one of those Tea party candidates on blast if they faltered. As time passed and most of these candidates didn’t live up to the hype and the promises they made, I wrote about it.

I went after Marco Rubio, Allen West and others and in doing so, it really started to sink in that all the Tea Party really was was a vehicle to get Republicans back in power. As I looked around at those in the fight beside me, I noticed that none of them were paying attention anymore. The passion was dead. Sure, there were still a few solid groups thriving and meeting monthly, if not weekly, but overall participation in the Tea Party and other pro-Constitution groups after the 2010 midterm elections dropped off significantly. I understand that there were no elections in 2011 but the mission was far from accomplished. In fact, it had really just begun.

The truth is, once they got their guys in, they stopped caring. When most of these Tea Party candidates went to Washington and either did nothing or went in the wrong direction, the Tea Party wasn’t there to check their asses. Marco Rubio turned into a big piece of shit, all of which I discussed in Tea Flavored Kool-Aid, Part II: The Fall of Marco Rubio and most of the other big names immediately started supporting very bad legislation. The only two Tea Party people that have kept their promise and continue to operate on a policy that encompasses fiscal responsibility and the Constitution is Senator Rand Paul and Congressman Justin Amash. Hell, look at how many of these Tea Party darlings just voted for the insanely tyrannical NDAA law!

We should all be pissed off because the Tea Party was a force that was going to change things, especially the Republican Party. However, it only served the purpose of changing the rhetoric of the party to appease those who were dissatisfied with its direction. In the end, the rhetoric may have changed but overall the action remains the same. I guess a lot of these Tea Partiers were full of hot air and just wanted to bitch. Maybe it was all a ruse and the real objective was to be hijacked by the GOP and to get their boys back in office. Either way, it is incredibly disheartening to those of us who truly believe in the message and who strive, every-fucking-day, to make sure that Liberty’s torch will still be burning for future generations.

Getting passed all the midterm bullshit, let’s look at right now. Let’s look at the 2012 Republican primaries and see how far this resurgence in real conservatism has gotten us. Apart from Ron Paul, a true constitutional conservative, the frontrunners are Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich! These guys are huge big government guys that are the furthest thing away from Tea Party candidates that one can get without labeling them liberals. Wait, many people do label them liberals and truth be told, these neo-conservative RINOs are really just progressives of the right. So how the hell did this happen?

How is Ron Paul, the guy that inspired the real Tea Party back in 2007, not blowing these statist shitcocks out of the fucking water in this race? How is this even a competition? I guess all the passed around literature and pro-constitution rhetoric of 2010 is just being completely ignored now. I guess the Republican Party has recovered from their 2008 John McCain hangover and just like any alcoholic, is back at the bar ready to drown in the same goddamned devil rum that got them hooked to their trickster demons in the first fucking place. It’s a pretty pathetic display but it just goes to show us all what is truly at the core of the Republican Party.

I’ve met too many young people in my travels that feel exactly the same way that I do. I, like several of them, have been involved with the Libertarian Party. As much as that party is a pretty close match to my political ideology, I am just so burnt out on political parties. Maybe it is because third parties never get a fair shake, as we are all forced to participate in this two party system where both parties aren’t that far apart anymore. Both are big government bullies that have monopolized the political landscape and do whatever it is they can to maintain their power and the illusion that we actually have a choice between the two of them. Trust me, it’s hard as fuck to stay motivated when you’re up against this giant rabid two-headed sasquatch creature.

I wish I had some real answers on how to combat this but I don’t and that’s the toughest part. How can we continued to battle it out with the old guard? How can we continued to stay motivated against a cheating leviathan that holds all the cards and picks who gets dealt what? I think the closest thing to an answer that I can give is that we just have to keep fighting, we have to stay aware and be vigilant and truly understand the system and what is going on around us. We have to call the mainstream media and the lying bastards in office out on their bullshit. Fuck, more of us need to write! Not to sound like a fucking commie zombie but through each other we can find Liberty’s torch still burning. The system and the political process have failed. All the warnings from history have been ignored and we are more or less stuck in this overly complicated mess. It’s time to move forward regardless of the barriers and to never stop, take a step back or move to the side. I think one thing we can do is to really know these candidates, not just through their words, but through their records and their history. We need to know who we are voting for and we then need to hold them accountable. We can’t win if we take our fucking eyes off of the ball once our guy gets in office.

However, considering that so many people who I thought were of the same mind and spirit as myself have now fallen off, maybe I’m just wasting my time writing this. Maybe my words will fall on deaf souls and we’re all fucked. Truth is, it’s not just up to me to make a difference and even if this inspires someone else to get fired up that probably still isn’t enough. I don’t want to sound pessimistic but there is a lot of work ahead and a handful of people can’t do it themselves.