STOP OBAMA NOW

[stopkingobama]

Is it bad to hold your pee?

Humans should urinate at least four to six times a day, but occasionally, the pressures of modern life force us to clench and hold it in. How bad is this habit, and how long can our bodies withstand it?

[stopkingobama]

From January, these 9 States will require a Passport for domestic flights

As I mentioned last month,  some states do not meet federal requirements for REAL ID when issuing drivers’ licenses.  And from January 22, nine states will require supplemental ID to allow passengers board domestic flights. If you’ve flown recently you might have seen the signs in airports warning passengers from these states.

Residents of Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Washington will have to use alternate ID forms (passport, military ID, or permanent resident card) to pass TSA security checkpoints—even for domestic travel. Travelers who are not from the nine states will not be affected by the change in 2018. But by 2020, all travelers must have identification in compliance with REAL ID or they will not be allowed through TSA security checkpoints. This was a result of post-9/11 findings that found terrorists could too easily acquire licenses allowing them to move around the US unimpeded. Only 24 states (plus Washington, D.C.) currently comply with the rules set forward in the act. The remaining states have been given extensions (through 2017) to meet REAL ID standards.

Documentation required before issuing a license or ID card

Before a card can be issued, the applicant must provide the following documentation:

A photo ID, or a non-photo ID that includes full legal name and birthdate

Documentation of birth date

Documentation of legal status and Social Security number

Documentation showing name and principal residence address

Digital images of each document will be stored in each state DMV database.

Document verification requirements

Section 202(c)(3) of the Real ID Act requires the states to “verify, with the issuing agency, the issuance, validity, and completeness of each document” that is required to be presented by a driver’s license applicant to prove their identity, birth date, legal status in the U.S., social security number and the address of their principal residence. The same section states that the only foreign document acceptable is a foreign passport.

[stopkingobama]

The Castle Doctrine at work. Thugs shot by entire family

According to this report, a neighborhood thug broke into a home at night.  Hearing him, the father, mother and son who were all armed, fired a warning shot to let him know that they were armed. He kept coming. Big mistake.

I’m not sure how I haven’t heard of this classic example of using The Castle Doctrine before. If you’re not sure whether you’re covered by it, check out this article. 

[stopkingobama]

150 volunteers came together from 29 states to decorate The White House

Yesterday, First Lady Melania Trump held a special gathering for volunteers who helped turn this year’s White House Christmas theme, “Time-Honored Traditions,” into reality. A Gold Star Family Tree honoring service members is proudly on display in the White House East Wing, and historic pieces celebrating holiday traditions – including a nod to the first White House Christmas theme, 1961’s “Nutcracker Suite” – can be found throughout.

More than 150 volunteers came together from 29 states to assist with decorating and baking. The numbers tell the story best:

• 31,000: Number of cookies baked

• 53: Number of White House Christmas trees decorated

• 1,000: Feet of garland strung

• 12,000: Number of ornaments hung

The First Lady thanked the volunteers, who spent more than 1,600 hours bringing the First Family’s first Christmas at the White House to life. She and the President look forward to hosting more than 25,000 visitors during the upcoming holiday season.

Watch First Lady Melania Trump unveil this year’s Christmas decorations here.

[stopkingobama]

"People of the Lie" ~ When the end justifies the means, whatever it takes.

I’ve written about The Big Lie many times over the years, and it’s more in evidence today than ever before in our nation’s capital.  Shock and disgust over sexual harassment in government, Hollywood, and the corporate world is a Big Lie.  Tax reform is a Big lie.  Social Security is a Big Lie.  Global warming is a Big Lie.  Braying over the plight of so-called Dreamers is a Big Lie.  And, of course, any government solution to the healthcare crisis is a Big Lie.

The Big Lie is a tool used by high-level, professional liars, those who are so morally flawed that they are able to apply their craft with a straight face — as in, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”

These accomplished liars understand that the key to effectively utilizing The Big Lie is to refuse to give ground even when the facts threaten to expose you.  On the contrary, effective tellers of The Big Lie are masters at feigning indignation, adopting a sanctimonious posture, and quickly going on the offensive when challenged.

The most masterful perpetrators of The Big Lie are those who wear personality masks intended to deceive.  They are, in the words of M. Scott Peck, “People of the Lie.”

A few examples include:

Media personalities who posit themselves as professional commentators while relentlessly pushing their hate-inspired agendas. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.

Politicians who cast themselves as champions of “women’s rights,” defenders of the “middle class,” or protectors of “the poor” in an effort to win votes. They are, in fact, People of the Lie.

Those who justify the use of violence by claiming to be in hot pursuit of “social justice.” They are, in fact, People of the Lie.

Et al.

People of the Lie have always been with us and will continue to be with us so long as the human race exists.  They do and say whatever they believe is necessary to accomplish their ends, which almost always includes achieving power over others.  In fact, in most cases power is the end.  In his book 1984, George Orwell, through his character O’Brien, underscored this reality when he said:

Now tell me why we [the Party] cling to power?  What is our motive?  Why should we want power? … The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.  We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. … We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end. … The object of power is power.

It’s worth noting that power and force are not mutually exclusive ends, because a person can use his personal power to act either constructively or destructively, and the ultimate destructive use of power is force.  Force is the use of physical or intellectual power to compel or restrain, thus force robs other people of their power.

In bygone days, the civilized world did not hesitate to use overwhelming, retaliatory force to destroy People of the Lie who tried to establish power over massive numbers of people through the use of force.  Despots like Hitler and Mussolini were crushed without ceremony.  Nevertheless, it is obvious to all but the sleepwalkers among us that People of the Lie are in positions of power more than ever before and are taking ever-greater control of world events.

Sadly, this will not change any time soon.  You and I do not have the means to rid the world of lying tyrants, but we can control how People of the Lie affect us on a personal level by being vigilant, well informed, and willing to face up to the truth about who these people are when they cross our paths.

If it’s obvious that someone is wearing a psychic mask — i.e., trying to represent himself to be someone other than who he really is — it’s almost always a big mistake to try to convince yourself that it’s your imagination.  In my experience, when someone hisses like a snake and slithers like a snake, he always turns out to be a snake.

By all means, you should give family, friends, and seemingly well-meaning people who come into your life the benefit of the doubt.  But when it comes to those whom you suspect of being be People of the Lie, giving them the benefit of the doubt can be an invitation to a snakebite.

In other words, at the first sign of dishonesty, it’s wise to resist the temptation to be naïve.  Do you really believe the teller of The Big Lie is going to respond to your presentation of facts by saying, “Gee, I hadn’t really thought about it in that way before.  I guess I was wrong.”  Forget it.  People of the Lie actually thrive on telling The Big Lie; it’s what they live for.

What I’ve learned through all too much firsthand experience is that the most rationally selfish way to handle People of the Lie is to respond with my feet.  Plain and simple, you do not have an obligation to allow a person of questionable character to enter, or remain in, your life.

And what about People of the Lie who roam the halls of Congress?  While it may not be possible to completely extricate yourself from government busybodies who seek ever more control over your life, it is possible to lessen their control by making a conscious effort to steer clear of them.

How does one go about doing that?  First and foremost, by not looking to People of the Lie in Washington to solve his problems.  As recent events in the nation’s capital have clearly demonstrated, the freeloading charlatans in Washington cannot even solve their own problems.

That said, I would suggest it’s a good idea to keep in mind Ronald Reagan’s admonition that government is not the solution to our problem, but, rather, government is the problem.  Then, once this reality is firmly entrenched in your mind, the challenge is to plan your life accordingly.

+Robert Ringer is an American icon whose unique insights into life have helped millions of readers worldwide. He is also the author of two New York Times #1 bestselling books, both of which have been listed by The New York Times among the 15 best-selling motivational books of all time. Copyright 2017 Reproduced with permission from here. 

[stopkingobama]

Committee finds failure at the highest level on Uranium One

By Printus LeBlanc

A little known federal governmental body has been making the news a lot lately. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will be the talk of D.C. after the Uranium One informant soon finishes his testimony. Doing a little research on the committee, it quickly becomes apparent CFIUS is a more significant problem than people realize.

According to the Treasury Department, “CFIUS is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.  CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800.”

In laymen’s terms, it means the federal government can review the proposed purchase of any company in the U.S. if the new owner is foreign and it is believed the company plays a role in U.S. national security.

The committee is comprised of several principals from various government agencies. The members of the committee include:

Department of the Treasury (chair)

Department of Justice

Department of Homeland Security

Department of Commerce

Department of Defense

Department of State

Department of Energy

Office of the U.S. Trade Representative

Office of Science & Technology Policy

Other offices can be included, such as the Director of National Intelligence, when the situation warrants.

The committee has had some severe lapses in judgment that scream for Congressional action.

Magnequench

In 1995 a subsidiary of General Motors was put up for sale. The company, Magnequench made magnets out of rare earth elements. The car manufacturer used the magnets in airbags and sensors. The company would be bought by a consortium consisting of two Chinese state-owned metals firms, San Huan New Material and China National Nonferrous Metals Import and Export Company (CNNMIEC).

This drew the attention of Committee because Magnequench also had another client, Uncle Sam. Rare earth magnets are essential to almost every weapon, communication, and flight system the U.S. currently fields. The Congressional Research Service states the magnets are used in:

fin actuators in missile guidance and control systems, controlling the direction of the missile;

disk drive motors installed in aircraft, tanks, missile systems, and command and control centers;

lasers for enemy mine detection, interrogators, underwater mines, and countermeasures;

satellite communications, radar, and sonar on submarines and surface ships; and

optical equipment and speakers.

Simply put, the U.S. military runs on two commodities; gas and rare earth elements. When the Committee, under the Bill Clinton administration, looked at the sale of the company holding the patents of the magnets to a communist regime and military competitor, it still allowed the deal to go forward.

The sale happened despite the former Chairman of the Central Military Commission in China, Deng Xiaoping, expressing his country’s desire to corner the market in rare earth elements three years before the sale in 1992. Deng stated, “The Middle East has its oil, China has rare earth…it is of extremely important strategic significance; we must be sure to handle the rare earth issue properly and make the fullest use of our country’s advantage in rare earth resources.”

Following the sale, China duplicated the production line in China and proceeded to flood the market, driving any and all competitors out of business. Now, the U.S. military is wholly dependent on battle with systems stamped “made in China,” thanks to the Committee. Is there any wonder how China was able to steal U.S. designs for weapons systems?

Uranium One

Uranium One is the current scandal involving the Committee. Uranium One is a uranium mining company with operations around the world, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The company runs two mines in Wyoming accounting for “20 percent of the currently licensed uranium in-situ recovery production capacity in the U.S.,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In mid-2010, Uranium One announced it reached a deal that would result in JSC Atomredmetzoloto, or ARMZ acquiring a majority share in Uranium One. ARMZ is a subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned regulatory body of the Russian nuclear industry. Due to the sensitive nature of uranium, its potential application in fostering nuclear weapons, the agreement would need the approval of the Committee, which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on.

Shortly after the deal was announced, former President Clinton gave a speech to Renaissance Capital, a Kremlin-tied bank, for $500,000, one of the most substantial fees he ever earned. The bank was also pushing the stock of Uranium One calling it, “the best play in the uranium markets.”

Before the deal was even announced, there was an FBI investigation into an American subsidiary of Rosatom, Tenam USA. The FBI had an informant inside, detailing multiple felonies, including extortion, fraud, and money-laundering. The crimes would make critical players in the U.S. nuclear industry susceptible to blackmail by Moscow.

With felonies being investigated and an apparent conflict of interest with one of the Committee members, the sale was approved. By 2013, Rosatom had full ownership of Uranium One and 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies, which the U.S. already has to import.

Recently it was discovered, despite the Obama administration’s promise the uranium would not be exported, the deadly mineral was exported to Canada and then on to Europe and Asia.

Port Canaveral

In the previous two examples, CFIUS investigated and approved deals despite glaring national security risks. In the Port Canaveral example, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew couldn’t even be bothered to investigate.

In 2014, the U.S. awarded Gulftainer a 35-year lease to operate the cargo terminal at Port Canaveral, Florida. The problem is Gulftainer is a UAE-based company with ties to very shady people, and the port is literally “inside the wire.” The port sits between two Air Force bases, next to a Navy nuclear submarine base, and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, all points of extreme importance to national security.

Gulftainer is a subsidiary of the Crescent group, a multinational headquartered out of the United Arab Emirates. The Chairman of Crescent group is a man by the name of Hamid Jafar. His brother is the person of interest. His brother and business partner is Dr. Jafar Dhia Jafar, an Iraqi nuclear physicist, the former Vice Chairman of the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission, and widely known as the father of Iraq’s nuclear program.

The Crescent Group also signed a joint venture with Russian Technologies (Rostec). Rostec is the parent company of Rosoboronexport, the exporter of the Club-K container cruise missile launch system. The Club-K is designed to look like an ordinary shipping container, except it has four cruise missiles inside. Russia has already sold the system to Iran, and Iran has practiced launching missiles from cargo ships. Robert Hewson of Jane’s Defense Weekly stated, “At a stroke, the Club-K gives a long-range precision strike capability to ordinary vehicles that can be moved to almost any place on earth without attracting attention,” when discussing the system.

Gulftainer also has ties to Iran. The company is a majority stakeholder and business partner in Gulf Stevedoing and Contracting Company (GSCCO), the cofounders of that company, Kuwait and Gulf Link Transport Company (KGL), have been investigated for money laundering to Iran.

Maybe nothing is wrong with this transaction, but the company seems to be at the center of an awful lot of nefarious actions, and the idea that Jack Lew didn’t even conduct a National Security Threat Analysis of Gulftainer screams “look over here.”

CFIUS handed over the nation’s manufacturing capability to China, gave part of the country’s uranium supply to Russia, and opened the door for hostile actors to come in the front door. Clearly the system is broken. Congress needs to launch an investigation into CFIUS and understand its weaknesses while putting additional safeguards in place to stop future damaging transitions.

Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.

[stopkingobama]

Statistician Rethinks Gun Control After Digging into the Data

Statistician Leah Libresco said she used to be for gun control. Then she looked at the data.

Writing at the Washington Post, the former newswriter for the data journalism site FiveThirtyEight explained her epiphany.

“Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence.”

Libresco pointed out, as we have at Intellectual Takeout, that media have drawn misguided conclusions about the effectiveness of gun control in nations such as Australia and the United Kingdom. She “concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be.”

From silencers, to bans on “assault weapons,” to magazine capacity limits, all of the policy prescriptions she had heard politicians talk about for years would be basically meaningless, Libresco concluded upon digging into the numbers.

The truth is suicide counts for the vast majority of gun deaths in the U.S (two-thirds). The next largest death figures come from homicides involving young men (15-34), deaths that often involve gang conflicts in which shooters use firearms obtained unlawfully. Gun legislation, she concluded, would have a minimal impact on gun deaths in the U.S. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

“A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible,” Libresco writes. “We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.”

Libresco’s story was a true “mugging by reality,” and one cannot help be impressed that the social scientist did something that seems increasingly rare in modern society: she changed her mind. As Jacob Sullum wryly noted at Reason, “If only politicians were so open to contradiction by reality.”

The problem is that gun control has become a moral issue in American culture as much as a political one. Take a look at the video below, for example:

  Mere facts have difficulty standing up to moral outrage of this kind. But facts, as they say, are stubborn things.

This post Statistician Rethinks Gun Control After Digging into the Data was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Jon Multimode. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than Intellectual Takeout.

[stopkingobama]

What to get the Libertarian on your Christmas list!

[stopkingobama]

FUNNY: Think we'd get more cops if we did this?

[stopkingobama]

Why? Another record Black Friday for gun sales.

Last year I reported here that the FBI had broken their previous record for Black Friday gun checks. According to the USA Today report, Black Friday 2017, 203,086 requests came down the wires on Friday 24th. No one is sure what caused the bump in requests as there is no “Hillary Factor” this year. The fear in 2015 was that Hillary Clinton would take away all our firearms when she became President in 2016. Then in 2016, the “Trump Slump” never materialized. Look at these figures from the FBI.

Image: FBI website

To me it suggests that Americans are waking up – not merely to the threat of having their firearms taken away by an over-zealous Congress, but to the fact they need to be more self-reliant. Crazies are shooting up people across the land.

To some extent America has always had mass-murderers. The gun death figures lump in suicides and accidental deaths with homicides as well as the single most likely cause of gunshot death — being in a gang — and are not representative of the true threat to Americans of being shot. (I read this stat: The odds of being murdered using a firearm in the US in a given year are about 30,000 to 1.  If you aren’t engaged in some sort of criminal enterprise, and don’t live in a violent domestic situation, your odds are much, much lower, around 150,000 to one.) Most murders occur between people who know each other. But despite the relatively small threat (blown up by the 24-hour news cycle) we all know there are crazy people who walk amongst us. The government has given up on institutions for the mentally ill, and soft judges go easy on white folk with “issues.” We are discouraged from calling in “weird behavior” to the local sheriff  because we’ll be accused of profiling or racism. So we all live with some risk. And mostly we have no idea where the threats lie. It makes sense to tool up.

Anecdotally, I now know of people conceal-carrying in their work places and even in their place of worship, who would not have done so before.

The Second Amendment protects this right for all of us. While there are constitutionally no reasons why anyone should be denied a firearm, the social contract suggests that the government is meant to ensure that We, The People, are safe from “bad guys with guns.” It’s our reluctant agreement to let them interfere in our lives on the understanding they protect us from enemies.

This should be achieved by keeping an absolutely correct record. The list should include mentally unstable people, people with a violent criminal record, and dishonorably discharged members of the military and law-enforcement agencies. Innocent people should never be included on these records and everyone should have the right to a speedy reassessment. Primarily, the function of this list is to be accurate and up-to-date. And yet. Time after time the system fails.

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Session directed the FBI and ATF to look at potential problems in the National Instant Criminal Background Check system (NICS).

Sessions wants the agencies to fix problems with how the military and other federal entities report convictions that could keep someone from having a gun.

The database “is critically important to protecting the American public from firearms related violence,” Sessions wrote in his memo. “It is, however, only as reliable and robust as the information that federal, state, local and tribal government entities make available to it.”

And not a minute too late. Tell that the parishioners of Sutherland Springs, TX. They know the Air Force failed to enter a conviction for domestic violence into the Federal database.  This allowed Devin P. Kelley to acquire a weapon and mow down worshippers in the largest mass shooting in Texas history.

Ag Memo to FBI Atf Re Nics 11.22.17!0!0 by OWNEditor on Scribd

[stopkingobama]

Hunting Dogs! Because everyone needs to laugh

[stopkingobama]

Christmas Tree delivered to the White House

[stopkingobama]

The Crisis Next Door: President Donald J. Trump is Confronting an Opioid Crisis more Severe than Original Expectations

“Together, we will face this challenge as a national family with conviction, with unity, and with a commitment to love and support our neighbors in times of dire need. Working together, we will defeat this opioid epidemic.” – President Donald J. Trump

AMERICAN FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES DEVASTATED: New data compiled by President Donald J. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) shows the costs of opioid abuse are much higher than previously thought. 

• Opioid-involved overdose deaths doubled in the past ten years and quadrupled in the past sixteen years.

o The number of opioid-involved overdose deaths has risen by nearly one-third since 2013.

o This rise in overdose deaths involves fentanyl, a highly potent synthetic opioid, and fentanyl analogs, most of which is believed to be illicitly imported.

• Evidence suggests that drug overdoses related to opioids are underreported by as much as 24 percent, which would raise the estimated 2015 opioid overdose death toll to over 40,000.

• Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States, outnumbering traffic crashes or gun-related deaths.

o According to preliminary analysis, more than 64,000 lives were lost to drug overdoses in 2016, devastating American families and communities.

o This represents a rate of 175 deaths a day in 2016.

• Since 2000, over 300,000 Americans have died from overdoses involving opioids.

THE TRUE ECONOMIC COST OF THE OPIOID CRISIS: The true cost of the opioid crisis has been greatly understated because the full loss of thousands of American lives was not accounted for.

• Using standard economic techniques, the CEA estimates the cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 to be $504 billion, or 2.8 percent of GDP, once the lives lost due to opioid overdoses are accounted for.

o The CEA’s high estimate puts the cost of opioid misuse at $622.1 billion while the most conservative estimate suggests the cost is $293.9 billion.

• CEA’s study included all opioid-involved losses, not solely losses caused by prescription opioids.

• The new cost estimates include nonfatal opioid abuse, which totaled $72.3 billion in 2015, according to the CEA.

o Consequences of nonfatal opioid abuse include billions in medical and addiction treatment costs, criminal justice costs, and the resulting decrease in productivity among users.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS FIGHTING BACK: President Trump is taking the opioid crisis seriously, using the tools of government to aggressively confront opioid addiction.

• On October 26, President Trump directed the acting Secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a nationwide public health emergency to bring the full war chest of the U.S. government to fight the opioid crisis.

• The Trump Administration organized the most effective “Take Back Day” on record, collecting 456 tons of expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs.

• In March 2017, President Trump established the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, with the mission “to study the scope and effectiveness of the Federal response to drug addiction and the opioid crisis and to make recommendations to the President for improving that response.”

• Since President Trump took office, more than $1 billion in funding has been allocated or spent directly addressing the drug addiction and opioid crisis.

o Since April, more than $800 million has been distributed for prevention, treatment, first responders, prescription drug monitoring programs, recovery and other care in communities, inpatient settings, and correctional systems.

o Since the President took office, $254 million in funding for high-risk communities, law enforcement, and first responder coordination and work has been awarded.

• The Department of Justice’s Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit is targeting criminals and their networks that are contributing to the prescription opioid epidemic, has netted the largest-ever health care fraud takedown, secured the first-ever indictments against Chinese fentanyl manufacturers, and seized AlphaBay, the largest criminal marketplace on the Internet and a major source of fentanyl and heroin.

• The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs are collaborating on a six-year, $81 million joint research partnership focusing on nondrug approaches to managing pain in order to address the needs of service members and veterans.

• The Food and Drug Administration is imposing new requirements on the manufacturers of prescription opioids to help reverse the overprescribing that has fueled the crisis.

• The State Department has secured a binding U.N. agreement making it harder for criminals to access fentanyl precursors ANPP and NPP.

[stopkingobama]

Senator Cotton: Immigration in the National Interest

“While we wish our fellow man well, it’s only our fellow citizens to whom we have a duty and whose rights our government was created to protect.” Senator Tom Cotton’s speech given at Hillsdale University.

Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you so much. That is such a warm welcome, and Larry, thank you very much for the kind introduction, as always. After an introduction so splendid, even I am interested in what I will say tonight now.

You know, Larry has had the occasion to introduce me on many occasions, and I’m always grateful for it because he gives such fine remarks. The only complicating factor is the height of these microphones. Fortunately, we’ve worked it out tonight. You know, Hillsdale studies many great statesmen. Two of the greatest would be Abraham Lincoln, who was 6’4”, and Winston Churchill, who was 5’6”. It’s an indication that the truly great men come in all statures and something to which we can all aspire.

Thank you all, Hillsdale, for having me back for my second Hillsdale Constitution Day celebration. At first, I thought this was an encore performance. But then Larry Arnn told me it was more of a shot at redemption. But whatever the case may be, it is always good to see so many old friends and patriots.

In a way, not much has changed since we gathered together two years ago. Yesterday, we celebrated the 230th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution. Earlier this year, Congress was seated for the 115th time under that charter of government. And last year, the American people once again expressed their judgment about our government through regular elections.

But I think we all know a lot more has changed in the last two years, that something more fundamental is afoot. For the first time in all those elections, our people chose as president someone with no high government experience. Not a senator, not a congressman, not a governor, not a cabinet secretary, not a general. It’s worth reflecting on why they did that.

I would suggest it’s because they’ve lost confidence in our governing class-of both parties, in both its competence and its intentions. Government now takes nearly half of every dollar our workers earn and bosses us around in every aspect of life, yet can’t even deliver basic services well. Our working class-the “forgotten man,” to use the phrase favored by Ronald Reagan and FDR-has seen its wages stagnate, while the four richest counties in America are all within inside the Washington beltway. The kids of those forgotten men are the ones who chiefly fight our seemingly endless wars and police our streets, only to come in for criticism too often from the very elite who sleep under the blanket of security they provide.

If you don’t understand this, if last year’s election came as a complete shock to you, then you truly need to spend more time outside of Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump understood those things, though I should add he didn’t cause these things. His victory was more effect than cause of our present discontents. The multiplying failures and arrogance of our governing class are what created the conditions for his victory.

***

Immigration is probably the best example of this. President Trump deviated from Republican orthodoxy on several issues, but immigration was the defining issue in which he broke from a bipartisan conventional wisdom. For years, all Democrats and many Republicans have agreed on the outline of what’s commonly called “comprehensive immigration reform,” which is Washington code for amnesty, mass immigration, and open borders in perpetuity.

This approach was embodied most recently in the so-called Gang of Eight bill in 2013. It passed the Senate, but thankfully we killed it in the House, which I consider among my chief accomplishments in Congress so far. Two members of the so-called Gang of Eight ran for my party’s nomination for president last year. Neither won a single statewide primary. Yet Donald Trump denounced the bill, and he won the nomination.

Likewise, Hillary Clinton campaigned not just for mass immigration, but also on a policy of no deportations of anyone, ever, who’s illegally present in our country. She also accused her opponent of racism and xenophobia. Yet Donald Trump beat her by winning states that no Republican had won since the 1980s.

Clearly, immigration was an issue of signal importance in the election. And that’s because it’s more than just another issue. Immigration touches upon fundamental questions of citizenship, community, and identity. For too long, a bipartisan, cosmopolitan elite has minimized the concerns about these things and put their own interests above the national interest.

No one captured the sensibility better than President Obama when he famously called himself “a citizen of the world.” With that phrase, he revealed a deep misunderstanding of citizenship. After all, citizen and city share the same Greek root word; in its classical meaning, citizenship by definition meant you belonged to a particular political community.

Yet many of our elites share this sensibility. They believe that American citizenship-real, actual citizenship-is meaningless, ought not be foreclosed to anyone, and ought not be the basis for distinctions between citizens and foreigners. You might say they think American exceptionalism lies in not making exceptions when it comes to citizenship.

This globalist mindset is, shall we say, foreign to most Americans. And it’s foreign to the American political tradition.

Take the Declaration of Independence. Our cosmopolitan elites love to cite its stirring passages about the rights of mankind when they talk about immigration, refugees, and so forth. They’re not wrong to do so. Unlike any other country, America is an idea-but it is not only an idea. America is a real, particular place with real borders and real, flesh-and-blood people. And the Declaration tells us it was so from the very beginning.

Before those stirring passages about unalienable rights and nature’s God-in the very first sentence in fact-the founders say it has become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands” that tie them to another-one people, one people, not all people, not citizens of the world, but one people. They’re speaking of actual, particular people who made up actual colonies. And they frequently use the words we and us throughout the Declaration to describe that people.

Furthermore, on seven different occasions, the Declaration speaks of “these colonies” and “these states.” The founders were concerned about their own circumstances; they owed a duty to their own people who had sent them as representatives to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They weren’t trying to free South America from Spanish or Portuguese dominion, much as they might have opposed that.

And perhaps most notably, the founders explain toward the end of the Declaration that they had appealed not only to King George for redress, but also to their fellow British citizens, yet those fellow citizens had been “deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity.” Consanguinity! That’s pretty much the opposite of being a citizen of the world.

So while the Declaration is of course a universal document, it’s also a particular document about one nation and one people. The founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to each other, in English, right here in America-not in Esperanto to mankind in the abstract.

The Constitution carries forward this concept of American citizenship. It includes only one reference to immigration, where it empowers Congress to “establish a uniform rule of naturalization.” It’s worth pondering a couple points there.

First, what’s that word uniform doing? The Constitution only uses the word three times, when requiring uniform rules for naturalization, bankruptcies, and taxation. These are some of the things that could most closely knit together our union or blow it apart-taxation by the central government, the system of credit upon which the whole free-enterprise [system] depends, and the meaning of citizenship. On these things, the founders insisted upon a single, uniform, nationwide standard. Diverse habits and laws are suitable for many things in our continental republic, but not for all things. In particular, we can only have “one people” united by a common understanding of citizenship.

Second, that word naturalization implies a citizenship process by which foreigners can renounce their former allegiances and become citizens of the United States. They can cast off what accident and force have thrust upon them-race, class, ethnicity-and take on by reflection and choice a new title: American.

That is a wonderful and beautiful thing, and one of which we are all justly proud. Few Americans love our land so much as the immigrants who’ve escaped the yoke of tyranny.

But our cosmopolitan elites take it to an extreme. They think because anyone can become an American, we’re morally obligated to treat everyone like an American. If you don’t, you’re hard-hearted, bigoted, intolerant, xenophobic. And so the only policies that aren’t inherently un-American are those that effectively erase our borders and erase the distinction between citizen and foreigner: don’t erect barriers on the border; give sanctuary cities a pass; spare illegal immigrants from deportation; allow American businesses to import as much cheap labor as they want. Anything less is a betrayal of our ideals.

But that’s just not the case. Just because you can become an American doesn’t mean you are an American. And it certainly doesn’t mean we must treat you as an American, especially if you don’t play by our rules.

After all, in our unique brand of nationalism, which connects our people through our ideas, repudiating our law is kind of like renouncing your blood ties in the monarchical lands of old. And what law is more fundamental to a political community than who gets to become a citizen, under what conditions, and when?

While we wish our fellow man well, we only serve our fellow citizens. It’s our fellow citizens to whom we have a duty and whom our government is created to serve.

And among the highest obligations we owe to each other is to ensure that every working American can lead a dignified life. If you look across our history, I’d argue that’s always been the purpose of our immigration system: to create conditions in which normal, hard-working Americans can thrive.

Look no further in fact than what James Madison said on the floor of the House of Representatives in 1790, when the first Congress was debating the very first naturalization law. He said, “It is no doubt very desirable that we should hold out as many inducements as possible for the worthy part of mankind to come and settle amongst us, and throw their fortunes into a common lot with ours.” The “worthy” part, not the entire world. Madison continued, “But why is this desirable? Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community.”

“To increase the wealth and strength of the community.” That’s quite a statement, and quite a contrast to today’s elite consensus. Our immigration system doesn’t exist to serve the interests of foreigners or wealthy Americans. No, our immigration ought to benefit working Americans and serve the national interest-that’s the purpose of immigration and the theme of the story of American immigration.

***

Although when open-borders enthusiasts tell that story, it sounds more like a fairy tale. The way they tell it, America at first was a land that accepted all comers without conditions. But then, periodically, the forces of nativism and bigotry would rear their ugly head and restrict who could come to the country. They triumphed, for a time, with the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. But eventually-but eventually-these forces of darkness were defeated by the spirit of Emma Lazarus and “The New Colossus” poem, with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which again opened our shores and is still the law governing our immigration system today-and everyone lived happily ever after.

Well, if I were to grade that account, not even as strictly as Larry Arnn or a Hillsdale professor, I would give them an F for history and an A in creative writing-because the history of immigration in America is not one of ever-growing tides of huddled masses from the Pilgrims to today. On the contrary, throughout our history, American immigration has followed a surge-and-pause pattern. The first big wave was the Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. Then immigration tapered off during the Civil War. The second big wave was the central and southern European immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This wave ended with the 1924 Act and the years of lower immigration that followed. And now, we’re in the longest wave yet, the surge of immigration from Latin America and East and South Asia, which has followed from the 1965 Act.

In this actual history-not the fairy-tale history-the 1924 Act is not an aberration, but an ebb in the regular ebb and flow of immigration to America. After decades of unskilled mass immigration, that law responded by controlling future immigration flows. One result of lower levels of immigration was that it allowed those earlier immigrants to assimilate, learn new skills, and move up the economic ladder, creating the conditions for mass affluence in the post-war era.

Now, there’s no denying that the story of American immigration also has its uglier chapters: the Chinese Exclusion Act, the national-origins quota system imposed by the 1924 Act, the indifference to Jews in the 1930s. We ought to remember and learn from this history. One important lesson, though, is this: if the political class had heeded the concerns of working Americans during the second wave, the 1924 Act likely would’ve passed earlier and been less restrictionist. The danger lies not in addressing our people’s legitimate, reasonable concerns about immigration; the danger lies in our leaders’ ignoring those concerns and slandering the people as bigots.

But then, we shouldn’t be surprised when politicians fail to understand fully the implications of their actions. Take the 1965 Act. That law ended the national-origins quota system, and at the time, was minimized in its importance. In fact, when President Johnson signed it into law, he said, “The bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

How wrong he was.

***

The economy we’re living in today is in no small part a result of the 1965 Act because it opened the door to mass immigration of unskilled and low-skilled workers, primarily through unlimited family chain migration. And that’s not an economy anyone should be satisfied with.

Today, we have about a million immigrants per year. That’s like adding the population of Montana every single year-or the population of Arkansas every three years. But only one in 15-one in 15 of those millions-plus immigrants-come here for employment-based reasons.

The vast majority of them come here simply because they happen to be related to someone already here. That’s why, for example, we have more Somalia-born residents than Australia-born residents, even though Australia is nearly twice the size as Somalia and Australians are obviously better prepared, as a general matter, to integrate and assimilate into the American way of life.

In sum, over 36 million immigrants, or 94 percent of the total, have come to America over the last 50 years for reasons having nothing to do with employment. And that’s to say nothing of the over 24 million illegal immigrants who have come here as well. Put them together and you have 60 million immigrants, legal and illegal, who did not come to this country because of a job offer or because of their skills. That’s like adding almost the entire population of the United Kingdom. And it also says nothing of the millions of temporary guest-workers we import every year into our country.

Now, unlike some open-border zealots, I don’t believe the law of supply and demand is magically repealed for the labor markets. That means our immigration system has been depressing wages for people who work with their hands and on their feet, for people who have to take a shower after they get off work, not before they go to work.

In fact, wages for Americans with a high-school degree have dropped by two percent since the late 1970s, and for those who didn’t finish high school, they’ve dropped by a staggering 17 percent. And studies say, though immigration has a minimal effect overall on the wages of Americans, it has a severe negative effect on low-skilled workers, minorities, and even recent immigrants.

Is automation to blame in part? Sure. Is globalized trade partly to blame? Yes, of course. But there’s no denying that a steady supply of cheap, unskilled labor has hurt working-class wages as well. Plus which, among those three factors, immigration policy is the one that we can control most easily for the benefit of the American worker. Yet we’ve done the opposite by allowing immigration to consistently hurt our blue-collar workers.

Trust me, I know the response of open-border enthusiasts; I hear it all the time. They plead that we need a steady supply of cheap unskilled labor because there are “jobs that no American will do.” But that just isn’t so. There is no job Americans won’t do. In fact, there’s no industry in America in which the majority of workers are not natural-born Americans-not landscapers, not construction workers, not ski instructors, not lifeguards, not resort workers, not childcare workers-not a single job that over-educated elites associate with immigrants. Because the simple fact is, if the wage is decent and the employer obeys the law, Americans will do any job. And for tough, dangerous, and physically demanding jobs, maybe working folks do deserve a little bit of a raise.

“No American will do that job.” Let me just pause for a moment and confess how much I detest that sentiment. As I’ve said, it’s ignorant of the economic facts. Furthermore, it’s insulting, condescending, and demeaning to our countrymen. Millions of Americans make our hotel beds and build our houses and clean our offices; imagine how they feel when they hear some pampered elite say no American will do their job. And finally, I must say, that sentiment also carries more than a whiff of the very prejudice of which they accuse those concerned about the effects of mass immigration.

But it’s not only the harmful impact on blue-collar workers. There’s another problem with the current system. Because we give two-thirds of our green cards to relatives of people here, there are huge backlogs in the system, which force highly talented immigrants to wait in line for years behind applicants whose only claim to naturalization is a random family connection to someone who happened to get here years ago. We therefore lose out on the very best talent coming into our country-the ultra-high-skilled immigrants who can come to America, stand on their own two feet, pay taxes, and through their entrepreneurial spirit and innovation create more and higher-paying jobs for our citizens.

To put it simply, we have an immigration system that is badly failing Madison’s test of increasing the wealth and strength of the community. It might work to the advantage of a favored few, perhaps, but not for the common good, and especially not the good of working-class Americans.

***

And that’s why I’ve introduced legislation to fix our naturalization system. It’s called the RAISE Act: Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy.

The RAISE Act will correct the flaws in the 1965 Act by reorienting our immigration system towards foreigners who have the most to contribute to our country. It would create a skills-based points system similar to Canada’s and Australia’s. Here’s how it would work. When people apply to immigrate here, they’d be given an easy-to-calculate score, on a scale of 0 to 100, based on their education, age, job salary, investment ability, English-language skills, and any extraordinary achievements. Then, twice a year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would invite the top scorers to complete their applications, and it would invite enough high-scoring applicants to fill the current 140,000 annual employment-based green-card slots.

We’d still admit spouses and unmarried minor children of citizens and legal permanent residents. But we’d end the preferences for most extended and adult family members-no more unlimited chain migration. We’d also eliminate the so-called diversity visa lottery, which hands out green cards randomly without regard to skills or family connections, is plagued by fraud, and doesn’t even promote diversity since Europeans are the fastest growing beneficiaries. No offense, Penny. We’d remove per-country caps on immigration, too, so that high-skilled applicants aren’t shut out of the process simply because of their country of origin. And finally, we’d cap the number of refugees offered permanent residency to 50,000 per year, in line with the recent average for the Bush era and most of the Obama era-and still quite generous.

Add it all up and our annual immigrant pool would be younger, higher-skilled, and ready to contribute to our economy without using welfare, as more than half of immigrant households do today. No longer would we distribute green cards essentially based on random chance, nor would we import millions of unskilled workers to take jobs from blue-collar Americans and undercut their wages. And over a 10-year period, our annual immigration levels would decrease by half, gradually returning to historical norms.

***

And now, given current events, this legislation is timelier than ever.

Earlier this month, President Trump announced that he would wind down over six months the unconstitutional Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. President Obama abused his authority with DACA, purporting to give legal status to illegal immigrants who arrived here as children and who now are in their twenties and thirties. As we’ve seen, the Constitution reserves to Congress the power to make uniform laws of naturalization. Even a part-time, left-wing law professor would concede that the president lacks that power-and, indeed, President Obama conceded it.

Because of President Obama’s unlawful action, about 700,000 people are now in a kind of legal limbo. President Trump did the right thing as a matter of law by ending DACA, though as a matter of policy he’d prefer its beneficiaries don’t face deportation. Democrats agree; a lot of Republicans do, too. So the question isn’t so much about deportation, but rather if and what kind of compromise Congress can strike.

And here’s where the RAISE Act comes in. We can, if we choose, grant citizenship to those illegal immigrants who came here through no fault of their own as kids and who’ve otherwise been law-abiding, productive citizens. But if we do, it will have the effect of legalizing through chain migration their parents-the very people who created the problem by bringing the kids here illegally. Some like to say that children shouldn’t pay for the crimes of the parents, but surely parents can pay for the crimes of the parents. And that’s to say nothing of their siblings and spouses, and then all the second- and third-order chain migration those people can create. So simply codifying DACA without ending chain migration would rapidly accelerate the wave of unskilled immigrant labor that’s been depressing the wages of working Americans.

An obvious compromise, then, is to pair any attempt to codify DACA with reform of the green-card system to protect American workers. A standalone amnesty will not do, nor will an amnesty with vague promises of “border security,” which never seem to materialize or get funded once the pressure is off Congress.

But if we were to codify DACA along with the reforms in the RAISE Act, we would protect working Americans from the worst consequences of President Obama’s irresponsible decision. President Trump has said chain migration must be ended in any legislative compromise and he’s highlighted the RAISE Act as a good starting point for those negotiations. I support that approach, and I’m committed to working with my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, on a deal that protects America’s workers and citizens.

***

But it won’t be easy. Immigration has emerged in recent years as a kind of acid test for our leaders-a test they’ve mostly failed. Our cosmopolitan elite-in both parties-has pursued a radical immigration policy that’s inconsistent with our history and our political traditions. They’ve celebrated the American idea, yet undermined the actual American people of the here and now. They’ve forgotten that the Declaration speaks of “one people” and the Constitution of “We the People.” At the same time, they’ve enriched themselves and improved their quality of life, while creating a new class of forgotten men.

It’s not surprising, then, that the people rebelled last year. There’s probably no issue that calls more for an “America First” approach than immigration. After all, the guidepost of our immigration policy should be putting Americans first-not foreigners and not a tiny elite. Our immigration policy should serve the “wealth and strength” of our people, as Madison said in that first Congress. It should not divide our nation, impoverish our workers, and promote hyphenated Americanism.

Citizenship is the most cherished thing our nation can bestow on someone. Our governing classes ought to treat it as something special. We ought to put the interests of our citizens first, and welcome those foreigners best prepared to handle the duties of citizenship and contribute positively to our country. When we do, our citizens will begin to trust us once again.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the one people of these United States.

Tom Cotton was elected to the U.S. Senate from Arkansas in 2014, following one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the Senate Banking Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Armed Services Committee. A graduate of Harvard College, he studied government at the Claremont Graduate School and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2002. In 2005, he was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, rose to 1st Lieutenant, and served deployments in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team. His military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, and Ranger Tab.

[stopkingobama]

Thanksgiving: A Uniquely American Holiday

Image: Public Domain

Just about every country has a national day, a holiday when citizens stop to honor their constitution, celebrate a monarch’s birthday, recall the day their nation was liberated from colonial rule, or otherwise pay tribute to their country’s origins. The United States isn’t unique in celebrating a day of independence.

But Thanksgiving is something else. Only a few countries set aside a day of national thanksgiving. Most of these holidays trace their origins back to a time when life beat to the rhythm of the agricultural cycle.

Koreans celebrate the harvest festival of Chuseok with family gatherings and visits to their ancestral homes. Similarly, China’s Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival is a modernized version of long-ago harvest celebrations. Germany has Erntedankfest, when churches are decorated with symbols of the harvest.

The first thanksgivings in Canada were religious ceremonies celebrated by English and French explorers, but the modern Canadian Thanksgiving Day owes a debt to the American Loyalists who carried the New England custom with them when they fled to Nova Scotia at the time of the Revolutionary War.

Brazil’s Thanksgiving Day, which debuted in 1949, was the brainchild of that country’s ambassador to the United States, who admired the American holiday. These and other thanksgivings are joyous occasions, but they say little about what it means to be Korean or Chinese, German, Canadian, or Brazilian.

In contrast, the American Thanksgiving is far more than an update of an ancient harvest festival. Thanksgiving has grown up with the country. It reflects our national identity as a grateful, generous, and inclusive people.

When a 21st-century American takes his place at the Thanksgiving table or volunteers at a local food bank, he is part of a continuum that dates back to 1621, when the Pilgrims and the Indians shared their famous three-day feast.

As this book has recounted, the most direct influence on the development of the holiday was the religious days of thanksgiving marked in all of the American colonies. By the turn of the 18th century, the after-church Thanksgiving meal had taken on an identity of its own in New England, and the holiday emerged as a time for homecomings, feasting, and hospitality, in addition to the religious aspects.

The Pilgrims weren’t associated with Thanksgiving until the 19th century, after the establishment of the now mostly forgotten holiday of Forefathers Day and the emergence of the Pilgrims as icons of liberty and the forerunners of the Founding Fathers.

The story of how Thanksgiving became a national holiday is itself a classic American saga of how one enterprising, hardworking individual with a good idea can have an impact in an open, democratic society.

In this case, a penniless young widow—subject to all the limitations attached to such a station in life in the early 19th century—rose to become the editor of the most popular magazine of her era. Sarah Josepha Hale used her position to generate grassroots support for her campaign for a national Thanksgiving, and she petitioned the most powerful men in the land to turn her vision into a reality.

In the political realm, Thanksgiving has sparked debates about core aspects of American liberty. In 1789, George Washington’s call for a national Thanksgiving ignited controversy when some members of Congress believed that the new president was exercising a power that rightly belonged to the individual states.

Other opponents said the Thanksgiving proposal violated the guarantee of a separation of church and state found in the First Amendment, which Congress had just debated.

In the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to change the date of Thanksgiving set off a revolt in statehouses over presidential authority, with the result that half the country celebrated on one day and half on another.

We live in a less religious age than did the Pilgrims or Washington or Hale, but it would be a mistake to claim, as some do, that Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday. It is that rarest of religious holidays, one that all religions can, and do, celebrate.

For this, as in so many other things, the nation can thank Washington, who declared our first Thanksgiving as a nation in a proclamation that embraced people of all faiths. The Pilgrims came to our shores seeking religious freedom. On Thanksgiving Day, Americans of all faiths—and of none—can give thanks that they found it.

This excerpt was taken from Melanie Kirkpatrick’s book, “Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience” (Encounter Books, 2016).

Originally posted by Melanie Kirkpatrick at the Daily Signal

[stopkingobama]

William Shatner on deep-fried turkey safety

Back in 2011, State Farm teamed up with William Shatner to produce a short video dramatizing an actual accident where the celebrity was burned in a turkey fryer mishap on Thanksgiving. As a result of the video and safety campaign last year, State Farm grease & cooking related fire claims occurring on Thanksgiving Day were carved in half and the daily average for the entire month reached a seven year low.

It seems that William Shatner really DID help save the world from exploding turkeys. To get the safety message out in 2012, State Farm worked with John Boswell, aka melodysheep on YouTube, to auto-tune the Shatner turkey fryer video. Called “Eat, Fry, Love: A Cautionary Remix”, Boswell injected the perfect blend of creativity and repetition to create a Thanksgiving safety anthem sure to have families clamoring for a moister, tastier and turkey.

<iframe src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/8t2dwPTnsyA” width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”></iframe>

[stopkingobama]

Everything Is Terrible, I Mean, Awesome

Wow, the daily news is grim. Civilization is collapsing all around us. Corruption is everywhere. The political parties are falling apart. The president is trashing the office. Americans are hopelessly divided and hating each other. Universities have become centers of contention and control. Russia meddled in an election. What a mess.

Right? Here’s the problem. If I weren’t reading this stuff, none of it would affect me in the slightest bit. Consider how we really live. By any standard, life is getting spectacularly great at increasing rates.

Here are some examples.

Life Is Grand!

I was just talking to this lady about where to get the best paper towels and at what price. She is some kind of amazing expert on the topic. A little weird, I know. She knew every brand, every seller, the exact prices, the addresses, and open hours. And her generosity was startling too: she offered to get them for me and deliver them to me.

The lady in this case lives inside a four-inch high cylinder with a speaker. It’s my Google Home. She gets smarter by the day. I just enabled shopping in my settings. I can order pretty much anything I need by having a conversation with her. At some point in my test, my specifications got too complex so she sent me to a web interface at: Express.Google.com.

I like to think I’m pretty savvy about these things, so I’m embarassed to say that I didn’t know this existed. It gives me access to all kinds of stores and allows me to order, same as Amazon but with a much cleaner interface.

She found a 40-pound bag of birdseed that used to cost me $50 for only $20, plus a new vacuum cleaner for…get this..$34. You can just walk around saying things you want (bleach, lemon juice, olive oil, a sheepskin rug) and they show up at your door.

The same lady makes calls for me, plays any music under the sun, tells me directions, pumps out tons of news and podcasts on demand, and even communicates with the television to play a movie or YouTube. She gets smarter by the day. I just found out, for example, that she can also have a male voice.

How is all of this even happening to me? If this is collapse, I’ll take ever more of it.

Technology is changing my life by the hour. For example, I used to be pretty fussy about my music tastes. As I think back, this was due to scarcity more than anything. Now that I don’t have to buy CDs (or vinyl!) I can listen to anything whenever I want to. This has broadened my mind. I forgot how much I love Big Band, and 80s pop, and 12th-century Organum, and the Police, and that Schubert string quintet too, but let’s not leave out all of Mahler’s symphonies. It’s all sitting right there, taking up virtually no space.

There’s a new product too, similar to Alexa Dot. It’s the Google Home Mini, which you can keep in your bathroom or bedroom – actually every room. It’s the same product without the outstanding sound.

Two Years

I’m trying to go through in my mind how much life has changed in the last couple of years. I have a new stabilizer for my iPhone which allows me to make beautiful movies without any shakiness. All my friends are getting full and wonderful meals delivered to their door. Some have actually stopped going to the grocery store.

And entertainment? Wow. I can watch any movie on Amazon, wonderful new stuff on Amazon, anything on Hulu, and all the pirate sites still exist for people who love torrents. And so much of it is absolutely delightful. I’m learning about history. I dazzled with sci-fi. I’m overwhelmed by life drama. I laugh so hard at animated movies.

What else? Oh how about instant video conversations with anyone on a gazillion platforms: Skype, FB IM, Google chat, and so many others. It’s all free. This is way beyond anything The Jetsons imagined.

Communication technology? The platform called Slack at work has liberated me from the endless tangle of email that ruled my life for the last 15 years.

Most aspects of the medical industry are getting worse thanks to government, but not everything. We have better diagnostic technology, better meds, and better procedures.

Currencies and investing? There is a huge market for cryptoassets available to anyone. I can buy and sell thousands of different currencies. And they have liberated me in so many ways. All over the new world, new millionaires are being made. New jobs are being created. New businesses. New ideas. Promising and beautiful things are emerging every day in the crypto space.

Prices are falling and falling for so many goods and services (so long as government is not involved). I used to be in the clothing business, and I couldn’t sell a decent shoe for less than $250. I just bought a wonderful pair two days ago for $100. And suits and ties are everywhere. I got a new Ralph Lauren all-wool double-breasted blazer for $25 just yesterday.

What else? My new book at Amazon stocks zero inventory. It is print- on- demand, same day, and ships immediately. This was unthinkable ten years ago. My e-readers are full of amazing books, some new that I have to pay for and many others that are absolutely free.

I simply cannot wait for cars that drive themselves. I’m starting to wonder how we got along without them for so long. Roads are still terrifying but maybe that too can come to an end.

It’s a new world, folks, and it is getting better by the day.

Dying and Living

So where is the evidence of the catastrophe that is every day being pushed by both the mainstream and oppositional press? Here’s an unthinkable thought: what’s really happening is that one pattern is dying just as another is finding new life. The dying form centered on public institutions, politics, and the managerial state. The living form is centered on free enterprise, innovation, technology, and trade.

It surely isn’t a coincidence that both are happening at the same time.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, economics adviser to FreeSociety.com, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books, most recently Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty, with a preface by Deirdre McCloskey (FEE 2017). He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press. He is available for press interviews via his email.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE.