James Madison's Bad Dream

 The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism. –James Madison, Federalist No 46

Madison was a very smart man, but even he didn’t expect Americans ever to become as passive and slave-minded as they have become. Fortunately, he did have a remedy in case this “incoherent dream” should ever come to pass:

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.

In short, if America was ever a country free of tyranny, it was only because of her heavily armed civilian population and the rights of the states and counties to defy higher government bodies within their local jurisdictions.

Our New Post-American Mission

The hard truth is that it's good business for companies to pander to the rainbow mafia, at least in the medium term. They'll lose a bunch of money for a few months, but we know from the last few years that the righteous indignation of boycotters will fade and everyone will go back to buying Bud Light just like they continue to buy from Target, the NFL, and Harley Davidson.

Even worse, the upcoming generations overwhelming support perversity and authoritarianism of every kind. Objective standards of morality--or even of reality!--are meaningless to most young people. Right and wrong and reason are whatever they feel at the moment, and they have been trained since birth to let other people control their feelings.

Eventually, of course, it will all collapse under the oppressive hate and pain created by the spirits behind all of this insanity, but stock owners and CFOs rarely care about real long term profits nor the costs of human suffering.

Whose fault is this? Yours, mine, and our parents' going back at least another 3 generations. We abdicated our responsibilities as parents to anti-moral entertainers and to an inhuman and anti-God government, and now we are seeing the entirely predictable results. 

The American dream is dead. It's been dead for decades. Trump, DeSantis, etc., are just postmortem twitches. Our real mission now isn't to Make America Great Again, because resurrections are acts of divine intervention. Our new mission is to prepare the ground for whatever comes next.

A Chiasm on Unjust Judges in Psalm 82

This chiasm is brought to you, in part, by one of my Chiasm Course students at Common Sense Bible Study.

• V1 – God rises to judge the judges (elohim)
• V2 – God accuses the unjust judges
• v3-4 - A righteous judge ensures justice for the oppressed
• V5a – They have no [divine] knowledge or understanding
• V5b – They walk in darkness
• V5c – The foundations of the earth are shaken (unstable)
• V6 - Judge righteously because you are a child of God
• V7 – God sentences the unjust judges
• V8 – God rises to judge the world

Knowing that this Psalm is all about God correcting the abuses of an oppressive leadership, how does that effect your understanding of Yeshua's conversation with the Jewish leadership at Hanukkah in John 10:22-42?

Progressivism is Satanism

 ALL leftist "progressive" politics boil down to two things: rejection of YHVH and the accumulation of power over others.

It's about breaking down resistance, not to vaccines or masks or any other supposed "good for you" commandment of Father State, but to people who rage with revulsion in every cell of their body at the mere existence of people who do not worship them as supreme gods. They point to the golden calf in Washington and say "Here is the god that brought you out of racism and sexism and income inequality!" but the calf is just a wooden puppet that dances and speaks on command from these would-be deities.

Social justice is a scam. Progressives don't care about racism or equality or actual justice. They care about power, about dominating their neighbors, and about eradicating the name of YHVH and everything godly from public society. They are modern day Hamans furious and terrified that Mordechai won't bow, and they are ready to murder anyone who stands against them. 

There is no such thing as a progressive Christian. Progressivism is Satanism.

The State of American Politics

 This line represents the normal, human levels of hypocrisy that we all have:

====

This line represents the in-your-face, shameless, mind-blowing level of hypocrisy of the leftist media & politicians:

=========================================================================================================================================================================================^10

They don't even bother trying to hide it. Their elitist hypocrisy is right out in the open and has been for so long, screened from public view by a willing and eager press, that they wouldn't know how to hid it if they wanted to. We didn't see it before because the Press has made it their #1 priority to hide every evil of the left. They don't care about truth or "news". They don't care about children, the poor, justice, racial equality, freedom of speech, or any of the other causes they wrap their perversion in. They care about money, power, control, and corrupting everything beautiful and pure.

A reporter recently excoriated Trump because he wouldn't denounce QANON for accusing the Democrats of being Satan-worshiping pedophiles. I used to think such accusations were wild exaggerations. After everything we've seen in the last four years, I'm not so sure anymore. As far as I can tell, Donald Trump is the only reason we have seen as much as we have. They're tripping over their own feet in their efforts to bring him down, and in the process revealing their true nature. 

I'm not sure that most of the Left is consciously engaged in Satan-worship--many are probably just deceived--but I am convinced that they are entirely owned by him. To be a member of the DNC today is essentially to declare your allegiance to Satan, and I suspect that the filth and corruption we have seen to date is only the tip of the iceberg.

No, that's not hyperbole or sarcasm. The Left is pure evil, and it needs to be burned to ash.

Do All Lives Really Matter?

We hear a lot about systemic racism and nobody doubts that the American people and justice system were once heavily weighted in favor of whites of European extraction, especially Englishmen, but that hasn't been the case for decades now. The plain and obvious truth to anyone who has spent any time outside of the USA is that Americans are among the least racist people on the planet, and anyone who has been in the corporate job market for long knows that if there is any institutional racism remaining, then it is against whites, not blacks. If anyone is likely to be the target of a racist hate crime, it's far more likely to be a white person in a black neighborhood than the other way around. I have never in my life picked a fight with a black person (or "African American" if you prefer), but I was attacked by black people in my own neighborhood many times in my youth.

99.9% of the time, if you obey the law and cooperate with law enforcement in the USA, you will have no problems with them no matter what your race or skin tone might be. When someone is shot or roughed up by a cop, in almost every single case, they could have avoided trouble by not *being* trouble. That doesn't mean that it's always right to cooperate with law enforcement nor that you won't be one of the rare exceptions, but it is a very good reason to obey the law and to be as polite and respectful as possible to all law enforcement officers.

Anyone who needs to be told that "black lives matter" will never believe it no matter how many times they are told, but the message of rioting, looting, & destroying lives will engrave itself in their hearts & minds forever.

Nobody who is countering with "all lives matter" believes that black lives don't matter. NOBODY.  

But if BLM terrorists (if you don't like that term, take it up with the many dictionary publishers) are allowed to continue employing violence and threats as a political tool and if people keep accusing normal, decent people of being evil racists for believing that "all lives matter", then those normal, decent people will start changing their minds. Very soon they will stop believing that all lives matter.

And in a very real sense, they will be right because terrorists, murderers, human traffickers, and traitors to their people have forfeit the right to live. Mercy and forgiveness for the penitent is ideal, but eventually we're going to have to take decisive and unpleasant action to restore order and peace.

From Dictionary.com.

Face Masks and Social Distancing

Defense in Depth

• "the arrangement of defensive lines or fortifications so that they can defend each other."
• "a concept used in Information security in which multiple layers of security controls are placed throughout an information technology system.

A network firewall filters all traffic coming in and out of a network and tries to prevent threats like hackers and viruses from getting onto the network. Each computer on the network has its own firewall that does the same thing in a different way. The computer also has software that checks websites for malicious code, scans files for known viruses, and actively watches the behavior of programs for anything suspicious. A military installation has fences, security cameras, and guards at the gates. Secure facilities within the base will have additional guards, access control using biometrics, passcodes, id cards, etc., and alarms. The personnel are trained to watch for suspicious activity and alert security or intervene when necessary. This is called "Defense in Depth". Everyone understands this concept intuitively. We use it while driving, in our personal safety, and even in our homes. No single element of defense is sufficient to prevent all attacks. In fact, it's impossible to stop *all* attacks. No security system will ever be perfect. However, each additional layer increases the odds that an attack will be stopped before it can do any serious harm. This is also the concept behind vaccines, face masks, social distancing, limited gatherings, etc.. Whether or not each of these layers is effective, necessary, or unintentionally harmful in some other way is another question altogether. As far as I'm concerned, it's all a waste of time, and we should just go about our lives as if this was a bad flu season. Protect the vulnerable, take reasonable precautions, and keep living. My point is that arguments like "If masks stop the virus, why do we have to stand 6' apart" are silly and they make you look silly when you use them.

Echo Chambers of Social Media

On Twitter you can apparently now hide replies to your tweets, not just from your own, sensitive self, but from all other Twitter users too. Other readers have to click on a tiny little icon in the corner to see the hidden replies. If you post something stupid, you can hide all of the dissenting comments from those less able to detect your stupidity.

One of the great things about social media is the exposure it gives us to viewpoints outside of our meatspace social circle.

One of the terrible things about social media is the echo chamber it creates by filtering out everything "they" think we might not like. It gives us the illusion that everyone around us agrees with our fringe opinions, thereby reinforcing our biases and errors.

Peer pressure isn't always a bad thing. Bullying is just the pathological extreme of a normal and healthy process that helps keep our wackiest tendencies in check. Contrary opinions, especially a contrary *majority*, are good for us. We need them in order to stay sane and sociable.

Social media platforms (all of them, as far as I can tell) are hell bent on destroying the social controls that keep us from murdering or enslaving our neighbors on the flimsiest of justifications.

Welcome to the world of Bernie and Trump.

Texas SB1978, the So-Called "Save Chick-Fil-A Bill"

Texas Senate Bill 1978 (SB1978) forbids the government from punishing people for their religious affiliations. Sounds like a First Amendment no-brainer to me.

It's not an pro-discrimination bill. It's an anti-discrimination bill.

In fact, it's really not much more than a restatement of section 4 of the Texas Bill of Rights, explicitly extending this basic protection to employees, contractors, and anyone else conducting official business with the state.

No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.

From The Statesmen: House gives preliminary OK to ‘Save Chick-fil-A’ bill
From openstates: SB 1978 - Texas Senate (86)

Progressives vs Conservatism

I tweeted this yesterday (1/24/2018):



Someone reasonably asked why I thought that conservatives are any better than leftists. (I should have said "progressives", as it's a more accurate and descriptive term.)

Progressivism assumes several things that are diametrically opposed to Torah:
1) Humanity can be forced to change its fundamental nature through pressure applied by a wiser elite.
2) It denies what the Bible says about human nature and the sovereignty of God.
3) It relies on mass violence, theft, and the manipulation of people's basest instincts of greed to accomplish its ends.
4) It denies the right of people to continually reap the material benefit of their own labor and--possibly even more importantly--the costs of poor judgment and refusal to labor.

Whether by re-education, bullets, or eugenics, progressivism seeks to replace God. It repeats the lie of the serpent in the Garden that man can become his own god.

Conservatism has its flaws because it is usually unaware of what it is attempting to conserve. Some of the values our culture once held are clearly terrible and ought to be forgotten. We still have a long way to go. However, conservatism's primary goals aren't to remake human nature or to steal from one person or group to give to another. Its primary goals lie in maintaining an outwardly just society through the rule of law, in maintaining the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society: family, faith, respect for authority, etc.

I say "outwardly just" because conservatism does nothing in itself to address the inward state of anyone. It does, however, create an environment where more people will hear the Bible taught and see it lived than progressivism ever can.

Rank and file leftists frequently have some good intentions: equity of justice, mutual respect, etc., but the philosophy as a whole assumes the supremacy of man and the ultimate inconsequentiality of God. The nominally good motives of many leftists are necessarily applied in a manner that elevates man above God, and it reveals them to be either wicked at heart or hopelessly deluded.

Stand by the ways. Search and ask for the ancient paths." -Jeremiah 6:16

Progressivism is diseased in its very foundation and it only leads to death, while conservatism is only infected with residual corruption that isn't necessarily inherent in its nature. Some things really are worth conserving, and I'll take imperfect over degenerate every time.

My Favorite Fairy Tales

These are a few of my favorite things not to believe in:

• Anthropogenic climate change
• Democracy
• Technocracy
• Feminism
• Flatearth
• Sacred-namism
• Imaginary Hebrew (Yahusha, Yahawashi, Yahuah, Yashraal, etc.)
• KJV-onlyism
• Equality
• Homeopathy
• Medical ex cathedra
• Vegetarianism
• Chemtrails
• Lizard people
• Aliens
• The Religion of Peace™
• The next election is the most importantest election ever
• Transgenderism
• Big Foot
• Every mass shooting is a false flag event
• Russians/Jews/Nazis/Masons/Illuminati are controlling everything
• Darwinian Evolution
• British Israelism
• African Israelism
• And its corollary, the Black Jesus
• Khazars converted to Judaism
• Dispensationalism
• Hypercalvinism
• Progressivism
• Socialism
• Globalism
• Papism
• Noahide Laws
• Egalitarianism
• Teetotalism
• Astrology
• Spiders are your friends
• Pharmacosoteriology
• Serpent Seed/Seed of Cain
• DidIMissAnIsm

I'm probably wrong about one or two of these. I mean, I can't be right about everything all the time, right? But I could be wrong.

Reality Wins, Every Time

Rejecting an argument because you don't like its conclusions reveals a fundamental irrationality, an inability to make sound decisions. An argument should be judged by its truth, not by your gag reflex. Because you are human, you are prejudiced, while the truth is not and cannot be. Truth is never sexist, racist, phobic, or elitist. It simply is.

We can accept the world for what it is and tack accordingly, or we can close our eyes in fantasy and let the winds and currents of reality steer us wherever they will.

When Truth Becomes a Crime

In today's political discourse "racist" just means "expresses (or openly associates with people who express) opinions that meet any of the following criteria":

1. Not approved by enlightened progressives. 
2. Respectful of various ethnicities of European origin or commonly referred to as "white". 
3. Acknowledges the possibility that inherited genes of non-whites might have the slightest undesirable effect on anything that cannot be clearly seen, such as hair color, skin tone, etc.. (The inheritance of undesirable emotional, intellectual, etc., traits by whites can be freely acknowledged without being considered racist.) 
4. Acknowledges the bad behavior of any non-white individual or group. 
5. Questions the integrity, capabilities, or genius of any non-white individual or group.
6. Fails to weight credit for any achievement in favor of non-whites.
7. Gives whites, especially white men, credit for achievements.

When a person is backed into a corner so that he can no longer even move without breaking some rules, when he's guilty merely because he exists, eventually he stops caring about the rules.

A Review of Rogue Justice by Karen Greenberg

Rogue Justice:
The Making of the Security State
by Karen J. Greenberg

From my reading and experience, lawyers tend to see the law in one (or more) of five ways:

1) A necessary framework for civilization, one that keeps us (all of us) from descending into barbarism. Without a consistent and rational system of justice, we might as well go back to the caves and trees.
2) A useful tool for keeping the little people in line. The law is justification for hanging some and jailing others, and a cattle prod to keep the rest moving in the right direction.
3) An obstacle to getting the real work done. The law is only for the people who aren't smart enough or powerful enough to know what really needs to happen. Those who have a more informed perspective, must be able to bypass the law or at least reinterpret it to suite their purposes as required.
4) A protective cover for what would otherwise be considered criminal behavior. With the right spin and pressure, any law can be made to say anything, and that's a good thing for people who want to be able to do anything they want while staying "within the law."
5) A game to be used for the entertainment of lawyers, a professional, high stakes sport full of word games and logic puzzles, prizes and penalties. The only real losers are those who don't know the unwritten rules.

Of course, every lawyer operates in all five paradigms. They're just people, after all, and can't be expected to be 100% consistent. Unfortunately, the only thoroughly honorable approach to law (#1), pays the lowest dividends, so the legal profession attracts and encourages people who are drawn to the other four.

The men who wrote the United States Constitution tended toward idealism and wrote it with the assumption that their successors would also be men of honor and high ideals. The Bill of Rights almost didn't pass for just that reason. It didn't work out that way. We've been on a downhill slide ever since. Today, Washington is dominated by men and women who scoff at idealism, who sneer at honor, who hold the first way anathema and the others as religious dogma. Although they give lip service to the founders' intent, not one DC lawyer in a hundred believes in anything like those original principles. They would imprison Washington, Adams, Jefferson, et al, in a third world dungeon and label the tens of thousands of non-uniformed militiamen who fought for our liberty as "enemy combatants" unworthy of the respect that one human being owes to another. They are liars, torturers, thieves, and murderers. The best thing that could happen to the United States, would be a black hole that swallowed up everything in the Capital Beltway. That would be far too kind to the legal filth who wrote and continue to support the Patriot Act and the like.

My greatest complaint against Greenberg's book is that she was far too easy on too many people. This is the softball version of the story. Greenberg seems to have assumed at least good intent on the part of those who destroyed the United States--and I'm sure many of them actually had some good intentions--and gave a complete pass to some of the worst offenders. Maybe she feared for her life if she told us how bad it really is. I would, if I were her.

(Review based on a free advanced reader copy.)

Only One Answer

We are a nation of prideful sloths, gluttons, liars, thieves, gossipers, & enviers. Our electoral system amplifies our evil inclinations. It even lets us pretend we're actually "doing something" to fix our problems & help the less fortunate, while we actually only make everything worse.

There's only one answer, and it's not Trump, Cruz, Clinton, or Sanders.

Super Tuesday Reflections

Trump's supporters are attracted by two defining traits of his rhetoric: anti-immigration & anti-establishment. That's it. No one comes close to him on those issues or at least no one appears to. Any talk about liberal vs conservative, Christian vs hedonist, Republican vs Democrat, etc., is irrelevant. It completely misses the point. 

The same factors work for Cruz but to a much smaller degree. He's too respectable, too mild, too closely tied to the GOP & financial establishment. If Cruz had been more abrasive, relentless, and believable on those two issues a month ago, he might be close to tied with Trump. 

But he didn't and he's not and most likely never will be.

Liberals Lie about Economics

How many ways can a person lie in a single image? To infinity and beyond!

Like most other images floating around social media, this one is full of bovine excrement.

I'm not a huge fan of trickle-down economics. (I'm a Biblical capitalist, meaning I think the government should leave the economy alone to do its own thing except for a debt-erasure every seven years and a real-estate reset every fifty years.) But this image completely misrepresents what trickle-down economics is actually about, demonizes intelligent, hardworking people, and excuses sloth and financial foolishness.

This is trickle-down economics in a nutshell:

• A large-scale employer gets government contracts, tax breaks, or some other favored treatment.
• The employer then has more resources to develop new products, employ more people, and offer higher pay and benefits to existing employees.
• The employer buys more raw material, labor, and services from other employers in order to produce more of its products.
• Those other employers then have more resources to develop new products, employ more people, and offer higher pay and benefits to existing employees.
• The employees of all of these companies have more income available to spend on the products that pay their salaries and invest in the companies that make them.
• Everybody gets richer.

It's generally sound in principle except that it overlooks (or over-simplifies) the market distortions caused by government favoring one producer or industry over another. However, that's not the criticism of the lying liberal who created this image.

The "artist" makes a number of false claims:

1. The people who own and run large corporations get stuff from government programs and use it all up for their own benefit. This is absurd, of course. Those rich folks can't make anything without putting a bunch of not-rich folks to work, and they can't put anyone to work without paying them. They don't just take money from the government and then party all day without passing on any benefit to anyone else. They take that money (or keep more of their own money) and then they use it to buy services, time, and goods from other people like you and me.
2. The rich don't produce anything for anyone except for themselves. Nobody makes anything that nobody else wants. You like your phone and your TV? Thank a billionaire. You like going to work for that Fortune 500 company and getting paid for it? Again, thank a billionaire. Without rich entrepreneurs, industrial visionaries, and venture capitalists, we'd all be scraping out a subsistence living in a local-only economy. No Internet. No highways. No airplanes. No computers. No cars.
3. Poor people are only poor because the rich prevent them from getting anything for themselves. 80% of all poor people are poor because they don't have the drive to get rich. I'm one of them. I like reading and posting crap on the Internet that hardly anyone will ever see. And it is totally my own fault that I'm not filthy rich. I don't care what country you live in, how smart you are, or who your mamma is. If you're poor, chances are very, very good that it's your own fault.
4. If poor people ever get anything from the rich, it's purely by accident. Some people just like accumulating wealth and will do anything to get more of it. However, almost anyone with substantial wealth will tell you that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. Donald Trump has made billions on real estate, but he never could have done it without paying even more billions to painters, plumbers, electricians, carpet layers, and ditch diggers. And he never could have done it without making that real estate available for other people to use at prices that they are willing to pay. If you pay rent (you, not the government, ya freeloader), then you should be paying a rent that is within your budget. If you aren't paying a rent within your budget, then you're making a stupid financial choice that is going to keep you in the poor house. If you are, then you should thank the property owner for making their property available for you to live in. While you're at it, thank them for employing all of those other workers so they can pay their own rent.

Maybe you've heard this one: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor." That includes Hillary Clinton (What? You didn't know she was one of those rich people who were keeping all you po' folks down?) and Donald Trump who provide you with a place to live and a paycheck to pay your rent and buy groceries.

If you don't like the way that works, change your priorities. Quit making excuses for your myopic life choices. Buy your own rental properties or start your own company. Nobody's stopping you except for liberals like yourself who try to make life as difficult as possible for motivated, self-driven people.

Election 2016 - Jay's Conservative Litmus Test

I very strongly believe that people backing their party's nominee regardless of the nominee's actual qualifications for the job or political views has been a complete disaster for the United States. Democrats cry for liberal policies, Republicans cry for conservative policies, and both parties only get bigger, more tyrannical government.

I'm not a member of any political party and don't intend to become one. I refuse to play that game. I vote in the primaries, but I don't play team politics. I doubt there's anything the Democrats could do to get my vote this decade, and the GOP will only get it if they nominate worthwhile candidates. Bush (all of them), McCain, Romney, Dole... These are the candidates of a party that values power, control, and money, not traditional American values like liberty and faith.

I don't demand perfection. I don't demand ideological purity. But I do have standards. I refuse to vote for any candidate for state-level or higher office who is not wholeheartedly defend the lives of unborn children, who will not protect the freedoms enshrined in the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments, who will not stand against the pervert mob and the invading masses, nor stand in favor of faith in God.

I don't care what party he (or she for the pathologically pedantic) belongs to. If he can't pass these tests, he can't have my vote.

Candidate	Pro-Life	Pro-1A	Pro-2A	Pro-4A	Gay Marriage	Immigration	Religion	Total Score
Jeb Bush	C	C	B	F	D	F	C	10/D+
Ted Cruz	A	A	A	B	A	B	A	28/A
Chris Christie	F	D	D	F	D	F	C	5/F
Rand Paul	A	A	B	A	C	D	D	19/B-
John Kasich	B	C	B	C	B	F	B	16/C
Donald Trump	C	D	B	F	B	F	C	11/D
Rick Santorum	A	D	A	D	A	C	B	19/B-
Lindsey Graham	A	C	A	F	B	F	A	17/C+
Carly Fiorina	C	D	A	F	D	C	C	12/C-
Scott Walker	A	B	A	F	C	A	A	21/B
Rick Perry	A	B	A	F	A	B	A	22/B
Marco Rubio	B	B	B	F	A	D	C	16/C
Bobby Jindal	A	B	B	F	A	A	C	20/B
Ben Carson	C	C	B	B	C	D	B	16/C
Mike Huckabee
George Pataki		C

There's no science behind these scores. They don't represent months of research, just a brief scan of public statements and historical behavior. I might change some of these grades as I learn more, and I'll fill in the rest over time.

More importantly, they don't represent all possible factors that should determine whether or not a candidate is a good choice. Foreign affairs, state's rights, familial history, gut-feelings...these are all important, yet they aren't on this chart. Why? Because I'll consider those things only after I've eliminated the no-brainers. If a candidate gets below C on any of these issues, there's no point in looking further.

Feel free to make your own suggestions in the comments.

Ron Paul Is Right About FEMA

I started smelling smoke on Sunday. Texas is in the midst of its worst drought in recorded history, fires are raging all over the state, and the federal government has told the volunteer firefighters to go home: We have it all under control.

Thousands of scorched acres and hundreds of burned homes say otherwise.

What they say loud and clear is that Ron Paul is right about FEMA and the federal government's mismanagement of, well, everything.

I realize that it wasn't FEMA who sent those firefighters home. It was the U.S. Forestry Service, the same bunch who is letting firefighting planes sit idle on the ground. It's all the same, though. Federal alphabet soup bureaucracies who invariably do more harm than good.

The Statist Opponents of Ron Paul

A staunch opponent of Ron Paul in the comments at salon.com wrote,

All rights come from the government, which is created by the governed to supply them with those rights. There is no such thing as "individual rights".

Since there are no individual rights, this parasite won't mind if we decide he shouldn't be allowed to vote, hold any office, teach, have children, or be in charge of anything, anywhere, anytime. Since the purpose of government is to give us batteries our rights, then it only makes sense to deny any rights to those who would use government to deny them to the rest of us.