Living in the Political Age of Ron Paul, American Thinker Article, and Matt Taibbi has Michele Bachmann's Number

After watching this, I truly believe we are living in the age of Ron Paul.  Seriously, who would have thought someone like GOP establishment himself Newt Gingrich would be attacking the Fed as a CAMPAIGN AD!

He doesn't go all out and call for abolishment, but I will take what I can get.  Still, it's a big sign that Ron Paul's influence really is growing.  Here are some more videos of the man:

And the man just doesn't stop.  He chaired this committee meeting today (but no big news from it of course):

Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Ron Paul is currently holding a hearing on legislation calling for a full audit of U.S. gold reserves. H.R. 1495, the “Gold Reserve Transparency Act of 2011,” calls for an audit by the Treasury that gives a full and thorough accounting of the U.S. government’s gold reserves, requiring an inventory and assay of the gold reserves. The Treasury’s audit is subject to independent review by the Government Accountability Office, allowing them access to any pertinent records or locations, including Fort Knox. "The Treasury Department has been less than transparent with the results of its gold audits,” Paul stated.  “It is asking the American people to trust that all the gold is there, while not allowing site visits and not publishing all the data it holds on its audits and assays.  Since most of this gold was originally seized from the American people in the 1930s, they deserve more transparency than a handful of financial statements." 

The hearing will discuss recent audits of U.S. gold reserves; challenges to conducting a full audit; and impediments to an accurate assessment of the US gold position, including any leases, swaps or other encumbrances placed upon the gold reserves; and also examine changes to the legislative proposal that will ensure a full and accurate audit, assay, and inventory of U.S. gold reserves.

WITNESS LIST

• The Honorable Eric M. Thorson, Inspector General, Department of the Treasury
• Mr. Gary T. Engel, Director, Financial Management and Assurance, Government Accountability Office

I had an article in the American Thinker today, check it out:

Obama and the Art of Wooing Big Business

By James E. Miller

Back in 2010, President Obama made the unprecedented move of using the State of the Union platform to criticize the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down any previous limits on political campaign spending by corporations.  

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities."

According to those on the left and the mainstream media, the Citizens United decision will end up making a mockery out of our electoral system.   Apparently privatizing profits and socializing losses, a.k.a. TARP, wasn't enough to do that initially.  
Bombastic progressive and former MSNBC, now CurrentTV (who?) pundit Keith Olbermann, compared Citizens United to the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford in which the Supreme Court famously decided that imported slaves were not U.S. citizens and therefore unprotected by the Constitution.
Dramatic much?
It's funny how the left takes great pleasure in deriding corporate special interests, yet failed to catch that Obama received his biggest donation during the 2008 campaign from none other than Goldman Sachs.  Hypocrisy goes hand in and hand with politics but it's hard to take a group seriously that demagogues big business while their president appoints the king of tax breaks, GE CEO Jeffery Immelt, to head the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. 
Still, even as Democrats and President Obama have continued their condemnation of Citizens United, the Obama campaign has recently advised the White House in a memo to give previous top campaign donors a "sense of access" according to the HuffingtonPost.  This memo was in response to CEO of Full Sail University Ed Haddock, who had yet to confirm his financial support for Obama's second run.
Principles always change fast when it comes to big money. 
The Center for Public Integrity has just put out a report revealing that almost 200 of the president's top donors "have landed plum government jobs and advisory posts, won federal contracts worth millions of dollars for their business interests or attended numerous elite White House meetings and social events."  The report came out only three days after the New York Times ran a story on Obama meeting with two dozen Wall Street executives in the White House Blue Room to discuss his reelection.
I guess those fat cat bonuses have to go somewhere. 
Democrats may love the image of championing the cause of the middle and lower class, but the fact is that they have always been just as beholden to wealthy special interests as Republicans.  Just ask Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her 38 waivers for businesses in her own district for the Obamacare mandate. 
As long as governments at all levels continue to dole out benefits, special interests groups will always be there to throw wads of cash at whichever candidate offers the most goodies, and politicians will always be more than happy to oblige.  The art of statesmanship has boiled down to convincing the public that they can give them the moon.  Farmers will get their subsidies, oil companies obtain tax breaks, unions receive protection, seniors get their entitlements, public school teachers are protected from accountability, and large financial institutions are bailed out. 
Famed political philosopher Frederic Bastiat defined government as "the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else."  The problem is not special interests; it is the belief and practice that an institution with a monopoly on force and coercion exists to provide benefits to one group at the expense of another.  The art of picking winners and losers is best utilized by a market economy, not by the government.
When it comes down to it, President Obama would be dimwitted not to take advantage of the Citizens United decision.  He is, after all, like any other person who acts in his own best interest.  Collectivist rhetoric makes good talking points, but always takes a back seat when it comes to winning reelection.  If he can continue to demagogue wealthy interest groups, simultaneously receive their donations, all the while convincing his base that he represents the working class, he may be a shoe-in for 2012.

Matt Taibbi has an excellent article in Rolling Stone this week on Neo-Con Queen Michele Bachmann.  Check out some excerpts:

In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies.

Bachmann was born Michele Amble in Waterloo, Iowa, to a pair of lifelong Democrats, but grew up in tiny Anoka, Minnesota. By her teen years, her parents had divorced; her mother remarried and brought step-siblings into the home, creating a Brady Bunchian group of nine kids. One of Bachmann's step-siblings, Helen LaFave, would later come out as a lesbian, a fact that Michele, who became famous opposing gay marriage, never mentions on the campaign trail. For the most part, though, Bachmann's upbringing seems like pure Americana, a typical Midwestern girl who was "in a couple of beauty pageants" and "not overtly political," according to her stepbrother Michael LaFave. Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.

If Bachmann has anything on the other candidates, its her fascinating history.  She certainly has an interesting background compared to the others (it doesn't beat Paul's 30 year bitch fest about everything wrong with the government, but I may be biased), but that doesn't translate into electoral victory.

I can't help it, I gotta post another Paul video, but this one has him on a panel on The Kudlow Report discussing the Fed with characters such as a former Fed governor and Mort Zuckerman:

Do I have to point out the obvious?  Which of the others predicted the financial crisis?  Well, I am not familiar enough with the others to actually know, but I would be surprised if any of them did.  The dude in the top left is great though!  Inflation is discussed, though is basically shrugged off.  Inflation may be slowing down as economic growth slows, but some prices, mainly commodities, are still increasing in price.  See livestock:

Speaking of commodities, Marc Faber is still long on gold and silver, but warns of decreasing prices in the next few months.  Get your checkbooks ready!