My name is Edgar J. Steele.

Call me naive. Lots of people do.

After all, immediately after 9-11, I wanted to believe that it was Arabs who did the deed and it took me a whole week to notice the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

And, once Barack Obama was elected, I called for us to come together in support of America's new president. I never imagined that anybody could be worse than George W. Bush. It begins to appear that I may have been wrong about that, too.

I want to like Obama. In fact, I still do ... personally. After all, he is just so ... likeable. Problem is, things are happening on his watch that continue to fracture America and, in fact, seem to be accelerating her plunge into the political, social and economic abyss.

Give him his due. Obama seems to have settled things down with countries like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. However, that merely has thrown Israel into a frenzy. Ultimately, America seems to dance to the same tune that Israel already knows so well. Not that Israel controls America, mind you, but the same shadowy cartel that controls Israel does control America (can you say Council on Foreign Relations, boys and girls?).

Change? WWIII is Change, After All

When (not if) Israel attacks Iran, the response will be guaranteed to draw in America, as well. That, in turn, will draw in Russia and, likely, China. So, even Obama's foreign-relations rapprochements seem to be drawing us ever closer to WWIII.

Domestically, things aren't really much better. There is a superficial sheen of action on Obama's part, but the reality becomes graver every day. Sure, he released those government memos showing that torture was authorized at the highest levels of the Bush administration, but that has served to ignite nothing but criticism. Disclosure means that we have tipped our hand and can no longer employ those techniques because our "enemies" now will be prepared, say the critics.

I have yet to hear anybody say that our forbidding torture actually is a good thing. I have yet to hear any real condemnation from officials or the media of the fact that America actually tortured people. That is just how far our country has come from the days of George Washington, who forbade injuring any prisoners because such conduct by his soldiers would "bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country." And so it has. So it has. Deservedly so, as well. After all, what have you or I done to bring an end to this shameful practice on behalf of America?

And one guy was water boarded nearly 200 times. 200. Think about it. You'd think that just a single experience of thinking he was going to drown would have been enough to elicit anything useful he might have had to say. 200 times shows that water boarding was being used to mete out punishment of someone who never had been allowed a defense to any charges. I don't hear any criticism of that fact, folks. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn't it?

And the bailouts. Oh, the bailouts. Talk about throwing gasoline on a fire! So we have a problem caused by the creation of money far in excess of the production of goods and services to support it? And we hope to solve it by doing what? Creating even more money, of course. And not just a little bit, either. So much more new money that the word trillion now has gone into our lexicon, just as the word billion went in a few years ago after being an inconceivable concept. How long before we start talking about quadrillions of dollars, do you suppose?

And just who do you suppose is in charge of deciding who gets what bailouts? Why, the same guys that got us into trouble in the first place, of course. That's why the banks and financial fat cats all are being made whole and we are being sold down the river to finance their bailouts. No, Mr. Obama is not making things better economically - in fact, history will show that he made them infinitely worse.

Obummer

People seem to be waking up to the fact that Obama, who never before managed anything so substantial as a fast-food restaurant during his lifetime, just might be in over his head and relying upon the wrong people for advice. That's why his poll numbers are taking a nosedive during what still should be his presidency's honeymoon period.

Even so, I still kind of like the guy. He just seems so naive, is the problem. He is allowing others to dictate policy, both foreign and domestic, and they are the same old clique (all together now: Council on Foreign Relations). That's why the Obama administration actually looks a lot like the Bush administration, folks.

Obama has announced his clear intent to legalize the illegal aliens now in America. Similarly, Obama shows a clear disregard for policing our southern border.

Obama has usurped the upcoming census and placed it under the control of ACORN, the private association of hired guns proven to have committed so much election fraud during the past two elections. Guess what is about to happen to the reported demographics that determine electoral districts and representatives - not that it will make any difference, that is?

In a very recent appellate court hearing (Jewel v. NSA), Obama's Justice Department lawyers actually argued for even greater immunity in conducting warrantless wiretapping of Americans than did Bush's! As a candidate for the Presidency, Obama decried the use of what is known as the "state secrets" privilege by the Bush administration. Yet, as President, Obama now argues for its unprecedented extension, so as to provide unlimited immunity to the government for spying on all of us.

The only reason that congress is not moving forward with Obama's expressed desire to confiscate our guns is the fact that his election created such a boom in gun and ammunition sales that many stores post a picture of President Obama with the legend "Salesman of the Year" beneath it. And just try to go buy ammunition these days.

Ozzie & Harriet: Domestic Terrorists

The Department of Homeland Security, in a report that Obama has refused to disavow, has identified the vast majority of Americans as potential domestic terrorists. Returning military veterans are a danger because of their training, not to mention the fact that they become disaffected by being mistreated by the very government that sent them overseas to fight and die. Good enough to carry a gun and kill Arabs for Israel, but too dangerous to own a gun now that they have returned home.

Opposed to illegal immigration? You are a potential terrorist, says DHS.

Opposed to gun confiscation? Yep, you are a potential terrorist, too.

Unemployed? Can't get credit? Look out, because you could be a terrorist.

Know anybody who expresses dissatisfaction with our federal government? DHS would like you to report those individuals immediately to both itself and the FBI because they could be terrorists.

The U.S. vs. us

Did you attend one of the thousands of "TEA parties" held throughout America recently? The FBI and DHS likely photographed you and recorded your license plate number because you are a prime suspect of being a domestic terrorist. What's more, agents of the FBI and DHS followed orders in covertly gathering this data about attendees, particularly keeping their presence secret from state and local authorities.

Seriously, now - does it sound as though Obama is changing anything for the better? Could things get any worse, do you suppose? In a word - yes. Hold on, because they sure aren't going to get better for a long, long time.

I've just received word that this Spring's record late freeze has destroyed approximately 75% of Oklahoma's 2009 wheat crop. This is a deadly serious fact, folks, one that has been repeated not only across all of America, but also throughout the Northern Hemisphere's entire grain belt. I'm sure that the total damage already has been estimated by government officials, but don't expect to hear the figures anytime soon. The implications are enormous. While I already had been predicting food riots for next year, the current wheat crop failures absolutely guarantee that they will take place.

Obama: Chains You Can Believe In

Get ready for martial law, folks. I predict that we will see it enacted sometime next year, if not as early as this coming Fall.

Get ready for serious food shortages. The climate change responsible for one of the worst winters on record in America is continuing and seems to support an inference that we are entering a "mini ice age" such as that endured during the Middle Ages.

Get ready for rioting in the streets of our cities.

Get ready for gun confiscation.

And all you potential domestic terrorists? Get ready to be arrested and held indefinitely without charges. With luck, we may avoid water boarding, but that is about the best for which we can hope.

Martial law means no transportation, no Internet, no cell phones, no freedom of any sort. Complete lockdown. Possibly in the company of a new "9-11" in the form of the disease pandemic that Dick Cheney so often has promised us. Already, mass media is so controlled that we likely will see no change in TV or the few newspapers that anybody bothers to read these days.

You think things are bad right now? You ain't seen nothing yet.

New America - an idea whose time has come.

My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.NickelRant.com, for other messages just like this one.

-ed

Copyright ©2009, Edgar J. Steele

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E.J,. Steele's Nickle Rant 4/15/09

Idaho - You Can See New America From Here
by Edgar J. Steele

April 15, 2009

"Between the silence of the mountains
"And the crashing of the sea
"There lies a land I once lived in
"And she's waiting there for me."
--- Moody Blues, Question, from A Question of Balance (Justin Hayward, 1970)

Audio files of Idaho - You Can See New America From Here: Formal Rant Only - (24 mb, 26 min) I:mp3 II:mp3 streaming mp3 Entire Broadcast - (14 mb, 60 min) mp3 streaming mp3

4-8-09 - Christians? In America? mp3 audio 4-1-09 - Ed Gov, Not Fed Gov mp3 audio 3-25-09 - We're All Terrorists Now mp3 audio 3-18-09 - Second Annual State of the Revolution mp3 audio 3-11-09 - The Road to Hell is Paved with Bailout Money mp3 audio

"The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority ... it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people."
--- Frank Cobb, Editor, New York World (1920)

My name is Edgar J. Steele.

America is sick. No news there. Like a patient with a fever, America seems dazed and confused. She knows that there is something gravely wrong, but just can't quite seem to put her finger on the root cause.

We are way past the stage when rest and a little medication will help America's natural immune system to overcome her problems. As with a severely disease-ravaged body, the time has come for surgery. Just as a ruptured appendix will kill you, so will America's current malady kill her without radical surgery. We must excise the real problem.

Government is the Problem, not the Solution

And what, exactly, is the problem, you ask? Easy. Government. Federal government, in particular, though government at all levels has come to be part of the problem. Like a cancer left unchecked, the disease has metastasized to all parts of the body politic.

Today's "Tea Parties," held throughout America, merely are a symptom of America's disease, much as a patient's lunatic ravings are symptoms of an advanced fever. And, like the lunatic ravings of a fevered patient, these public meetings, protests and outcries will do little good. Petitions? A total waste of time.

Nor will the media do justice to the public protests. The media is part of the disease, you see. It is no accident that flagship newspapers throughout America are running aground and ceasing operations. They lost their way and stopped reporting the news, becoming mere parrots for establishment thinking. Little wonder that we stopped reading them. Less wonder that TV news has become a mere parody of its former self, becoming primarily entertainment for the masses of unfurrowed brows now populating America's vast wasteland.

However, like a patient slipping in and out of the grip of a mounting fever, there are pockets of lucidity apparent throughout America. The Tea Parties are symptoms of those lucid moments. More substantial, though, is the growing anti-Federal-overreaching sentiment being expressed in state legislatures, best exemplified by Idaho's recent sovereignty and anti-gun-confiscation legislation.

I rail against the bureaucratic and mindless nature of Idaho government at all levels, but the fact is that Idaho is light years ahead of such bastions of communism as California, Massachusetts and New York. Nor is it a coincidence that those three states are among the most financially troubled and corrupt states in the country.

Idaho - You Can See New America From Here

Idaho isn't ideal, by any stretch of the imagination. Idaho needs a major overhaul, beginning with the way in which she bows to Federal pressure. Idaho certainly isn't New America, but you can see New America from here.

Recently, I posed the following question to the primary list that receives these rants of mine: Should I seek the Constitution Party nomination for Governor of Idaho in the 2010 election? The response was overwhelming and uniformly positive. In fact, you were wildly supportive. What I didn't expect - what came as a real shock to me - was the high percentage of out-of-state respondents who stated that they would move to Idaho if I won the Governorship. A great many said they would move here if I simply ran, then offered to help in the campaign.

I have tried to respond to each and every one of those email replies, something I simply cannot normally do, because of the sheer quantity of them. Thank you so much for your outpouring of support. Know that I read your emails - all of them - every single week. Please understand that I simply cannot answer or acknowledge but a handful. Again, however, I read them all and they all have influence upon my thinking.

But it is the obvious yearning for real change that is apparent in the many hundreds (well over a thousand) of emails I received, particularly those who expressed a desire to move to Idaho. That desire for change is what elected Obama, of course. And that is what is beginning to sink his poll numbers, as America realizes that his rhetoric about change was simply that - rhetoric. I find it particularly ironic to listen to MSNBC news anchors report that Obama's poll numbers exceed 75% when MSNBC's own on-line poll clearly shows 60% of Americans disapproving or outright hating the man's performance as President.

Bush on Steroids

It is a relief to be rid of Bush, to be sure, but we still have the Bush mentality astride America. We still are in Iraq and we are there for good, too, as Obama's administration finally has admitted. Any Iraqi troop drawdown will be sent to Afghanistan, where we actually are expanding the war, not to mention north Pakistan where America now is conducting extensive bombing, as well. Gitmo still operates. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive warfare lives on. Domestically, personal liberty shrinks daily while the Department of Homeland Security operates more and more like the new Gestapo.

Probably, it is just coincidence, but have you ever noticed: Rearrange the letters in the name "Barack Obama," drop a couple, add a few others and you end up with the phrase "George W. Bush on steroids." Coincidence? You be the judge.

SPENDING vs. spending

W's tax and spend has become TAX AND SPEND under Obama. We have gone beyond simply saddling future generations with debt to be repaid for our current profligacy. Now America has sailed into uncharted (for her) waters by assuming debt that clearly never can be repaid. Debt that will bankrupt America with even a nominal increase in interest rates, in fact.

Depression? Yes, this is a Depression, though they will not admit it until it becomes all too obvious to more than just a few of us. Now, however, we have laid the groundwork for inflation akin to that experienced by Germany between last century's major wars - what is known as Weimar inflation. In the process, America's entire middle class will be dropped down to the poverty level. We have no more than another three years, in my opinion, before the real financial troubles grip all of us.

You know this, of course. You have read my rants and, possibly, my book by now. You have read others', as well. You know what is coming, though you may yet have hope that the worst can be averted. It cannot. The time is past for normal measures. Now the time has come for major surgery.

Two Choices: Count 'em - Two!

We have two choices: revolution or secession. We cannot work within the system because the system has frozen us out and refuses to allow us back in. Our "elected" representatives view us with disdain and more than a little fear. Why else do you think they are strengthening the enabling legislation for the woefully-named Patriot Acts and, now, openly discussing gun registration and confiscation?

The Federal government is lost to us and running full force into the arms of the New World Order, per the orders of the real masters of America: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), composed of some of the most evil men and women ever to inhabit Washington, DC.

Why else do you think that CFR-member bankers are being bailed out right and left while we are left to flail hopelessly in an ever-rising tide of debt and regulation? Why else do you think that AIG, which still pays its executives million-dollar bonuses for failing, is given billions upon billions of our tax dollars, which it then dutifully funnels to the banks and congressional pension funds that it insures? Why else do you think that major corporations that should have gone under long ago are being shored up with your tax dollars? Not to save the workers' jobs, because our "leaders" certainly care nothing for them, but to save the banks and insurance companies who have propped up those failing corporations.

Just as Russia was looted late last century and left for dead, so is America now being looted - and by the same tribe of people. America will be left just as hollowed out as was Russia, unless we do something about it and do it quickly.

I sometimes come in for criticism for not advocating revolution in America, which is something that our founding fathers, if alive today, certainly would foment. I like to visualize George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine magically transported to this time, then setting off for Washington, DC in a red Cadillac convertible with a road map in one hand and a bazooka in the other. However, I cannot espouse violent revolution, folks. First, it goes against my basic, non-violent nature. Second, it is illegal and would get me arrested in a heartbeat. Just how much good would I be able to accomplish from a jail cell?

Used to be, I advocated change within the system. Then, when it became apparent, during the Bush administration, that such change was impossible, I began to advocate preparing for the inevitable collapse, both financial and, possibly, militarily at the hands of those that we have offended internationally (which includes everybody else in the world by now). Picking up the pieces was my new strategy for New America, which I envisioned rising, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of a fallen America.

While I still believe in preparing for the worst, I have become hopeful of a new avenue: secession on a state-by-state basis. Call it wishful thinking, if you like, but secession still strikes me as a viable alternative to simply waiting for the coming apocalypse.

Yes, Lincoln seemed to foreclose the possibility of secession with his War of Northern Aggression (you may know it as the Civil War), wherein he oversaw the wholesale slaughter of brothers by brothers in pursuit of his unconstitutional objective of "preserving the Union," which didn't then deserve to be preserved, as proven by the manner in which the North manhandled the South during the period we laughingly call "The Reconstruction."

I submit that today's Union - today's America - has lost its legitimacy even moreso than did Lincoln's and I call for a modern wholesale secession by the various States now making up the United States. I call for this to be an orderly, lawful and peaceful secession. A non-violent revolution of a sort, in fact.

The United District of America

Just imagine, for a moment, the result if all 50 states were to secede at once, leaving the Federal government to preside over merely the District of Columbia. The states then could recall all of their men in uniform from wherever posted, seize all federal property within their boundaries and demand that all federal employees either throw in their lot with the state or move to the District of Columbia. There literally would be nothing the Federal government could do about its well-deserved predicament, particularly with its major tax revenue sources cut off.

Secession is Our Legal Right

The Constitution certainly has the legal basis for secession still in place: It resides within the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states and the people all "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states." You see, because secession is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution or its Amendments, such power resides still within the states themselves and the people. This is a crucial fact that we must keep in mind at all times.

Similarly, the legal precedent for secession is laid out in America's Declaration of Independence: "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government ... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security."

It is the utmost in irony that none other than Abraham Lincoln, who did more single-handed damage to the US Constitution than, even, George W. Bush, rose up in Congress in January 1848 before he became President and stated: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." Mind you, Lincoln meant even down to neighborhoods being able to secede from the Union.

The US Constitution: a Breached Contract

View the Constitution as a contract between us, the States and the Federal government. The Federal government has breached that contract in more ways than I have hours left in my life in which to recount its transgressions against all of us, both individually and as States.

For example, though its duties are few, the Federal government simply refuses to perform many of them:

Rather than "provide for our common defense," our Federal government initiates foreign wars without provocation and without congressional declaration - wars that actually heighten the danger of our being attacked from without. Similarly, it refuses to protect our southern border and declines to protect us from the de facto invasion by countries to our south.

The Federal government has abdicated its responsibility to "coin money (and) regulate the value thereof" by delegating to a private, foreign-owned corporation (the Federal Reserve Bank) that duty, which has managed to steal 98 cents out of every dollar issued since its inception in 1913. This single failing is responsible for the current financial catastrophe now befalling America.

Rather than "provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia...reserving to the States...the appointment of the officers and the authority of training the Militia," the Federal government has done its best to destroy anything resembling militias in America, preferring instead to implement an unconstitutional and permanent "standing army."

"The privilege of Habeas Corpus" repeatedly has been suspended in direct contravention of the US Constitution.

Our system of lobbying, campaign funding and proven election fraud on the part of officials has robbed us of our constitutional guarantee of a "republican form of government," accountable directly "to the people."

We have installed as President a person who is not "a natural born citizen" and, quite possibly, not even "a citizen of the United States," incredible as that may be to contemplate, let alone comprehend.

Previously, I have written at length as to how each and every single element of the Constitution's Bill of Rights has been abrogated or abridged by unconstitutional legislation, ultra vires judicial decisions and by executive fiat. Very little remains of the original ten Amendments comprising the Bill of Rights. In particular, the Tenth Amendment has been stripped of its mandate that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Remedies for a Breached Contract

I could go on almost endlessly, but the foregoing list alone more than comprises the "substantial breach of contract" required by the law before the non-breaching party to a contract may suspend its own performance and proceed to elect a legal or equitable remedy.

Under prevailing law, an innocent party has a choice of remedies that it may enforce against a breaching party: monetary damages (including punitive), rescission (and restitution), reformation and specific performance.

Specific performance seems foreclosed to us, as we have tried unsuccessfully, both in the courts and by the ballot box, to force the Federal government to perform its side of the bargain. Its response has been to further oppress us and to continue to refuse to fulfill its obligations under the contract.

Reformation, or a simple rewording of the breached contract, similarly seems foreclosed to us, as that would require an agreeing and capable breaching party, particularly since we are lacking the judicial authority to supervise and then enforce such a rewriting of our contract. I think we all will agree that the Federal government will be anything but agreeable to our demands for a reformation of our contract and we certainly will not agree to its being reworded to reflect the current reality of our arrangement.

That leaves to us monetary damages or rescission. Since the Federal government has no independent means to pay us our considerable damages, our only effective remedy left is that of rescission.

Rescission refers to the cancellation of a contract and the return of the contracting parties to their pre-contract status. That means secession, folks. We have only secession on a state-by-state basis available to us as a remedy for the substantial and egregious breach of contract that our Federal government has foisted upon all of us.

A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have thought it possible. I still think it is a long shot. But, the various states' rights, or "sovereignty" bills introduced in a variety of states lately makes me think that a building movement toward secession not only is likely, but inevitable. Idaho is a bit ahead of the curve in that regard, being one of the few bastions of individuality and free thinking left in these "United" States of America. I have a clear vision of what New America looks like. While Idaho does not yet even approach that vision, you can see New America from here.

Our Own Private Idaho

Thinking of moving someplace relatively independent and free thinking? There's New Hampshire, but it just killed its own states' rights bill and, besides, it is surrounded by states firmly in the grip of socialists and communists. There's Alaska and there is much to commend it. There's Montana. There are parts of Texas and North Carolina and Arkansas. From where I sit, though, there is little else.

Though I generally discourage others from moving to Idaho, so as to preserve its relative lack of population and pristine condition, these are unusual times. Therefore, I hereby issue a call to all who are seeking somewhere else to live within the United States - a place with greater freedom: consider Idaho. We need you, your independent nature and your open mind. Tough times are coming for all of America. Come to Idaho for the freedom - stay for the adventure.

New Idaho - you can see New America from here.

My name is Edgar J. Steele. Thanks for listening. Please visit my web site, www.NickelRant.com, for other messages just like this one.