Let's see how I do with the list.

• Fast And Furious (guns for drug lords, resulting in murder of Americans and Mexicans)
  
  
• Robosigning (over 100,000 perjured affidavits filed in court cases)
   
• IRS Tea Party and other group and individual abuse in direct violation of the law (politically-based harassment and now apparently-perjured testimony before Congress)
  
  
• Money Laundering for terrorists and drug lords (by multiple large banks) 
  
  
• Intentional and unlawful destruction of property rights (GM bondholders screwed for political cronies in the UAW)
  
  
• Intentional and unlawful destruction of your saved wealth (QE, QE2, QE3, QEinfinity, $1 trillion+ deficits, etc; Treasury and Federal Reserve actions)
  
  
• Benghazi (apparent illegal arming of terrorists, then an attempt to reverse that leading to the attack on our CIA outpost and what appears to be intentional indifference and orders to stand down during the attack that had to come from the White House despite ability to respond; this amounts to conspiracy with the terrorists to kill Chris Stevens and the others who died.)
   
• Swindles by the billions in countless schemes during the 2000s related to securitizations and other hinky deals (where despite black letter legal requirements for actual endorsement and delivery of documents banks simply did not comply and now argue there should be no penalty for not having done so, and that these defects are "mere procedural errors" despite intent to not comply.)  The result is that our land title system no longer has any resemblance of integrity.
  
  
• Intentional destruction of anything approaching a "free market" for health care going back 30+ years and now compounded through active conspiracy by Obama and all of the political parties to grant, protect and enforce through government monopolies and cost-shifting resulting in cost escalations of 500-1,000% or even more against market prices and now, with Obamacare, abuse of the IRS tax power to force another 100% or more increase in those expenses down your throat for the express purpose of enrichment of those in the medical industry.

I'm sure I've missed a bunch, but this is a good start.

What do all these (and more) have in common?  

The people's refusal, as Americans, to stand and demand that The Rule of Law be restored and honored and that those who refuse to do so be impeached (if in government) and stand trial for their abuses.

I keep hearing people ask when I, or someone else, will "lead" on this issue.  

Why do you ask where the leader is?

Do you want a Hitler?  You're going to get one if you keep that **** up.

We the people do not need "leaders" to resolve this.  

We all need to personally grow a pair of balls to replace that vacuum between our legs (or nestled in our pelvis where our ovaries are supposed to be.)  

We need to get off our fat asses and stop demanding that someone else take care of what is our job as citizens of this nation.

You do not have the right to health care.

You do not have the right to a job.

You do not have the right to go to college.

You do not have the right to a house.

You do not have the right to food.

You do have the right to effort to generate some form of economic activity by your own hand and mind for yourself and those who you have as dependents through your own actions, such as your children (who exist because of your actions -- your exercise of the power to create life.)  You may then expend the fruits of that economic activity as you see fit because such is your property; you earned it through an honest exchange with another.

You do have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit (but not guarantee of attainment) of happiness.  This means that all of the above -- every single one of those abuses that have been served upon you -- are unlawful.

But those three rights only exist so long as you will stand and defend them.  A person is a victim only until he or she gives consent.  

Put a different way: The only difference between sex and******is consent. 

As soon as you consent to the frauds and abuses heaped upon you they cease to be frauds and abuses and become part of a sick sado-masochistic ritual you have willingly taken upon yourself.

They remain so until you stand and demand that it stop, backing that demand with whatever defensive force is necessary to stop what has now become******rather than sex.

It is for that reason that I am an absolutist on where the Second Amendment's boundaries lie.  It is impossible as a matter of logic for me or anyone else to depend on someone else to stop a criminal who intends to take my life or that of those in my care, irrespective of how we would otherwise design such a social system.  By definition the first person able and often the only person able to stop such an assault is the victim that the perpetrator intends to assault or kill.  It matters not whether the assailant is an individual thug, a pair of thugs, an organized gang or a government agency.  

The bottom line is the same; your right to life only exists so long as you are willing and able to defend it. 

The same bottom line exists for liberty and the offense against it that is delineated in most of the above list; you have such a right only so long as you are willing to defend it.  The minute you cede that right you have consented to what you are experiencing and you lose the right to bitch about it until and unless you stand and take back that which God gave you.

This is basic logic and as soon as you cede basic logic you inevitably lose every other point of argument.  In this case when you lose those arguments you risk losing your life and/or liberty; you are literally risking death or enslavement.

Since 2007 I have written on these matters in the economic realm and laid forth arithmetic proving that what has been done is not an accident but rather is a swindle.  It is not a new swindle either; it is in fact one of the oldest in the history books, rivaling only prostitution in age.  Arithmetic is not subject to debate; you can choose to overlook it but you cannot change it.

Those of you who seek leaders are fools; each of you should lead for yourself and confine that leadership to yourself and your life along with those dependent upon you through acts of your own free choice, enjoying or suffering the consequences of those choices.  

Your right to lead in that regard ends as soon as you demand that someone else pay for whatever it is that you want to acquire or suffer as a consequence of your actions and inactions, whether it be food, shelter, education, health care or anything else.  

The first principle behind The Declaration is that we are a nation governed by laws, not men, with each such law that is valid and enforceable being able to be tied back all the way to The Declaration through The Constitution.  

The Declaration sets forth the reason why although rights are absolute societies organize governments -- it is for the purpose of providing a framework of laws to enforce those rights and punish violators.  Absent that you have only the law of the jungle, where the individual with the biggest teeth, claws and body mass wins while everything else is food.

That is what you have in the absence of the rule of law, and that is what we have collectively and individually allowed to occur in this country.  All of the above has occurred because we have regressed to The Law of the Jungle from The Rule of Law.

We either stop it or we will be consumed by it.

There were plenty of zingers and more than a few stupidity exhibitions from Democrats, but one bit of questioning stands tall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vCjssK-i4Mg#!

Here's the real question -- for exactly how long will the American people put up with this crap?

Remember this story?

The teen is accused of mixing household chemicals in a tiny 8-ounce water bottle, causing the top to pop off, followed by billowing smoke in an small explosion.

Charges were dropped.

That's a START.

But until Mr. Douchenozzle Ron Pritchard formally apologizes in writing and re-instates Kiera Wilmot without any penalty in her record or otherwise my call to consider the district's diplomas issued for this year and forward as toilet paper stands.

You're still wrong Pritchard and that your prosecutor decided he wasn't going to be a jackass along with you after severely damaging this family's finances defending an act that had no criminal intent in no way excuses your conduct or that of your district.

So, Mr. Pritchard, are you going to man up and go down on bent knee while asking forgiveness from the Wilmot family or not?

I'm waiting.

PS: There's no indication that the NC district involved in a similar instance which I also reported on have yet grown an intelligence beyond a brainstem.  I'm still waiting in that case in North Carolina too, and their diplomas as of this year forward remain suitable only for the bottom of a bird cage or wrapping dead fish until apologies and correction of all harm suffered by these students and their families is forthcoming.

The worm turns....

Research outfit Raymond James says that the debut of BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the two handsets on which it runs have gone a long way toward repairing the home turf market share erosion the company has suffered over the past few years. In the fourth quarter of 2012, BlackBerry’s share of the Canadian market topped out at a dismal 6%. But by the first quarter of 2013 it had more than doubled, rising to 13.5%.

13.5%, a clean double in one quarter?

Did I read that right?

And by the way, the Z-10 was only on the market in Canada for less than half of that quarter.

Now to be fair, I own a Z-10.  I came from Android as a guy who has ported Android (twice) because I didn't like the versions that shipped with the hardware I owned and have hacked on it and loaded various versions from other people for years.  

I undertook all of that because of problems with the software provided "stock"; it was either bloated, unstable or (frequently) both.

The Z-10 continues to impress me, incidentally, although I will not try to snow you and tell you it's perfect.  It's not.  What I can tell you confidently however is that I vastly prefer the Zed to the Samsung Android devices.

It's just easier, simpler, and more-productive to use.

Canadian and EU carriers have now rolled out version 10.1 of the phone's firmware, which includes several material improvements that I've talked about before.  There are various "hacked" versions floating around and it also turns out that loading new firmware on the Z-10 is a trivial matter, where with Android phones it frequently was and is not.  While the Triumph (for example) was really nice in this regard certain Samsung phones can be a pain and many have a risk of "hard-bricking" the device inadvertently -- that is, unrecoverably screwing it up to the point where it has to be exchanged.  It appears to be nearly impossible to actually hard-brick the Z-10, although I'm sure someone will come up with a better idiot at some point....

Recently I have discovered a way to change software versions on the phone non-destructively.  While carrier OTAs (over-the-air upgrades) have typically been able to do this on most devices it has been difficult or impossible to do so as a third party in most cases, and attempting it has usually been fraught with risk (including a device that refuses to cleanly boot and run.)

US carriers still have 10.1 in test and have not yet rolled it out for wide release.  However, I've been running it for a while, and a couple of days ago "harmonized" my phone with the Canadian and EU releases, all of which are of the same version as far as I can tell.

If you're still on a 10.0 release you'll like the update, and if the US market share figures wind up anything like the Canadian ones there's going to be quite a shock coming to a number of people.  Remember that the US didn't get the phone until April and the Q-10 (with the keyboard) has not yet shipped in the US at all.  

Additionally in recent days the LA County Sheriffs Department (largest in the nation) has recently confirmed it is deploying the new BB10 phones and the underlying corporate BES infrastructure.  I expect these announcements to continue now that both BES and the phones are out.  In addition I suspect there will be material acceleration in this trend once the Q10 ships in the US market -- an event that is now just a couple of weeks away.

Those who have written off the company in the enterprise space have, in my opinion, made a big mistake.

The bottom line is that the penetration results for Canada thus far are well beyond my expectations, especially considering that the Q-10 is not in those figures.  I was looking at the smartphone universe in the US/Canada market as a marketplace where BlackBerry could command a mid-to-high single digit presence and have a nice, stable business.  If they actually deliver double that or better then the stock is not just undervalued it is grossly undervalued, particularly given that the margins on the new phones are wildly better than their previous generation devices.

In addition I look at the introduction of the Q5, a somewhat-decontented Q10 for emerging markets, as an excellent step forward.  Someone will eventually bring that device into the North American market; being a keyboard device it could easily have a great deal of appeal to people who are very heavy text message users at the right price-point, displacing some of the lower-end Android appeal.  Again, the issue is one of margins -- if you can replace the commodity-style margins on the older devices with one that returns double that you win big, and it appears that's exactly what BlackBerry intends.

When you add to this the ridiculous amount of short interest in the stock this looks to be quite a warning to those who believe the company is going to fail -- you could well be proved wrong in dramatic fashion.

Disclosure: The author is long BBRY.

Grrr....

If you are a customer of Verizon Wireless, you might want to consider switching carriers in light of the Associated Press phone snooping scandal.

When the feds came knocking for AP journalists’ call records last year, Verizon apparently turned the data over with no questions asked. The New York Times, citing an AP employee, reported Tuesday that at least two of the reporters’ personal cellphone records “were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena.”

The authors of this lefty piece are idiots.

First, we don't yet know (factually) what was requested and how.  

As a former ISP operator and current forum operator I will tell you this -- we used to get these "so-called requests."  They're not really requests. We complied with every single one of them and it was my policy then (and is now) to comply with subpoenas and other legal process that is valid in the jurisdiction where I operate.  I make absolutely no bones about this and never have.

Second: If you think I have an obligation to take upon myself, as a CEO of such a company, legal expense trying to protect your ass, you're wrong.  

That responsibility is yours.

The article claims Verizon could have notified the reporters before turning over the data (after, of course, the issue is moot.)  This is not necessarily true.  Some forms by which these "requests" come contain an explicit gag that, if violated, can expose the releasing party to criminal prosecution.

Now yes, you might beat that rap and so might I, but again I am not responsible for protecting your ass at the potential cost of either dollars or my liberty.

I have long recommended that if you are concerned about such things that you go to the trouble on your own to set up secure infrastructure that encrypts your communication and terminates on your hardware before it is decrypted. Now you will know if the government wants your data "in the clear" because they will have to come to you in order to seize it in a form useful to them.

This puts the responsibility, cost and control exactly where it belongs -- on you.

The real problem is that far too many people refuse to stand and put a stop to ridiculous over-reaches of power by government agents.  Some of what these people do is entirely reasonable, but some is not.  Differentiating between the two is why we have a 4th Amendment and it is precisely those of you who argue that we must get rid of "drugs" or similar garbage that lead directly to the outrageous abuses that are taken by incidents such as this.

The fact of the matter is that most of the people complaining about this sort of thing in fact want someone else to bear the cost and responsibility associated with putting a stop to this sort of thing.  I have no quarrel with you wanting me, for example, to refuse to comply until and unless you can and do challenge such a subpoena (and lose) but if you want me to do so you had better be prepared to post up a surety bond for any likely costs that I would incur in doing so, and that's going to be a substantial amount of money.

It sure as hell is not covered in a $20, $50 or even $100/month cellphone or internet access bill.

Responsibility includes bearing your own cross -- and costs.