The Truth about Excelsior is now available in both paperbackand Kindle eBook.
No, I’ve not yet heard about film rights, who might direct or star in the movie no doubt forthcoming. But the significant news is that in both eBook and paperback, you can read “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War.”
“‘The Truth about Excelsior’ offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”
Let me know what you think of it. If you like it, please leave a rating and review.
If you don’t like it, well, let me know what you think of it.
I don’t like the way it looks as an eBook, but I’ll likely publish that, too, in a couple of weeks or so. It’ll be cheaper, of course.
But since some stuff gets lost in the eBook version, I’m resisting it as long as I can.
The blurb is, “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War, “The Truth about Excelsior” offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”
I mean it to be fun, but you know me…I had to insert some serious stuff in there, too.
Anyway, let me know what you think of it…and if you like it, tell everybody, and leave a review!
The Land of The Free has been surrendering freedom hand-over-fist because the Home of The Brave is scared of its own shadow. Almost literally, its own shadow.
Though China is certainly a strong contender – even with its fingers in our sock puppets – We The People are still the most heavily-armed, most globally nannying and bullying, domestically intrusive, imprisoning and militarized nation of all time.
It is our own shadows that both terrify and genuinely threaten us now, and, surprisingly, in the past, too.
Rational people can look at the USA’s past mistakes reasonably. Our government made horrible, murderous, costly mistakes when it was far smaller, less powerful, less secretive, less snooping, and vastly less heavily-armed and militarized both globally, and domestically, than today. But ironically, the closer we get to the present, the more wrong we call right, and the more we justify today’s wrong by yesterday’s wrong.
We all know that slavery and native genocide was bad. Only the more educated among us know that the wars against Mexico and Spain were motivated by greed and desire for empire, and had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting American liberties and land. But very few consider how Teddy Roosevelt stimulated the Empire of Japan and the USA helped create the Soviet Union, however, so we tend to think of WWII as a wholly Good War, where the USA wore white and saved the world for liberty and justice for all.
The point is that, the closer we get to the present, the more our views of USA government become disconnected from reality.
Even after we learned that the Vietnam War was justified on, at best, a screwup, we tend to think of USA government as a benevolent god of peace and love, incapable of wrongdoing (though we keep seeing new wrongdoing every day).
This is a freakishly weird phenomenon. But it’s also the nature of tribalism and idolatry. We love our team, and we hate the other guys. We can’t see the wrong in our idols, teams, champions and leaders, but we know that the other peoples’ idols, teams, champions and leaders are pure evil.
And it’s also just human: People of the past were THEM. People of today are US. We can easily admit that our ancestors did horrible, stupid things; but we sure don’t want to admit that, today, right now, WE are screwing up. We’re blind to our own errors.
In other words, we see the past more clearly than the present. And we see other sinners more clearly than we see ourselves.
So, as a result, we exemplify, even if unintentionally, the exact opposite of The Golden Rule.
This is self-immolation. We have so many impending disasters of fiscal, social, monetary and military nature (will it be WWIII when China takes Taiwan and Russia takes Ukraine on the same day?), that we desperately need an epiphany and revolution of heart and mind.
You can’t be the Land of The Free if you’re not the Home of The Brave. But no nation can survive at all with this kind of stupid.
Freedom, IN – It’s a quote attributed to pretty much everybody, that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The saying is more true and applicable to USA foreign policy than to anything else.
And we’ve been getting worse, not better, at finagling foreigners into serving us and our Saudi allies. Does anyone doubt that our interventions in Libya and Syria have been disastrous? Have we really fixed anything in Somalia, Yemen or Pakistan? When will we be done with Iraq? Afghanistan is the USA’s longest war, ever…and we’re losing. What’s the plan? What’s the goal?
A leaked May 17 memo reveals that the USA government once again intends to replay the same failed script; this time against Iran (again).
The key directive sent to Rex Tillerson is “…that the U.S. should use human rights as a club against its adversaries, like Iran, China and North Korea, while giving a pass to repressive allies like the Philippines, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”
Let’s think like a human, and not a politician, for a moment.
What actual human beings on the planet would not hate us for our arrogant, armed and deadly games and manipulations? Why wouldn’t we be creating more enemies than friends with such obvious duplicity? Does anybody on this planet think they’re the ones who’re wrong, and deserve death?
But we’re acting like stupid teenage “swatting” and “knockout game” thugs; not at all like rational adult humans. We’re acting as though we can use killing force against others with impunity, when in fact, we’ve been hurting ourselves as much as anybody else.
Our armies are protecting the petrodollar and drug trade, not anything We The People should value. Not freedom; not for anybody.
And we’ve for some time been lobbing missiles and troops and drones at people and nations who, really, are no threat to us. What will we do when China decides to take Taiwan? That’s been slowly brewing since 1949, and heating up fast since 2012 and the dictatorship of Xi Jinping made plain that China was already waging war against us and buying up haf the world with our consumer’s money and our governments’ cooperation. What will we do when Russia decides to take Ukraine? That’s been Russia’s plan since our broken promises to stop expanding NATO onto Russia’s doorstep in 1994, then accelerating since at least 2013, and certainly since 2014 when Ukraine, spurred on by the USA, pushed for NATO membership, Russia annexed Crimea and began campaigns of hacking, subversion and propaganda. How long can we be party to the corruption that’s kept Ukraine out of NATO up to now, without some response from Putin, who we know wants the old USSR back? Not very long, I suspect.
Will we fight people who can fight back? Could we afford to?
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Freedom, IN – What is human history but a litany of warnings? How many cassandric founders, US Presidents and activists warned us about the advancement and corruption of political/crony power against individual human rights?
Throughout all the human history we know, the default human state – the human norm, has been oppression, slavery, genocide and war. Liberty and justice have always been rare exceptions.
Throughout most of our history, and still today, most of “the media,” in whatever form reporters have existed, have been the mouthpiece of power and tribe; agents of propaganda rather than honest town criers.
I thank God for the chaotic angel called Wikileaks. But Wikileaks isn’t enough.
We find out about new “civil” police military tools and techniques (like bomb-bots!) only after they’re used. We learn about the effects of usurpation and trespass like the 2012 NDAA only after fully implemented and working against us.
In electoral politics today, being right is no advantage and being wrong is no demerit.
But you may want to look into my history of being right as I tell you that this is the truth: Our nation is in very, very serious trouble – the kind that people will some day look back upon, and shudder.
We could fix all this. We could live in peace, prosperity, security, liberty and justice…for all.
But that would mean a very revolutionary change of heart, mind, and action. No, not in the hearts and minds of our politicians…in us.
I pray for that change every day. You should too; or pray that I’m wrong about what always comes next.
Freedom, IN – Many feel that our “Major Party” choices on Election Day have been getting worse and worse, while the general condition of our society and individual lives seems to be devolving toward calamity.
That’s true, of course.
But we could fix it if only we’d acknowledge the problem, admit who freely chose this, and realize who’s got the power to turn this around. The fix itself is simple enough, and mostly written-down already.
That’s in reverse order, unfortunately; because as congressmen I could address the first two listed only aftervoters take a stand against the recent (since the 1970’s), self-appointed and irretrievably corrupt, “Two Party System”…by electing me!
Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, crony network, which has become little more than a front, distraction, protection and marketing group for the finance and militarism elites who run the world behind the Two Party Firewall.
The other 8th district candidates have no intention or ability to fix the mess they choose to represent. So, first, voters must vote against that corrupt monstrosity. Yes, it’s good to vote against what’s wrong. To say otherwise is a terrible misunderstanding of the whole point of elections; and that is for peaceful revolution. If they feel that they can vote for me, that’d be great. But first, voters must fire the Two Party System!
After voters fire that shot heard ‘round the world, we can talk about other reforms including:
Why? Because the most effective way to hide the true costs of war, tax the public without their knowledge, enrich elites, and covertly monetize the massive debts incurred by impossible political promises and a military empire and industry, is to replace naturally limited money with monopolized fiat currency*, and then devalue it by making gobs of it…
And making gobs of increasingly valueless “money” is literally what inflation is. The price of everything goes up when the value of money goes down. And we’re headed for catastrophic hockey-stick-graph inflation very soon. I don’t know when. But we’ve let this corrupt, expand and fester long enough that I’m afraid it is now inevitable.
There’s a long, repetitious history of this. In every case, from ancient Egypt to today’s Venezuela, devaluing currency represents a slide to catastrophe.
In theory, fiat currency could work fine. But every case involving humans, the short-term political gain of devaluation outweighs the catastrophic long term costs to the society.
There are no exceptions; “fiat currency” always fails. And it’s always by the same stupid pattern.
Politicians spend money they expect future generations to pay, so they have to find a way to devalue/inflate the supply of currency, and then point fingers of blame everywhere but at themselves when it all collapses.
The United States of America has occupied the catbird seat of fiat currencies since WWII, when our lend/lease arms trading sucked up 2/3rds of the global reserve currency, and almost 3/4 of the monetary gold. We immediately started spending down on that when we joined the war, and through subsequent never-ending consequences of the world wars. We spent all that gold long ago, and between the end of the Breton-Woods Agreement in ’71 and the petrodollar scheme in ’72/’73, we found a new way to further devalue what had become truly fiat currency.
Audit the Fed.* We are past-broke, and it’s time to go through an orderly and just restructuring of debts, nullifications, and dismantlings.
Replace the current Federal Reserve System with a truly private banking system that is not only subject to audits, reporting and SOP as with other incorporated institutions, but also has NO power to monetize political debts or create currency.
However, people must be free to use whatever form of money or currency suits their needs. “Cryptocurrency” (which is really a form of market fiat currency that I’m seeing as an eventual problem in itself), foreign coins, even conch shells or knotted strings are not the government’s business. Our government’s only legitimate role in interpersonal transactions is when there is force or fraud involved.
In other words, I propose we stop lying, stealing, making promises we can’t keep, and clean our accounts for the promotion of peace, prosperity, security …and freedom.
Liberty or Bust!
Andrew Horning
*One could debate the meaning of the words and concepts “money” and “currency” forever. But for the purposes here, currency is an “official” (mandated or agreed upon) trade instrument that has no intrinsic value. Money is a pretty abstract concept, since value is still applied by humans, but it’s generally a scarce/limited/difficult-to-reproduce thing that therefore has by itself been granted some relative value (gold, silver, rare shells, libertarians).
*The Fed gets “audited” already, but only with many glaring exclusions and only by internal government and Fed processes. You can look up the details. But pretty much everything significant (like actions with foreign governments and international banking groups, internal communications and discount window operations, and monetary policy itself) is excluded from GAO audits, and all “independent” auditors are hired by…(wait for it)…the Fed’s Board of Governors.
That’s called crime when any of the rest of us do it. When it’s done abusing power in violation of oaths of office and causing economic distress and pointless death it really ought to be called treason.
And that treasonous ruling class is mostly not the people you see on the ballot, or numbly pontificating on C-SPAN. Heck no. Follow the money that we’ve been voting for. You’ll see the people who pull strings from behind a curtain.
There isn’t anybody alive who can’t be threatened, blackmailed or otherwise manipulated by the dark and twisted forces that control our “intelligence” agencies, for example.
1. Stop voting for it! And by “it,” I of course mean the global crony network whose puppets we call The Two Party System. No, I don’t mean just Democrats and Republicans. I mean the system of cronies and unfair legal advantages that’s more corporate than it is political. Don’t give this monstrous mob your approval on Election Day. And do NOT, by default, grant its wishes by staying home on Election Day. Anybody left alone and unchallenged with unchecked power for too long becomes corrupt, and almost all of us have been blowing electoral kisses to the same Powers That Be for over a hundred years nonstop. STOP THAT!!
2. Vote against it. Yes, we’re supposed to vote against people. Remember, this is revolt with your vote! When your house is on fire, you need to kill the fire, not swap it for another. So first, fire the crooks! Vote for anything or anybody but the puppet show you know to be corrupt!
Remember, even the very best Ds and Rs (and there are some great people in those parties – like Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash, for example) are powerless against this mess without more allies, and your help. They cannot fix their party, or the people who control it. YOU must vote against all of that!
Our nation’s founders understood that elections are messy, corrupt and problematic in themselves; so elections’ purpose is very focused – they’re for peaceful revolution. That’s why we vote; so we don’t have to shoot politicians the way our founders did.
3. Use your vote as a weapon, or somebody else might. Seriously. It actually happens that people who don’t vote often show up voting…even after they’re dead. If you think staying home is a protest, you don’t understand how bad things have gotten.
4. Then, and only then, is a discussion of ideology and ‘isms something better than a time and energy wasting distraction.
In summary: Vote as though it’s war! Because, of course, it is.
USA wonks nodded their smug comprehension, apparently thinking that at least we elect our lawmakers on this side of the pond. At least our lawmakers can be fired.
But we don’t fire them. Nor can we; because most of our laws aren’t written by people authorized to write laws. And we didn’t elect them.
You see, while the “lawmakers” in the US Congress are of course overpaid, arrogant, and almost completely corrupt, they’re practically irrelevant now.
Unelected bureaucratsin innumerable federal agencies (DOE, FDA, FCC, USDA, IRS…) and even private organizations with governing powers like “The Federal Reserve System,”make thirty times as many regulations as does the US Congress, though Article I Section I of the Constitution for the USA restricts all legislative powers to only congress. Even if counting only those regulations that affect USA citizens directly, bureaucrats wrote sixteen times as many laws as did the US Congress.
Some say the rapidly growing regulatory burden amounts to around$15K per year for every USA household. Whatever the actual cost, unregulated regulation is literally criminal, and very destructive to our prosperity, independence, opportunity and of course, freedom.
What’s worse is that these agencies are also, quite unlike our US Congress, heavily armed against us.
They have been granted legislative, judicial, and executive powers (armed with SWAT teams and military gear…the USDA has machine guns! Even the federal DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION is armed now!!!) without checks and balances, without an electoral accountability, and without any constitutional authority.
I propose a sunset rule or constitutional amendment – a 10-year expiration date for all non-constitutionally specified agencies, laws, powers and programs to gracefully remove, or at least review for reinstatement, everything that’s not specifically written into the constitution.
I propose a Rule of Law reboot, to affirm that politicians must obey laws too…at last.
I propose we stand down our global military “whack-a-mole” machine, and concentrate on defending our homeland instead of browbeating and manipulating the world.
Let’s get something straight about the 2nd Amendment that has little to do with personal protection or fighting off an ungoverned government:
The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries. And we willingly, anti-constitutionally, surrendered our militia system in 1903 to build a professional, global, war machine. …Just what our founders warned us to never, ever do.
The USA Constitution‘s Article I, Section 8:15 does grant Congress the rather scary authority, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”
Politicians (including judges) apparently stop reading here, thinking this grants the federal government essentially total military power and authority over everything, including you; you uppity citizen.
Article I, Section 8:16 further grants Congress authority “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
This is considerable power over militias, but look at the delimiter, “…governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States…” (bold is my added emphasis)
That should make us think about what the state constitutions say about the “Part of them” not governed by the feds, but we’ll get to that shortly.
Article I, Section 10:3 provides enough confusion in today’s context that, without the state constitutions, you might get the wrong idea about militias: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress… keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace …or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” If you can’t “keep Troops” in peace time, how could a state respond to invasion or other imminent danger?
Article II Section 2 should provoke some thought, though: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
So, the POTUS is NOT the CIC of the militias until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress. The militias aren’t “federalized” until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress. And an actual declaration of war by the US Congress hasn’t happened since WWII.
Again, this won’t make proper sense without state constitution context.
So, for Indiana, for example, the Indiana Constitution’s Article 5, Section 12 is where things ought to start coming together: “The Governor shall be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and may call out such forces, to execute the laws, or to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion.” (again, boldface is my emphasis, but you really ought to be raising your eyebrows now. This is even as amended in 1984. This is still law!)
Here’s Article 12, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution, which was amended as recently as 1974:
“A militia shall be provided and shall consist of all persons over the age of seventeen (17) years, except those persons who may be exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state. The militia may be divided into active and inactive classes and consist of such military organizations as may be provided by law.”
OK, there it is, Hoosiers. I’m supposed to be in the militia, arthritis and all. So are you. Anybody over 17, unless a conscientious objector or otherwise excluded by law, is the militia. We are constitutionally to be more like Switzerland, where kids learn gun safety early on, and everybody plays a part in the defense of the Canton/County, state and nation. And we used to be until around 1903. Even more recently, kids still learned gun safety…in public schools!
So, now, still, by law, you are supposed to be trained in the use of weapons, as a militia member, including the sort of weapons that’d make Nancy Pelosi scream, as in Indiana’s Article I Section 32, “…for the defense of themselves and the State.”
(This is why, dammit, you have to read both your state and federal constitutions to get the whole picture when it comes to anything having to do with politics.)
There’s more, of course, but I need to get to the point: We’re not doing any of this at all, and we need to. Pronto.
Without going into how, why or when we became a global empire of fear and aggression, I want to as quickly as possible, and by big steps, nullify this self-destructive mess, and enforce/invoke/do the constitutions, as written; to restore our freedom, prosperity, opportunity, justice and security, for all.
I want to stand down our professional, global, permanent war industry. That would not only reduce the obvious blowback of constantly blowing up other people’s countries and people and wedding parties, it would make us more secure here at home.
And a lot richer!
We could afford to actually keep the promises we make to our soldiers in both regular and “National Guard” ranks. We’ve currently no way to keep up with the escalating costs of medical care and pensions. Not until we massively cut our global monstrosity of destruction, and return our military to its proper role and structure in national defense. Real national defense.
I want kids to learn about both the danger and proper use of weapons. That would not only raise up a nation better able to defend itself, it would also greatly reduce the irresponsible, stupid accidents, and unchecked violence in places like Chicago (where guns are essentially illegal and therefore ubiquitous in all the wrong hands) we now suffer.
And I want our armies out of the control of all the wrong people. You know that our government sold out. If you’re reading this, you probably know a good part of our global weaponry is unleashed in service to our financial sector’s fiat currency scams, the “petrodollar” scheme, the CIA (which I’d like to kill, gut and mount on the wall as a warning to future generations that we must never allow such a thing again) and the military industrialists we were warned about by a dozen USA Presidents.
There’s nothing civilized about delegating away all our violence and acting like it’s right. The damage we do to our own children’s lives, minds, bodies, careers and family lives, just to soothe our trembling nerves, is both embarrassing, and sin.
But the significant news is that in both eBook and paperback, you can read “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War.”
We’ve for generations been the 
Our 
The point is that, the closer we get to the present, the more our views of USA government become disconnected from reality.
Freedom, IN – What is human history but a 
But that would mean a very 
Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, 
Forget ideology; that’s not the problem.
Remember, even the very best Ds and Rs (and there are some great people in those parties – like Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash, for example) are powerless against this mess without more allies, and your help. They cannot fix their party, or the people who control it. YOU must vote against all of that!
Our nation’s founders understood that elections are messy, corrupt and problematic in themselves; so elections’ purpose is very focused – they’re for peaceful revolution. That’s why we vote; so we don’t have to shoot politicians the way our founders did.
3. Use your vote as a weapon, 
Without going into how, why or when we became a 
We Declare 
