The state has impoverished its subjects through its ruinous burdens and meddling, and it has used democratic demagoguery to shift the blame and pit its victims against each other. It has divided America up into rival ravenous tribes, and the crowds we see facing off in the streets of Berkeley are the vanguards of those hungry hordes.

I did not have an initial number at the start of the quarter other than “I’ll take the under, way under” in response to initial estimates from GDPNow.

I expect I will be saying the same thing again.

The only things holding up the economy are housing and aircraft orders. I believe the latter has skewed many of the soft data regional Fed reports.

Hard data is starting to look ugly. Autos have rolled over, bank lending has rolled over, retail sales have been weak, and credit card defaults are up sharply.

This is also, as abolitionist Frederick Douglass noted, the definition of slavery: “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted.”

You want to know what it means to be a slave in the American police state?

It means being obedient, compliant and Sieg Heil!-ing every government agent armed with a weapon. If you believe otherwise, try standing up for your rights, being vocal about your freedoms, or just challenging a government dictate, and see how long you last before you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded government-issued gun.