You didn't see this in the debate as it failed to garner enough votes.

Oh, and by the way, despite Trump's tape not having any votes (it was too late to be included) it got what was darn close to first billing.  So much for democracy and the people's voice, which the commission claimed was going to be responsible for the order of questions and which questions got included at all.

You see, according to the media and Hillary Clinton the most-important thing to talk about is whether someone made lewd comments 10 years in the past.  We cannot, of course, have the first question in the debate be about a 12 year old rape victim that was sewed up after being violated, and yet Hillary Clinton, in defending the rapist, filed a motion in court alleging that she liked older men, had filed false allegations of sexual assault in the past and was taken to fantasies.  I've read that motion (it's available at the above link) and it was filed without presenting any objective evidence for those assertions in Hillary's bid to argue for a psych evaluation of the victim -- despite knowing that the original report of the rape came about as a result of a call from the hospital where the victim was sewn up after being physically injured from being violated (to an extent sufficient to preclude her from ever being able to have children!) and the presence of forensic evidence linking her client to the offense (which she managed to argue had been compromised.)

But leaving both sides of the "ethics when it comes to women" aside -- a topic that, if given full exposure, I believe Hillary would lose badly -- there is the fact that the media utterly refuses to talk about the issues that are actually before this nation and this goes all the way back to 2008 and the financial crisis!

In point of fact I believe a clean case can be made that my question is the top issue when it comes to both the economy and health care in this election, simply on the arithmetic.

As I pointed out in my post on the budget deficit we ran a $1.4 trillion dollar deficit last fiscal year.  In a few days I will have the MTS and be able to break it down, but I already know what it's going to show me -- continued outrageous acceleration in spending on both Medicare and Medicaid, putting the lie to any claim that the spending acceleration is all about "people getting older."

No, it's not, and no, whether a candidate made lewd comments (even if there were lots of them) is immaterial to the inevitable outcome if we do not address this issue in the here and now.

The most-important issue in this campaign and in fact in our nation today is people getting screwed blind by the medical industry.  It will shortly, if not stopped, become not just about the millions of Americans who are bankrupted by this outrage but will expand to include the destruction of our government's funding model, the economy, the markets, and our way of life that will happen, with mathematical certainty, in the next few years -- almost certainly during the next President's first term.

There is exactly one way to stop it, and that is to start prosecuting and thus break up all of the price-fixing and monopoly practice in said industry, which will cause medical costs to fall through the floor -- a reduction of as much as 80% or even more.

If we do not do this, and do it today, the rest literally does not matter.  We cannot sustain $1.4 trillion deficits in a time of alleged economic expansion for long.  The markets will not allow it and the screwing you take as an individual in your cost of living will not bear it.

We either stop this, here and now, or we lose our nation.

Period.

Why aren't we talking about this?

Remember, the actual "public" deficit is the difference in borrowing between the end of the fiscal year and the beginning in debt held by the public.  The total increase in debt, including intergovernmental (mostly Social Security and Medicare) is the actual deficit and is exactly equal, on an arithmetic basis, to the destruction in your personal purchasing power that the government causes (or gain if the government runs a surplus.)

The actual deficit -- that is, the destruction in purchasing power the federal government caused last year, is the percentage of 1.423 trillion .vs. the total GDP of 18.450 trillion or approximately 7.7%.

That's right -- the government intentionally destroyed almost 8% of your paycheck and your savings last year, running a $1.423 trillion dollar budget deficit, which is roughly equal to the worst of the "great recession" when tax revenues went through the floor.

Today there is no such "tax shortfall" excuse. 

The breakdown of exactly where the ugly is coming from will be published next week.  I already know what is in there because I've been following the monthly treasury statements all fiscal year, but wish to report final "as tallied" facts -- and thus will have another post at that time.

Let me be clear: On the arithmetic if we do not stop this now within the next 4-5 years -- that is, within the next Presidential term -- our government will collapse, our economy will collapse, our health care system will collapse and both the stock and housing markets will collapse.  This is not politics, it's arithmetic.  And the worst part of it is that I am utterly certain that the "references" count, along with the "views" count on this article will both be a fraction of the politically-oriented articles I've recently posted.  That the real end of our way of life in America, a threat that is obvious, mathematically certain, not very far in the future and yet avoidable if we act now fails to garner any sort of serious attention is the real outrage folks.

How many times will you hear crap coming out of your Tee Vee and various reps and senators before you drop everything you're doing, get off your ass, show up in DC and refuse to leave until everyone involved in this garbage goes to prison?

The EpiPen isn’t new; it has been in use since 1977. Research and development costs were recouped long ago. Nine years ago, it was bought by the pharmaceutical company Mylan, which then began to sell the device. When Mylan bought it, EpiPens cost about $57 each.

Few competitors existed, and for various reasons, that has remained the case. The device actually worked and saved lives. People needed it. Mylan raised the price. It also began to raise awareness.

"Raise the price" is sure a decent description... if you consider a 500% increase a "raise"...

Why?

No competition.

Or is there?

Yes, there is.  You can buy these over the counter virtually anywhere in Europe for about $20 each.  You can buy insulin over the counter in France for about the same price for a month's worth of supply.

And yet if you bring just one of either back over said border with you then you are breaking the law.  Bring a whole suitcase back and you're going to prison.

Yet if you did exactly that, were not put in prison and sold them, how many $600 (for a pack of two) pens would be sold in America?  Zero, because even if you charged $50 each (a $30, or 150% profit) you could make a hell of a business out of flying back and forth between any EU country and the United States doing exactly this.

How long would Mylan sell them for $300 each ($600 for a 2-pack) if you started doing this?  15 seconds, which is how long it would take them to figure out that they'd sell zero of them if they didn't drop the price back to about $50.

Now note very carefully that absent government force it is blatantly illegal under 15 USC, with a ten year per count felony prison term, to attempt to monopolize, restrain trade or price-fix.  Therefore it is only because of the explicit, intentional and outrageous conduct of your own government that you are getting raped like this on a literal daily basis, and this issue, as I've repeatedly pointed out is not limited to EpiPens -- in fact, Mylan has raised prices on dozens of off-patent, generic medications by about the same 500% in the last few years and the only reason they get away with any of it is the above use of government force.

Note that while the law may prohibit you from bringing said things back from Europe under penalty of imprisonment nowhere in that same law does it exempt the makers from 15 United States Code -- in other words, said law and regulation prohibiting your reimportation doesn't grant them an exemption to 15 USC prohibiting restraint of trade or pricing-fixing.  If that law were ever to be enforced those executives would still go to prison and their firms would still be bankrupted by ruinous fines, in short.

That is exactly where they, and all of Congress, damn well ought to be facing right here, right now.

If you want to know why medical care is so expensive and you need the fraud called "insurance", if you want to know why Obamacare was "sold" to people and is now going to collapse, if you want to know why Medicare and Medicaid were sold as "necessary" and yet continue to bankrupt the nation the answer is right here.

You are paying roughly five times what virtually everything ought to cost when it comes to medicine, and the reason you are paying it is because every firm and person in the business either is wantonly violating the law (and nobody ever gets indicted or goes to prison despite doing so) or even worse they've conspired with the government so they can enforce what is an otherwise-illegal act of restraint of trade under penalty of throwing your ass in jail instead of theirs and yet the're still quite-arguably violating the law themselves!

Let me know when you're ready to cut the crap, America, because until you do en-masse and descend on Washington DC to demand and enforce that this garbage stop right here and now, with every one of the co-conspirators drawing 20+ years of hard felony federal time along with each and every one of the involved firms being dismantled from the millions of dollars of fines per count, with each person harmed being a separate count, you deserve to be screwed, blued, tattooed and finally dead as you continue, each and every day, to give your consent to exactly that.

Seriously folks?

You don't understand why The Ticker has faded to black?

REALLY?

Let me start with this: Why do drug dealers shoot each other on street corners?

Answer: Joe the drug dealer cannot call the cops and tell them that Jack the drug dealer ripped him off and sold him a bag of oregano instead of weed.  Joe also can't sue Jack.  Thus, when the threshold of his tolerance is crossed Joe has only the use of direct force available to him because he has no recourse to the law to settle his dispute with Jack.

The FIRST foundation of civil society is The Rule of Law.  Without it there is literally nothing other than the Law of the Jungle, commonly known as "he who has the biggest teeth (or the most guns) and is willing to use them first wins."

Let me remind you that Han Solo, who is widely regarded through the Star Wars series as a hero, shot first at Mos Eisley.  George Lucas edited that in the second release of the film (and later had to put it back after fan outrage) but it is a fact that Han shot first in the original theatrical release. Why did Han shoot first and kill Greedo?  Because he knew there was no Rule of Law and he had no recourse to the law, which incidentally was later proved to be an exactly correct expectation when he was made an ornament in Jabba's castle.

Now I want you to stop reading, go get an adult beverage or a cup of coffee, and think long and hard before you continue reading about the above.

Why?

BECAUSE THE ABOVE IS THE ISSUE THAT, IF WE FAIL TO ADDRESS IT IN THE PRESENT TENSE, RUNS THE RISK OF RESULTING IN AN IRREVOCABLE SERIES OF EVENTS IN THIS COUNTRY UP TO AND INCLUDING POSSIBLE CIVIL WAR.

Did you go get your drink, consume it, and think?

Good -- you may now continue.

This site was founded back in the early part of the financial crisis, spring of 2007 to be exact, because the Rule of Law was being blatantly disregarded -- specifically, with regard to "Prompt Corrective Action" and banks that were paying out dividends with fictitious earnings.

Did anyone go to prison for doing that?  No.

Did anyone go to prison for selling "good investments" to clients that they described in their own internal emails and on recorded internal conference calls as "vomit" and "dog squeeze"?  NO.

Did anyone go to prison for claiming to Congress (and all testimony to Congress is under oath) that they were "adding liquidity" to the system during the meltdown when I found, in public records, that in fact over $60 billion was pulled from the system into the maw of Lehman's collapse?  That facially appears to be perjury, incidentally. The answer is again NO, and one of the people directly responsible (at the time the head of the NY Fed) was actually rewarded for this act (among others) by being appointed to head the Treasury Department (Tim Geithner.)

Did anyone get prosecuted for the felony of perjury in filing literally hundreds of thousands of knowingly false documents in foreclosure actions across the country?  NO.

How many hundreds of thousands of Americans lost jobs and homes as a direct result of this?  How many lives were ruined?  Now ask this: How many people were made whole on the damage they suffered as a result of these acts, all of which were facial violations of the law?

NONE.

It is broadly illegal to price-fix via any mechanism where market power exists.  So says 15 United States Code, Chapter 1. Go read it.  Virtually the entire US Medical System operates on business models that are facially in violation of that section of law.  The latest outrage is an off-patent device called an "Epipen" used for severe allergic reactions; if you need one and don't have it you have a very good chance of dying.  They cost about $60 10 years ago, and are about $100 today anywhere else in the world.  Except here in the United States -- where they're $400, and if you get on a plane, buy a bunch and bring them back to sell (to make a profit and undercut the price) you go to prison.  The exact same sort of price-fixing with the direct support of the US government and FDA is present in virtually every area of medical practice -- from drugs to devices to hospitals.  All of this facially appears to be illegal; were I to even have had a discussion with a competitor on fixing pricing when I ran my Internet company that would have been a federal offense.

How many people are dead -- broke -- or both as a direct result of these practices?  There is an entire industry that accounts for nearly one dollar in five spent on all items in our economy and it has multiplied its share of spending by a factor of roughly six through the use of these tactics.  You, I and everyone else in the country are being overcharged by a factor of five times as a result, it's destroying the Federal budget and has or will destroy state and local budgets also. You can't run a car repair shop without quoting prices before you start turning wrenches and yet it is essentially impossible to get a price, nor to bind the hospital to any figure they give you, for a procedure before it is done.

What did you see James Comey do in regards to Hillary Clinton and her "private" email server, on which she knowingly stored and transmitted classified information?  The head of the FBI - the nation's top police officer - stood at the podium and described, facially, a felony violation of the law, which I remind you does not require intent, and then said "no prosecutor would bring the case."  Then, one business day later, he sat in Congress and described knowing that a second felony violation of the law, perjury, had taken place in that he admitted he knew she had lied before Congress about 'never' having done so and yet he insisted that he needed a "referral" to "investigate" said act.

If you were being interviewed because the FBI thought you robbed a bank and on your kitchen table was a bale of marijuana do you think they'd need a "referral" to bust you for the weed?  You know damn well the handcuffs would be on you in seconds, so why weren't they on Hillary?

Next, if there was no intent as Comey claimed he could not find why did she lie repeatedly, both to the public and Congress, about the presence of classified information on her server?  You don't lie about something you aren't trying to hide and you don't hide something that doesn't incriminate you!  Prosecutors argue this every single day before juries and get thousands of convictions every year on exactly that basis -- the accused lied about something they did and that lie is evidence that they knew what they were doing was wrong as that's the only reason to lie about it!

Another section of the same law attaches liability to anyone who is involved in these acts and fails to report them.  That facially involves Bill and Chelsea Clinton as well as Hillary's entire senior staff!  This issue is, again, not just limited to Hillary's conduct.  As persons with security clearances (with the possible exception of Chelsea) they all were aware of the law and their positive obligation to immediately report any breach of security of classified information, and failure to do so is a criminal offense.

Finally, contrary to Comey's assertions (which were also a lie, and since they were made to Congress were also Perjury, a felony violation of the law) there indeed are people who not only have been but are being prosecuted for quite-similar violations of the law with regard to classified data.  Specifically there are service members who have been arrested, not just demoted or had their security clearances revoked, for putting classified information on unauthorized devices.  One, Kristian Saucier, faces 20 years in prison; there is no apparent public evidence that this individual ever allowed anyone outside of trusted Navy circles to see the images.  Comey made the blanket statement that the government does not prosecute people who do not give said information intentionally to our enemies; his statement before Congress was a lie.

If you believe this is a singular instance you have your head firmly planted somewhere that the sun never shines.  As yet another example out of literally hundreds I cite the recent shooting at Pulse; 50 people died.  The wife of the shooter has disappeared and the FBI has pointedly refused to answer as to where she is, despite the fact that it has been disclosed that she drove the shooter to the club and knew he was going to do it.  That makes her an accessory just as you or I would be charged with murder if we drove our girlfriend or boyfriend to a bank to rob it and he or she shot dead a teller.  There are now reports circulating that this woman was allowed to flee the country and is in the Middle East where she cannot be extradited nor has she been indicted.  Before you say one more word about how "blue lives matter" you first have to account for and subtract back off the 50 murders that didn't matter when we had someone who we could charge with them that was both alive and able to be arrested, indicted and prosecuted.

If I, as an ordinary person, fire a gun I own every single round that comes out of the barrel until it comes to rest.  Even if I am perfectly justified in drawing and firing that weapon if I shoot an innocent person I remain responsible for the round that did not go where I intended it to and the results of same.  Now contrast this with the police of any stripe, who may fire indiscriminately, emptying weapons containing dozens of rounds even into targets that are facially wrong such as a pair of women in a truck when they are seeking a man in California, and yet they are never held accountable for the damage those rounds do to either person or property.

How many people are dead in Orlando not as a result of a terrorist but rather due to the rounds fired by police, along with their intentional 3+ hour delay in entering the building?  Where are the manslaugher (or felonious assault) charges for the persons who were hit with wildly-sprayed rounds from police weapons during that breach? Why has there been no accounting for those rounds and the persons killed by them?  Why is there never any accounting for said rounds fired by the police wildly and with outrageous disregard for innocent persons in the vicinity?  You or I would be charged immediately for such a flagrant display of gross negligence, likely with multiple felonies.

Now consider all of the above flagrant violations of the law, all of which were observed by many officers of the law of all stripes -- federal, state, county and local.  Exactly how many of said officers made an arrest and processing of said suspects (including other police officers, CEOs or politicians) for behavior they personally witnessed that was (and is) a facial violation of the law, turning over same to a prosecutor?

Effectively zero.

If that's not enough the shooter in Dallas was cornered -- "treed" if you will, isolated in a parking garage from which he could not escape.  Rather than wait him out and arrest him, then go through this entire pesky "due process" thing including a trial and sentence even though he was not presently shooting at anyone the police instead mounted a bomb on a robot and blew him up.  You got that folks?  Yeah, he was obviously guilty as hell but if you catch someone having just killed your daughter and he's cornered in your shed, either out of ammo or choosing not to shoot at that time, you cannot blow the shed up rather than arrest him!  Due process of law?  What's that?  

Boobus Americanus cheered that on too and yet what you just invited the next guy to do is throw a grenade or make damn sure he has a really BIG bomb with him instead of surrendering when cornered! If one person has no right to due process of law THEN NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE -- including the cops.

Folks, all of what has gone on of late is traceable and chargeable to the destruction of The Rule of Law.  The destruction of millions of American's financial status, their wealth, their freedom, their health and frequently their very lives are destroyed because CERTAIN PEOPLE, namely the rich, politically powerful, those wearing a "blue" costume of some sort or those who happen to run big corporations can and do whatever they wish and are simply not prosecuted for violations of the law that you, I, or anyone else would be and are.

When you back a bear into a corner it will attack you because it perceives that as the only remaining course of action that it has available to it other than death.

We created the conditions under which drug dealers resort to shooting each other because we made the consensual act of trade in and consumption of certain substances a crime, and by doing so denied them any other recourse under the law for disputes among themselves.

They are at fault for shooting at one another but it is our responsibility because we intentionally removed their recourse to the law.

We created the conditions under which millions of Americans, most of whom are not drug dealers, believe they have no recourse to the law through our willful and intentional acts and then we sit still, swill beer and post on Facebook when the fact that ordinary Americans have no recourse to the law as soon as someone rich, powerful or wearing a costume who wants to screw them is shoved in our faces instead of demanding that all of this crap stop.  That message - "you have no recourse" - has been driven in day after day as every "important person", cop or company you care to name pulls some stunt that would result in anyone else facing down an immediate felony indictment and walks away laughing or, equally as bad, collects hugs, donuts and, for corporate executives, million dollar bonuses.

Specifically, and in reference to recent events, it is our refusal to demand that police officers be held accountable for every round they fire just as is any other person.

It is our refusal to demand that those in political power who perjure themselves are prosecuted while if you lie you go to prison for obstruction of justice.

It is our refusal to demand that "law enforcement officers" who aid and abet someone who can facially be indicted for multiple counts of murder "disappearing" be held accountable as accessories after the fact and indicted themselves, never mind refusing to demand that our former Attorney General and current President who between them, along with dozens of other "sworn officers", knowingly armed drug dealers also face indictment for their acts.

It is our refusal to demand that the cops who claimed they had video footage of an innocent man shooting and plastered same all over the media when they knew they did not be prosecuted for intentionally causing him to be subjected to death threats and have his reputation destroyed while if he had told the slightest untruth to said cops he would have been charged with obstruction, lying to investigators or both.  Worse, instead of tendering that demand and sticking to it we bring the cops donuts, pay for their lunches and post all sorts of laudatory crap on social media, cheering on the lies!

It is our refusal to demand that an officer who claims to pull over a car for a broken tail-light when both lights are clearly illuminated on the dashcam video and then shoots said motorist be immediately brought up on murder charges and as prime evidence of his guilt we use his intentionally false statement that he was stopping the car for a broken taillight.

It is our refusal to demand that police officers who steal property under so-called "civil forfeiture" when they have no actual offense they can charge the owner with be prosecuted and imprisoned for grand theft and the entire department so-involved dismantled for Racketeering, exactly as you or I would be if we all got together and held people up at gunpoint claiming that they had committed some crime, stealing everything they owned.

It is our refusal to demand that executives in the medical and pharmaceutical industries face the music for conduct that facially appears to violate hundred-year old anti-trust laws that not only mandate a decade long prison sentence for said executives they come with company-ruining fines big enough on a per-count basis to destroy any corporation that pulls this crap.

It is our refusal to demand that all of the "finance professionals" who sold mathematically impossible schemes in the pension and insurance space to teachers, police officers, firemen and others go to prison and have their firms confiscated for promising that which is impossible.

And it is our refusal to hold accountable all in a given role who are aware of this rank corruption, have taken an oath to uphold the law and have violated that oath by either not doing their job directly or sitting silently while others refuse to do so.  It is illegal for a person to be associated with Daesh even if they do not personally commit a terrorist act.  Given that fact why can any member of a police force or other government agency, whether federal, state or local, cover up or refuse to investigate blatantly unlawful behavior without everyone involved in same being charged as co-conspirators when the law clearly defines that someone who acts as an accessory before or after the fact is equally liable.

If this issue -- the utter destruction of The Rule of Law -- is not addressed now there is a very real risk that the spiral of events that has been growing, first slowly and now exponentially, could erupt into literal war within our own nation.

If it does you had better get up and look in the damned mirror because it is the collective inaction and refusal to demand the restoration of the Rule of Law by the American people that has and will lead to this outcome.  There is no violent repression -- by police or anyone else -- that can stop it.  

Only restoring the Rule of Law so everyone has equal recourse to the law will stop and reverse what is otherwise inevitable.

It is for this reason that I have decided that for the present I am going to go enjoy whatever time is left in a reasonably-peaceful society here in America instead of writing for your consumption, for I neither believe that this relatively-peaceful state of affairs will persist for long nor do I believe any material number of people will lift a single finger to do anything about it other than whining on so-called "social media."

Eight years is enough time to see whether or not there is any indication that any material percentage of the public gives a good damn and absent a marked change in the evidence my verdict is in.

Han was not wrong in his assessment of the state of Rule of Law in the Star Wars Universe. We must not, as a society, allow that assessment among people in this nation to continue on the path it is on here in the United States or the outcome will be the same.

Be careful what you wish for.

You might get it.

In the face of media, politicians, and GOP primary voters normalizing Trump as a presidential candidate—whatever your personal beliefs regarding violent resistance—there’s an inherent value in forestalling Trump’s normalization. Violent resistance accomplishes this. 

Oh really?

Well, let's go through a few things.

Trump has said he wants to deport all the illegal invaders in this country.  What part of illegal did you miss?  Someone who comes to this nation and ignores our laws isn't an "immigrant", they are a criminal.  Their very first act is not only a crime it does violence to the desires of others to come here legitimately, following the rules, even if only by line-jumping.

But it's not just line-jumping, you see.  It's also the cost of said people -- cost that is forcibly imposed on everyone else, and which takes from those who are legally coming here along with those who are less-fortunate and could use the resources they consume.  It's theft, fraud, and a crime.

Oh sure, today we don't want to call it that, but that's what it is, whether you name it properly or not.

The author charges Trump and his supporters with "fascism."  Really?  Is it fascist to expect that people who come into the United States present proper identification (e.g. a passport from the country of which they are a citizen) and document both their identity and the purpose and intended duration of their stay?  I am expected to do this everywhere I go outside of the United States, including, I remind you, when I travel to Mexico -- which I have done several times.  I've also been to Bermuda, Japan, Canada and a few other nations and every single one of them demanded my identification, the purpose of my visit and its expected duration.

Indeed, in Mexico it it is prohibited by law for a foreigner to in any way participate in the political process of the nation.  You can and will be arrested, prosecuted, deported and possibly permanently barred from entry if you break that law.  What the hell are we doing allowing illegal invaders to wave Mexican flags at political events, say much less participate in any form of violent demonstration?  That is a de-facto act of war.

Next, may I ask what demanding that boys be allowed to parade into a girls locker room with a raging hard-on might constitute?  Is that not threatened sexual assault?  Sure looks like it to me, and unless said girls and their parents, being that said girls are under the age of consent, are both ok with it I'm not and you shouldn't be either.

Yet this is what our current President just shoved down every school system's throat.  You want to talk about fascism?

Drink a big cup of STFU, jackass.

Defunding public education is long overdue.  Education is the responsibility of those who bring children into the world, not the state.  Never mind the fact that so-called "state education" does a terrible job and despite throwing more and more money at the problem results have continued to deteriorate.  Portland, Oregon recently decided that they'd join the literal flat-earth society by mandating that instructional materials not raise questions about whether global warming is man-made.  This, despite the fact that essentially every alarmist claim of the last 20 years from said "global warming scientists" has been falsified through time.  If you claim to have a theorem that predicts an outcome and it doesn't happen then refusing to face that and question said theorem isn't science -- it's witchcraft.

I could go on point-by-point but there is no need, because the salient point of the Huffington Post's article doesn't lie there.  No, it lies in the validation of something that few are willing to say: Revolution is what formed this nation and the people have always, through history, had the right to engage in it whether the ruling class liked it or not (they don't -- duh.)

However, the Huffington Post might want to consider whether giving voice to such a buttclown as this guy is wise.  There are several reasons that no matter how stupid things have gotten in the years I've been writing The Market Ticker you have never seen the endorsement or advocacy of violence and you never will.

Let me list them for you:

1. A violent mob is by definition out of control.  You can light the fuse but once it goes inside the box you have no idea how much explosive is in there, how much fuse remains between the outside of the box and the explosives (in other words, how much time you have to run -- or whether you can even outrun what's in the box at all), or what else is in there with the explosives.  In other words once you walk down this path by definition you irrevocably cede control over the outcome.

2. History says that in virtually every case what comes out the other side of such an event is worse than what you had before.  There's a simple way to express this that I've used before when asked this question during a Q&A after a speech: For every George Washington, historically, you get 10 Hitlers.  Those odds suck and nobody in their right mind openly promotes a path of action that has a decent probability of ending up there unless there is no other choice.  Today, there certainly are other choices.

3.  If violence is acceptable in the political process then it is legitimate for everyone, not just you.  By refusing to condemn such actions and instead claiming they have legitimacy, especially when such is done on the pages of a media publication in this nation, you are putting forward the premise that both you and your opposition have the same right to resort to these tactics.  To the extent you decide to assault someone, destroy or damage their property you have lost any claim to peace if and when they respond in-kind and since your act was the initiation of violence they have no duty to constrain their response.

Are you willing to be responsible for a rapidly-escalating cycle of violence ending in murder or even violent revolution which you cannot control and might well end in a fascist, totalitarian nation?

If not then an author has no business advocating through his or her writing, and The Huffington Post has no business printing, an article such as what was in fact just published.