Conversations Around a Wood Stove

Submit or Don't Fly

2010-11-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

Mom,

I am very, very proud of you that at 96 you are still flying, alone, across country. And I understand that you want to be in Virginia for Ali’s wedding this June. But I need to give you a heads-up here.

The drill has changed. No longer will struggling to remove your shoes be enough. No longer will surrendering your nutritional yogurt, because it’s a liquid, be enough. No longer will it be sufficient to give them your nice diamond nail file because you might threaten the flight crew with it.

This time you have a choice: you can submit to x-ray screening of your full body, or you can submit to a finger check of your breasts and genitals. I am not making this up.

Now, I know that you have a history of skin cancers on your face, but I still recommend that you go through the x-ray machine. Because if you choose the alternative, they WILL go through your panties, and they WILL object—trust me, I know these people—if you ask them to at least use a new glove, not the one they used for the 20-something hottie right ahead of you. Herpes you don’t need; at least basal cell carcinoma is curable with surgery.

There’s no plea bargaining on this one. They don’t care that our whole family was under the security microscope back when Dad was Research Group Leader at Cal-Tech, developing a part of the Manhattan Project. They don’t care that more than one member of our family still works for a highly responsible branch of the government. They don’t care that you are a 96-year-old great-grandmother simply trying to see your loved ones.

You will submit or you won’t fly. Pistole has said so. Napolitano has said so.

But it will get worse, I guarantee you. Wait until some swarthy stranger decides to blow himself up, mid-air, with a bomb up his rear.

Your daughter, Linda Morehouse

Our Suggestions For 11/02/2010 Candidate Support in Key Elections

2010-07-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

We will maintain and add to this list until 11/03/2010 . Check out these candidates and support your choice with campaign contributions or through volunteer work. And of course vote for your choice if you are eligible to vote in the state or state and district where the candidate is running. If you have suggestions for additions or changes, add the candidate's names and locations in the comment section or your suggestion for a change.

Caveat on Wikipedia links: In the past there have been problems with misleading and outright untruthful postings on political issues, various candidates and elected officials as well as other well known people. The folks in control of Wikipedia claim to have addressed this issue with more safeguards. However, be warned.

From Jerry (10/17/10) another important race – Mark Kirk (R) vs. Alexi Giannoulias (D) for U. S. Senator from Illinois (See Below).

Newest Addition 10/10/10 - Three Real Important Races See Below.

It is hard to keep up with all the important races. Here is another resource at Townhall.com that you can use to learn about contests that may be of interest to you – Race of the Day by Brian Walsh. In addition do what you can to support Sharron Angle in her attempt to replace Harry Reid in Nevada. The Democrats will do everything they can to keep that Senate seat. If we don’t oust Harry, any significant turnaround this November will be in doubt.

Mark Kirk (R) vs. Alexi Giannoulias (D) for U. S. Senator from Illinois.

Two reasons why this race is very important.

First, President Obama once held this seat. Losing it to the Republicans would be a bitter — and symbolic — blow.

Second, there are two ballots: one to seat the winner for 2011, and a second to fill out the remainder of the current term in the 111th Congress.

The victor of that would be seated right after the election on Nov.2. That could jar Democratic hopes for a post-election, lame duck session in the Senate.

What this means is that this is probably the most important race in this election cycle. If we can seat Mark Kirk in BHO's seat at the end of the election, he can block all manner of mayhem that will no doubt come from the lame duck legislature. If we can't seat him, stand by for a serious cram down of unpopular legislation. The Democrats don't really care about what the citizens want. They just want to shove us over the socialist cliff. That is because they are sure they know what is good for us, and are equally sure we don't know what is good for us. If you have any money left you might consider putting it with Kirk. That is probably where it will do the most good.

Three Real Important Races in Alaska, Nevada and Massachusetts.

I recommend that you continue to check out Brian Walsh’s TownHall column “2010 Race of the Day” (see link above) for information on the candidates in the November election. However, IMHO, there are three key races that you might want to consider for campaign contributions. One is Nevada where the polls have Harry Reid and Sharron Angle tied. Harry has just got to go. Support Sharron Angle if you can. Another is Alaska where the RINO Lisa Murkowski lost the primary to Joe Miller but is now a write in. She can’t win but she might siphon off votes for Miller. Support Joe Miller if you can. Finally there is the race in Massachusetts between Republican Sean Bielat and Rep. Barney Frank. Frank would be another venal corrupt politician whose defeat would really improve Congress.

The Alaska and Nevada races are in states that I consider mostly conservative/libertarian. We can’t afford to lose in these states and shouldn’t but there are special circumstances. In Alaska Miller will probably win (he is well ahead in the polls) but there is the Murkowski factor. Nevada is a bigger problem. Too many folks from states like California have moved there and have brought their bad voting habits with them. Angle is very important for two reasons. The first is that Reid is an egregious venal politician who does not deserve to be in the Senate or for that matter anywhere near a government post of any kind. The second is that Angle although classified as a conservative has a lot of libertarian leanings. Unless she has some incredible change in views after the election you can rely on the fact that she will not vote for anything that isn’t specifically authorized by the Constitution. In Massachusetts Frank is ahead so Bielat has an uphill battle but a Frank defeat would be a big bonus. It would mean one more venal corrupt hack politician out of Congress.

Candidates Running in Connecticut Against Richard Blumenthal

Peter Schiff (R) – Web Site, Article, YouTube Report, Wikipedia, Founder of Euro Pacific Capital, Who is Peter Schiff? A True Patriot.

Rob Simmons (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia Campaign Suspended

Linda McMahon (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

The latest development in the Connecticut race - Rob Simmons has suspended his GOP primary campaign for U. S. Senate in Connecticut although his name will remain on the ballot. This leaves only two active candidates Linda McMahon and Peter Schiff. Here is Schiff’s video on this subject. Linda McMahon has a lot of money to use in a campaign against the Democrat Richard Blumenthal and she would certainly make a better Senator than the corrupt Chris Dodd who is retiring. But IMHO Peter Schiff is the guy to support. He will not sit quietly in the Senate and let these progressive/collectivists destroy the republic. I am confident he will fight them at every turn.

A new development in the Connecticut race - Dodd Won’t Seek Re-Election After Five Senate Terms. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat will run in Dodd’s place. This guy appears to be just a younger version of Dodd. Essentially people like Blumenthal think that government programs are the answer to all the countries problems or maybe more truthfully the answer to all his financial aspirations. Dodd has certainly done a great deal of damage during his time in the Senate so it is definitely a good thing that he will be leaving. However, continue to support your choice in Connecticut because it is important to reduce the general socialist mindset in the Congress wherever possible. Now is definitely not the time for complacency.

This is a donation request video from the Schiff campaign. Even if you don’t think you can support Schiff check it out anyway. It points out why you shouldn’t be complacent because Dodd has decided to retire. As Schiff points out we need to get rid of the mindset that people like Dodd represent not just the actual culprits.

Nevada Senate Race to Unseat Harry Reid

This is another very important race. One of these candidates will run against Harry Reid. Reid has become increasingly unpopular in Nevada but conservatives and libertarians can take no chances. This guy must be defeated. This election like the one in Connecticut has to be a no prisoners battle.

Danny Tarkanian (R) – Web Site, Article

Sue Lowden (R) – Web Site, Article

Sharron Angle (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

Chuck Kozak (R) – Web Site, Article

John Chachas (R) – Web Site, Article

Mike Wiley (R) - Web Site, Article

Mark E. Amodei (R) - Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

Mark Noonan (R) – Not Official, Web Site, SourceWatch Article, Blog Articles By Noonan

Bill Parson (R) – Web Site, Article

Robin Titus (R) – Web Site, Article

Chuck Flume (R) - Web Site, Dentist in WI (odd situation)

General article on the problems of a crowded field for Republicans. - Why having 10 candidates doesn’t help GOP.

This is a very crowded field but you might want to keep tabs on these candidates through the primary and support the candidate that emerges to challenge Harry Reid. Harry has got to go. He is one of the most corrupt members of the U. S. Senate.

Special Election in Massachusetts for the U. S. Senate Formerly Held By Ted Kennedy - Brown Wins!

This state has been pretty much a fiefdom of the Democrats and the old Kennedy clan for decades. This could be the beginning of the end at least for the extreme left of the Democratic Party.

Scott Brown (R) - Article, Web Site, Wikipedia

California U. S. Senate Race to Unseat Barbara Boxer.

This is another very important race. Boxer is a quintessential leftist who has enthusiastically participated in the unwavering march toward transforming the U. S. into a third world banana republic. Although China is far from political liberty it is important to contrast their economic policies with American leftists. The Chinese now get it. Socialist policies will not bring economic prosperity and cannot foster the growth of advanced high tech economic systems. The Chinese for example have no , I repeat, no capital gains tax. Folks like Boxer would become apoplectic if you suggest elimination of the capital gains tax.

Carleton "Carly" S. Fiorina (R) - Article, Web Site, Wikipedia

Charles S. DeVore (R) - Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

The Race in Minnesota’s 6 th District

The “progressives” in the Peoples’ Republic of Minnesota will stop at nothing to unseat Michele Bachmann. Here is a typical example on Huffington Post . The MN socialists have already captured both Senators. This is a must keep conservative seat in the House. Some recent news – Minnesota Poll: Bachmann "in a solid position politically" . But remember we are close to an economic cliff. This is no time for complacency.

Michele Bachmann (R) - Web Site, Article, Wikipedia, Gov Site

The Senate Race in Florida

Marco Rubio (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

Charlie Crist (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia

George LeMieux (R) is the current junior Senator from Florida and was appointed by Charlie Crist as a seat warmer.

Marco Rubio makes a good case that Crist is a RINO and not someone that conservatives and libertarians want in the Senate.

Race in Florida’s District 22

Allen West (R) – Web Site, Article, Wikipedia, YouTube

Dead Rats: Thoughts on the May 6 Crash

2010-05-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

On May 6, 2 Yo, the New York Stock Exchange’s Dow Industrial Average plummeted over $1,000 in an extremely short period of time. This is certainly unusual, to say the least. I heard that the porn watchers over at SEC were distracted from their assigned task of protecting us from naked folks getting it on long enough to determine that somebody had simply entered a computer transaction to sell 16 gigashares of a stock when the correct order was to sell a mere 16 megashares of that same stock. Never mind that an order to sell even the supposed correct amount of shares in a single company seems rather on the high side, almost like insider trading knowing that a company, a bank for example, is about to be assimilated by the collective at the Chief Executive Inn and Suites, but I would think, and I frankly admit that I’m not smart enough to get a well-compensated gig at SEC watching Debby do Dallas, that a 16 gigashare sell order might sound an alarm somewhere, anywhere. I heard that Debby knew about it immediately, but as a working girl I suspect she knows the value of money and doing a job right.
But consider these numbers. Last January 25, I began tracking the daily New York Stock Exchange volume. I get this number direct form the source, http://www.nyse.com/. About 7:55 AM ET the morning of May 7, 2 Yo, I took a screenshot before the market opened for the day. It shows the NYSE Listed Volume at 10,484,824,000. As this was snapped prior to the start of trading, it would be the May 6 volume. Any value of 10 or so billion is less than any value of 16 or so billion. Makes me wonder.
Because of problems with my ISP, I was unable to get the volume for March 15, 2 Yo, but excluding that I find the following Excel calculated table informative for the dates January 25 - May 5, 2 Yo inclusive:

Max Vol 8,108,469,000
Min Vol 3,774,678,000
Mean Vol 4,926,597,529
Mode Vol 4,521,047,000
Med Vol 4,687,405,500

Statistically speaking there are three types of average, a point not lost on the liars in dee cee since when most people hear the word average they think of how Miss Grundy determined Archie Andrews’ English grade by averaging his test scores. This technique is properly called the mean. The median average is determined by ranking the scores in order (high to low or low to high - doesn’t matter) and picking the one exactly in the middle. For example, given the numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, we note that there are two numbers to the left of the 6 and two to its right. 6 is the one in the middle and thus the median. Another way of thinking of median, and one I suspect is taught the SEC voyeurs is to just imagine the unsuspecting waitress at La Brasserie, a restaurant near kapital heil in dee cee, who allegedly had a close encounter simultaneously with sinaters krispie-kritter dudd and toddy-boy kon-eddy, http://sonsoftherepublic.blogspot.com/2005/08/kennedy-dodd-waitress-sandwich.html. I hope the poor lady received a large stipend for being the median of a non-menu item.
Mode is simply the number that occurs the most often, receives the most votes so to speak. So based on my hopefully accurately copied numbers, since towards the end of last January the largest volume was just over 8 gigashares which occurred on April 16 in celebration of tiny timmie’s getting his ol’ tax returns filed on time. Mathematically speaking, and I’m certainly no Stephen Hawking, 16 of anything is about double 8 of anything. And no alarms went off?????? Maybe the dedicated video peeping-toms at SEC should spend their time taking a finite math class instead. I believe Miss Grundy teaches one in which they’d fit.
And I understand that the official unemployment rate increased from 9.7% to 9.9% even though beavisbud saved or created 290,000 jobs. Huh?
A few other points to ponder:
1) As pointed out by Glenn Beck the morning of 5/10, U.S. T-Bills tend to benefit whenever there is a sharp decline in the DOW.
2) The regime credits a huge influx of off-the-rolls unemployed inspired by the huge increase of available jobs with the rise in the Unemployment Rate. But if there are so many jobs why are they unemployed? And why did the discouraged worker rate increase to 17.1%? These statistics are as reported by The Washington Post http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2010/05/truer_unemployment_rate_rises_2.html
3) I used to be a Food Stamps Caseworker which made me a state employee. Every time I entered a transaction into the state computer, all my supervisors had next day access to everything I had done. The only reason they did not have instant access was because in those prehistoric times before obummer, these transactions were processed overnight. But they had the reports on their desks the next morning. So why 20 years of technological advances later do we still not know the fat-fingered culprit who hit a ‘g’ instead of an ‘m’?
4) Take a look at your standard qwerty keyboard and tell me how easy it is to aim for the m-key but hit the g-key one row up and 3 keys to the left. I could do it, but I’m an incredibly clumsy old man who suffered a stroke 30 months ago.
5) Is it a mere coincidence that this plunge occurred while the obummerites are lambasting Wall Street?

So you betcha I smell living dead rats trapped inside the wall and they’re stinking up OUR Country.

Anyone who’d like a copy of that NYSE screen shot or my Excel spreadsheet with my financial numbers, just drop me a request at gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com

Posted by Gill O Teen

Amend the Constitution!

2010-05-03T18:00:00.000-07:00

The Constitution was never meant to be interpreted as it is today. This fast and loose attitude that the collectivists which includes many of our judges have toward the Constitution is now endemic and accepted. This is why ultimately I think we have got to amend the Constitution either via the process that starts with the Congress as it has been done in the past or via a constitutional convention. We have only had one such convention in our history.

We not only have to undo the evil that has been done by this fast and loose attitude but we have to keep the collectivists from just biding their time and when conditions are right repeating the process of undermining the republic. Here are my favorite amendments:

1. A balanced budget Amendment with real teeth like the one from Representatives Jeb Hensarling of Texas , Mike Pence of Indiana and John Campbell of California.

2. Repeal of the 16th Amendment that also makes plain that only consumption taxes like the FairTax are henceforth permitted cutting off the massive money pipeline that politicians use to punish enemies, reward friends and of course reward themselves.

3. An original language or original intent amendment that makes clear that the bogus and sophistic "living document"/ "general welfare" concept is henceforth banished from American jurisprudence.

4. An amendment that either abolishes the Fed or at the very least backs the dollar with precious metals so that out of control money creation is stopped.

5. An amendment that explicitly makes the commerce clause (in Article I Section 8) more restrictive and in line with its original intent, i.e. limits its applicability to acts by the states that are in restraint of trade such as duties, tariffs, subsidies, etc.

6. Repeal of the 17th Amendment and a return to Senators being appointed by the state legislatures so that the original idea of preserving state sovereignty is protected.

Now before you decide this is a bogus idea because (A) it is too hard to amend the Constitution (It’s supposed to be BTW), (B) it is a lengthy process and we don’t have time or (C) the collectivists will get into the process and we will end up with a document that looks like the EU constitution (now called a treaty) let me remind you how much damage has already been and will be done by just ignoring the Constitution as collectivists are want to do.

I contend that just using this process of ignoring the real intent by using the “general welfare/living document” argument and the almost limitless interpretation of the commerce clause collectivists will render the Constitution totally irrelevant in a few more years. In fact if you notice they barely used any arguments at all either constitutional or otherwise to pass this health care monstrosity. They just did it because they are the “ruling” class and they know best. Somehow that has to be stopped or this constitutional democratic republic will cease to exist before this decade has ended.

Ask yourself these questions. If without explicit amendments to reestablish the Constitution as a document to enforce limited government, can limited government ever exist here again? If we don’t amend the Constitution along the lines I have suggested at this late date how are we going to stop the sort of attitude displayed here by these two Congressman Phil Hare and impeached federal judge Alcee Hastings?

It is totally out of control folks. We may be able to slow things down this November and even reverse a few things in November of 2012 but remember this. The collectivists won’t go away and they will resume their incessant effort to circumvent, undermine and render ineffective the Constitution in anyway they can.

The Washington D. C. culture of money and power will not disappear. At least some of the folks that are elected by conservative and libertarian mined folks will get co-opted by the Washington D. C. culture. The collectivists will continue to use the D. C. culture to subvert the idea of a limited constitutional democratic republic.

With properly worded amendments a lot of power will be drained from this culture and we would have a fighting chance to maintain the republic. IMHO if we don’t resolve to do this eventually the only way to get back to a limited constitutional democratic republic will be the way the Founders had to do it. Their war was nearly a decade. Ours could be ten times that long. Even the youngest of our relatives and friends may not live to see it. In fact it could well disappear for all time.

Pedal to the metal

2010-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Please - Don't ease off the gas now!

With the Obamacare debacle fresh in our collective memory and Wall Street reform looming, I fear we're becoming a bit complacent. We cannot afford to make the critical mistake of assuming that November will bring a course correction. We've got to keep that foot on the gas pedal, and it's more important now than ever.

Consider that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes activity taking place in Washington that we hear little about. For instance, Cap-And-Trade (Cap-And-Tax?) still lurks in the wings, and isn't it convenient that there has been a major offshore drilling disaster just at this critical juncture? I am certainly no conspiracy theorist, but it certainly plays into the hands of those who would pass this ill-advised legislation.

The President has now formed his "bipartisan deficit commission" in order to have a place to point his finger when taxes for everyone go up dramatically. He'll be able to say, "Hey, I don't want to raise your taxes, but they said it had to be done." Campaign promises be damned along with common sense - it's coming, whether it emerges in the form of a V.A.T. or some other concoction meant to separate us from what's left of our money.

The mainstream media is going along with all of this, and when fall rolls around you can be sure they'll be helping the left tout "successes" on a number of fronts. They are already painting Senate Republicans with the obstructionist brush simply because they want Wall Street reform to be meaningful and to amount to more than a left-wing witch hunt.

I've found it more difficult to stay fired up after the health care fiasco, but I'm making a renewed commitment to be active and involved and to push for that November course correction. I'm keeping the accelerator pressed to the floor.

Tom Wells

Why We Should Scrap the Income Tax

2010-03-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

1913 was a very bad year. That was the year the Federal Reserve was created and the 16th Amendment was enacted. In those days the United States Secretary of State had the task of verifying that an amendment to the Constitution had been properly ratified.

The man, a lawyer and professional politician, who was the Secretary of State at that time, was one Philander C. Knox, a Republican. There have been many folks who have called into question the 16th Amendment ratification process. There are some valid reasons why one could say it had not been properly ratified by the requisite number of states. That’s an academic discussion at this point. The 16th Amendment and the federal income tax are facts of life. The courts support the income tax. And why shouldn’t they. The salaries of judges at the federal level are supported by the income tax. They aren’t going to mess with what is a good thing from their standpoint. They want to keep the money pipeline open just as much as politicians and bureaucrats do.

We have looked at reasons not to continue with a central bank or at least to place the restriction of precious metal backing on money creation. Now let’s take a look at the income tax.

Professional politicians and bureaucrats whose very existence depends on taxation are always looking for ways to extract more money from the taxpayer. I think they recognize in an almost atavistic way that they must at some point curb their greed and desire for the power money can buy else they will kill the host. However, their insatiable desire for more money and power often clouds judgment and leads them to destructive policies. The power to tax truly is the power to destroy. In its modern form with features like payroll deduction and a powerful enforcement bureaucracy the income tax is a professional politician’s and bureaucrat’s dream. It provides an endless stream of cash and is a very useful instrument for rewarding friends and punishing enemies.

The very power focused reasons why politicians and bureaucrats love the income tax are also reasons why every citizen should want it abolished. There is another reason however. Even if you pay very little in income taxes or a lot (I have been in both positions) you should want this abomination deep-sixed for good. Why, you ask? The reason is that it is another governmental policy which acts like a sea anchor on the U.S. economy.

This tax system is very damaging to all but the governmental sectors of the economy. The U. S. advanced high tech economy has done well in spite of not because of damaging federal policies. Of all these policies the income tax is one of the worst. It not only siphons large amounts of capital from the private sector but also through its ridiculous complexities places a large added administrative burden on businesses and individuals to comply with the massive tax code and attendant regulations and letter rulings. In addition changes are made frequently by politicians who are constantly tweaking the code so from one year to the next no one can count on the stability of the tax burden being applied to them nor can they rely on constancy of reporting and filing. What does this mean? It means less capital available to truly productive sectors of the economy and fewer jobs.

There are lots of statistics and studies to back up the economic damage thesis so I won’t include a lot of tables and economic analysis. The interested reader will have no trouble finding large amounts of information on this subject.

We should repeal the 16th Amendment and institute some form of consumption tax like the FairTax. No tax is perfect but I would bet a lot in fact I would bet my life that if we had a balanced budget amendment with real teeth and got rid of the income tax in favor of a consumption tax businesses all over this planet would be lining up to set up shop in the USA. Capital formation, business formation and job creation would take off like a rocket.

Our problem of course is progressives again. I’ll end with this:

A progressive is one who is in favor of more taxes instead of less, more bureaus and jobholders, more paternalism and meddling, more regulation of private affairs and less liberty. In general, he would be inclined to regard the repeal of any tax as outrageous.

H. L. Mencken

Bourbon Thoughts

2010-02-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

By: Gill O’Teen

I have learned through expensive on-going research that some Bourbons are definitely better than others. These stand up well when swallowed straight with no added water or ice. To my tongue these have a bit of age, a minimum of 6 years, and a bit of germ-killer, at least 45 ABV (90 proof). Some whisk(e)y experts recommend that when tasting such a product for the first time, it's best to add a drop of water in order to release the full wonders of its taste and smell. But there are other Bourbons which in order to trick my tongue into thinking they are as tasty as Ridgemont Reserve 1792, Wild Turkey Rare Breed, Knob Creek, Makers Mark or a dozen other first class spirits, may require a bit more boost. To my taste, 80 Proof (40% ABV) Bourbons such as Jim Beam (white label) and Old Crow need a flavor assist for me to enjoy them.

Now I am not an expert on making whisk(e)y by any criteria. When it comes to my opinion I am reminded of the old Monty Python skit in which some old ladies were visiting the local art museum. They were literally eating the expensive paintings. One said to the other, “I may not know art, but I know what I like.” But why would ABV play such an important part in the taste of Bourbon? I believe it has to do with water. With a distilled liquor, basically if it’s not alcohol, it’s water. Distillers like to sell their beverages at a certain proof level, which might have something to do with how the gum’mint’s outrageous excise taxes are calculated. Do you realize that when you purchase any alcoholic liquid, you pay sales tax on the excise tax. If a barrel contains a supply of spirit with an ABV higher than the target, sufficient water is added to dilute the alcohol. This newly added water was not aged in any container other than the nearest water supply and so lacks the flavors imparted to the rest of the liquid by a magical charred white oak barrel. That’s why, in general, I find cask or barrel strength whisk(e)ies tastiest. Blended whisk(e)ies retain their flavor by blended higher ABV product with that having lower ABV, which may be why 80 Proof Scotch tastes better on my tongue than its American cousin.

Last Fall, I visited a ‘legal’ moonshine distillery. I think that’s an oxymoron. It’s master distiller told me that the gum’mint of his state mandates that his product be sold at 80 proof. Mathematically inclined folks know that this means 60% of his whiskey is not alcohol. Essentially moonshine, white lightning, white mule or whatever it’s called in various locales is simply unaged condensation. This liquid consists of practically all alcohol and water. This means his ‘shine’ is mostly water because if it comes out of the still at a proof higher than the law allows, it must be diluted with water to make it legal. Say it comes out of the still at a healthy 125 proof such as Frankfort Kentucky’s Buffalo Trace Distillery’s White Dog Mash #1 (actually I don’t know at what proof it exits the still, that’s the proof of the bottled fluid), then to reduce it’s proof to that other state’s legal limit, the moonshiner mentioned earlier must add 422 ml of water to 750 ml of product to keep his license to bottle and sell. So to my thinking the higher the proof, the less added water and the more tasty the potion.

I love Bourbon. I do not know an incorrect way to enjoy it. Parker Beam has been Master Distiller at the Heaven Hill Distillery near Bardstown, Kentucky, an incredibly worthwhile tour, for just over 50 years. A big party was held in Louisville to celebrate this remarkable achievement on October 24, 2009. As part of the festivities New York mixologist, Allen Katz, put on a cocktail seminar for Bourbon aficionados (why wasn’t I invited? -drat). As part of the seminar Katz demonstrated how to make a hot Bourbon cocktail which is sure to cure the global warming winter chill blues. Courtesy of The Bardstown Whiskey Society Winter 2009-2010 Newsletter"The Barrelhouse Chronicle" (from which I stole other details of this paragraph), here’s that recipe. It makes more than I can drink in one night, and the addition of sugar makes storage difficult (freezing the leftovers might work). However, it might make an excellent party punch. There might be easy substitutions for the fruit juice such as Minute Maid for the orange juice or Realemon for the lemon juice. And I see no reason to not use your own favorite Bourbon - just make sure it’s one that mixes well.

Ski Lift - A bourbon cocktail invented by Allen Katz:
1 750 ml bottle of Evan Williams Single Barrel
2 ounces of Orange Curaçao
2 cups hot green tea
Juice of 3 lemons
Juice of 6 oranges
½ cup sugar
Stir tea, lemon juice, orange juice and sugar together over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Add Bourbon and Orange Curaçao. Stir gently, keep warm and serve in your favorite mug.

Might warm up your next party! Have fun!

Last Friday night I sampled a wonderful example of the brewing arts and fully endorse it for others. The drawback is that it is a pricey limited edition. It is Bourbon Barrel Stout (Stout Aged in Bourbon Barrels) which is brewed by Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO
http://odellbrewing.com. It came in a 1 pint 9.4 fluid ounces (750 ml) now emptied bottle. Notes on the bottle side say, “This limited edition offering begins with a full-bodied Imperial Stout that has notes of sweet milk chocolate, smooth vanilla and roasted coffee beans. Then things get interesting. We transfer it to Kentucky Bourbon barrels where it’s aged for four months to let traces of oak and caramel come forward. The Bourbon barrels have a remarkable effect on the Stout. In turn, the Bourbon barrel aged stout has a remarkable effect on the senses." The Bourbon barrels might come from the Buffalo Trace Distillery mentioned above, and they make wonderful Bourbons and Bourbon Balls for those of us with a sweet tooth. Actually a Bourbon Ball imparts a nice finish to a just downed shot.

As mentioned earlier Bourbon must be aged in a NEW charred white-oak barrel. This means that once used for any reason the barrel cannot be used another time, if that second use is to age Bourbon. Bourbon distillers resell their once-used barrels to anyone willing to purchase them. Scotch and Irish distillers are large buyers of these and use them for building the huge casks in which they age their excellent beverages. Some sherry, brandy and wine companies also age their excellent fluids in used Bourbon barrels. That is what Odell did. By aging this stout in a used bourbon barrel, they have crafted a wonderful American Stout with a touch of Bourbon flavor to it. If you like Stout, and I do, and you like Bourbon, and I do, you will like this limited edition Odell offering.

If you are a Bourbon purist incapable of enjoying other drinks, I don’t care. I can be just as snotty as anyone; however, the only valid point to any alcoholic drink is to have a good time, as long as it makes the folks happy nothing else matters. If you don't like mixed drinks, I have no problem with that, but back off on the folks who do. The last thing this country needs is a whisk(e)y nanny. In my opinion, there is only one correct way to drink Bourbon - frequently. Everything else is incidental.

There are several distilleries worth a visit within an easy drive of Buffalo Trace such as Woodford Reserve, Four Roses and Wild Turkey. I have completed the 8 stops of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and have toured both known Tennessee Whisk(e)y Distilleries and encourage everyone do the same. Every one of these 10 businesses offer products which are worth our time and our hard-earned treasure. Most of the other Kentucky Bourbon trail stops are near Bardstown. Bardstown is also home to the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History.

Here are a few links to help your studies:
Kentucky Bourbon Trail http://www.kybourbontrail.com/
George Dickel Tennessee Whisky http://www.dickel.com/
Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey http://www.jackdaniels.com/
Bardstown Whiskey Society http://www.bardstownwhiskeysociety.com/
Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History http://www.whiskeymuseum.com/

I would never impose my own drinking preferences on another. The only correct thing to say to someone about to enjoy a tasty American spirit, wine, or brew is, "Salute!" - be sure to join him or her. However, there are thousands of other toasty expressions which may be substituted. An old friend of mine was fond of saying, "Look out lips, look out gums, look out stomach, here it comes!" I never corrected him, but I did drink his booze for free.

Cheers!

Gill O’Teen 09 February, 2010

Beware the Bigs

2010-02-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

Once, about a half century ago I watched some hammerhead sharks eat some guys. It was a nasty business. The killing and eating did not proceed in series, but rather in parallel. Watching the sharks at their meal made me angry. There was irony in that since just a few minutes before, I had been trying to kill the same guys. But the irony did not sink in at the time, and to this day, if somebody came up with a plan to kill every last man-eating shark on the planet, I would be for it, bio-diversity and endangered species be damned.

I'm told the same emotions are evoked in even the most liberal of tree huggers when they see wolves at work doing what they were designed to do. Strange that they are so beautiful when they are not tearing a moose apart.

The lesson is that it is the nature of sharks, and wolves, and even cuddly white polar bears to eat you if they can. The less there is of this in your life's experience the happier you will be, but perhaps without a little bit of such, we tend to be naive.

As I try to find my way in the twisting and shifting political world of the moment, it is helpful to understand the nature of sharks and wolves and bears. They are going to do what they are going to do, according to their nature. I'm a conservative so I am obligated to say that they are welcomed to that provided I can stay out of their way.

There are not many sharks in my life these days, but there are other things. For example, I'm learning that I don't like Big. Specifically I don't like:

Big Government
Big Banking
Big Business
Big Unions
Big Political Parties

The interesting thing is that I think all of these Bigs are necessary. It might be better if the Bigs were small, but one of the problems with the way the world works is that success tends to make Bigs out of Smalls, so eventually some of these entities will be big. Anyway, how they were wrought does not matter so much. There they are ..., and they are big. And, they have a particular nature. The Bigs are all entities that seek money and power. Arguably, Big Banking, and Big Business can make money, but Big Government, Big Unions, and Big Political Parties don't create any wealth at all. They must take it from the people. In fact, that is their nature and they are good at it.

Even Big Banking and Big Business may tend to eye you more like lunch than someone to take to lunch if you catch them "in the act of being themselves".

The Bigs have three other characteristics in common. They are all top-down bureaucracies. They all crave money and power, and like all big things, they are not easy to feed. They need a lot of money and power just to continue to exist. Not surprisingly the Bigs that have been around a while are very good at getting fed.

You and I, as citizens, need to keep a wary eye on the Bigs. We can't simply avoid them as we might avoid sharks. We must go "in among them" as a part of our daily lives while carefully watching them all the time, never trusting any Big.

The best protection we have is the Constitution, and that part of the body of law that constrains their activities and limits their power. We would do well to keep these protections cleaned, well oiled, and loaded like the rifle we might keep nearby to even the odds should we encounter a bear that thinks we are lunch.

Not surprisingly, the Obamunists and other Big Government liberals don't like the Constitution. It is really in their way. They don't like democracy for the same reason. It is in their way too. Hell, they don't even like the country. They are always apologizing for it. They desperately need to make it a different thing.

If we let them have enough power, they would eliminate the constraints of the constitution, and even democracy itself. Their attitude is they know best, and we the people are just too stupid to understand the wisdom of their program and agenda. They see the value in the citizens... we the people. We are the ones that create the wealth that they have such an appetite for. We are the ones that grant them the power they are so addicted to. They might mumble something about the "consent of the governed" to justify what they get from us.

The Bigs are no different than the sharks, and wolves and bears. It is their nature to be what they are. It is their nature to resent any constraints that are placed upon them. It is their nature to tell us that they are our friend.

But have a care ..... that is just so they can get closer.

Jerry

Announcing the Gill O’Teen 2 Yo (2010 A.D.) Haiku Contest

2010-01-30T06:49:00.000-08:00

Both of you who actually pay attention to what I post are aware that in the past I have attempted to have two fun contests.

The first simply asked contestants to submit their favorite Obama lie. I received exactly two entries and they each simply repeated the very lie I had cited as an example when announcing that contest, so I did not declare a winner.

Then I thought that to celebrate Obama’s lie that those who make less than $250,000 a year will not see their taxes increase even one thin dime, contestants were asked to compose a rhymed four line poem in the manner of George Harrison’s 1966 Rock Classic "Taxman". I received entries from one person. Accordingly that person was declared the Gill O’Teen Poet of the Year 2 Yo (2010 A.D.) and he was awarded a spiffy certificate.

A few weeks ago he sent me the following email:

"Gill, You might consider promoting a Haiku competition. They are very easy to do as they require only the 5-7-5 format. I've seen them mushroom on other discussion lists where rhyming verse did not. I would gladly sit this one out and watch what comes in."

Well why not, might be fun!

The rules for this contest are as follows:
1) Contest entries must be date stamped before February 21, 2 Yo (2010 A.D.).
2) All entries must be sent to my gmail account gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com.
3) Each entry must follow the basic haiku format of three (3) unrhymed lines. The first and third lines must contain exactly five (5) syllables. The middle line must contain exactly seven (7) syllables. Any entry containing obscenities or pornography will be disqualified. I will be the sole judge of this.
4) In the event that I and a contestant disagree as to exactly how many syllables a word might have, a standard dictionary or Google will be consulted. If that fails, I will ask the submitter for an explanation. If the dispute is not resolved by the contest deadline as determined by the email date stamp on the explanation, the entry will be disqualified.
5) I will compile a list of all the entries received which adhere to rule 3, and forward them to the Contest Judge as soon as practical. The identity of the composer of any entered verse will not be disclosed to the Judge. Each verse will be assigned a number based on the order received.
6) The Contest Judge alone will determine the winner using whatever guidelines he chooses. His decision will be final and may not be challenged by anyone.
7) The Winner will receive a certificate suitable for framing designating him or her "The Gill O’Teen Haiku Champion of 2 Yo (2010 A.D.)
8) The Contest Judge will be the Gill O’Teen Poet of the Year for 2 Yo (2010 A.D.).
9) His actual identity is known to participants in the earlier contest, but will only be revealed to others who send me a request. This request will be forwarded to him and only he has the right to divulge his name. For the purpose of this contest he will only be referred to as the Gill O’Teen Poet of the Year for 2 Yo (2010 A.D.).
10) Neither Gill O’Teen nor the Gill O’Teen Poet of the Year for 2 Yo (2010 A.D.) are eligible to win this competition. Everyone else who enters before the deadline is eligible.
11) The email address of all contestants will not be knowingly disclosed by Gill O’Teen to anyone for any reason.
12) Contestants will, however, be identified by their email user i.d. unless I am instructed to use an alias for said contestant. For example, ‘race5@oaklawnpark.org’ will be known as ‘race5'. If a second ‘race5' enters, that i.d. will be ‘race5(02)’ etc.
13) By entering any haiku in this contest, the contestant grants Gill O’Teen the right to use said haiku in any manner he deems fit except that he may not use any but his own compositions in any commercial enterprise without the signed permission of its author.

Sample Haiku I wrote (if I can do it, anyone can do it!)

I’d gladly concede
His first term the best ever
If he’d resign now.

Gill O'Teen

Do We Need the Federal Reserve?

2010-01-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

I came to all the conclusions in this piece slowly over the years. To do it I had to unlearn and throw off almost all my Keynesian economics training just about the only kind you got back when I was an economics major. I guess the opposite of Keynesian economics would be the Austrian School of economics which until quite recently has been out of favor and ignored. There is a reason for that. It really doesn’t provide a rationale for increasing government power.

"Give me control over a nation's currency and I care not who makes its laws."
- Baron M.A. Rothschild (1744 - 1812)

The first thing we should clear up is the definition of wealth and the difference between money and wealth. Wealth is not the piles of paper, the bits on some magnetic storage device or even coins made of gold or silver. These things are used as money which can be a proxy for wealth as long as it is accepted as a store of value by individuals in a socioeconomic system and more importantly as long as it is not manipulated as implied by the above quote.

Once any such manipulation is truly understood by the actors in an economic system the store of value status is lost. Unless savers and investors have before this loss of value occurs moved to things that directly and more securely represent real wealth they lose everything. People have learned this painful lesson about money many times in the past.

It is important to remember that money is only a medium of exchange and can be a store of value only in a stable viable socioeconomic environment. Ultimately you cannot have a stable socioeconomic environment when the supply of money is manipulated.

Real wealth isn’t a static thing. It is productive capacity. It is a process by which people in an economic system apply brain power to the problem of producing goods and services that other folks want and that make living easier and better, better living through science and entrepreneurship so to speak. Investors can own a stake in this productive process through certificates of ownership via securities like stock or they can own a promise to pay a debt from wealth producers via securities like bonds. They can also hold money at interest which is a broader kind of security. It is the overall accepted store of value by a society and represents but is not actually the wealth of that society.

But as I said above once confidence in the store of value idea for a given type of money is lost your monetary representation of wealth is FUBAR. Fiat money the only kind in existence at this point in history can only hold its store of value status based on the promise by the government issuing it that it is in fact worth its stated face value. Ultimately no fiat money has ever lasted because it is too easily manipulated. Commodities like gold and silver however were more successful because they have intrinsic value and have some use beyond their use as money. Also much more importantly their supply is more limited although governments have debased even these types of monies by adding less valuable metals like lead to produce gold coins for example.

I consider 1913 the year that sealed the ultimate economic fate of the USA. It was the year that the Federal Reserve was created and the federal income tax was permitted by the ratification of the 16th Amendment (a subject for another time). The final nail in the economic coffin was the end of the gold standard for international transactions in 1971. In the U. S. we went off the gold standard internally in 1933 when the federal government confiscated all “monetary” gold and handed gold owning citizens twenty dollars and change and then promptly declared that all the gold then owned by the U. S. government was henceforth to be valued at $35! Not only was the confiscation a direct violation of the Constitution but they immediately cheated each gold owning citizen out of $14 dollars and change! Once upon a time any bill introduced into Congress was almost invariable challenged on grounds of constitutionality as a matter of course. See how easy violation of the Constitution had become by 1933?

Even so there was still some restriction on money creation by the Fed because internationally the dollar was still backed by gold. When that link was broken by Richard Nixon the Fed was freed to create as much money as they pleased whenever they pleased. We then had a pure fiat currency.

Did the Founders understand what printing too much paper money can do and what hyperinflation is? You bet they did. The demise of the paper currency called the Continental dollar was fresh in their minds when they wrote the U. S. Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation. In point of fact they authorized the federal government to only create hard money from gold and silver. This is authorized in Article I Section 8. It says:

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the
Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;”

The Founders had no intention of allowing the unrestricted printing of a paper fiat currency. Under the Constitution there was and still is not any authority to do so or to create a central bank that could do so.

Some of the current increase in the price of gold, silver and other precious metals is due to an actual increase in value or purchasing power if you think of it in terms of money relative to other things. That’s because demand has increased and precious metals are relatively scarce. But most of the increase is because the value of gold and silver stays stable while fiat money is decreasing in value (now primarily internationally) as it is being created by central banks.

For thousands of years, gold and silver have been used as money. That’s because they are relatively scarce and convenient to use compared to other things. Fiat money (our paper and electronic forms) is very convenient but when politicians and bureaucrats have power over its quantity they will always abuse that power at some point and bring instability and a decline in purchasing power to consumers. They get away with it because the “dumb masses” as Boortz likes to call them don’t understand the process.

The “dumb masses” can’t be totally blamed for that since the people in power work mightily to hide the true reasons for inflationary price increases. That is because inflation is a hidden tax. They even spread the canard that a little inflation is a good thing. That’s odd because overall the period between 1800 and 1913 a period of massive industrial expansion had no price inflation. In fact in 1913 the dollar had slightly more purchasing power than in 1800. We have only had stability in purchasing power when we used gold and silver directly as money or to back another form of money like paper. It will always be thus.

There has also been a canard spread through the education system and MSM that falling prices are a bad thing. That is not necessarily the case. If prices fall because of advancements and efficiencies in manufacturing and services, that is actually a good thing. The decline in the cost of electronics is an example. BTW, that decline began long before the current day outsourcing controversy.

There were of course ups and downs in the business cycle during the period 1800 to 1913. But some of that was due to wars especially the massive conflict in the middle of that period. The American Civil War was devastating yet the period that contained it was still a period of amazing economic progress and prosperity. Downturns not connected to war were brief and economic recovery rapid during the period. It was not until the 1930’s that we had a prolonged period of economic problems. The evidence is very strong that these problems were prolonged by government and Fed actions.

I have concluded that unless we return to a gold standard or some other commodity (one of limited supply) based money system we will never be able to rely on our monetary system. I have further concluded that we do not actually need the Federal Reserve. Those banks can be dissolved or just converted to ordinary banks. Think about it. Why do we need an institution that can change the thing we use as a store of value whenever the folks that run it wish or when politicians pressure them to do so? It is nothing more than a hidden tax system. At the very least such power should be restricted. That restriction existed when we were on a gold standard.

The Gray Society

2009-12-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

Like so many other liberals, my daughter-in-law doesn’t see it coming yet. But I’m fighting to save her children (my granddaughters) from the uniformity and dullness of The Gray Society that appears to be in their future. She, like so many other Democratic/Socialists probably thinks people who share my — newly ignited and suddenly radical — political passion are misinformed, misguided Astroturf Tea Partiers. That’s what she’s been told and she probably believes it. For the sake of family harmony this — and several other topics — are taboo.

But those who are relying on the messages and advice of our mainstream media are the ones who are misinformed and misguided, as a few are beginning to discover. They are the pawns in a great socialist movement. Those of us who can think independently are this country’s only hope.

If all goes according to the socialist plan, this is what I foresee (and fear) for my granddaughters:

• A country full of safety nets. No one will be able to fall too far. But no one will be able to achieve too much.

• A country of mediocrity. No one will be expected to accomplish much. And no one will.

• A society with no risks and no rewards.

• A community of sameness and homogenization, lacking extreme happiness and extreme grief. The highs of life will have been removed along with the lows.

• A politically correct society in which no one ever offends or challenges anyone or anything. A society in which “diversity” has come to mean “sameness.”

• A country of vapid television reporters/government mouthpieces supported by government stipends and having no competition.

• A country in which the proletariat works to support the ruling class with government jobs being the only “good jobs” and “secure jobs” left, one in which voting for the ruling political party is the best way to protect those jobs.

• A country in which the government runs everything (banks, auto manufacturers, utility companies, schools, news media, insurance, doctors, hospitals, and air transportation) as well as it runs the postal system, the railroads, and the welfare system.

• A country with crushingly expensive but nonetheless bad health care for all (or most anyway).

• A country with Russian-style education in which the ruling class determines what’s real and what will be included in the curriculum.

• A society in which only the criminals have guns and other countries have destructive weapons (that’s OK, we’ll meet with and talk to them).

• A country in which the wilderness is protected as a park and people are completely safe there in a Disney-like cocoon. There will be rationed time slots for visitors, so it’s never crowded (sign up now).

• A society of absolute security for most and unending dullness and sameness for all, one of no worry but also of no joy.

• A country of 1984-speak duplicitousness and misinformation provided by the media and big government.

• A country in which food, fuel, and entertainment are rationed, hyper-taxed to prevent many from buying (or from buying too much), or simply unavailable.

• A country of oppressive dept. My granddaughters and their fellow proletariat (including those lucky enough to land the “good government jobs”) will work to support their government and have little to show for their efforts. They’ll have exactly what everyone else has. Perhaps they won’t realize what they’re missing.

• A country of cities, mass transit, community-think, and stifling sameness. One for all and all alike.

• A country in which all forms of energy have been limited or capped so travel becomes impossible, creating a country with inhabitants who are insular and whose ideas are inbred.

• A society in which the proletariat is manipulated not so much by the thought-police as by their friends and neighbors who know what is correct and how all persons should behave in order to conform to all social expectations (recycling, driving green vehicles, joining certain clubs, shopping in approved stores, voting in acceptable ways, reading correct books, and eating the currently sanctioned diet).

• A world with unremarkable gray gauze stretched in everyone’s field of vision and blinding everyone’s world view.

• Essentially a world in which all the blacks and whites have been removed, leaving just the grays behind . . . a safe, secure, and monstrously monotonous society: The Gray Society.

That is the scenario I fear for the next generations. One by one, I hope others will turn off their one-way televisions, toss out their misleading and biased newspapers, boycott Hollywood, and begin to see the trends anew as independent thinkers. As more and more join our Astroturf revolution and the Tea Parties, it is my fervent hope that we will prevent the graying of this country for the sake of the generations to come.

By: KTL 26 December 2009

Christmas Greetings

2009-12-21T06:46:00.000-08:00

Wishing you
the warmth of
hearth and home
this blessed Christmas season.

Matt and Linda Morehouse

Wood Stove Baked Apple or Poached Pear for Two

You can, of course, cook this on your stove top rather than your wood stove, if you prefer. Adjust proportions if you want to serve more than two diners.

1 large apple, Macintosh, Rome, or similar
2 tablespoons rum
½ teaspoon molasses
2 teaspoons raw sugar
1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
2–3 cubes candied ginger, minced fine
1 graham cracker, crumbled fine

Cut apple in half horizontally and core. Place in casserole or in cast iron skillet cut side up. Pour rum over apple. Drizzle molasses over apple halves. Sprinkle with sugar. Cover with aluminum foil or the skillet lid and place on moderate-heat wood stove for about an hour.
While apples are cooking on wood stove, blend peanut butter with minced candied ginger and graham cracker crumbs. Reserve for topping.

When ready to serve, spoon apple halves into small bowls and pour reduced rum over. Top each baked apple half with a dollop of peanut butter mixture.
Serve hot. Serves 2.

If desired, top with whipped cream or vanilla-flavored yogurt, but this is almost gilding the lily, for this dessert is perfect as it stands.

Variation: Wood Stove Poached Pear

Use a Bosc pear, split lengthwise and cored. Omit molasses drizzle and sugar sprinkle, but use the same amount of rum.
Cook on stove top same as apple. Serve warm, garnished with 2 tablespoons Neufachtel cheese, creamed with 2–3 minced cubes candied ginger and one tablespoon finely chopped walnuts. Different flavor, same great hot dessert.

From our cookbook, Cast Iron Cuisine from Breakfast to Dessert, published June 2009, now in its second printing.

Will 2012 Be the Year of the Mass Grave of the Democratic Party?

2009-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

I think a good portion of the Democrats have finally morphed into full fledged totalitarian socialists albeit I suspect wimpy ones. They may not be fully aware of this change themselves. Being wimpy, once it hits the fan for our economy they will be the first to run for cover and I hope it is to another part of the planet. They may have bought themselves a one way ticket on a train headed to oblivion. Those who oppose their mad rush will unfortunately lose a lot also. Let’s review their current brain dead policies and attitudes.

They are intent on passing legislation like the government run health care bills and cap and trade bills that a majority of voters don’t want and that are certain to bring economic ruin. Their obsession with CO2 alone is a massive jobs killer. Recent polls show that around 52 percent of respondents oppose the health care reform under consideration in Congress and only 38 percent support it. The other 10% percent are the ones that are habitually clueless I suspect. I also suspect that when they bother to vote it is always for Democrats or RINOS.

They refuse to allow any type of sane energy policy which again is certain to bring economic ruin. They eschew all but wind and solar power.

They are continuing a reckless fiscal policy which the Fed is aiding and abetting with an equally reckless monetary policy. This combination alone would bring economic ruin upon any country.

They have tied themselves to the failed Keynesian policies that prolonged the Great Depression, damaged our economy for decades and now in hyper drive have us within months of going over an economic cliff.

They have lost any understanding of what a constitutional democratic republic is, what the founding philosophy of this country is and what market capitalism is if in fact any of them ever possessed such understanding.

Increasingly the Dems act like rulers rather than anyone’s representatives. Queen Nancy’s recent “Are you serious?” statement about the Congress’s constitutional authority to pass sweeping health care legislation reminds one of Marie Antoinette’s supposed quote “Let them eat cake.” If the economy continues on the current road a similar statement can’t be far off from the aging hollow-eyed hippie of Haight-Ashbury as Neal Boortz likes to call her.

Of course the problem is that this final banzai charge toward the socialist utopia will bring down our economy and create such misery and economic chaos that it could take a generation to repair the damage. Possibly it might never be repaired at least not in the lifetime of anyone now in existence. That means this madness has to be stopped to avoid a massive train wreck and it has to be stopped soon. At this point however the train may be traveling too fast to stop easily or without a lot of damage anyway. 11/02/2010 looks like our last shot but may not be soon enough. Economic processes like this tend to be somewhat exponential and we may be near extremis.

You might wonder what the point of all this madness is. It has happened before on large and small scales all over the world and has been chronicled by many in countless books. They explain the history and the process but I have never seen a good explanation of why especially given the fact that these suicidal actions aren’t new. There are plenty of bad examples. I believe it is an old Chinese saying that “everyone has a purpose in life even he who serves as a bad example”.

I have concluded that the mindset of these folks is not unlike that of fanatics engaged in a religious cult suicide pact. Life for them without their utopian dream simply isn’t acceptable. Do not expect rationality from these folks. In the last few days of the Third Reich Magda Goebbels poisoned all six of her children because she could not conceive of them living in a world without National Socialism. Remember these were not stupid people living in some third world backwater. Germany was a first world industrial nation. Yet they succumbed to the madness engendered by propaganda and the big lie.

Once it really hits the fan economically I think the Democrats are done. The party is headed for a mass grave. We just have to figure out how not to be dragged into our own tomb by the inevitable economic tsunami. I don’t think they will have the stomach or aside from a few thugs from organizations like SEIU the firepower to bring about a true police state which is what they will need to maintain power once the economy hits the wall. I don’t believe SEIU is full of former Marines, Green Berets or Navy SEALs.

A while back there was speculation on the internet, discussions of which you can still find; to the effect that this existence could actually be a computer simulation (OK techies on large doses of caffeine get a little strange late at night). Actually what the proponent of this idea showed mathematically was not that we were in such a simulation but that if it could be assumed that we would some day be able to build machines so powerful that they could reproduce or simulate our reality then the probability was very high that we were ourselves in such a simulation. One of these folks indicated that we might all wake up one day step outside and have an instant epiphany when we saw a sign in a bright blue sky that said: “Game Over”. Maybe that is what will happen on 12/21/2012!

Nothing so dramatic will happen to the collectivist Dems. Their “Game Over” moment will come when they fall ignominiously into the dustbin of history. I just hope things aren't totally FUBAR and we can piece the republic back together when they are finally gone.

Let's hear it for Small Business

2009-12-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

I have a small business.

Like in a log rolling contest, past success in a small business is not a predictor of future success. Starting a small business involves risks that are so great that most people never try to do it. Safety nets for small businesses do not exist. "Too small to be allowed to fail?" Still, small businesses are the first engines to start up in an economic recovery, and they are, taken in total, the enterprises that create the most jobs.

In my opinion, the "leaders" of these large multi-national companies are not the kind of people who could or would start a small business. Nor could they run one successfully. They are steeped in the concept, much as politicians are, that you must do everything with other people's money. I can't fault this, they, like the politicians, seem to prosper no matter what.

Speaking as a small business owner, I'll state here what I would like to have from the Government(s).

1. Get off my back.
2. Get out of the way.

It is that simple.

Jerry

Subsidized News

2009-12-03T11:02:00.000-08:00

The main stream media seems to be taking no notice of the Climategate Scandal. That is because it does not fit their propaganda message. Bias? Of course, but there is hope. Some of these people are already in the bread line.

As we tap dance merrily down the primrose path toward socialism, we will see more and more elements of society line up at the public trough. After all, we bailed out Wall Street, and bought some car companies, and want to forgive some mortgage contracts while making more shaky mortgages for people that can't afford them. Who or what will be next? Why the journalists of course.

Here is a look at one of the latest schemes:

From Utahpolicy.com:
10/20/2009

Is Government-Subsidized Journalism the Future?

By LaVarr Webb

A new report from Columbia University's School of Journalism says government needs to step in to save journalism. BYU communications professor Joel Campbell, a former colleague of mine at the Deseret News, posted a link on Facebook to a blog called SaveTheNews.org, which reports on the study.

It suggests six steps to save journalism, most of which deal with providing tax breaks, government funding, and philanthropy to journalism organizations.

The report's bottom line: "American society must now take some collective responsibility for supporting independent news reporting in this new environment -- as society has, at much greater expense, for public needs like education, health care, scientific advancement and cultural preservation -- through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy and government policy."

So is traditional journalism so important that your tax dollars should prop it up?

Analysis by Jerry

This paper from the Columbia School of Journalism is long, perhaps in the hope that the sheer size of the work will make it more compelling. The authors start with a history lesson, and proceed through the causes of the decline in the fortunes of newspapers. One after another winks out. Many (like my hometown paper) are in bankruptcy. The authors move on to try to develop a crisis out of the lack of local reporting. That seems to be a key to the argument.

Finally, the authors say:

“We are not recommending a government bailout of newspapers, or any of the various direct subsidies that governments give newspapers in many European countries.

American society must take some collective responsibility for supporting independent news reporting in this new environment.”

Note here the use of the word "collective", as in collectivist, as in socialist. They say they don't want subsidies in the first sentence and waffle back to suchlike in the next sentence. Collective, collectivist.... socialist. "Do like the Europeans do."

The authors claim throughout the paper that we are going to lose big journalism, which is critical to our democracy. But they peck at the idea, perhaps to expand the length of the piece. (bad writing for a journalist) A better statement of this position actually came from Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. This statement was in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled "How Google Can Help Newspapers" which is a piece defending Google for creating a site called Google News. which they bill as an Aggregated headlines and a search engine of many of the world's news sources.

Schmidt says: "We recognize, however, that a crisis for news-gathering is not just a crisis for the newspaper industry. The flow of accurate information, diverse views and proper analysis is critical for the functioning democracy."

I do not disagree with Mr. Schmidt, but I think we have already lost the thing Mr. Schmidt values.

To put it another way, if the main steam media is already not doing its job, I can't see how "collectivist support" (they don't want to call it subsidies) provided by the government will bring it back. I also don't accept the idea, offered by the authors, that government support of news organizations would not compromise their independence. Of course it would.

I offer a different view. I have believed for a long time that the Republican Party is in a life or death struggle with the main stream media. It is possible that neither side recognizes that quite yet, but I believe it is the case. I think the Democrats have recognized this for a long time. The Democrats understand this business of propaganda and control of communications. For example, the Democrats desperately wish to silence Rush Limbaugh, and they are willing to turn the first amendment upside down to do it. They have plans under the cloak of increased diversity, to gag the few other media outlets where Republicans and Conservatives communicate. They even eye the internet as a threat to their control of the "message".

What I mean by life or death struggle is that either the main stream media or the Republican party will survive this contest in some recognizable form. One will survive, not both. The first element in winning a fight is to know you are in one. I wonder if the Republicans know. They complain of bias, that is all. There is no aggressive attack offered in return for the aggressive attack from the main stream media on them.

While it may seem impossible to fight the main stream media, it is not. The main stream media is in a lot of trouble. As the Columbia J School piece says, Newspapers are going bankrupt, and some are closing their doors. The Columbia School of Journalism thinks this is bad and offers ways to save journalists from losing their jobs. They propose we use some "collectivist" (don't call it subsidy) solution so these people can continue to spew their left wing biased propaganda out and call it unbiased news. "Lets tax the internet providers and give the money to the journalists." That has an appeal. Push the competition down and make them give money to the poor journalists.

Instead, I suggest we continue to find ways to encourage the journalists' demise:

1) Embarrass them. Their accuracy has always been horrible. Point that out.

2) Discredit them by pointing out their bias.

3) Replace them with other forms.

4) If necessary, encourage a conservative boycott. (this last seems to be happening with no leadership or encouragement at all, but we could make it worse for them if we organized).

We are already living without good unbiased journalism in the main stream media. Don't subsidize them, let them go. They failed in their task.

Jerry

Quote for the day

2009-12-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

"It is disheartening that Americans must overcome not only enemies but their own government. But the spirit of liberty and the majesty of our Constitution empower us to do just that. There’s only one question: Do we have the will?"

Andrew C. McCarthy NRO Online 02 December, 2009

Duty

2009-11-24T16:55:00.000-08:00

It is the patriotic duty of every American to keep as much money as possible out of the control of his government.

Matt Morehouse

2010 – Our opportunity to restore sanity

2009-11-23T09:31:00.000-08:00

We are enduring a concentrated and vicious assault on American values and principles, led by the “troika” of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid. They are aided and abetted by the usual hacks and demagogues in both houses of congress, and in particular by the mainstream media. We can bring it to halt in 2010, hopefully before the damage is irrevocable.

We’ll eschew the use of the word “Change.” -- That’s what we’d like to have a little bit of remaining in our pockets. We’ll also ignore any reference to “Hope.” -- That’s a little town in Arkansas made infamous for giving us Bill Clinton. The 2010 election will be all about a return to American values and principles, and a course correction to counter the current hard left turn that has all of our heads spinning.

The preceding posts to this blog point out the opportunity to remove chronic offenders such as Senators Dodd and Reid, but they also point out the crowded field lining up for the competition. Such a mob scene plays into the hands of the liberals, because they can and will use a divide and conquer strategy to point out the differences and cause rancor among the various candidates’ supporters. Those feeling hold over long past the primaries.

What do we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen? We who have been vocal and active here and on other forums need to get involved. Here’s a five-point plan, subject to editing and amendment by those with better political instincts than I have.

1. In each critical race, identify those candidates who reflect conservative values and American traditions, and are not afraid to say so.
2. Carefully vet the candidates – not with the proctological exam techniques used by the media, but with a careful look at the history and career of each. Any red flags than can be used by the libs and the media to destroy a candidate have to be acknowledged and dismissed early, so that it’s old news.
3. Work with State and Local officials to objectively rate the suitable candidates, and then to identify the ones with the strongest chance to win.
4. Work with the other candidates to try and convince them of the wisdom of narrowing the field. A two-or-three candidate primary is far preferable to a ten-candidate primary, and will usually result in the better candidate being selected.
5. Finally – once the primaries are over, support the candidate selected, even if he or she was not your first choice. They are still going to be a preferable to leaving the Dodds and Reids in place.

We will not likely oust Nancy Pelosi or Barney Frank – they are both elected in districts that might be described as “People’s Republic of…” But if we actively work in the other important races, we can enhance the chances that sanity will return in 2010. Then we’ll be able to call Pelosi “Ex-speaker” and Reid “Former Senator.” Wouldn't that be nice?

Tom 23 Nov. 09

If it ain't broke...fix it??

2009-11-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

When I was a young boy I used to tear down all manner of things just to see how they worked. Not all of these things got back together and went back into service, but my father was an indulgent man and kept bringing me more things to examine. Eventually he brought me things that already didn't work, with the stated expectation that they should work when I was finished with them. For a young boy it was a fine way to learn about how the things in the world worked.

As I was moving through this review of all things, I would occasionally see signs and bumper stickers saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I wondered about that motto. Later I would have engineering bosses who would say, "first prove to me that we have a real problem before you redesign that thing" (to fix a supposed problem based on one telephone call from the field). I learned from them too, and came to understand that they were essentially saying "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

Too late in life I began to take an interest in politics. Before that interest, I kind of understood that out there in the world somewhere there were "others", Nazis and Socialists and Communists. I even ducked a few communist bullets in my misspent youth, but I always had the feeling that those kind of people would never come to my homeland. I had to go to their homeland and fight them there.

As I grew older, I finally understood that "If it ain't broke don't fix it" really meant that lots of things work for reasons we may never fully understand, but if they work and we should respect them nonetheless.

As I studied the behavior of the socialists and communists, I detected a variation on "If it ain't broke don't fix it" Their motto was "If it ain't broke they won't let us fix it" So, "We need to break it first, then they will let us fix it." Socialism and communism cannot easily replace economic and governmental systems that work fairly well. Furthermore, almost all economic and governmental systems tend to work better than socialism and communism unless they are sabotaged.

And that is the point, or at least it is the question. Is our present administration, with their very socialist agenda, trying to fix things, or are they trying to break them? We are told now that our imbalance of trade and our ever increasing deficit are a big problem, big enough to destroy our way of life. Why then are we prevented from exploiting our own energy reserves? Is that so we have to send dollars to our Muslim enemies and aggravate the trade imbalance? Why have we made so many restrictive regulations on our own industry. Was that so we would export our industry and jobs to our arch enemy Communist China? Why are we contemplating cap and trade legislation that can only offer economic destruction? Communist China and India are not stupid enough to join us in this economic suicide. Without them, there will be no significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions so why are we intent on destroying the rest of our industrial base? Why is our government spending money at a truly shocking rate, thereby driving up the deficit and driving down the dollar? Why are we promoting the largest entitlement program in our history at a time when the government borrows almost half of all the money it spends?

Are the people in power at the moment trying to fix things.... or are they trying to break them? Have they reasoned that first they must break the system and then we the people will beg them to fix it? Good question. It is, after all, the socialist and communist way of gaining power and then keeping it.

By: Jerry

(

A Fair Trial?

2009-11-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

Ironically, after the Station Master of Treblinka, Adolph Eichman, was kidnapped in South America by Israeli agents, he was tried in an Israeli civilian court (tribunal), convicted, sentenced to death and hanged. No venire of twelve citizens of "average ignorance"!

I think Holder is a worthless piece of excrement for bringing those Islamic pigs here when we spent hundreds of millions engineering the Military Commissions and constructing a special court house at GITMO. If Military Commissions were good enough for the Germans and Japanese, they're certainly good enough for Islamic pigs! We both know this wasn't Holder's decision. Obama and Axelrod made this decision. BO is still grandstanding and campaigning --- for 2012.

I will never vote for a President who hasn't served in the military! This is week 12 of Barack's mulling-over a troop increase in Afghanistan. Like Jimmy Carter, he can't make a meaningful decision about anything.

We're still under attack! Case-in-point: Major Hassan. No doubt another excellent candidate for a "civilian" trial notwithstanding the fact he's active duty Army. BO's 2012 campaign is in full-swing.

Alan I7 Nov. 09

Quote for the day

2009-11-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time."

General George S. Patton

S.P.I.N.E.

2009-11-10T07:01:00.000-08:00

“Why is it getting so hot, and what are we doing in this handbasket?”

That is the question Americans will be asking if the U.S. Senate follows the lockstep insanity exhibited by the House of Representatives.

Yes – there is still time to reign in the headlong rush to a government-run health care system and all the woes that come with such a monster. It will take several decisive events to stop it, including:

· The first step: Growth of actual spines by several Senators. This includes not only RINOs such as Olympia Snowe, but several so-called “Moderates” and even (hopefully) a few less liberal Democrats who have not fallen mindlessly into this lockstep rush to socialism.
· The second step: With backbones in place, this band must join committed conservative Republicans in blocking the Pelosi/Ried agenda and then offering up real, constructive reform such as interstate portability, tort reform and other changes that will help increase competition and reduce cost without handing the whole thing to the government.
· The Third step: Assuming step two can be achieved, the House and Senate bills brought to conference will be radically different. These Senators will then need all of the spine grown in step one to resist the inevitable arm-twisting, threats and wheedling that will take place as Pelosi and Ried try to force government-run health care down our collective throats. They must INSIST that the so-called “government option” be dropped; that portability and tort reform be left in place; and that any so-called “triggers” that would allow a government run plan to be brought in the back door be eliminated.

The thing we must do now is contact our Senators, forcefully and often, urging them to dig in for us and prevent the looming catastrophe. The movement needs a name. How about “SPINE?” (Senators Preventing Insane New Enactments)

Tom Wells
10 November 09

Quote for the day

2009-11-09T07:14:00.000-08:00

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

2009 Judge Alex Kozinski

(Don't) Let Them Eat Bananas

2009-11-05T20:18:00.000-08:00

The bizarre banana boycott

I have just read that some virtuous liberals have now decided to save the world by refusing to buy or eat bananas. Their argument follows the lines that the transportation of bananas from Central and South America is too expensive in terms of fuel consumed. They hope, it seems, to do their part to prevent global warming by buying only locally grown produce. What next?

I’m sure they feel righteous in sacrificing to save the world from global warming in this manner (think globally, act locally, after all). What a shame they’re jousting with fearful phantoms that have no basis in science (but then what does science have to do with it -- it’s really about who has the most persuasive lawyers and the largest checkbooks, isn’t it?).

Misguided as they are on the problem, how can their solution (a bizarre boycott of bananas) save the world? That’s the question that kept me awake last night. Did they remember to tell the banana growers that demand will be shrinking? Do the transportation companies have plans to reduce their fleets? Or will the banana growers just keep right on growing and shipping, using the same amount of fuel to send every last banana on their trees to the grocery stores for those who are less enlightened and not nearly as righteous?

Isn’t this latest greatest idea for world salvation the equivalent of a boycott against someone’s national economy . . . the same economy they tried to save by eating only South American nuts in their Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in order to save the rain forests? Will bananas alone do it, or must they also boycott all chocolate, coffee, and sugar? Now we’re moving into the realm of true personal sacrifice.

But wait! Transportation costs being what they are, it seems to me that they also should buy only manufactured products produced in local factories. That means nothing more from China. Depending upon where they live, this could be a real hardship. I’m not certain that anything is manufactured in the continental U.S. anymore. Not even our flags.

Now that they’re eating only locally grown food, they’d better quit their jobs (commuting probably requires too much fuel anyway) so they can devote their springs, summers, and falls to growing and putting away crops for the winter. With all the canned and preserved food as their core meals, they’ll no doubt need to put in root cellars and they could then get rid of their energy-hungry refrigerators.

Now that they’ve a bit more time on their hands, they could save a lot of fuel by doing their wash in oaken buckets with washboards and using hand-powered wringers and the clothesline drying method. They could even haul their own water. They could get rid of their family automobiles (never mind what will happen to the landfills if they all decide to dump the family cars at once).

If we are all to get back to basics in this way, we’ll each need a much larger plot of land than most suburban dwellers own. That could be a complication, since there are so many of us and so little land left. But don’t worry. If some zealots decide this is a good idea for them, they’ll no doubt try to legislate it for the rest of us. Maybe they’ll need a czar and a federal bureaucracy to oversee the allotment of farmland, seeds for crops, how often we could water those crops, our use of pesticides, payment for not planting . . . just think of the additional government jobs that could be created!

After some reflection, it doesn’t seem as if we can easily revert to the 1800s after all. My conclusion is that we may as well eat bananas. We’ll need the energy they provide to fight the real problems we face today. In fact, the biggest problem we face may very well be the well-meaning zealots who would like to change their lives and ours too.

KTL

Disaffected Leftist Relocation Fund

2009-11-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

Let’s face it leftists, collectivists, Marxists, and all manner of socialist minded folks just don’t like it here. They don’t like my favorite form of government a classical constitutional democratic republic. They don’t like market capitalism. They find the United States Constitution so constraining that they want to turn it into an endlessly changing “living” document, i.e. a scrap of paper with no real meaning. They want to march everyone in this nation off to their wonderful utopian dream under the control of one or more of their philosopher kings. How dismal would that be?

I have a better idea. Rather than continually trying to change this nation into their idea of a socialist utopia they should just move to some place in the eastern hemisphere. There are lots of places to choose from and I am sure they all could find a nice country with a socialist ambiance much more to their liking than the USA. Why suggest the eastern hemisphere? Well, I don’t want to make it too easy for them to sneak back over the border with the other illegal immigrants.

Why don’t they just pick up and move then? Well, maybe they need a nudge. How about a financial incentive from those of us who like all the things they hate.

To that end I suggest that we establish the “Disaffected Leftist Relocation Fund”. I know it will cost us money and it seems like bribery or protection money but think about it for a moment.

We could avoid endless political battles over trillion dollar stimulus packages, bailouts and other government largess. We could reestablish a real constitutional republic. We could have a reasonable tax system, a stable dollar, and an end to leftist politicians and bureaucrats constantly undermining the Constitution, the dollar, and the economic structure of the country.

We could attract talented folks from other countries that think a democratic republic and economic freedom are capital (pun intended) ideas. California would become the Golden State again. Massachusetts would be the Bay State again instead of Taxachusetts. I could stop calling this state the People’s Republic of Minnesota. Last but not least we could avoid any nasty stuff like armed conflict.

In the end I am guessing it would save us trillions. Isn’t it worth an annual contribution to this fund to get that result? Isn’t it an attractive nonviolent market oriented way to solve our intractable political differences with these fools, oops I mean folks?

How would it work? I propose that we establish the fund as a nonprofit organization and solicit donations. Maybe some folks at Cato, Heritage, or Hoover could help us with the legal stuff and paper work and we could hire a good PR firm to create some snappy ads that your typical leftist just couldn’t resist.

The rules? Well each disaffected leftist would have to sign a document in triplicate renouncing his or her citizenship and agreeing to leave this country and hemisphere permanently. They would have to agree to a photo, fingerprints, and DNA sample and their information would go into the Disaffected Leftist Database (DLD) so a new and highly effective United States Border Patrol could at least keep them out of this country if not out of the hemisphere. I am sure we could develop some incentives for other countries on this half of the planet to refuse them entry and perhaps even get rid of their own leftists.

In consideration for this renunciation of citizenship and immediate departure for the east each leftist would get the following:

A ticket to any country in the eastern hemisphere that would permit them entry.
A tax free $100,000 dollars in cash or in some other major currency like Euros, Yen, etc.
A tax free $25,000 moving expense allowance to transport their belongings like copies of Mao’s little red book and Marx’s Das Kapital. If they want to settle in the Middle East, we could supply them a complementary copy of the Quran which they will need for acculturation and Mein Kampf a very popular western book in places like Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
A tax free cash settlement for any real estate they own in this hemisphere equal to the average of the appraisal amounts of three independent appraisers. They could keep their assets like securities and private pensions but would have to give up Social Security and Medicare. But I am sure they would be more than happy with the “free” medical care and vast array of social programs in their new socialist digs.

What if they have underage kids? They can take them along or leave them with relatives. That might be too bad for the kids but you know you can’t solve every problem.

Too generous? Maybe but after about 20% are gone the rest might panic and we could reduce the price. And when 50% are gone just think how much more pleasant life would start to be here in the USA! Now, 20% of say 10,000,000 hard core leftists is 2,000,000 so not counting real estate purchases that would be $250 billion. But as we got rid of more and more leftists our taxes would go down and our economy would markedly improve so some of that real estate could be sold off to defray the cost of the program.

Of course there would be some rich folks like Barbra Streisand and George Soros that wouldn’t take the bait but as time wore on they would become afraid of being left behind with a bunch of rabid conservatives and libertarians. The pressure would cause them to bail eventually.

The big issue would be getting donors and getting a law for tax free payouts. But maybe if we showed some headway in eliminating leftists we could eventually get say 50 million folks with an average donation of $6000 per year. That would be $300 billion per year not counting investment income and real estate sales. We would need some wealthy conservatives and libertarians to help with a sizable chunk of startup money and a commitment to a sizable annual donation.

Now I know there might be some legal and logistical problems with this but hey, you have to think outside of the box!

I just had another out of the box thought. I know they are understandably attached to their little piece of desert for religious, cultural, and historic reasons but maybe a lot of non socialist Israelis might want to trade places with our disaffected leftists.

I know Israelis had a socialist bent for a time but I read a few years ago that they were becoming disenchanted with the whole idea. That could solve much of our Middle East problem. And it would be another selling point since leftists here so desperately want to help the Palestinians. Maybe each disaffected leftist would want to share some of their $100K stipend with a new Palestinian friend. I think that would be just precious don’t you?

The Lesson of the Pomegranate

2009-10-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

Today I peeled a pomegranate that was past its prime. As I separated the good seeds from the bad ones, I thought to myself that I had better be "liberal" in the use of what is left, since none of it will last long.

That's when I was struck by a second meaning of "liberal." In the common usage, it also means to spend, waste, or use up quickly.

Here's what one dictionary says:
a liberal coating of paint: abundant, copious, ample, plentiful, generous, lavish, luxuriant, profuse, considerable, prolific, rich; literary plenteous. antonym scant.

Come to think of it, why does that alternative meaning surprise me?

--KTL 10/29/09

A Call For More Co-Authors

2009-10-28T07:02:00.000-07:00

I converse on a number of private email groups wherein we discuss matters that deserve much wider dissemination than is possible among the few members of those groups. My attempts to drive the discussions to this blog, where there is at least the potential for wide exposure, have been unsuccessful. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how we might encourage others to come out from under their rocks and give everyone the benefit of their wisdom?

Perhaps one of the problems is that only co-authors can post new topics (anyone may post comments). At present there are only two co-authors: gxm and myself. I am hereby issuing a call for more co-authors. Post a comment if you are interested. This is a way to get your ideas far beyond the confines of your circle of cronies.

This Is the Problem!

2009-10-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

While taking a break from software bug hunting I read this article by Walter Williams - American Idea. I recommend it highly. For my money Walter has pretty much identified our main problem. Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are two of the best constitutional scholars and libertarian economists I know of.

Birther Idiocy

2009-10-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

I say, people, we must get off this "birther" idiocy. This is right up there with Holocaust deniers, those who posit 9/11 as an "inside job", and OJ didn't do it.

It truly doesn't matter if He was born on the left side of the Moon He is the president and will be for the next three years. Bend your best efforts toward making sure He isn't president for the next seven. It is a monumental waste of time, talent, and money to pursue the "birth" issue.

Matt

Comrades in arms

2009-10-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

I have been in contact with “Moose” who is the administrator of :

theunrepentantpatriots@googlegroups.com.

This is a group of patriots much larger than this nascent blog. They have graciously agreed to mention “Conversations” on their site. In return I agreed to mention theirs. Please take the time to check it out.

I believe it is of utmost importance that a lot of the intelligence that passes among members of small email groups be given wider distribution. Therefore I ask that all who are interested in promulgating Conservative principles use public forums instead of keeping their wisdom hidden in small email groups.
Matt

A Democratic Republic Not A Democracy

2009-10-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

Progressives are always harping about democracy. Me thinks they protest too much. Much of what they propose smacks of authoritarianism mixed with mob rule.

The Founders were suspicious of democracy which often ends up as mob rule. They were concerned with preserving individual liberty. With pure democracy the majority can often violate the rights and trample the individual liberty of the minority. The Greek city states were historical examples of why they were concerned.

This is why they opted for a constitutional democratic republic with the Constitution as the highest law of the land. They viewed this form of government as the best way to allow a democratic process to control the representatives of the people but also maximize the preservation of individual liberty for all citizens. We often refer to it as the rule of law.

In my view calling the U. S. a democracy has subtly shifted the perception of our governmental system away from what the Founders envisioned. They managed to create the best form of government yet devised a classical constitutional democratic republic. It’s not perfect but it beats all the alternatives.

Progressives want you to believe that perfection and utopia are possible. They suffer from what I call philosopher king(s) syndrome. They think they can find a godlike leader or group of leaders to guide them to collectivist utopia. The historical record is that they always lead to dystopia. H. L. Mencken who I think could arguably be thought of as the first modern libertarian made this observation:

"Liberty, at bottom, is a simple thing, whatever its outward forms. It is common faith in man, common good will, common tolerance and charity, common decency, no less and no more. Translated into political terms, it is the doctrine that the normal citizen of a civilized state is actually normal – that the decency which belongs naturally to homo sapiens, as an animal above the brutes, is really in him. It holds that this normal citizen may be trusted, one day with another, to do the decent thing. It relies upon his natural impulses, and assumes them to be sound. Finally, it is the doctrine that if these assumptions are false, then nothing can be done about it – and if human beings are actually so bad, then none is good enough to police the rest.”

Women power?

2009-10-14T07:28:00.000-07:00

The media is now recognizing the trend that I have previously identified. I would ask that all interested in the future of Conservatism, get on board with this phenomena and support the efforts of Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, Meg Whitman and all charismatic female candidates that have the star power to be elected. Sallie Krawcheck is one that I identified in a previous post although her political views are unknown. Another is Meredith Whitney. (Google them)

The Conservatives should also be looking for other charismatic females who may join our cause. Most of the potential candidates will come from the business world but there must be others in the military, law, judiciary and even in politics .

While I love Huckabee, Gingrich, McCain and others, the old white men are simply not electable in the present day of Social Networking (300 million on Facebook), media hype and frenzy. I speak as an old white man.

--Stone from Texas

Women power?

2009-10-14T07:23:00.000-07:00

Notice how woman have all the star power today? The mere mention of an important opening and woman get all the publicity. The same applies to minorities but I think the electorate is going to be sick of BO soon. The repubs had better get on board with this phenomenon.

Again I don’t think Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, or Meg Whitman are the entire answer but the Republicans better be thinking of charismatic woman rather than old white men or we are doomed.

Stone from Texas

A Challenge to Progressives

2009-10-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Progressives or liberals or whatever the collectivists are calling themselves these days are always touting their plans as good for the “general welfare”. It ties right into their “living” document make it up as you go along constitutional philosophy. OK, let’s give them a challenge. They want national healthcare while conservatives and libertarians would like a change in the tax system and fiscal sanity with of course no national healthcare. How about this challenge:

They get a constitutional amendment establishing national healthcare for as long as it is deemed more effective than the private sector health system by the American public as determined by referendum each year or two.
We get repeal of the 16th Amendment which would be replaced by a new balanced budget amendment that limits government taxation and borrowing to no more than 20% of GDP for as long as it is deemed more effective than the old tax and spend system by the American public as determined by referendum each year or two. Federal income taxes and payroll taxes would be replaced by some sort of consumption tax like maybe the FairTax. The folks in the IRS get transferred to the border patrol or can look for new jobs in the private sector.

Note being a person who believes in strict adherence to the Constitution this can’t be done without amendments. Government run healthcare is blatantly unconstitutional, Medicare notwithstanding. Medicare like Social Security was instituted under the bogus make it up as you go along policy. Humor me. In order to stick to the Constitution the referendums would not be the last word. They would just give the U. S. Congress and state legislatures a straightforward clue as to the public’s preferences. Final resolution would have to be real amendments to the document to repeal what the public rejected.

I would bet serious money that after a few years we would end up with the tax changes as permanent policy but government healthcare would be rejected. Here is a bonus. If government healthcare gets voted down and the tax changes do not we get to reduce the 20% to 15%. If the reverse happens, they get to add dental care. If both are unacceptable, it’s back to Go.

We all have a good idea what government healthcare would bring cost and quality wise. Just look at some of the state health plans like the one in Massachusetts or consider Medicare. The fact is they are unsustainable. That’s why all government managed healthcare systems practice rationing. Some rationing also takes place in a completely private system but is less than in state systems because the profit motive brings cost savings and technological improvements just like any other market driven system. Note that once all computers cost millions of dollars each now they cost mere hundreds (or thousands for high end servers) and are much more powerful. This dynamic has proven to work countless times.

As for a consumption tax my belief is that it would reduce the manipulative power of Congress substantially and would result in a massive increase in economic growth. There would be a time lag greater than one would anticipate under normal circumstances before really significant growth. That’s because of all the structural damage to our economy done by the booms and busts created by the foolish third world banana republic fiscal and monetary policies that have been followed by the federal government and Federal Reserve. But I think noticeable real growth would start within a year. There is an estimated 12+ trillion dollars in offshore investments held by American citizens and organizations. Huge amounts of that capital would return to the United States. U.S. and foreign companies would engage in a mad rush to build facilities here. Unemployment would drop to record low levels and growth would increase to record high levels possibly approaching levels seen in high growth Asia-Pacific countries. Note for example that China officially still a communist country has no capital gains tax!

Yes, I know it’s risky. Our health care could get screwed up for a year or two. But isn’t it worth it to show the entire country unequivocally that the ideas of these “progressive” fools are total nonsense? Besides, there are a whole series of other challenges we can present to progressives until they give up and all move to France!

Quote for the day

2009-10-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this quote:

"Talk is cheap, it takes money to buy whiskey."

Light my fire

2009-10-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

Now that Fall has arrived we have lit the fire in the woodstove. Pull up a chair and we'll pass the jug.

Congress is the Key

2009-10-02T07:41:00.001-07:00

We must find good people who are willing to run for Congress, but having them go to Washington to be either corrupted or castrated by the present system won’t accomplish anything. They must run on a coherent plan to clean up the systemic problems that encourage corruption and attract those who are all too willing to be corrupted. Such a plan will attract the vast majority of voters who are disgusted by what the Congress has become.

What follows are the steps necessary to get Congress under the control of We The People by making it a place where decent people are once more willing to serve.

1. The Congressional Ethics Committee (Johnny Saks investigating Tony Soprano and vice versa) will be abolished and replaced with a Grand Jury Panel selected from the tax lists of the States by the random methods normally used by the States to chose grand jurors (perhaps 2 or 3 per state). From the resulting panel a grand jury will be chosen by lot for each case. While serving, jurors shall be paid reasonable expenses and one dollar per day more than Congresspersons.

2. Congressional pay will be frozen at its present level. All special allowances, such as those now given to committee chairmen and others in leadership positions shall be abolished. Congressional salaries or other benefits will only be raised if the reasons for such increase are explained and justified in writing and made public 90 days before a vote on the increase. A two thirds majority of the total membership, not just those attending the session, shall be required for passage. Any member not present and voting on an increase shall not receive it.

3. Congressional expense accounts will be subject to audits by an accounting firm selected by lot from a list of nationally accredited CPA firms. There shall be no flat and automatic expense allowances. All claims for reasonable expenses shall be backed by receipts. All travel shall be on commercial carriers in economy class. (This is the system most employees in the general economy live under.) There shall be no travel in government aircraft. Those aircraft now used exclusively to fly congresspersons shall be sold (probably on Ebay). All foreign or domestic travel, other than between Washington and the Congressperson’s or Senator’s home district shall require detailed written justification publicly posted on the internet one month before the date of such proposed travel. All travel and any other expenses paid by private persons, corporations, or labor unions shall be referred to a Congressional Grand Jury for investigation and possible action.

4. Congressional pensions shall be limited to $1000 per month served, for a maximum of 72 months. This shall be paid as a lump sum when a member leaves Congress honorably. Conviction of a felony will cause forfeiture of all pay, pensions and benefits.

5. The present obscene pensions will be paid to all present members who elect to leave at the end of their current term. (As huge as they are, it will be worth it to get rid of them.) If they stay they will get the maximum $72,000 when they leave.

6. While serving, Congresspersons and their families will get the same medical benefits provided to retired military. These will end when they leave Congress. However, upon leaving Congress, members shall be eligible to purchase interim health insurance through COBRA like anyone else who leaves an employer.

7. Congress shall pass no law applicable to the People at large from which they, themselves, are exempted.

8. No bill that has not been posted on the internet, in its entirety, seven days before being brought to the floor for a vote shall be voted upon.

There are other issues that will have to be addressed: for example those bloated, overpaid and under qualified staffs now used as a place to reward cronies, relatives and concubines, and the committee system that allows chairman far too much power to control the agenda and silence reasoned opposition to it. But these eight changes will go a long way toward giving us a Congress that will understand that they are the servants and not the masters of WE THE PEOPLE.

--Jule Miller 10/2/09

Quote for the day

2009-10-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this quote:

"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come."

The last (and best) word on health care

2009-09-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

On the current topic of health insurance, conspicuous in its absence is any discussion of the actuarial numbers. Seems those in charge just want to get to the end game, with no public discussion on what it will cost. Not so fast.

Among other things in my checkered past was a short stint as an insurance underwriter. From that I learned the concept of insurance, at least as far as the insurance industry is concerned, is that insurance is a social mechanism for the transfer of the risk of monetary loss from the individual to a larger group. The concept is that risk of loss fits a random pattern of probability. It works very well for things like lightning strikes, hail, wind, etc. Risk and the premiums charged for insurance vary directly with the probability of loss. Hurricane insurance premiums are greater for folks living in Pensacola than for those in Minneapolis. Car insurance premiums for a guy with 3 DWI's and two at-fault accidents are higher than for grandma, who only drives to church on Sunday. Life insurance premiums for an aging rodeo clown who smokes and has a bottle hidden behind chute #9 are higher than for a young (straight) desk clerk. You get the idea.

Insurance doesn't work when the pool is exposed to catastrophic losses (exclusions for acts of war, earthquakes, etc), or when the pool as a whole is exposed to a high probability of loss. Assuming a guy with 3 DWI's still has his license to drive, he isn't going to be able to buy insurance from a commercial company. It will have to be a low limit, state fund that sells him insurance. How about $1,500 a quarter for $10,000 liability only coverage? That is the way it works.

Enter health insurance, where the industry has attempted to do the same thing, except in this case, the risk rules are not supposed to apply. Insurance companies do deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. Not to do so would be like asking a property insurance company to sell insurance on a car that's already been wrecked. The same thing applies for seniors. It is a fact of life that as one ages, health related issues, and the costs to pay for health care, increase. As a group, seniors would be considered high risk for claims, so the concept of insurance isn't workable at any reasonable premium. Because the insurance industry couldn't make it work, the government assumed the risk. To pay for it the government created the pyramid scheme known as Medicare, with a supposed larger pool of workers paying for the health care of our seniors.

My thoughts on this piece were triggered by a recent op-ed in our local paper in which the author set forth his list of "demands". To address the problems he sees in the health cost dilemma it included a host of things; insisting that insurance companies provide coverage for pre-existing conditions, portability of coverage (meaning you get to keep the policy if you change jobs or lose your job), no limits on coverage, cheap drug benefits, etc. Of course he wanted it for little to no cost to him. In short, he wanted to be able to transfer liabilities of potentially hundreds of thousands (billions?) of dollars to someone else. The author didn't say what he would be willing to pay for these benefits, but my guess is probably no more than a few hundred a month. Is this realistic? No, but when these same folks are presented with the facts, the general reply is they don't care, they just want it. But if you put the numbers to it (and I suspect those up to their neck in this have), the per capita cost for all this as an insurance product is unworkable. If not, it would have already been done.

Once the cost to do this becomes reality, it will not be acceptable to the market. Private insurance is still risk rated. Most private health plans are weighted to younger, working force age employees, not seniors. These pools are exposed to child rearing costs, but once you get past the first few weeks, most children are healthy and health care costs, while frequent, are not large. In contrast, government pools are intended to assume all risk, so costs will blow through the roof. Just as the bank bailouts took all the bad credit off the bank's books and put it on the government, this will take all the major health care costs away from those who can't afford it and put it on all of us.

But back to our opiner's list of demands, it's unlikely he sells his product for a huge loss, or if he works for wages, unlikely he works for free, but somehow expects the health care industry to do just that. Bottom line is they couldn't do it if they wanted to. In no time at all they would pay out more in claims than they could collect in premiums and the checks would bounce. At least it would if it were being operated on a straight up basis. Medicare is broke, paying out more than it takes in and that's with all workers paying into a fund to pay for only part of the health care costs of seniors. But Uncle has had a big credit limit on their charge card, so they have covered it for now. But throw in everyone, and it is an unworkable system. You often see Medicare being touted as a model government program everyone is happy with. Yes they are because they get a huge amount of something for nothing. It is unsustainable and if you could get an honest assessment from the Dems, they know this. The "House Plan" being discussed does roll seniors into the total plan, where it will run head first into reality. Talk of "Death Panels" is a little over the top and makes for good theatrics in rebuttal, but the fact is if you throw Seniors into a pool, it gets top heavy in a hurry. Rationing care, or better, having a senior die is a good way of balancing the books.

Make no mistake, this is going to be expensive. Once the sticker shock sets in, government plans will have to find a way to spread the costs. Enter MANDATORY participation. If you object to getting in the pool, they throw you in. They need you to help spread the costs. First it will be how much you are going to pay. Later, they will start telling you how to live to control costs. And this time they will have to. This is shaping up to be the mother of all pyramids, dwarfing Medicare and Social Security.

So to cut to the chase, we are no longer talking about "health insurance" that is a mechanism to insure against the risk of large medical costs that might wipe a person out with the insurance industry assessing risk. Instead this will be another system of put and take, with the total risk pool thrown into one large hopper. So the question is, “After throwing everyone into the same pool, what is the cost?”

Lets assume that a unit of standard care (use Medicare as the base line) the industry offers to the general healthy public costs some amount of money. Say $1 per unit. The industry and government both know what it costs by occupation, by age group, or collectively as a whole. OK, that is the standard unit. Now include all the extras, like pre-existing conditions, etc. Is it now $4 or $5 per unit? So be it. It is what it is. Are you going to include illegals? You can say they will have to pay to participate but if you put a low earnings threshold, that is tantamount to free health care for illegals and anyone else.

So be honest about it. Put the numbers out there for all to see and then make the call.

Howard Audsley

WANT TO RUMBLE?

2009-09-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

Let us take a short break from politics and speak of something more pleasant.

Last June three old friends and I took an eight day motorcycle tour of the Oregon Coast. To say we had fun is a gross understatement. I am organizing a run next year through a little traveled portion of Northern California. This will be a leisurely putt for no more than seven or eight old (ancient?) farts sixty and older.

The run will consist of easy 2-300 mile days over well maintained “Blue” highways with short stretches on the superslab no dirt or gravel. Each day we are in the saddle around 0730-0800, breakfast and lunch on the road. After a scenic and gentle run we park the bikes around 1600-1700 at an upscale accommodation and walk to a fine dinner at a restaurant with a full bar. This is no “Iron Butt” event. No, this is tailored to the “geezer glide” set. All bikes and trikes are welcome. (I ride a 2004 Road King Classic.)

This will be a stag event so send the wife or girlfriend (or both) to the spa for a week.

We will stay at comfortable, upscale hotels or motels within walking distance of good restaurants with full bars. There will be no camping or sleeping on picnic tables.

Now, I know what most of you guys are thinking, “Man that sure would be a hoot and I have the money and health but I’m too old, the wife, kids, grandkids, would never let me.” In reality even if you are healthy 60+ and have never even ridden a bike it is more than possible to take MSF course, buy a bike and be perfectly comfortable on this adventure.

I have a very tentative itinerary that is guaranteed to change before we leave. Anyone interested? Leave a comment.

Let them drink tea

2009-09-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

I emailed the following to teaparty@centralvalleyteaparty.com today about noon eastern time:
Watched Sean Hannity’s TV show last week from Huron, California. He’s been beating YOUR drum about the gum’mint’s shutting off YOUR water to the San Joaquin Valley. As I watched, I kept growing more and more angry. I was angry at YOUR congressmen who talked about all their efforts to turn on the pumps. I was angry at YOUR governor who talked about all his efforts to turn on the pumps. Didn’t he play tough guys in the movies? Wasn’t he once called Europe’s strongest man? Didn’t he win something like 900 Mr. Olympia titles? Or is he more like the characters he played in such forgettable films as ‘Twins’? But I was most upset at the sight of thousands of healthy men whining to the gum’mint to please, please, please, be nice to us.

The current gum’mint of OUR nation cares nothing about YOUR plight other than to exploit it for their own self-interests: subjecting WE the people and forcing us all to suck on them for our nourishment, that and caving to foreign dictators and terrorists. I was hollering at the TV for you all to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! When a rapist attacks should we just lie back and enjoy it hoping he won’t kill us, or should we do all we can to scratch his eyes out? Are we to go gently into the good night of what was once the greatest nation in the history of the world until it caught a bad case of the kommie flu? Come on folks, the gum’mint has you exactly where it wants you and you act like a herd of mewing sheep following the judas goats you elected into the slaughter pens. Remember what happened to Christ on the Cross when He told gum'mint that He was thirsty?

Cass Sunstein currently is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. His appointment was confirmed by the senate. He believes that animals should have court appointed attorneys and be allowed to sue people in OUR courts. Do you really think that a gum'mint which has placed this clown in any position of responsibility cares one twit about mere human beings when a pizza topping is at risk?

The policies of out-of-control gum’mint are pretty much raping YOUR incredibly fertile valley, which only needs water to thrive. A quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is, "God helps those who help themselves." In order to help ourselves, we must take this matter into our own hands. You all should have a Tea Party at the Pumps.

Use Hannity to get the word out and invite tea partiers from throughout OUR nation to gather. Ask us to bring chain cutters and welding torches. If the gum’mint has not restored YOUR water by a given deadline, we must do so ourselves. Party at the pumps! Dare the gum’mint to stop us. Turn the water back on ourselves if need be. The time for yackity-yack is over. We must take back OUR country from the kommie-czars determined to enslave us and our posterity.

I suggest you hold this party on November 4 as that is the anniversary of the worst mistake OUR nation ever made; however, I do not live there, so I am open to whatever date you all choose. But we do have to draw a line in the dust and the time for words was yesterday.

Invite us and we will come!

Gill O'Teen

Indoctrination in Our Schools

2009-09-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

Maybe you thought I put too much emphasis on conservatives and libertarians cooperating on some sort of education initiative at the end of my recent seemingly endless treatise. Well check this article out - Elementary School Students Reportedly Taught Songs Praising President Obama. There was a similar incident in a private home in California. As far as I know they aren’t yet calling Obama the Dear Leader but that is the only upside. This sort of indoctrination is going on to a greater or lesser degree all over the country.

I can honestly say that when I was in grade school and high school I had no idea what the political beliefs or affiliations of my teachers were. That’s how it should be. Even in college it was less obvious than it is now where even technical courses are politicized. This nonsense has got to stop or this Republic is doomed! We are running out of daylight!

Quote for the day

2009-09-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

Who is the very famous author of this quote:

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part VI

2009-09-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

A Libertarian Conservative Coalition?

Before I end this series with some practical bottom line suggestions for cooperation between libertarians and conservatives I thought I would provide some thoughts from a conservative friend I often correspond with.

Part of the problem libertarians face in working with conservatives comes from our legitimate idea that civil society needs to handle many of the things that government now purports to control, maintain, and underwrite. Libertarians usually wish to go a little further in that direction than conservatives. But unfortunately for libertarians civil society is on shaky ground these days.

This particular conservative friend of mine has a theory about what made the U.S. a great country and powerful defender of constitutional government. He calls it the Four Pillars theory. "They are Our Republican Democracy, Our Capitalist system, Our historical reliance on Christian Principles, and the physical safety afforded by our Ocean Borders."

He contends that civil society as we know it and more importantly my ideal governmental institution, i.e. classical constitutional democratic republican government cannot function without all of them interacting in a reinforcing manner. I tend to agree although our ocean borders will have to be replaced by military high technology.

He had a comment about the scope and reflections of this series of posts and suggested that I add something about the special nature of the Constitution which I tried to do in Part II.

He also indicated that liberals and many others think that just because something is a “good idea” the Federal Government somehow needs to pass a law about it with little thought as to whether the Constitution would actually allow it without an amendment and with even less thought about the true purpose and nature of the document. This of course is a pernicious result of the “living” document concept.

He pointed out that people like Hamilton didn’t want a bill of rights. Not because Hamilton didn’t believe in rights but because our rights were in effect axiomatic and a legitimate government could only be instituted by people with rights, i.e. rights came first and then government. His specific observations were:

They actually are righteous in their belief that the way to ensure that
everyone behaves properly is to legislate it, forgetting that it was the people
(i.e. founders) that defined the extent of the government duties and
obligations, not the other way around.

Hamilton was emphatic about that. In effect, he recognized that if we were to have a “contractual” relationship with our government; that is that we agree to allow the government to “manage” our lives in exchange for certain rights and privileges, then (like in all contracts) there would need to be a negotiation, or an arbitration to settle arguments over which rights the people actually have or to make changes. Instead, he proffered that it was necessary that we keep the Constitution as a document that only defines the obligations of the Federal government, all else being left to the
people.

It was the people; he said that gave the government rights specifically formulated and defined by the various states. He wanted no Bill of Rights, considering them unnecessary since, in the Constitution, “the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations." He likened them to political arrangements between sovereigns and subjects, where the people would wind up depending on the government to define their rights. He wanted it kept the other way around and warned against stipulations defining the people’s rights like those between kings and their subjects. The arguments between the federalists and the anti-federalists are legendary and make and interesting study, especially as we
now look back on 225 years of subsequent practice.

Whether you agree on the exact number of "pillars" one thing should be clear the social, economic, and moral strengths that supported our democratic republican constitutional system have been under attack for many years.

It seems to me that only a very few citizens have any concept at all regarding issues like the above that were debated when the Constitution was written. Yet this and other important issues were central to the reason the document was created in the first place.

What is important to understand is that in the view of the Founders legitimate governments protect the rights of their citizens but they are not the source of those rights which are natural or God given. This is the founding principle and philosophy behind our republic. Just because we haven’t always lived up to that principle does not change the fact that no other nation on earth was founded on such a profound and radical idea.

I have to believe that both libertarians and conservatives would agree that it is very important for our education system to cover these ideas in an unbiased manner. We allow all sorts of people inside and outside of our education system to offer their “considered” opinions on the Constitution and its meaning while providing almost no information on the ideas of the people who wrote it.

One of our key problems is that the moral integrity and the willingness to defend our socioeconomic system that was underwritten by our Judeo-Christian heritage are in massive disrepair and are constantly assaulted by the mainstream media and our education system which has become nothing more than a socialist propaganda mechanism for leftists. Yes, there were secular philosophers that contributed much and informed citizens should know about them but there is no denying the importance of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Although I was raised as a Christian, today I probably would best be described as a deist not an atheist but not a devout follower of any organized religion either. Yet I acknowledge this moral heritage because it is an important fact and is part of the moral underpinnings of our laws. The idea that we are on the verge of becoming a theocracy is cultural Marxist propaganda. The only theocracies today are Islamic states.

Furthermore it is important to teach the truth. The U.S. is not a perfect nation but on balance it has done many more good things than bad. It is important that all citizens understand this especially the young ones. In U.S. schools today it seems to me that what is taught is not American history but negative American history. This will be a long difficult fight and the outcome is decidedly uncertain.

Two Sets of Suggestions:

Now here are my suggestions for practical cooperation between libertarians and conservatives in two critical areas.

Direct Political Cooperation:

We should support only those politicians who show a clear understanding of constitutional issues and who are against the “living” document concept and the misuse of the phrase “general welfare”. In fact it might be a good idea to demand an amendment to the Constitution that requires every elected federal official to make a statement in writing describing his understanding of the Constitution and its purpose. That means they would actually have to read it!
We should support only politicians who show a clear understanding of economic issues and are against profligate government spending and understand that we need a strong and stable currency backed by more than hot air from folks like Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke.
We should support only politicians who indicate a genuine commitment to reducing the size of the federal government and who will demand that any new initiatives introduced in Congress be specifically authorized by the Constitution.

Any such new initiatives not authorized must be implemented only by an amendment to the document. That also means ending actual departments and moving back toward what is actually allowed by the Constitution. The departments of Education and Commerce come to mind immediately. They are just not needed. Other things will either be phased out or we will agree on an amendment. This will be a very long and contentious process.
We should support only those politicians who are willing to scrap our current Byzantine tax system, and add a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Whether you favor consumption taxes like the FairTax or a flat income tax let’s make it clear the status quo won’t cut it any longer.
We should endeavor to convince all libertarians and conservatives to work together at all levels to strengthen the Constitution and to agree to leave contentious issues between them in abeyance until we have restored the Republic.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Consider a conservative who meets all the constitutional philosophy criteria but is in favor of strict drug laws. If he has the best chance to beat a collectivist in an election, libertarians should vote for him and support his campaign. Another example would be a Libertarian or libertarian Republican who is not happy with our large oversees military commitment. Ron Paul and Peter Schiff come to mind. Conservatives should vote for them and support them because they are committed to limited constitutional government.

Educational Cooperation:

We should support school vouchers. It isn’t a panacea but it will help break the hold of the cultural Marxists on our education system.
We should support the right of parents to home school their children and demand reasonable rules for this activity. We can’t let the unions, politicians and government bureaucrats throw up unreasonable roadblocks.
Knowing that we will get no help from the education establishment we should encourage all conservative and libertarian institutes like Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, etc. via e-mails and other means to launch a joint educational effort to teach as many citizens as possible about the Constitution and its founding principles and about basic market economics.

All of these institutes have some educational outreach programs but we need an all out coordinated effort to reach lots of folks. Maybe it should take the form of a joint foundation. We should make sure that we indicate that we will financially support such an effort. How this is done is best left to the experts. Maybe it can be done by a combination of TV, Internet, town hall type meetings, free formal classes, etc. Maybe 30 minute TV ads every day for the next 3 years is the answer! Maybe prizes or scholarships for students that write the best explanations of documents like the Federalist Papers would help. I just don’t know.
We should write, call and e-mail your representatives in Congress to introduce a bill that would require every person entering government service to complete a course on the Constitution and the Founders basic view of this document as part of their training. If they are going to swear to support and defend this document against all enemies foreign and domestic, they should at least know what it says and have some understanding of the basic ideas behind its creation.

When it comes to the area of education we have to break the stranglehold of the cultural Marxists. That will take money and a long term commitment. I believe that if we don’t do that any political gains will only be brief holding actions. People will not support ideas they do not understand or have been indoctrinated to believe come from 18th century tedious treatises of no value in the modern world. The Constitution and the philosophy of the Founders must to be part of the education of American youth either in the regular educational system or outside of it.

Let's Agree to Disagree on Certain Issues

Disagreements between libertarians and conservatives are important but surely a commitment to make real progress on limited government defined by the Constitution and the principles upon which it is based has to be the highest priority. If we cannot make progress toward that goal, how can we expect any progress on other less important issues? I am convinced that if we don’t do this the collectivists will win.

Conservatives may not always agree with libertarians. But there is one thing they can count on from all libertarians (large or small L). If there is something libertarians really think the federal government should take on or some change is required in our government that isn’t explicitly allowed by the Constitution they will try to convince 2/3rds of the Congress and 3/4ths of the state legislatures to support it. If they can’t do that then they will accept the fact that as Mick Jagger said in 1969: “You can’t always get what you want.” They won’t try some weasel like maneuver to circumvent the Constitution a la the collectivists and their “living” document make it up as you go along strategy.

The “living” document concept has caused incalculable harm to this republic. It has in effect without the consent of the governed transferred the power that the Constitution declared as being automatically in the hands of the citizens of this country (see my conservative friend’s comments on Alexander Hamilton above) to its politicians and government bureaucrats. I think the “living” document concept is a canard and unmitigated sophistry. Think hard about it and see if you agree.

So what would be the best outcome of all this verbiage? I can’t speak for anyone else but for me it would be this. Someone will read this series of posts or just some of them and pass some ideas along or just talk to others about these issues. More people will think about the issues, come up with more or better ideas and just maybe somebody like Newt Gingrich will say: “Yeah, I can do something about this political situation and this education problem. I’ll just sit down with guys like Dick Armey, Bob Barr, Ron Paul, John Cornyn, Mike Pence, Jim DeMint, some folks at Heritage, Cato, NRO, Townhall.com, etc. and get things rolling.”

Then I can go back to being a techie, building web sites and web stores and burying myself in database and software manuals secure in the knowledge that the Constitution will be safe at least for a while anyway.

Respected Friends?

2009-09-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

On a recent broadcast of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews was chatting with historian Douglas Brinkley. He noted that Brinkley’s book ,"Teddy Roosevelt: the Wilderness Warrior", was #21 on the New York Times best seller list, and then he could not resist getting in this dig: "There’s so much right-wing crap on the best seller list these days. It’s great to see a book that you might want to put on your shelf and let your respected friends see you actually reading."

By Matthews’ definition, a "respected friend" is obviously someone who has swallowed the liberal bait and doesn’t want to even consider that there might be another view. He fails to grasp an important fact: The reason that his so-called "right-wing crap" tops the list is that many more people are buying it. In harder times, people tend to vote with their wallet; they buy those things they really believe are necessary. It’s a fact that far more literature from the conservative side is being sold in these difficult days, and that seems to defy the percentages seen in last year’s election. It may mean that many people are regretting their vote in light of the Obama administration’s hard left turn in policy and huge increases in spending.

Chris - The tingle you feel running down your leg might just be a spasm of guilt.

--Tom Wells 9/20/09

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part V

2009-09-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

Another Difficult Issue – Immigration

First let’s talk about immigration in general. Most people think it should be handled in an orderly way via reasonable laws. I think the radical open border folks are a small minority. They are people who essentially don’t believe in nation states and favor some sort of world government. BTW that is a typical Marxist view of the world.

Libertarians do view immigration favorably, maybe too much so now that we have over 300 million inhabitants in the U. S. They are often accused of being open border supporters by conservatives who are more likely to be concerned about immigration. I can assure you, however, libertarians do believe in the concept of nation states. Unless the U. N. adopted wholeheartedly the limited government philosophy of the Founders of this country and a carbon copy of the U. S. Constitution libertarians would not be remotely interested in even contemplating world government. That isn’t likely with an institution as corrupt as the U. N. with its plethora of factions that do not believe in democracy let alone limited democratic republics.

Immigration is one area where I personally disagree with the Libertarian Party. They are too cavalier regarding this issue. Milton Friedman a libertarian economist pointed out that you can't have a liberal immigration policy and a welfare state. The welfare state has to be dismantled first. Libertarians sometimes forget that Friedman admonishment.

There are of course business people who see immigrants as cheap labor and helpful to their bottom line. Many of these business people hold mostly conservative views on other issues. The collectivists see them as potential voters who will support socialist policies. It’s a complex issue with many viewpoints some of which are very dangerous to the survival of this nation state.

I think we all understand that unrestricted immigration is a national security, economic, and cultural (assimilation) problem. All of us need to understand the practical limits of immigration.

It is also a problem of sheer numbers. Yes, the ideas of Thomas Malthus did not play out as he envisioned them due to the march of technology. However, there really is a practical upper limit on the number of people in a given geographic area. Because it is something that doesn’t get talked about very much let’s now consider that one issue in detail.

Immigration Has Mathematical Limits

There is the matter of the exponential mathematics involved with large influxes of people many of whom have high birth rates at least in the first few generations. Growth and decline in the population of any species is an exponential function. The U.S. now has 300 million plus human inhabitants. Is 500 million OK? 700 million? More?

The problem with exponential growth is that it can sneak up on you. If Pn = P0 * (1 + r)**n where P0 is some starting population, Pn is the population after n years, and r is the growth rate you can creep up on the “knee” of the curve and then suddenly be overwhelmed. This is possible even if r isn’t particularly large. It just takes longer to reach the “knee”. Here is an example of an exponential curve.

Here is a numerical example. If you assume that the growth rate r is 0.02 (2%) and you start with 300 million folks in 25 years you will have 492 million, an increase of 192 million between year 1 and 25. However after 50 years you will have 807 million, an increase of 315 million between year 25 and 50. Between year 50 and 75 the population would jump by 518 million to over 1.3 billion! It just continues to get exponentially worse until something bad happens.

It strikes me as ironic that maybe current economic policies will be that something. No one will want to come to a bankrupt United States. If our current third world banana republic economic policies result in much lower immigration or the opposite emigration it’s a hell of a price to pay to attain manageable population growth! Or as Dirty Harry said “That’s a hell of a price to pay for being stylish.”

If we disregard emigration, the only way this constant increase can change for a given indigenous population is if your growth rate is negative, i.e. there are more deaths than births. You then have a population decreasing exponentially. Emigration of course would accelerate the decline especially if the émigrés were mostly young. This by the way is what is happening with the indigenous populations of Europe and Russia which brings its own set of problems.

There seems to be one possible exception to an increase vs. decrease scenario. Some societies that have a robust economy where the middle class is pretty large seem to be able to stabilize around replacement, i.e. zero growth (r = 0). Our native born population in the U. S. is at about replacement. Japan on the other hand doesn’t seem to have been able to achieve this. The only reason the U.S. and European populations are increasing is because of immigration. In the U. S. the influx comes mostly from south of the border. In Europe it comes from North Africa, the Middle East and Asian countries like Pakistan.

The manner in which populations grow or contract is simple irrefutable mathematics.
Because we have an advanced high tech economic system which includes a high tech agricultural system we have avoided the dire Malthusian predictions. But the objective of this little exercise is to show that at some point we will still reach limits. Those limits are not unimportant.

Yes, we like to think of our country as welcoming immigrants but there are these damn facts that can’t be ignored. You can’t stuff everyone on the planet into North America. Some folks from certain cultures may not assimilate well. Some folks coming into this country may be terrorists. Some immigrants may not have the skill to live and work in an advanced economic system without financial support from the state.

The Bottom Line

OK, why did I bother to explain these points of contention in detail in posts III through V? I think they are the main reasons why cooperation between libertarians and conservatives is often lacking. I wanted to be honest and not ignore the contentious issues. If we gloss over the differences between conservatives and libertarians we will have at best only temporary cooperation and the collectivists will win with their main weapon, cultural Marxism. Keep reminding yourself that collectivists control most of the media, most of the education system and now most of the state and federal governments. Get complacent and you are done and they win.

Conservatives should not underestimate the number of people who are outright libertarians or hold at least some libertarian ideas. A coalition is worth pursuing. My last post in this series will be on the two areas where long term cooperation is vital. One is obviously political cooperation. The other is in the area of education. That’s a tough one since that is a game where the collectivists especially the cultural Marxist variety now hold almost all the high value cards.

Conservative/Libertarian Coalition

2009-09-16T07:50:00.000-07:00

Gxm--- I find your discussion of Conservative/Libertarian interesting and informative. I agree with most if not all of your points. While I agree, I must take issue with what I suppose the premise to be: That Libertarians, and Conservatives, should join forces and in joining forces could be a force on the national stage. While this might be the hope and dream of many of us, the fact is the Republican Party rules this roost.

I ask, how many Libertarians are there? How many Libertarians vote? How many Libertarians vote for their national candidate? I suspect that in a national election most Libertarians vote Republican.

Assuming that most Libertarians vote Republican and the others vote for their candidate, what is the driving force that would tempt the Republican Party to more than tepidly court the Libertarians? Nice to have them on board, but not worth a lot of effort.

One might reasonably say, Republicans should better spend time and treasure courting the Black vote. Now this would be a true “black hole,” given that the present resident in the White House recently took something like 96 percent of the Black vote. What about the large and growing Hispanic vote? No way is it going in majority to Republicans.

What does that leave the Republicans? Not much.

What does this leave Conservatives? Even less.

Quote for the day

2009-09-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

This was writ thousands of years ago but could have been written yesterday. Who is the author?

"The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part IV

2009-09-12T05:50:00.000-07:00

A Difficult Issue
One of the most contentious disputes between conservatives and libertarians is their view about what should be legal and illegal behavior.

Libertarians tend to view any action that does not directly violate the rights of another person as being permissible in a strictly legal sense. That doesn’t mean that libertarians don’t find certain behavior objectionable. It’s just that we don’t think people should be locked up for being foolish in their life choices or objectionable in their behavior.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are more likely to view certain behaviors as so damaging to society that they must be outlawed even though no individual is a direct victim in the conventional sense. Society as a group is a victim.

Libertarians would prefer that these damaging and objectionable behaviors be reduced via social pressure within civil society. However, I think many libertarians would acknowledge that there is a problem with our reasoning. Our civil society has been ineffective in reducing certain self-destructive and objectionable behaviors due to a general disintegration of our culture.

I believe that disintegration also has a lot to do with the lack of understanding and support of the founding principles of our republic something conservatives and libertarians desperately need to address. I also think that cultural Marxists, a la Antonio Gramsci, have consciously aided and abetted this cultural disintegration.

Two of the most contentious issues are the use of drugs and the oldest profession of prostitution. Now, some actions connected to these two issues are without a doubt illegal. Prostitution often involves intimidation and abuse of prostitutes, the use of minors, and outright slavery by the organized criminals that control the sex trade.

None of this is viewed as legal behavior by libertarians. Drugs are often sold to minors and drug gangs use intimidation, force, and murder to increase their market share. None of this is viewed as legal behavior by libertarians either. Probably the one area that holds the most potential for real damage to the social fabric is the drug trade.

Drugs Are Harmful--Sometimes Very Harmful

I agree with the principle that “victimless crimes” cannot be crimes because there is no victim. Certainly the use of drugs, as opposed to the sale of them, should at some point be decriminalized. However, you could possibly make the case that selling at least some types of drugs is harmful enough to society to be a national security issue and a crime similar to espionage, sabotage or treason.

Again, libertarians need to acknowledge this and have a civil discussion with conservatives about how we can reach a compromise. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to recognize the problems of trying to enforce anti-drug laws.

We experienced the same issues during the period when alcoholic beverages were illegal. Should we allow this and the general dispute over allowable behavior to be a deal-breaker with respect to the important goal of truly limited government and the restoration of the Constitution to its former exalted position in U. S. jurisprudence? I think not. Let’s agree to disagree on this one for now and focus on ways to stop the collectivists from destroying classical constitutional democratic republican government.

My next post will be on immigration, another point of contention with conservatives; then I’ll lay out the two most important ways libertarians and conservatives can cooperate to save the Constitution.

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part III

2009-09-10T14:14:00.000-07:00

One of the fundamental differences between conservatives and libertarians is their view of foreign policy. I think they both agree on the importance of national security but disagree on the policies needed to maintain national security.

We have military installations in something like 135 countries but we only have about 5% of the world’s population. That’s not sustainable, any more than the third world banana republic economic policies now being pursued by our government.

In the libertarian view we need to discuss a phase-out of the American military presence in the world and return to something closer to the old Monroe Doctrine. Some folks have occasionally referred to it as a more rubble-less trouble doctrine, i.e. leave us and our hemisphere alone or we will pound the hell out of you and then go away and let you ponder the consequences of messing with us.

However, I am one libertarian who is willing to hold any decision on this matter in abeyance until we have actually gotten on the road to restoring the Constitution and the Republic. I think even staunch defenders of our current military and foreign policy would agree that some phase out is needed to help get us through the current financial situation--along with, of course, large cuts in many other parts of the government.

It seems to me that the bedrock of any cooperation between libertarians and others in the political sphere must rest on a belief in the principles of limited government, a written constitution of contractual nature, and the philosophy of “God given” or “natural” rights. Lately I have had some misgivings about the attitude of some libertarians that makes them sound too much like the anti-war collectivists who simply want to unilaterally disarm.

Make no mistake. These folks desire the destruction of our constitutional republic in favor of some ill defined world collectivist government. I can assure conservatives that libertarians do think the U. S. government must provide for the common defense and are very concerned about the viability of the Constitution and the Republic. We do not favor a world government.

Libertarians Have Very Little in Common with Modern Day Liberals or Progressives. Modern Day Liberals or Progressives Are Socialists.

There has actually been some discussion among a few libertarians of a possible alliance with liberals on foreign policy issues. In my view, today’s liberals are really an eclectic group of collectivists.

I have had discussions with both liberal Democrats and with “democratic” socialists over many years. I have always come away with a disquieting feeling that many of them are really closet totalitarian socialists. They, like their European counterparts, seem to be afflicted with what I call the philosopher king syndrome. They are looking for someone to lead them to Utopia.

I know feelings are not a good basis for solid analysis. However, if you listen to their rhetoric and examine their proposals for policy changes, there is no adherence to limited government or to the philosophy of the Founders beyond some vague commitment to “rights” which seem to expand and contract with passing fashion. One thing seems very clear to me: they are committed to the concept of a “living” constitution, i.e. you make it up as you go along. This idea is an anathema to libertarians.

Our Foreign Policy Is a Result of the Trauma of WWII.

To be honest, many libertarians, like collectivist Democrats, seem to have a lack of historical perspective when it comes to foreign policy. In my view we still operate under the Truman Doctrine, not the Bush Doctrine or any other doctrine, albeit in time there may be a radical change coming with the new administration and it will then justifiably take on a new name, i.e. the Obama Doctrine.

At any rate, the current doctrine is the same one that sent me to Vietnam in the late 60’s. The overriding theme of today’s foreign policy continues to be our break with the noninterventionist policy that prevailed (with some deviations) prior to WWII. Prior to that war we operated for the most part, except during WWI, under the Monroe Doctrine. You will note, however, that the Monroe Doctrine was not totally noninterventionist--at least with regard to the western hemisphere.

The trauma of WWII radically changed our foreign policy, and that should be perfectly understandable. At the time it may well have been the only way forward. Over the years each administration has placed its own “spin” on this doctrine (some being more aggressive than others). JFK, LBJ, and Reagan were Truman Doctrine heavy while Carter and Clinton were Truman Doctrine light and now Obama is at best ultra light bordering on treason.

There has been a whole foreign policy establishment built up since WWII that is wedded to this doctrine, albeit to different ways to implement it. I have read some articles written by Thomas Barnett, for example. It seems to me that he has taken the Truman Doctrine and ratcheted it up a few hundred degrees and then mapped it over the entire underdeveloped world.

Other folks, like Carter and Clinton, think we need to use the soft approach by talking in the UN, which is a thoroughly corrupt organization and giving countries stuff so they will be nice. The Europeans refer to this with the oxymoron “soft power”.

Admittedly, Obama’s foreign and military policy is only a few months old and hasn’t fully matured, but it seems very suspect. There are many people in his administration who are world government believers and so are his financial supporters like George Soros. They can’t be trusted and would, I believe, sell out the U. S. in a heartbeat. They will end the Truman Doctrine in favor of a new approach of complete submission to the U. N. if they can get away with it.

I have read speeches by Wilson (the first truly internationalist president), FDR, Truman, JFK, et al. Bush and Cheney sounded exactly the same. To postulate anything different, as many collectivist Democrats do, is patently absurd and I think dishonest.

Bush and Cheney believed in the Truman Doctrine because they grew up with it just as I did and unlike me have never questioned it, although Bush did exhibit an aversion to "nation building" prior to 9/11. I do not hold that against them. My father, who served in WWII, firmly believed in it also.

If the U.S. does not guarantee peace and stability, the world will descend into chaos. I actually don’t necessarily disagree with that supposition but I don’t necessarily think it would be impossible to defend the U.S. even if such chaos ensues. However, what libertarians must come to grips with is that for the foreseeable future a very robust national defense will be necessary.

Although the Founders highly recommended that we not enter into “foreign entanglements”, this was not an explicit part of the U.S. Constitution. If we are going to suggest a return to a noninterventionist foreign policy closer to something like the old Monroe Doctrine, we first need to explain to the American people that we understand the history of our foreign policy, and then we need to explain how the US can be defended just in case the rest of the world does not make progress toward peace and prosperity based on our good example.

The conservatives, who are more apt to accept the current military situation, need to honestly assess alternatives to the massive number of military installations we have worldwide. Libertarians, on the other hand, need to understand that if we begin closing bases in the eastern hemisphere, for example, some or all of the savings may have to go to other military expenditures like R&D. We can get a much fairer hearing from conservatives if we acknowledge this fact.

In the interest of national survival a noninterventionist foreign policy requires a realistic understanding of the world we live in. The attitude of the Swiss might be worth reflecting upon.

We also have to address the moral issues involved. What libertarians have to understand about this whole foreign policy paradigm shift at the end of WWII is that once you buy into it you begin to look at the world differently. Other places in the world seem so connected to us that a deviation from our less violent behavior requires action to stop it.

Think of it this way: If bombs were being detonated daily in Chicago or L.A. as they were in Baghdad not too long ago, would anyone here think it was none of the rest of the country’s business? Would it be OK if Chicago’s mayor Daily was systematically executing people he didn’t like?

There is some logic and moral arguments on the side of conservatives who think the U.S. should police the world and make it "safe for democracy". Think of it in more personal terms. If you knew your neighbor was mercilessly beating his wife every night, would you ignore it because it was none of your business?

What I am saying is that there are moral dilemmas here that cannot be cavalierly dismissed. Now, the collectivist Democrats say we should do all of this policing through the UN, but we know that will not happen. Look at Darfur! Even when UN peacekeeping troops are deployed they often act like organized criminals, thugs, and child molesters!

The collectivists always like to vilify the U. S. military whenever they can get away with it. Any individuals in the U. S. military that commit crimes are prosecuted under UCMJ if caught. The sort of wholesale corruption and barbarity exhibited by U. N. troops from other nations does not occur in the U. S. military. I think the solution advocated by collectivists is a veiled attempt to place the U.S. military under the direct control of the U. N., something that would be an anathema to both libertarians and conservatives.

In making the case for a more noninterventionist foreign policy, libertarians have to acknowledge these moral issues and then argue persuasively that given our resources and political ideals we cannot and should not act alone as the world's police force. But we should and have every right to vigorously defend this country and its constitution.

Conservatives need to make a cost benefit analysis and convince libertarians that all these oversees military expenditures are really worth the sacrifice. The Monroe Doctrine was once the foreign policy conservatives supported. They wanted to bring all the troops home after WWII. Truman won the debate and maintained forces in Europe and Asia that grew ever larger over time. It was a triumph for a philosophy started by another Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

At any rate, this disagreement can wait until such time that the continued life of this Republic is more secure from its domestic enemies.

Quote for the day

2009-09-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this Quote:

"All profit is not measured on the bottom line."

We will call you out….

2009-09-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

One word: Wow!

The talking heads previewed President Obama’s speech to congress as an attempt to reach across party lines and find common ground on the health care reform issue. It was anything but. The President instead used every negative term he could cram onto his teleprompter to further divide and inflame the issue. American citizens who have demonstrated their concerns were accused of using lies, distortions scare tactics and misinformation. Could it be he was looking in a mirror when he wrote those words? He finished by acting the playground bully, with his, "We will call you out." comment.

The best way to deal with a bully is to face him down. We need to consider ourselves called out, then, and we need to respond by increasing our efforts to expose the massive hypocrisy that is this administration.

This provides a perfect example of the old axiom that absolute power corrupts absolutely. They believe that their way is the only way, and because they control the White House and congress, they refuse to compromise. The President chided Republicans for "having no plan", ignoring the members holding aloft their alternative legislation. The lapdog media, in their wrap-ups, called that a theatrical stunt, with one commentator stating that he suspected them to be only blank stacks of paper.

The Obama/Pelosi/Reid wagon is rolling headlong down the road to ruin with only arrogance in control, and we need to put on the brakes before it’s too late.

Mr. President, I am an American Citizen who has real concerns. I consider myself "called out."

Tom

The President's Address to Youth

2009-09-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

First of all congratulations to President Obama on his address to our youth. With his eloquence he imparted much better the same wisdom I would have. He is a Loved Great Leader.

What he has deftly done is to establish a new national day of message to our youth from the President. You may be sure that henceforward the day after Labor Day will be known as “The Presidents Address to Youth Day” or some such name. It will be hyped in the media to the extent well known. (Until [if ever] a Conservative is elected.)

This President has at least three, likely seven, and perhaps many more addresses to be made. So, one might ask, “What is the problem?”. No problem as long as messages stay on the same note as the first, but do you expect that? I don’t. The messages will become more and more slanted toward his Socialist agenda and after three, six or seven years students will be pledging alliance to BHO against a background of a Wagnerian symphony.

Remember Barack Hussein Obama and his people are intelligent, very intelligent. More intelligent than you or I; trained behind ivy walls, nurtured by Lenin, Marx, Alinsky, Ayers, Wright, and put to the test on the streets. These are combat hardened veterans. Do not at all underestimate the evil that lurks within their hearts.

Politicians Give Drunken Sailors a Bad Name

2009-09-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

I've seen a lot of comments lately to the effect that the government in Washington is spending money like a drunken sailor. This is an unfortunate comparison. Having been a drunken sailor, I'd like to offer some comments on their behalf.

Unlike the comfortable life style of the politicians in our capital, the lot of a sailor is a hard one, and so it is not surprising that sailors are a hard lot. When you see them ashore they are compensating for a life that has often been brutal, frightening and lonely.

The sailor always wishes he were somewhere else. Mostly he wishes he were home. The politician is comfortable in Washington. He may even be afraid to go home.

While the sailor may be found to have an astounding vocabulary, he is not a lawyer. He does not drone on and on in debate. He settles his differences quickly and often at amazingly low cost.

The sailor will not try to modify your behavior. He will not make rules for you to follow to achieve some glorious but distant end. In fact, if you take care not to insult him, his ship, or his consort, he will probably take no notice of you at all.

There will be a clear understanding between the sailor and the woman on his arm. Unlike the politician with his interns or staff, the sailor and his consort will do nothing newsworthy. They will make no scandal.

So if you see a sailor enjoying the delights of the port, you might consider buying him and his companion a drink. Be he Navy or merchant marine, he is greatly responsible for your liberty and your good life style...

but most importantly, unlike the politician, he is spending his own money.

--Jerry 9/8/09

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution? – Part II

2009-09-05T06:21:00.000-07:00

The Problem

Now that we have some idea of what conservatives and libertarians are let’s discuss the joint problem we have. First, the Constitution of the United States is no longer the one the Founder’s envisioned. I don’t mean because it has been amended. They envisioned that. What they did not envision was that it would change radically merely by a convoluted and sophistic interpretation process that began in earnest in the 1930’s when it was redefined as a “living” document. They may, however, have had some inkling of the problem if you consider the quotes below under “The General Welfare” heading. That “living” document process has almost rendered the U. S. Constitution “a mere scrap of paper”. A view of all constitutions sometimes attributed to Fredrick the Great. Second, I think we are now seeing the final step in this process an attempt to bring what I call classical constitutional democratic republican government (CCDRG) to a complete end and replace it with a sort of collectivist mob rule guided however by the elites of Washington D. C. and their bureaucratic minions. If collectivists remain in control, that final effort may come as an overt move to completely replace the document at some point. This has been openly talked about by a number of socialist individuals and groups. Obama himself has talked about the document being about negative rights – Obama Interview on WBEZ. My interpretation of his redistribution idea is nothing less than legalized theft. True individual liberty cannot exist if you take property from someone who gained it without violating some else’s rights, i.e. via theft, fraud, etc. and give it to someone else. The only way that can happen in a free society is through individual charitable giving. Anyone that has been half awake for the last 80+ years knows that the “altruistic” politicians and bureaucrats involved in the government redistribution process take a big cut of the money flowing through these programs. It is about power, control and money for them not about helping the downtrodden.

I think the perniciousness of this process is understood by many libertarians and conservatives but is not even on the radar of the vast majority of voters. In addition even among libertarians and conservatives there does not seem to be a good grasp of what can be done. I’ll suggest two things which we can discuss in more detail in subsequent posts. They are joint political action and some sort of joint educational effort to at the very least present the philosophy behind the Constitution to the general public especially those who are or have been in the government school system between 1970 and the present. Surely if voters are going to reject the U. S. republic they should at least understand what they are rejecting. Rest assured that unless individual teachers are making an effort to teach the true philosophy behind the Constitution it is not happening. Schools are now propaganda mills for collectivist ideas. Here’s just one example - Politically correct mumbo-jumbo in our schools. Many collectivists will tell you the Constitution isn’t really very important because it was a flawed document that allowed slavery for example. That’s another unsound argument. It is an amendable document and that flaw was eliminated. You can bet however that the flawed document sort of reasoning gets full play in government schools. You can also bet that the truth will never see the light of day in the average government school. That truth is that the Founders realized that people (themselves included) were not perfect and can never be trusted with too much power. That truth has not changed and had been germinating from the time of the Greek democracies and the Roman Republic long before our country’s founding. This from Cato’s Letters a series of essays very familiar to the Founders:

“There is something so wanton and monstrous in lawless power, that there scarce ever was a human spirit that could bear it; and the mind of man, which is weak and limited, ought never to be trusted with a power that is boundless.”

Cato’s Letter # 25 April 15, 1721

The Constitution was drafted to limit and divide the power of the federal government via checks and balances nothing more and nothing less. It was based on the Founder’s best understanding of the problems experienced in the Greek democracies and the Roman Republic, the philosophies of Adam Smith, John Locke and others, and on essays like those of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (Cato’s Letters). They did a pretty good job but nothing is perfect and the collectivists have been chipping away at this concept for about 100 years now. They have done a lot of damage. If we let them they will destroy the whole concept of limited government and the separation of powers.

The General Welfare

As a libertarian I believe that the root of most of our problems lies in the sophistic argument that the phrase “general welfare” found in two places in the U. S. Constitution transforms it into a “living” document. Check out the copy of the U. S. Constitution here or here, read the paragraphs that contain this phrase and see if you agree with collectivists on their interpretation that these words give the federal government the level of power they contend it does. You will find the phrase in the preamble and the first paragraph of Article I Section 8.

This idea got its first real opportunity for massive implementation during the New Deal of the 1930’s. Although the Supreme Court thwarted some of the New Deal’s unconstitutional collectivist programs the concept of a “living” document held. Taken to its logical conclusion it basically means we just make it up as we go along. In spite of what collectivists will tell you it really is the antithesis of the rule of law. How can you rely on the rule of law if the law isn’t in writing or if even though it is in writing it is subject to such broad interpretation that it might as well not be in writing? Just think of normal business contracts. Imagine you sign a contract with someone. Standard business contracts always have some way to change them by agreement between the parties or for parties to abandon the contract after giving notice in writing. There is usually some period of time that must elapse before the notice takes effect and there may be stipulations that some payment must be made to exit the agreement, etc. Now imagine you find out that the other party to the contract you signed a few months ago is violating it. You call him and ask why he is not adhering to your agreement. “Oh well” he says “that was a number of months ago and times have changed”. “I interpret this as a living agreement subject to change as the times change.”

The Constitution is a special kind of contract. It can be changed by amendment in writing only by one party. That party is the citizenry of this republic who can amend the Constitution via their representatives. You need the agreement of 2/3rds of the Senate and House and 75% of the state legislatures. The amendment process can be started in the Congress or in a convention held by the states. The New Dealers thought that was too much trouble so they just started adding powers and responsibilities to the central government and ignoring the amendment process. The excuse for this approach to the Constitution was the general welfare phrase. They called it a clause but it isn’t. It’s just a phrase taken out of context.

Now collectivists don’t want you to know this but this question of general welfare came up early in the history of this republic. Here is what two Founders had to say.

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817

"…in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution…"

- Thomas Jefferson

"With respect to the two words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the "Articles of Confederation," and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted."

- James Madison in a letter to James Robertson 04/20/1831

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States."

- James Madison (Federalist Paper 45)

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

- James Madison in a letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

- James Madison

I rest my case.

My next post will be on foreign policy which is an area of disagreement between libertarians and conservatives. Let’s see if we can agree to disagree until we have gotten this country heading back to CCDRG.

Colossal Arrogance on Display

2009-09-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, September 8, President Obama intends to address all schoolchildren in the country simultaneously. It was initially reported that his address would include encouraging the children to find ways to “serve President Obama” and to write a paper describing their ideas. As of Friday morning, September 4, it is reported that he has abandoned that approach, and will instead encourage them to “work hard and improve themselves.” We’ll see.

It is very disturbing, even frightening, that he even considered such language. The founders intended that elected officials would serve the citizens. What kind of object lesson is it, then, when a President considers telling our young minds that they should be serving him? The question should be, “How can you serve your country?”

Take a look back through world history. Whenever people have been told that they should serve any national leader, that leader has proven to be a self-serving despot who believes that he IS the country. That is the definition of arrogance. If the intent was there to use such language when addressing the kids, it means the thought remains regardless of any statement to the contrary.

This colossal arrogance on display, combined with the reckless spending and ill-advised agenda of this administration and congress, makes the growing grassroots efforts more important than ever. We need to work as hard as we can to assure that congress is brought under control in 2010, and that a new administration is elected in 2012.

--Tom Wells 9/4/09

Some Call it Torture

2009-09-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

When the attorney general appointed a special persecutor [sic] to harass CIA interrogators, I got to wondering if these people were missing something. I tend to think of this gang as a bunch of liberal whiz kids, and one thing about liberal whiz kids is that they mostly do not avail themselves of the chance to serve their country by being in our military.

Lacking this military experience may prevent them from being able to understand the big picture. Now I will grant that extreme interrogation measures are not nice, but look at these from the perspective of millions of American servicemen.

In boot camp they take you apart with various physical, mental, and verbal abuses and then put you back together the way they want you to be.

After boot camp the main theme is to do harm to the enemy. It is OK to kill the enemy with small arms fire, artillery, bombs, and mines. It is OK to attack the enemy with really nasty things like flame throwers, napalm and white phosphorus. None of these things are nice.

While our service men and women are attacking the enemy with these nasty implements and methods, they understand that the enemy will be attacking them with similar weapons and techniques. There is no question that such experiences are comparable to the worst torture possible. But they have always been the standard deal for millions of Americans who, unlike the whiz kids, served in uniform.

There are lesser things to deal with as well. Sleep can be hard to get. Meals are missed, and the food was not always great, and you have to learn to live with the fear and separation. You know that if you are captured the enemy will torture you if he sees any advantage in doing so. I have to wonder if we have ever fought any enemy that did not torture our troops. It is pretty much the standard deal. Try not to get captured.

Given all that, I have to wonder if we are about to start treating enemy prisoners better than they were treated by their own side before we captured them. We must make sure they get enough sleep. They must not miss any meals. Can't say threatening things to them. Looks like we are going to treat them better than we treat our own people.

Waterboarding is romper room stuff compared to what happens when a ship goes down and all hands are lost. Over the years we have lost a lot of ships. Our people have died in a lot of other ways that are easily comparable to the worst torture. War is not nice.

Our new administration, the whiz kids with little or no military experience, want to be nice to the enemy. I don't think they get it. The enemy is at war with us. We need to be at war with them.

In the good times a person can take to the moral high ground and look pretty. In the bad times (that be now) people will look at them over there and wonder why they are not over here in the mud where the fight is. It is going to look like they won't fight. At least not for our side.

--Jerry 9/3/09

They Never Learn...

2009-09-01T17:20:00.000-07:00

In the past few months, we’ve endured the passage of the Stimulus package, the continuing saga of Cap-And-Tax, and now the soap opera that is Obamacare. The Obama Administration’s casual references to trillions of dollars in debt send chills down the spine. (Not thrills up the leg – sorry, Chris Matthews.)

When they are asked how they intend to pay for all of this, the only response is the old mantra, “Tax the rich.” They couch it in vague terms and attempt to mask the intent, but it is, as it has always been, the mainstay of Democrat tax-and-spend economic theory. Time and again the fallacy of this approach has been proven, but the left continues down the same tired path. They ignore a simple truth, one which cannot be refuted by the most rabid liberal. It is best summed up in this series of questions and answers:

Q: How did the wealthy get wealthy?

A: They are the investors, the entrepreneurs, and the developers that make this country grow and prosper. They provide the goods and services that everyone needs. They make their profits (Profit is not a dirty word!) by selling these goods and services.

Q: So, if they make a profit, shouldn’t they pay more?

A: They need to continue to make a profit. Otherwise, it’s pointless. If they are forced to pay more in taxes, they will need to increase the price of their goods and services to offset that loss and remain in business. That means that the end consumer bears the brunt of any increase in the taxes on the so-called “rich.”

Q: Well, if they can’t sell the goods at a reasonable
price, shouldn’t they fail?

A: And be replaced with what? If you drive these people out of business and essential goods and services become scarce, supply and demand will force the prices still higher. Again, who gets stuck with the increase? You do.

If you run through this with a liberal, you will find them grasping at straws to defend their side of the argument. They will turn to government caps on profit, price controls, and the other ill-advised intervention strategies that have never worked and never will. Eventually, what they will propose is nothing short of a move to socialism, which is exactly where this bunch is trying to take us.

Try this on a liberal or two. It’s fun to watch them struggle with it.

--Tom Wells, 9/1/09

The Beginning of WWII

2009-09-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

I’ll continue with my ongoing treatise on conservatives and libertarians in a few days. However, during the next two days you might want to read this two part article - Why Wasn't Hitler Stopped? Although there were military skirmishes in the decade prior to September 1, 1939 that really were part of the build up to WWII this was the day that was the official start of that massive conflict 70 years ago. WWII was the event that radically changed our foreign policy something conservatives and libertarians don't always agree on. The article is interesting from another angle because it is in Spiegel Online a German media site.

Quote for the day

2009-09-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this quote:

“My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whore house or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference!”

Mainstream Media Bias

2009-08-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

The effect of the mainstream media bias on the outcome of the 2008 election should not be ignored. The third estate enjoys certain special privileges in our constitution and legal system because the founders envisioned that this group would create well informed voters who would make good decisions. The schools that educate our journalists still give lip service to the idea of an unbiased press. They teach a separation between news and entertainment, and between news which is theoretically unbiased, and editorial opinions which are clearly separated from news and are allowed to be biased. The graduates of these schools do not follow these theoretical teachings and so the concept intended by the founders no longer works. The main stream media has become the propaganda arm of Democratic party.

Republicans have pointed out that the mainstream media is blatantly biased to the left, but accusing these people of biased reporting has had no effect on their behavior. If news coverage had been as the founders had intended would we have lost the 2008 election for president? Maybe, perhaps even probably not. The mainstream media had their candidate, and they promoted him with enthusiasm and good effect. To our claims of bias they do not even need to reply.

I contend that the Republican party and the mainstream media are in fact locked in a life or death struggle with each other. They just don't know it yet. It is a struggle in which one must necessarily destroy the other completely to survive. Certainly the Republican party has not acknowledged this. Currently, the mainstream media does not need to acknowledge this. It is not a foregone conclusion which entity must win this struggle. Although to many it seems that we are powerless to effectively attack the mainstream media, while they are able to deliver one crushing blow after another to the Republican party. Actually, we have the means to effectively fight back. Our actions can, and must be ethical and legal, but beyond that we must acknowledge that we need to destroy the mainstream media. We have tried raising the objection to their bias, and it has done no good. Past that ineffective effort we must recognize that we are in a fight to the death with this institution, and must destroy it before it destroys us.

The current presumption is that we are powerless to confront mainstream media. That seems to be the attitude of both protagonists at the moment, but it is wrong. The reason that we have been ineffective in this matter is that we have presumed that if we simply proclaim bias, and even prove bias on the part of the media, the media will correct its behavior. We must recognize that we are not going to change the mainstream media. They are doing what they want to do and they are getting away with it. The first step in dealing with this problem is to recognize that it is a life or death struggle that we must win to survive, and that we must destroy the mainstream media to win. Half measures here will not work.

I'm not advocating illegal or even unethical activity. In fact what we do must be both legal and ethical. This is essential, or the plan won't work. The plan also won't work if we set upon some moderate course that would allow for the MSM as we know it to survive. Sorry, but we have to be tough about this. It is not nice work, but if we are squeamish we will not win. If we don't win we will be destroyed. This thing cannot end in a stalemate or a tie.

So what powers do we actually posses that will allow us to destroy the mainstream media before they destroy us? Bear in mind that we lost the 2008 election with a popular vote of 46%. 46% was not enough to win an election, but it is more than enough to wreck havoc on the mainstream media.

If you were to approach almost any businessman and ask him what would happen if he lost 46% of his customers you would get the answer that it would destroy his company and he would be out of business. The key here is that the mainstream media are a collection of rival businesses. They can be destroyed by simply making them unprofitable. This needs to be done quickly enough so that they cannot simply downsize and survive. The goal here is their destruction. Remember that our base here is about half of their customers. If we do this right they won't even know what hit them until they find themselves mentioned in a museum somewhere alongside buggy whips.

The credibility of news organizations has been very bad for a long time. This is their weak spot, or perhaps their weakest spot. Instead of attacking first with claims of bias, we need to attack their credibility. This will not be difficult.

The mainstream media currently offers a glut of badly prepared misinformation. Inaccuracies are numerous and major. If we could put together a group that would hound the mainstream media over their inaccuracies we could destroy what remains of their credibility. I believe bloggers are well along on this work. They know how to do this. We simply need more dedicated people to find inaccuracies and make them public. Once this effort is in full swing, we may even be able to use one news outlet against another, but publicizing the errors of the mainstream media broadly enough will be hardest part. Finding the errors will not be much of a problem. It would be exhausting to find all the errors, but we don't have to.

Only after the mainstream media has a credibility near zero should we mention their bias. After the mention of bias, we move on with two other elements of attack.

First we create alternatives to the mainstream media that attempt to be the source of error free information. Ideally these would be constructed along the lines of the model taught in at least some journalism schools but quickly abandoned in practice afterwards. That is to say, the news would be without bias, and the opinion would be clearly marked as such and not mixed into the news to make entertainment with a bias. This will be a challenge because there is a natural tendency particularly in bogs to be all bias and use only information that supports the bias. The alternative we create must be better than that if it is to displace the mainstream media. We are trying to create an offering like journalists tried to create fifty years ago, and we must do it with a low cost infrastructure. The internet seems the likely place for this, but not the only place.

Second we invite everyone, but particularly our base (remember they are half of the mainstream media's customers) to abandon the mainstream media in indignant disgust and embrace alternatives that actually do serve the purposes intended by the the country's founders. At some point this means an organized boycott.

Could some mainstream media survive this kind of attack by changing to a model that was in line with role the founders intended for the third estate? Sure, but in effect they would have been destroyed and rebuilt so as to be a servant to neither party and a threat to the veracity of both. That is OK, we are not trying to control the flow of information the way the Democrats do now. We are only trying to protect the flow of high quality, unbiased information to the public so that it resembles the intention of the founders. If we try to do more to make the situation favor our own interests the attack will fail.

Having said that some of the mainstream media might survive in an acceptably altered form, I think the more likely outcome is that alternate methods of distribution will displace the majority of the mainstream media, which is a thing they fear even now. Our attack and our determination to proceed with efforts likely to cause their total destruction are essential, and if done thoughtfully may help to launch alternative means of distribution on a trajectory that better serves the nation and not incidentally treats our own party and causes more fairly.

Jerry

Can Conservatives and Libertarians Form a Coalition to Save the Constitution?

2009-08-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Before I launch into any discussion of practical ideas about this topic let’s discuss what conservatives and libertarians are in contemporary America.

If you peruse Wikipedia or other sites devoted to political philosophy you will find conservatism and libertarianism often defined in terms of left and right politics. Conservatism is often described as being right-wing politically and as supporting tradition and the status quo. Libertarianism is often described as on the right politically with regard to economic and government fiscal issues but on the left on social issues. You’ll even find such terms as libertarian socialism which I think was coined by Noam Chomsky. I consider this an oxymoron. Noam Chomsky like Obama is a Marxist as far as I am concerned. They employ other confusing terms to describe themselves to hide that fact. There is a trail of too many mass graves attributable to Marxism.

If you need a short definition, then the best way to think about libertarianism is as a natural or God given rights doctrine. Libertarians in the U. S. are classical liberals in the tradition of philosophers like Adam Smith, John Locke, et al and of the Founders of this country. They are focused on individual liberty. American conservatives on the other hand do value the tradition of individual liberty and the philosophy of the Founders but are focused on traditional moral values in a broader sense. However they aren’t wedded to the status quo to the detriment of material progress as is often implied by leftists who I will henceforth refer to as socialists or collectivists. As far as left and right are concerned those terms are misleading at best when applied to libertarians and conservatives. It’s best to think in terms of those who favor socioeconomic systems that rely on state control and collectivist approaches as opposed to those who favor decentralized socioeconomic systems that rely on individual liberty when determining the differences in political philosophies in the United States.

In this country libertarians and conservatives have a lot in common but also some important differences. Since libertarians generally place maximum importance on individual liberty they will often be against criminalizing harmful behavior which does not directly violate the rights of another person. In simple terms people have a right to harm themselves by stupid behavior. Conservatives will tend to favor control of certain behaviors because there is indirect harm to others. That’s a tradeoff that libertarians are less likely to favor.

I think the most central commonality in these two political groups is the belief in individual liberty and market capitalism which are decentralized socioeconomic approaches. The folks we refer to as leftists, progressives, or liberals, i.e. the collectivists place very little value on decentralized socioeconomic approaches. Although they will vociferously deny it collectivists tend to be authoritarian. They believe most of us need to be guided through life by the rulers of the state and their bureaucratic agents. They use to call themselves liberals but they really aren’t liberal at all.

So let’s recap by providing definitions. These are my definitions so you may disagree. In fact when it comes to defining American conservatism and libertarianism you will likely find no two conservatives and no two libertarians in the U. S. who define themselves completely the same way. In the end political and socioeconomic beliefs vary quite a bit by individual.

Conservative – one who holds traditional socioeconomic and moral values in the highest regard and believes that adhering to these values will best promote material progress and the general welfare.

Libertarian – one who holds individual liberty based on natural or God given rights in the highest regard and believes that adhering to individual liberty will best promote material progress and the general welfare.

Things like the philosophy of the Founders, the U. S. Constitution, market capitalism, and the concept of God given or natural rights are all part of American traditional values. Because these things are also important to individual liberty conservatives and libertarians have a lot in common. They often get to the same page but by slightly different reasoning.

As a practical matter the main differences between libertarians and conservatives are in the areas of foreign policy, immigration, and drug laws. Note I have used lower case c and l for conservatives and libertarians. We are talking about two groups of people not any political party. There are conservatives like Newt Gingrich and libertarians like Ron Paul in the Republican Party for example. Bob Barr was a Republican but is now a member of the Libertarian Party. In subsequent posts I’ll describe the aforementioned main differences in more detail and posit reasons why conservatives and libertarians should hold these differences in abeyance in order to save our constitutional republic.

G.M.

Obama's Visit to Montana

2009-08-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

The following is a recent e-mail from "Kathy" in Montana, who wishes to remain anonymous.

"Hello All,

By now you have probably heard that President Obama came to Montana last Friday. However, there are many things that the major news has not covered. I feel that since Bill and I live here and we were at the airport on Friday I should share some facts with you. Whatever you decide to do with the information is up to you.

On Wednesday, August 5th it was announced locally that the President would be coming here. There are many groups here that are against his healthcare and huge spending so those groups began talking and deciding on what they were going to do. The White House would not release ANY details other than the date.

On about Tuesday Bill found out that they would be holding the "Town Hall" at the airport. (This is only because Bill knows EVERYONE at the airport.) Our airport is actually located outside of Belgrade (tiny town) in a very remote location. Nothing is around there. They chose to use a hangar that is the most remotely located hangar. You could not pick a more remote location, and you can not get to it easily. It is totally secluded from the public.

FYI: We have many areas in Belgrade and Bozeman which could have held a large amount of folks with sufficient parking (gymnasiums/auditoriums). all of which have chairs and tables, and would not have to be SHIPPED IN!! $$$$$ During the week, cargo by the TONS was being shipped in constantly. Airport employees could not believe how it just kept coming. Though it was our President coming, several expressed how excessive it was, especially during a recession. $$$$$

Late Tuesday/early Wednesday the 12th, they said that tickets would be handed out on Thursday 9am at two locations and the president would be arriving around 12:30 Friday.

Thursday morning about 600 tickets were passed out. However, 1500 were printed at a local printing shop per White House request. Hmmmm......900 tickets just DISAPPEARED. This same morning someone called into the radio from the local UPS branch and said that THOUSANDS of Dollars of

lobster were shipped in for Obama. Montana has some of the best beef in the nation! And it would have been really wonderful to help out the local economy. Anyone heard of the Recession?? Just think...with all of the traveling the White House is doing. $$$$$ One can only imagine what else we are paying for.

On Friday Bill and I got out to the airport about 10:45am. The groups that wanted to protest Obama's spending and healthcare had gotten a permit to protest and that area was roped off. But that was not to be. A large bus carrying SEIU (Service Employees International Union) members drove up onto the area (illegal)and unloaded right there. It was quite a commotion and there were specifically 2 SEIU men trying to make trouble and start a fight. Police did get involved and arrested the one man but they said they did not have the manpower to remove the SEIU crowd. The SEIU crowd was very organized and young. About 99% were under the age of 30 and they were not locals! They had bullhorns and PROFESSIONALLY made signs. Some even wore preprinted T-shirts. Oh, and Planned Parenthood folks were with them....professing abortion rights with their T-shirts and preprinted signs. (BTW, all these folks did have a permit to protest in ANOTHER area.)

Those against healthcare/spending moved away from the SEIU crowd to avoid confrontation. They were orderly and respectful. Even though SEIU kept coming over and walking through, continuing to be very intimidating and aggressive at the direction of the one SEIU man.

So we had Montana folks from ALL OVER the state with their homemade signs and their DOGS with homemade signs. We had cowboys, nurses, doctors you name it. There was even a guy from Texas who had been driving through. He found out about the occasion, went to the store, made a sign, and came to protest.

If you are wondering about the press.....Well, all of the major networks were over by that remote hangar I mentioned. They were conveniently parked on the other side of the buildings FAR away. None of these crowds were even visible to them. I have my doubts that they knew anything about the

crowds. We did have some local news media around us from this state and Idaho. Speaking of the local media...they were invited. However, all questions were to be turned into the White House in advance of the event. Wouldn't want anyone to have to think off the top of their head.

It was very obvious that it was meant to be totally controlled by the White House. Everything was orchestrated down to the last detail to make it appear that Montana is just crazy for Obama and government healthcare. Even those people that talked about their insurance woes........the White House called our local HRDC (Human Resource and Development Committee) and asked for names. Then the White House asked those folks to come. Smoke and mirrors...EVERYTHING was staged!

I am very dismayed about what I learned about our current White House. The amount of control and manipulation was unbelievable. I felt I was not living in the United States of America, more like the USSR. I was physically nauseous. Bill and I have been around when Presidents or Heads of State visit. It has NEVER been like this. I am truly very frightened for our country. America needs your prayers and your voices. If you care about our country please get involved. Know the issues. And let Congress hear your voices again and again! If they are willing to put forth so much effort to BULLY a small town one can only imagine what is going on in Washington DC. Scary!"

Quote for the day

2009-08-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this quote:

"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Quote for the day

2009-08-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Who is the author of this quote:

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

How to post a topic

2009-08-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

Only co-authors may post topics. At present there are only two co-authors, George and myself. If anyone would like to post a topic send it to me I will copy and paste it verbatim.

Anyone interested in becoming a co-author may contact me by email at the above address.

Guns in public

2009-08-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

The following is a summary of the discussion a few friends were having. The discussion outgrew email exchanges and the Conversations Around a Wood Stove Blog was born. This summary was authored by Jerry an original member of the original group.

The founders intended that citizens be guaranteed the right to bear arms as a precaution against tyranny from their own government. When the constitution was written citizens might well have been able to equip and train themselves well enough to protect themselves from tyrants in their own government. That would be somewhere between difficult and impossible today. I also personally believe that by the time citizens are in armed conflict with our troops or our police, our cause is already lost, and I will not spill blood for a lost cause. I think George differed with me on that.

The right to bear arms for personal defense against violent criminals, and even political thugs such as the modern equivalents of the brownshirts of Nazi Germany is still a reasonable use of the second amendment. If we continue down the road toward socialism there will be more of these. In fact, there are indications that the current administration is using such already.

I mostly agree with Jerry's summary. I would add with emphasis that it is my strong belief that those who stockpile all manner of black rifles, shotguns and pistols along with tens of thousands of rounds of ammo are seriously deluded. Their stated goal is to deter the central government from some vague and nefarious purpose. I have said it before and I say again, ''Those who expect to mount a winnable armed revolution against the US Government are suicidal. A platoon of grunts, raw out of Boot Camp will make mincemeat of them before they empty the first magazine from their Belchfire Magnum".

I have a sufficiency of weapons; all, except some handguns, suitable for hunting. There is not a black rifle or "assualt" rifle in the safe. My battery is sufficient to protect against varmints, and feed my family in emergency.

The present purpose of the Second is to gaurantee to non criminals the right to possess and bear arms for personal protection against varmints both human and animal. The Second has nothing to do with hunting.

Quote for the day

2009-08-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Who is the very famous author of this quote:

'Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.''

2009-08-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

Welcome. This blog evolved from a few friends corresponding about economics and politics. The last subject was about guns in public. This proved such a popular topic that we needed more room for discussion. This blog is the result.

The authors have no illusions or delusions that this, out of the millions of blogs, will ever amount to anything more than a bull session among a few hundred people interested in civil discourse on subjects of mutual interest.

No ideas, thoughts, opinions, or heresies are forbidden so long as they are presented without profanity and the ad hominem argument. If you accept that small constraint, pull up a chair and join the fray.

2009-08-23T15:18:00.000-07:00