MACHIAVELLI’S MASQUERADE

By

ROBERT HARKINS

Who is it attends Machiavelli’s Masquerade? Bipartisan and conservative politicians— so called who, in a pretense of good will, mask ambitions if found out would take them down to ruin. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court, declared unconstitutional the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, a bill enacted by Congress and signed by former President George Bush. The Bill was enacted to criminalize free speech.

In January of 2008 filmmaker David Bossie attempted to market a documentary entitled Hillary: The Movie. The Federal Election Commission concluded that the movie was illegal under campaign finance laws and upon threats of civil and criminal prosecution, prohibited its airing or advertisement. Mr. Bossie filed suit. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In a 5/4 decision it condemned a Congressional attempt to begin the abrogation, in bits and pieces, of the First Amendment. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, struck it down.

"When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. ... The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves…."political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it… We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers."

In passing the bill, Congress, in an expression of bipartisan and conservative guile, placed itself beyond the reach of the constraints imposed on it by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It does not take a Constitutional scholar to figure out that the drafters of the First Amendment intended that, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.” The Supreme Court pointed out the glaringly obvious fact that Congress passed a law abridging the freedom of speech— an act of hubris as repugnant to the First Amendment and it is to the Republic. Really, how could anyone fail to understand this plain, powerful and elegant sentence? “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.”

Is there a question members of Congress and the President were careful not to ask? Indeed yes. Upon what pretense of constitutional interpretation may Congress, intent upon the effacement of freedom of speech, declare itself beyond the reach of a First Amendment written expressly to forbid it this abhorrent power? Congress, after all, may not legislate in defiance of the Constitution a sovereign people breathed into life.

That said, what part of the First Amendment did the bipartisan and conservative members of Congress and the President not get? Certainly, its language is clear, plain, simple and mandatory. The Constitutional prohibition against Congressional infringement of free speech is the first of a series of amendments written to insure forever that American freedoms be now and forever sacrosanct. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that those who passed and signed the McCain/Feingold Bill into law either knew they were mounting an attack upon the authority and relevance of an august Constitution, or subscribed to Humpty Dumpty’s rhetorical theory that “Words mean what I say they do. No more, and no less.”

Assuming Congress and the President were able to rise above the rhetoric of Lewis Carroll’s nursery rhyme, it follows they must have known the McCain/Feingold Bill, written expressly to abridge free speech, violated the First Amendment. In fact, the ominous inference is that Congress would not have passed the Bill unless its members, bipartisan and conservatives so they say, Democrats and Republicans alike, believed they could pull it off in service to a predatory Congress superior in all ways to its Constitution.

Senators McCain and Feingold, despite syrupy expressions of sentiment, did not legislate for the benefit and protection of the sovereign people that entrusted them with senatorial privilege and power. Instead, they passed a Bill into law intending that it criminalize free speech—just as if the First Amendment had not been writ in plain words—and in defiance of the sovereign people they claim to serve.

The Congress, by violating the First Amendment, took unto itself a power forbidden to it and so, abridged free speech for eight long years. Of course, a majority of politicians predicted, in an alphabet of lurid demagogy, the imminent corporate destruction of democracy and constitutional government—unless the Bipartisan Bill were passed, and passed quickly too. Congress, however, has no right to defy the Constitution in the service of its will to power.

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court destroyed a bill passed by a rogue Congress. Buy it did so just barely. Had President O’bama placed just one more Justice on the Supreme Court, a Constitution, now defaced, and subject by a dangerous precedent, to further degradation, would be for all of us the new law of the land. It should surprise no one that Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor voted with the leftist phalanx of dissenting justices. President O’Bama, of course, has condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling. At the State of the Union Address, Democrats stood and cheered his excoriation of the Supreme Court Justices seated before him.

It should serve as a warning to Americans that Congress managed to declare the expression of free speech, for eight long years, illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. It’s not over, of course; this is just the beginning. Americans will see again its Congress and President contest the Bill of Rights. What then is next: the criminalizing of whatever Congress decides, from time to time, is hate speech? Perhaps you object to tax increases or government mandated health care. Well, isn’t your objection, cleverly construed, really a species of rhetorical hate? Then too, members of Congress have characterized Tea Party protesters as fascists, as hooded, cross-burning klaners, as ignorant, angry, racists and sycophants. For such as these, who live beyond the official pale, what could be fairer than that Congress pass a law to shut them up—or put them in jail? Perhaps Congress will pass a bill to tell us precisely when and what we may safely say, when we must say it and when we must be silent. After all, other countries have been as helpful and precise, Stalin’s Soviet Union for example or Mussolini’s Italia.

What is to be done? Watch carefully what is said and done by Congress, its President; and above all keep them close. Listen critically to their words. Ignore their classic rhymes, and lyric prose; tune out their vaulting presidential elegance— and listen more closely still to him who claims to be our voice. For their message, well polished, in meters fine and strong, is sung by men and women wearing masks.

Oh, and take them down to ruin with your vote.

“That Dog Don’t Hunt”
by John Alexander Madison
January 25, 2010

You may have heard that expression before, especially if you are from the South...but for those of you from Yorba Linda, CA let me explain. It means something is not right, something is bogus. A reference to hunting dogs, it means as they age they lose their ability to smell. They don’t work anymore, as hunting dogs.

Translation: Poor English aside, Mr. President, we ain’t buying it no more. After your improbable ascension to the White House exactly 53 weeks ago today you, and only you, must be held accountable for our nation’s economic disaster and each and every one of your failed policies.

Yet today brings us news that the President’s campaign manager, Dave Plouffe, has been hired as a political consultant to the White House as planning for the midterm elections heats up. This is the same Plouffe whose winning strategy was to “blame it on Bush.” It worked then and it seems they plan to resurrect that theme as they gear up for the 2010 midterm elections. Many political experts expect that these current plans will go up in smoke, as in “plouffe.”

Fox News reports that “the president's party is facing a stiff headwind from an electorate angry about high unemployment and what they see as ineffectual government, White House officials said. Republican Scott Brown's capture of the Massachusetts Senate seat Tuesday was a first shot in what Democrats worried would be hard-fought contests in November.”

However, if anybody is counting it is at least the fourth shot heard ‘round the world...the first being the line from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn” (1837), which referred to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, then the recent New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races being #s 2 and 3.

I digress when I share with you that my father determined studying Shakespeare at a young age would be a regular appetizer for a weekly family dinner. (circa 1954 “Oh dad, come on, we’re hungry.” circa 2010 “Thanks, dad, for the great early learning experiences which continue to serve me well today.”)

One of my favorite recollections is from Bill Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Act 2, scene 2, 92-99). eNotes.com reminds me that in one of the funniest scenes in Hamlet, the politician Polonius, who has declared that "Brevity is the soul of wit", continues to enlarge upon Hamlet's supposed madness. The impatient Queen dryly demands "More matter with less art," that is, more substance and less rhetoric. (Translation: cut the b.s.)

Polonius:
Your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it, for to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.
Queen:
More matter with less art.
Polonius:
Madam, I swear I use no art at all
That he's mad, 'tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity,
And pity 'tis 'tis true—a foolish figure,
But farewell it, for I will use no art.

So, Mr. President, we can and must learn from history. Rhetoric is boring. Americans reject socialism. Results are what matters.

EPILOGUE

The great poet and philosopher Horace once wrote “Carpe diem” which translates to "seize the day". Carpe means "pick, pluck, pluck off, gather", but Horace uses the word to mean "enjoy, make use of."

Bush (#43) messed up a bit and, Mr. President (#44), you have messed up in spades in one-eighth the time. So now it’s time to move forward with a more rationale plan to save our nation. And that plan cannot include any of your failed initiatives. Let’s seize this moment and move forward.

And as the philosopher Carrington once wrote: Yesterday is history, tomorrow your future. Move forward.

Indeed, let’s move forward together before it is too late.

LIBERAL FASCISM

By

ROBERT HARKINS

What’s in a word? Everything. But its meaning evolves and changes over time. Today’s “leftist” liberal subscribes to few if any of the beliefs held by 19^th century classical liberals. The 19^th century liberal believed that the Constitution, and its Bill of Rights, were carefully drafted to restrain within the boundaries of a Constitution a government that sovereign unto itself would feed upon its people and their states. They realized that a government unrestrained inexorably drifts into despotism. They detested the “democracy” of a French Revolution where the many, by acts of calculated and brutal terror, were made subject to the dictates of the mob and its guillotines.

The American Constitution enshrines a revolutionary new political principle. The state is not sovereign. Only the people are sovereign. They may, of their free will, loan such powers to a central government, as they see fit. But the people are no longer “subject” to the will of kings or tyrants. They are not subject to the central government they breathed in to being.

The Founders drafted a Constitution, which in plain, clear, and unequivocal language expressed the intention of a sovereign American people to strictly limit the central government to the exercise of specific “enumerated” powers. All other powers were forbidden to it. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments, contained in the Bill of Rights, made it certain that the central government and the powers vested in it by the American people exist only by their grace and permission. The Amendments, the primary and critical mandate of constitutional construction, clearly and in plain words intend the creation of a central government vastly inferior in power and reach to the states and their people.

Amendment IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X. The powers not delegated to the Untied States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Since the drafting of the Constitution, however, the Supreme Court since the reign of Chief Justice Earl Warren, in an extraordinary presentation of mental gymnastics, vested all real power in the federal government. The Amendments Nine and Ten are now constitutional relics powerless to circumscribe the federal government’s accession to the blatant powers of a Welfare State. It is now the central government that is sovereign, the people its subjects, the states its administrative agencies. The rest, federalism, and the separation of powers, are holy myths.

The new liberalism was not born from the American Constitution. Rousseau, and Robespierre gave birth to it in a French Revolution. In 1794 the soon to be President Monroe was appointed minister to France. His wife Elizabeth secured the release of Mms. Lafayette from prison, this at the height of the Revolution’s savagery in which millions of French citizens were executed upon the guillotine or died in prisons. Monroe also managed to obtain the release of Thomas Paine from a French jail, and assisted the Lafayette family’s escape from France and certain death.[1] Later, Lenin, believing himself to be the reincarnation of Robespierre, honed the Revolution’s techniques of calculated terror to such perfection the mass graves of Russian citizens, dug in the years of Stalin, are still occasionally unearthed.

Since the Sixties “leftist” liberalism has shed such constitutional affectations as it may have garnered from life under the freedom, protection and constraints of constitutional government. It does not remotely resemble constitutional liberalism nor are its theories of government to be found in any Constitution. Jonah Goldberg, in his history, Liberal Fascism[2], suggests that the worldview of contemporary liberals more resembles that of the fascist. In fact, “…the term “fascist” was first widely used by Mussolini,” to describe a society where everybody belonged, where everyone was taken care of, where everything was inside the state and nothing was outside: where truly no child was left behind.”

Accordingly, Goldberg writes, progressives in America, most notably the intelligentsia at Columbia University, were as fascinated with Mussolini as were Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. The liberal playwright George Bernard Shaw attested to the glories of the Stalinist state, and H.G. Wells, science fiction writer and socialist, urged liberals to embrace “liberal fascism” in the name of freedom. But why? Goldberg writes, “The answer resides in the fact that Fascism was born of a ‘fascist moment’ in western civilization, when a coalition of intellectuals going by various labels—progressive, communist, socialist and so forth—believed the era of liberal democracy was drawing to a close. It was time for man to lay aside the anachronisms of natural law, traditional religion, constitutional liberty, capitalism and the like and rise to the responsibility of remaking the world in his own image. God was long dead, and it was long overdue for men take his place.”

Goldberg makes a point. Walter Duranty, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and liberal star of the New York Times, sought with all his might to convince the world of Stalin’s sainthood. He wrote outright falsehoods calculated to suppress the truth of Stalin’s intentional starvation of six million Russian Kulaks. The liberal Walter Duranty was not alone.

James Glazov in his book, United in Hate[3], carefully documents a strange liberal affection for fascist regimes that hate America. It is a fact that, “Throughout the twentieth century, the Western Left supported one totalitarian killing machine after another. Prominent intellectuals from George Bernard Shaw to Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming America, and even the victims, for the crimes.”

Leftist Liberals of the age were a bit put off by the 1943 discovery of the Katyn Forest Massacre. In 1940 the Soviet NKVD murdered, execution style— by a bullet to the back of the head— thousands of Polish prisoners, military officers, policemen, and intellectuals. They were buried several bodies to the grave in the Katyn Forest. Liberals nevertheless rallied and were there to applaud Stalin’s burgeoning Soviet Socialist State. Later, they would cheer the cold-blooded murderer Fidel Castro and the wonders of his stylish, island prison. And of those with the grit to have listened to the pouting mouth of Sean Penn there is not a one can doubt his near worship of dear Fidel. Indeed, even members of the American Congress speak in loving prose to the virtue of the aging Cuban killer.

Jane Fonda, in one of many expressions of love, for another American enemy, the communist state of Ho Chi Minh, posed giddily for pictures with a gun crew that when not available for photo ops were busy shooting American pilots from the sky—or torturing American soldiers. One might think that dear Jane would meditate upon the deaths of the South Vietnamese taken and “reeducated” after the fall— or the Boat People who took their chances with pirates on the open sea rather than face the Utopia Ho Chi Minh had in mind for them—or for the millions of Cambodians slaughtered in the Killing Fields of the communist Khmer Rouge.

It does not stop. Liberals gave moral and material support to the Marxist killer Noriega whose Sandinistas executed, tortured and imprisoned, thousands of their own people. And lately, Danny Glover and again, Sean Penn can’t seem to fawn enough over the anti-American Marxist Chavez as together in morbid harmonies they slander the country and the people that made them rich.

Where then are the constitutional liberals? They are well and good, and rare. But search them out; for in the classical liberal lies the hopes of an American people.

---

[1] The Last Founding Father, James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness Harlow Giles Unger (DA CAPO PRESS, 2009).

[2] Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism. The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. (Double Day, 2007)

[3] Jamie Glazov United in Hate, (WND Books, 2009).

“Doing the Right Thing?”
by John Alexander Madison
January 18, 2010

As if our nation hasn’t already been hit hard by the reckless policies and wrong-headed political agenda of an inexperienced administration bringing the United State of America to the brink of financial collapse…now, by Presidential declaration, we must single-handedly pour what remaining wealth we have into disaster relief for Haiti…because the $100 million cash, plus unlimited other resources is just the beginning.

What happened to your one world vision Mr. President? Shouldn’t we call upon, no demand, that your friends in Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others throughout the world to share their wealth for a nation brought to the brink of extinction by last week’s devastating, magnitude 7.1 earthquake? After all, according to your world view aren’t we all in this thing together? Hardly, it seems.

Make no mistake…the tragedy in Haiti is unimaginable and the effects will be long-lasting (perhaps decades). But the reality is America alone cannot possibly continue to be the world’s savior, the world's benefactor, and the world’s warrior in the ongoing fight for personal freedom and democracy.

The United States of America has been THE MOST GENEROUS NATION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD and it will, of course, step up once again and send every resource available, and then some, to this island nation merely 700 miles off the coast of South Florida. It is the right thing to do.

As predictable as the fact that there will be another catastrophic earthquake so too is that fact that the United States, after significant efforts to send aid to Haiti, will be blamed before long for not doing enough to completely rebuild Haiti, its infrastructure and its economy. What economy? Haiti has been the poorest nation in the western hemisphere and we must acknowledge, at some point, that with our recently accumulated and unprecedented national debt we, too, will soon be broke as well.

There are two alternative and immediate solutions to this crisis and we must pursue them.

The largest economies in the world are as follows (in trillions of dollars) #1- The United States ($14.6); #2 China ($7.8); #3 Japan ($4.5); #4 India ($3.3); #5 Germany ($2.9); #6 United Kingdom ($2.8); #7 Russia ($2.2); #8 France ($2.1; #9 Brazil ($2.0); #10 Italy ($1.8). The economies of nine of the largest ten economies are twice that of the United States. Logic would say they need to contribute twice as much as the U.S. to the relief aid to Haiti. But we know that won’t happen. Of course, logic also says we should never have elected a smooth talking, inexperienced, idealistic, and naïve Senator as our 44th President either. So much for logic.

Plan #2: The President should pick up the telephone and ask the ten world’s richest billionaires to send today’s lunch money (pocket change) to Haiti. Excluding the Middle East’s oil-rich sheiks, whose individual wealth remains a mystery, nine of the top ten are American citizens. The top ten are as follows (in billions): #1 Bill Gates (Microsoft: $52.8); #2 Warren Buffet (Berkshire-Hathaway: $35.0); #3 Karl & Theo Albrecht (Germany-retail: $26.8); #4 Paul Allen (Microsoft: $25.2); #5 Larry Ellison (Oracle: $23.5); and #s 6-10 are five of Sam Walton heirs (Wal-Mart: $102.9). That’s right the nine Americans alone have a combined wealth of $239.4 billion. If they gave one-tenth of 1% of their accumulated that would be a mere $239 million…or nearly 2.5 times America’s initial cash commitment.

So here’s a message to the Democratically-controlled Congress and President Obama: STOP THE MADNESS…stop spending money we don’t have. You have already, or soon will have, completely destroyed our free market economy. Mark my words, America as we knew it…the greatest nation and most generous on Earth…cannot continue down this path much longer.

My thoughts and prayers are with every person who has been affected by the tragic 2010 Haitian earthquake.


EPILOGUE
For heaven’s sake Mr. President and Congress, we cannot keep printing and spending money we do not have. And you can begin with an immediate end to your corrupt efforts to foist your disastrous national health care plan upon an unwilling nation.

Maybe, just maybe, the beginning of the end to your madness will occur tomorrow when common sense returns to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as the citizens send a fiscally responsible Republican Senate candidate to Washington, D.C. One can only hope.

AMERICA! The 2010 General Election will be held on November 2, 2010. Mark your calendar.

Integrity and the Greater Good

By Range Rider

About a year ago, a friend of the Rider expressed disgust with the Republicans and the Democrats, suggesting that the Libertarians had it right. She had abandoned hope in the current system and was turning her attention to working with small business to help them survive the economic sabotage she felt was about to be delivered by the new President.

I disagreed with her decision to abandon politics… thinking that the Democrats, and especially the President, would misread the election as a mandate to shift to the left. It was really a flight from President Bush and the Republican Party’s free spending drift from the core values of limited government and free enterprise.

President Obama’s inexperience and ideological agenda have indeed been disastrous, and the Republicans will likely see significant gains in power in November. Watching the process of legislating the demise of the greatest health care system in the world… there are problems, but when was the last major advance made that was not invented here… I am reminded of third world influence peddling and corruption.

The democratic process appears to have taken a deeper plunge into brokered back room deals where integrity and the interest of the greater good are left at the bargaining table. Some resist, but the inexorable pull to go along to get along and bring home the bacon proves too great for many. Many people think Washington will never change.

The Rider says it has to change. The Republican party, as a matter of survival, must not only organize and win in November, but must also change the way Washington works. They must do what Obama said he would do, and it can’t be an empty promise. Fail, and the next generation will witness the demise of the present two-party system and the rise of new party that will serve the people, not themselves.

THE WELFARE STATE UBER ALLES[1]

By

ROBERT HARKINS

Democrats and Republicans serve a single constituency, the Welfare State Uber Alles, an entity that exists “above all”, beyond the pale, in defiance of a once sovereign people. It functions in contempt of Democracy. It is the portent of a dying Constitution. Inexorably, the Welfare State confiscates the territory of mind and heart where free thinking strives to prevail and government trespass is forbidden. It is the legacy of a culturally Marxist left triumphant in the Democratic Party. It is the legacy of a Republican Party that claims falsely to be the champion of a conservative people.

To ensure the ascendance of a permanent and indestructible Welfare State, President O’bama has embraced “…a federal budget deficit projected to run into the trillions of dollars, [and] appears willing to increase the current $10 trillion U.S. national debt by 65 percent in just two years.”[2] The President’s budget is a human conflagration that beggars the gross indulgence of former President Bush who claims the conservative mantle. It is a hard truth to tell but President O’bama’s collectivist vision is not the anti-thesis of President’s Bush’s vision; it is its logical fulfillment.

In their last eight years of power Republicans drastically increased the power and reach of the Welfare State. They increased federal spending by 70 percent,[3] a record barely exceeded by the late President Lyndon Johnson who birthed a “Great Society”—now a heap of expensive rubble—out of a Democratic spending orgy. Republicans have also competed collegially with Democrats to see whose earmarks might take the grander cut of pork. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, for example, a conservative Republican, is a finalist for the Porker of the Month award. The good Senator defended her pursuit of earmarks as the quintessence of patriotic duty. Indeed, she characterized her demand for 1.6 billion of taxpayer’s money as a selfless service to her state of Texas— a request only by coincidence aligned with her campaign for Governor.

In naming Sen. Hutchison the October 2009 “Porker of the Month,” CAGW said, “While claiming to be a fiscal conservative, Sen. Hutchison requested 149 projects worth $1.6 billion for authorization and appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010.”[4]

On May 9, 2007, the “conservative” President Bush signed the “National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive.” The Executive Order empowers the President, in the event of a national emergency,

“to ‘seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces on roads, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, [and] restrict travel.”[5]

Now, powers usually wielded by despots are available to a new President dead set on vesting irrevocably in the Welfare State the power to tax and redistribute hard-earned American wealth to his loyal and ever more dependant constituencies.

We should judge the Parties by the abject failure of their economic prophecies. In 2007, Bush experts predicted a glorious economic future even as the American economy began its descent into the abyss. In the Economic Report of the President for 2007 prepared by the Council of Economic Advisers, the experts giddily concluded, “’Economic growth in the United States has been above the historic average and faster than any other major industrialized economy in the world.’” President Bush, concurring, announced, “’our economy is on the move.” He proclaimed that “…we can keep it that way by continuing to pursue sound economic policy based on free-market principles.’” Emphasis added. [6]

Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign revealed a more insidious cause of Republican perfidy. It is not that Republicans, like innocent lambs, have lost their way; it is that they know their way too well. Senator McCain, while he claims conservative laurels, he nevertheless fancies himself a “Wily Maverick.” Indeed, just recently he cantered across the aisle to support a Democratic initiative intent on the destruction of the American economy by the passage of an international swindle known as Cap and Trade.

While prancing about the other side of the aisle, the wily maverick also co-sponsored a bill with the late Ted Kennedy that would have granted blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. While the majority of people are here, however illegally, for the chance at a job and a decent life, tens of thousands are sojourning in federal prisons in punishment for their commission of execrable crimes upon American citizens. Others are forging social security cards and working the welfare state for hard cash and the full range of welfare benefits. We shall never know the legion numbers of people who are not American citizens but who nevertheless vote faithfully and virtually always for Democrats in state and national elections.

While, Senator McCain thinks of himself as quite the primal and principled conservative, in 2001, he “… founded the Alexandria, Virginia-based Reform Institute as a vehicle to receive funding from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, as well as several other prominent leftist nonprofit organizations….”[7]A politician out for money from the likes of George Soros will certainly suck up to the Welfare State. While Senator McCain should have been put out to pasture long ago, the rumor is that he is seriously considering another presidential run. Whatever may be his new political theme it will not change a thing. We know his constituency.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican just announced that, on Cap and Trade, he is willing to be the sixtieth vote that will pass this obscene piece of legislation into law. That he stands censured by true conservatives in his party is for Senator Graham, the wind blowing.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has been censured for a second time in the last three months by members of the South Carolina GOP. In a resolution approved Monday by the Lexington County Republican Party, Graham was attacked for working with Democratic leaders in the Senate on cap-and-trade legislation.“U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham through his support of a cap-and-trade bill, reiterates his support for government intervention in the private sector in direct contradiction of the Republican principle of free markets, as stated by the Republican party platform,” reads the resolution, which also accuses Graham of having “debased” Republican principles.[8]

The most telling Democratic response to legitimate Republican criticism of its health care plan occurred when a few Democrats reminded Republicans that they too are facilitators of the Welfare State. President Bush, a Republican House and Senate rammed through an exorbitant and unfunded Medicare Supplement bill. Democrats quietly asked, eyebrows raised and tongue in cheek, where the Republicans might find the trillions necessary to pay for this new extension of federal power. Ah details. The Republicans, in their passing of another instantly bankrupt program, used strong-arm tactics to vest in the Welfare State, an ever more aggressive reach and power. They should not be surprised that their strong-arm tactics would serve as a model for the O’Bama administration’s legislative use of gross bribery and an iron fist in faithful service to the same State.

Compromise, as it is now used by the parties, is far too often a species of duplicity, an instrument obfuscation and moral decline. Blue Dog Democrats, traditionally “conservative”, when presented with a socialist, bank-breaking health care bill, cynically garnished with shameful bribes, took the bribes—and in the taking, sold their favor, vote, honor, dignity and all else in return for transitory self-aggrandizement.

The conservative political tribes, Democrat Blue Dogs and Republican “conservatives”, are alike well practiced in the barking of platitudes. They condemn the decline of Western civilization as they increase the size and power of a Welfare State dedicated to its destruction. They bow solemnly to the sanctity of life as they quietly fund the abortion of children. They praise the Constitution as they step on it. Indeed, it may be time that Blue Dogs and Republicans consider the admonition of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

This above all

To thine ownself be true, 


And it must follow, as the night the day, 


Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
[9]

What is to be done? We must dismantle the Welfare State or accept the status of serfs in our own country, as we live upon our own land, We will not prevail in this Herculean task with the cooperation of those who built it stone by stone: the Democratic Party, The Blue Dogs, Republican “conservatives,” Senators McCain, Lindsey, Hutchinson and their ilk. We should reject moderates, pragmatists, wily mavericks; and negotiators willing to compromise anything. We must vote into political oblivion the advocates of the Welfare State Uber Alles— whatever be their name and party.

Who then will have our vote? It will be men and women committed to an American Constitution precisely as it is written, leaders whose first loyalty is to the People and the States, the Constitution, its 9^th and 10^th Amendments—not the Welfare State and its acolytes, not the Justices who are able to find between the lines of a Constitution plainly written, anything that pleases their political fancy.

It will take a common, peaceful, lawful and implacable Revolution. The hour is late, but not too late to recover the America that once in days gone by was our certain heritage. It is late but not too late to embrace again the faith of our Fathers and their Constitution.

But what “If we should fail? We fail!

But screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we'll not fail.”[10]

Finally, we must cast to the dump of dead and dying ideologies, a politically correct demagogy that has birthed a neurotic hatred of America, American sovereignty and all things American. We must capture, shrink, bind and confine within the constraints of an American Constitution the aberration that is the Welfare State, Uber Alles— which, even as I write, is transforming free Americans into serfs, bound in service and penury to its voracious appetite. We gain nothing by easy compromise. Small talk is not the stuff of revolution. Instead, let us take up “Caesar’s spirit….

Cry ‘Havoc,’

and let slip the dogs of war,

that this foul deed shall smell

above the earth
 with carrion men,

groaning for burial.
[11]

---

[1] Uber Alles. From the German National Anthem. English, “Above All.”

[2] AMERICA FOR SALE, FIGHTING THE NEW WORLD ORDER, SURVING A GLOBAL DEPRESSOIN AND PERSEVING USA SOVEREIGNTY. Jerome R. Corse Ph.D. (Threshold Editions, 2009).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Washington Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Finalist For Porker of the Year. Submitted by watchingkay on Thu. 12/31, 2009.

[7] Ibid. 259

[8] POLITICO. By ANDY BARR | 1/5/10 12:35 PM EST

[9] Shakespeare’s -Hamlet

[10] Shakespeare, Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 7

[11] Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1.

“Mark My Words…Predictions for 2010”
by John Alexander Madison
January 11, 2010

Global Warming: Although not for the reasons the inventor of the Internet claims, global warming will become more of a reality due to the President and his legions of blind sheep continuing their rhetoric (read “hot air”) about socialism AND the need for a national healthcare program AND a one world economy AND their irresponsible spending. Also the U.S. Treasury’s printing presses, running twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week, will overheat and thereby help create much needed warmth and relief from the unprecedented arctic temperatures blanketing the Deep South early in this New Year. So much for global warming, Senator Gore.

U.S. Senate (East): Republican Scott Brown will be elected United States Senator from Massachusetts. He will be the first Republican elected from Massachusetts in 37 years, filling the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat. Citizens saw positive results with Republican Governor Mitt Romney and believe another Republican candidate can serve them well in Congress.

U.S. Senate (West): Former Lt. Governor of Colorado, Jane Norton, will easily displace a U.S. Senator who is even less qualified to be in office than Barry Soetero. U.S. Senate rookie and Governor Ritter appointee Michael Bennett will not earn a full term and will be forever an insignificant historical footnote...yet another big mistake, Governor.

The Economy: Will improve slightly. However, it will be much less than is needed to begin a serious recovery. Consumers will be cautious with their spending while bracing for a plethora of new and inevitable taxes which will be foisted upon us by an out of control President and his complicit Congress. A true recovery will not take place until a majority of the members of Congress (House and Senate alike) believe in the limited role of the federal government, fiscal restraint, and personal responsibility - and they act accordingly. Only then will we see a meaningful economic turnaround. (i.e. True Conservative principles.)

IRS regulations: New federal regulations for income tax preparers (along with fees which will be passed along to citizens) will cause another nationwide uproar and a cry for the elimination of the IRS and creation of a national flat tax on consumption. Speaking of the Internal Revenue Service can someone explain what “service” they provide?

Governors: The recent take back of the Governor’s mansions in New Jersey and Virginia is only the beginning. Colorado has already thrown out Bill Ritter (well at least they sent him a message that running again would be a futile effort- thus his announcement not seek a second term). Coloradans will not elect anybody closely associated with him. No more free-spending, union-loving, liberal Democrats, thank you. As with this Governor, the President will soon be looking for another career after his failed foray into politics. P.S. Thank you, Mr. President, for endorsing Mayor “Hick.” Your two-minute telephone call ruined his chances for election.

Another loser: Senator Harry Reid (NV)

Colorado’s Vehicle Registration Late Fees: A bill signed into law by Governor Ritter, which generated over $14 million in the first six months, will be retracted or modified in a futile effort to help re-elect many of the Democrats who voted for the bill last year.

Colorado’s Senior Property Tax Exemption: Will be reinstated by the next Governor, a Republican.

El Paso County Sheriff: Sheriff Maketa will be unopposed in his bid for a third term except, perhaps, for a futile effort by a candidate with no chance of winning. Elimination of term limits for the County Sheriff will be on a future ballot and pass by a wide margin. Congratulations Terry!

Mayor of Colorado Springs: A non-traditional Mayor (non-politician) will bring his business experience to the City of Colorado Springs mayoral race. Among his first acts will be replacing what many believe to be an ineffective city manager. Also, Sean Paige will emerge as a dynamic community leader with refreshingly common sense solutions to the City’s budget woes.

Roadside homeless encampments: Several years ago the lack of “curbside appeal” for the City along I-25 served as one major motivator for the Confluence Park project. How ironic it is that most homeless encampments are now located adjacent to Confluence Park and further up and down Fountain Creek. All homeless enclaves within the City limits of Colorado Springs will be banned before years-end citing public health issues.

Socialism: Never in the history of the world has socialism been a successful model for governance and in spite of his efforts to impose his world view on Americans, the President’s agenda will be solidly rejected in the United States...and not soon enough.

Religion: America was established by Christian men and was based on Christian principles. America has always been a Christian nation and that will not change, at least not this year. Prayer in public schools and in other public places will return in our lifetime. However, this one is up to you.

Marriage and divorce: In spite of efforts to the contrary, the definition of marriage can only be defined only as between a man and a woman. The divorce rate in America will decline by the end of this century. One can only hope.

And…the Super Bowl winner will be:   . One can only hope!

EPILOGUE . . . (saving the best for last)
Resignation: The creation of scores of unnecessary and (perhaps) unconstitutional czars; AND the selection of inexperienced, incompetent and ineffective cabinet choices; AND deplorable and ongoing unemployment levels; AND the poorly performing economy due to the takeover of America’s financial institutions and controlling interest of major segments of our free-market economy such as the automobile industry; AND the costly, ill-fated and irrational Obama Care health plan; AND the unprecedented national debt; AND the growing fear among Americans that our government has become soft on the war on terror; AND unprecedented mid-year election losses in Congress which will burden this country for decades, will by year’s end cause our “Orator-in-Chief,” our “Commander-in-Inexperience,” to resign.

(Chalk up this unlikely scenario to wishful thinking, if you’d like. However, it may be my most accurate prediction.)

They Know Better (Not)

By Range Rider


The Denver Post recently posed the question of whether the United States was better served by a return to free enterprise and an entrepreneurial spirit or by continuing down the path of regulation and government invitation.

Two responses were provided. The Rider was almost unhorsed by the naïve liberal response…that big government was necessary because the lack of regulation and government control had directly led to the financial crisis. While this contributed to the problem, government pressure on the industry and Fannie and Freddie to provide home ownership to people who could not afford to own homes was at best the stimulus for poor credit decisions and more realistically one of a few major causes.

This revisionist history portraying big business as the sole culprit in the housing and financial crisis is indicative of a liberal belief that most of us are not smart enough to understand or remember what happened or, worse, it reflects a complete lack of knowledge of the history leading to the events. The Rider thinks that it is the first. Consider a few examples:

• The would-be Christmas bomber: The Administration’s initial response was to suggest that everything worked as it should. When the public didn’t buy that response, over the course of ten days the President used increasing levels of concern, finally declaring it an unacceptable failure. The hope apparently was that the average Joe and Jane wouldn’t know the difference.

• The promised open health care debate: When it became clear very early on that horse trading was only way the Democrats could pass a partisan (and potentially unconstitutional) health care bill, the seedy negotiations couldn’t be exposed to the light. The President has stayed silent on this issue (unlike the overexposure on most others). Do they think we don’t remember what he said?

• The Making Home Affordable program: Treasury announced a major “conversion campaign” for December in which servicers were to complete all modifications for which documents had been received by year end. They announced an intention to “shame” the servicers who weren’t performing. The basic problem: the program doesn’t address the issues that most borrowers face: a lack of income. During the month, Treasury made multiple changes in an attempt to improve the approval rates, creating havoc for the staff who have to keep learning new rules and procedures.

The latest dictate from Treasury: unless the property is non-owner occupied, servicers are forbidden to decline any modifications in during January, despite a myriad of other disqualifying factors. The borrowers are to be left in suspense. Treasury won’t say why. The Rider suspects they don’t want to publicly admit the program is poorly designed… better to blame the servicers. This one they will get away with…the complex labyrinth of program requirements was skillfully crafted to confuse even the experts.

There are many more examples of where our inexperienced but arrogant leaders are making decisions based on political optics instead of sound public policy. This intentional misrepresentation of easily demonstrated facts is weakening our economy and eroding our influence in the world. But that’s another sad tale that even the Democrats can see…

On to November!

THE SALTY OLD QUEEN OF THE SEA

BY ROBERT HARKINS JD

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen 


Friendly old girl of a town.


'Neath her tavern light 


On this merry night 


Let us clink and drink one down. 


To wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen 


Salty old queen of the sea 


Once I sailed away 


But I'm home today 


Singing Copenhagen,

wonderful, wonderful 


Copenhagen for me[1]

How wonderful, wonderful it was to see the enormous carbon footprint worked into the Copenhagen snow, the long, black, stately, gas-guzzling limousines, the slick private carbon scattering jets, the dignified, too well-fed, delegates in tight, dark suits, conspirators all, walking, hand in hand, with hangers-on, scientific lunatics, Communists and friends of the Left’s most popular assassin Che Guevara. We see them well met upon a winter’s night in Denmark, saints every one, so they say, arrived to save the earth from us. Tell us Shakespeare old friend, who was it cried havoc and let loose these dogs of war to junket north to Denmark?

Well, there they were in the frigid Copenhagen night, snow blowing hard and cold, shivering, cowering behind barricades raised against mean protesters, short, tall, raucous, ugly or even worse, politically incorrect. Indeed, House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, aka Madame Thérèse Defarge, in the Revolution’s name, shut the mouth of Republican Senators and Congressmen who thought naively they would, like others, have their say. So, from the clouds of tear gas, rising above the cadent squeals of flag waving trash, the Danish cops wielding clubs thumped the heads of Climate Skeptics: Flat-Earthers, and Scandal Mongers, and those who allege the moon landing was a porno skit Al Gore directed from a Tijuana jail.

A thousand protesters, colorfully draped, raised one discordant voice: Conservatives protested the use of loaded dice upon which global warming was conjured in an orgy of hypothetical lunacy. Greenies, enraged, protested the arrogance of men and women who would enlarge man’s earthy carbon footprint by the intimacy of love, and the rearing of children. Communists waived red flags adorned with the gold hammer and sickle. They chanted hymnals in protest of Amerika’s Capitalism, Imperialism, cruelty to furred animals and whatever. A lonely man, bemused, decked out in a polar bear suit, silent mostly, protested something or other; we know not what.

Finally, the President of the United States appeared, the very One, come to save civilization, and terrified little girls[2] from crushing death, from smoking fissures which—failing a serious financial investment to reduce her tiny carbon footprint— would open ravenously beneath her feet. He had arrived. There was nothing now to fear; for it is an article of delegate faith that the President will save us from seas that, if allowed to rise, will submerge New York State, Miami Beach, New Jersey and yes, Colorado. Breathe easy then, for He will rest a calming hand upon the waters of the deep. He will save us from starvation as hurricane winds savage the fertile soil of the good earth. He will save us from thirsty death as fresh water boils away in the global heat.

The President’s carbon footprint plan, as we know too well, will cost far more money than exists among all the peoples of the earth. After all, he’s spent that much already, not even counting the Affordable Health Care Plan. Even so, the President believes, as only a visionary free of original sin believes, that we Americans, as sorry as we are, are up to the task. All that need be done is that we write a check say for four or five trillion bucks to repair the damage we alone have wrecked upon an innocent planet. Fortunately our government has a printing press and is negotiating big loans with the few countries still moronic enough to loan it money.

The delegates to Copenhagen are of one ambient faith: the President, will save the earth, the economy and world government, will protect human health and happiness, prosperity and peace, will end war, disease and depredation, will guarantee to all a decent standard of living, a plasma T.V., a shiny new car and for those of us who would marry—Yes! He will compel an acceptable spouse to marry us.

Finally, the President will bring to justice the American people. In the trashing of really big bucks, that is to say, in an “investment” of trillions, in the decent nations, he will expiate the bloody stain of American guilt that festers in their quaint belief in Freedom, Pursuit of Happiness, Art, Science, Religion, and the Celebration of Human Dignity.

Americans therefore—the President excepted because he was a tiny tot at the time— must pay up, for the working of their willful sins upon Saddam’s Iraq, Hirohito’s Japan, Leopold and Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, a Communist Soviet State, (now so much trash in the dustbin of history), a genocidal Serbia, now quiet, and a South Korea, by American blood and honor, restored to freedom and made proof against a North Korean maniac.

But who strangely got the loudest applause? It was the Red Commie Chavez who, in the name of Karl Marx, prophesied the demise of democracies, constitutions and free economies.

One could say, Mr. President, that a ghost is haunting Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a ghost is haunting the streets of Copenhagen, and I think that ghost walks silently through this room, walking around among us, through the halls, out below, it rises, this ghost is a terrible ghost almost nobody wants to mention it: Capitalism is the ghost, almost nobody wants to mention it. It’s capitalism, the people roar, out there, hear them.…Socialism, the other ghost Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-ghost. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt[3].

But here this friends; not all delegates were ideologues committed to the reduction of carbon footprints and the destruction of human freedoms. There at Copenhagen were the good old girls or shall we call them, “Salty Old Queens of the Sea” who offered to take unto their romantic embrace all men in Copenhagen, every one, to give them peace, joy, short and quick, to give them transient love at no charge. Why their sacrifice? World peace? An end to global warming? Maybe not. It may be that the Salty Old Queens were delegates to Copenhagen just as were the sleek, shiny, and too well fed people who arrived by jet and limousine. It may be they were all of one profession and one lascivious mind: to throw a good, old-fashioned party for the boys.

What do you think?

---

[1] Author Frank Loesser, 1910-1969.

[2] A movie presentation apparently sponsored by the UN.

[3] Heritage Foundation, Morning Bell, December 18, 2009

“Be it resolved…”

by John Alexander Madison
January 4, 2010

It’s that time of the year…New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, New Year’s Week…a time for reflection on the past year...an opportunity for a new beginning…a time for New Year’s resolutions.

So, let’s get some easy one’s out of the way right now. These can be yours and mine!

#1…Resolve to get more exercise (and lose weight). More? Who am I kidding? Let me rephrase that…I’ll start over and make this year’s resolution more realistic, more achievable. I promise to get some exercise, perhaps at least once a week. I can do that!

#2…Resolve to eat better. No more ice cream. No more red meat. Eat more fruits and vegetables. No more sodas. Eight glasses of water every day. Who am I kidding? Let me rephrase that and make this year’s resolution more realistic, more achievable. Okay, one more time…I promise to cut back on my ice cream consumption. I promise to eat less red meat, more fruit and veggies and drink fewer sodas and drink more water. I can do that!

#3…Resolve to spend more time with family and friends. Now I’m getting the hang of this. Pick not only resolutions you can easily achieve but ones you WANT to achieve. Everyone wins.

#4…Resolve to learn something new. Another easy one. Don’t be complacent or content. Stimulate your mind; learn something new every day...it’s a sure way to stay young.

#5…Resolve to drink less alcohol. Okay, I’ll do it. Drinking less is a guaranty one will live longer. Since I don’t drink alcohol this one’s in the bag...even thought the doctor said a glass of red wine a day will ensure a longer life.

#6…Resolve to listen to my doctor! So, right off the bat, do I break resolution #5 or #6? This is getting confusing.

#7…Resolve to quit smoking. Well, about 45 years ago the U.S. Surgeon General stated “WARNING: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health.” And the Surgeon General was right. Are you still smoking? Duh!

#8…Resolve to manage your debt. If one has debt it is critical to reduce it immediately or over time. Do not increase your debt in 2010. Resolving to save more money goes hand in hand with this one. Save money for a rainy day, save money for emergencies, and save money for your retirement. Accumulating more debt is a killer…it’s definitely not good for your mental health and if your mental health deteriorates so will your physical well-being.

#9….Resolve to get organized. Who couldn’t benefit from this one? Simplify your life and donate items you will never use to someone who will.

#10…Resolve to dedicate more time to volunteer to help others. George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, talked about a “thousand points of light” in his 1989 inaugural speech, referring to “all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation, doing good, for everyone. I agree. Hillary Clinton wrote “It Takes a Village,” to raise a child. (Rather than two parents? Really?) I disagree. Volunteer today to make your community an even better place to live, for everyone!

Well, this is only a beginning…a starting point. Don’t lose your opportunity to make a few New Year’s resolutions right now, today. It is not too late.

EPILOGUE
The tradition of New Year’s resolutions is a long-standing one which, according to www.wilstar.com, dates back to the early Babylonians. Wilstar indicates that “Popular modern resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking. The early Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.”

As the New Year begins perhaps we can all agree to a modern twist on the Babylonian resolution…rather than returning borrowed farm equipment, we should:

RESOLVE to carry over last year’s pledge to force our government to return to the basic principles of a free market economy…and to stop spending money it doesn’t have. How can we do that?

For starters we can RESOLVE to not reelect any member of Congress who has been complicit in the disastrous agenda of the 44th President of the United States. Let’s be honest here. The Denver Broncos (2009 edition) had a better game plan than our president, and we now know what a disaster that plan was.

Keep the faith. A list of New Year’s resolutions cannot be achieved over night. In the meantime, may the New Year bring much health, happiness and prosperity to us all…our families, our friends, our elected leaders, our spiritual leaders, and also those with whom we may disagree…and let’s RESOLVE to work together to make this great nation an even better place to live.

Happy New Year 2010!