Battling Our Own Balderdash!

WARNING!

Be careful what you believe without evidence. When real things are happening that are disturbing, the nuts come out of the woods. I remember during the Branch Davidian Standoff, a stream of paranoid schizophrenics streamed through our town on the way to Waco, mumbling about government conspiracies. It's happening again.

Our liberties are, in fact, being threatened. Let's remember, however, that the truth is more important than making a point. Some of the stuff that's being posted on some of the conservative discussion groups is really questionable. There are two sources for this kind of stuff:

(1) People who are mentally unbalanced, kooks and conspiracy theorists

(2) Political wolves in sheep's clothing posting wildly inaccurate and paranoid stories while pretending to be conservatives in an effort to make conservatives look mentally unbalanced and like kooks and conspiracy theorists.

If you listen to Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and the leading conservative commentators, they are careful to bring solid evidence before they tell a story. Let's follow their example and be very careful to verify everything we pass on in our community. We need to be 99.9% right all the time, to maintain our credibility since we are paddling upstream against a flood of media and educational system driven "common knowledge" that is slanted, distorted, manipulative and just plain wrong. It doesn't help us counter the mainstream when they lie if we pass along lies ourselves, however well-meaning the helpful soul was who made the story up.

Do some research first before you hit "forward".

Someone wrote once, "Satan, Satan is my name. Confusion is my game!"

Or as someone else wrote, "The devil is in the details." Let's try hard to make sure he's not. If something posted here is balderdash, you should say so. Let's be scrupulous about not letting a lie stand. Let's demonstrate our integrity by refusing to accept lies EVER, even when it's our own side telling them and you'd really love to believe the story because it's sooooooooooooooooooo good!

Tom King
Flint, TX

Signs & Wonders: Chapter 2

Trials

Tom
I was born with a birth defect called pyloric stenosis. A valve below my stomach closed off completely when I was about 2 and a half months old. For a couple of weeks I threw up virtually everything I ate.  I became dehydrated and weak and my Mom took me to a local doctor. The doc rushed me straight to the hospital for emergency surgery just a couple of hours later. I was too weak and too young for a general anesthetic, so they did the whole procedure with a local. A nurse told my grandmother I screamed the whole time and the surgeon had to cut between gasps for air. Everyone said my survival was a miracle.  Another day and I might not have made it. As a kid I sometimes wondered if there was a reason I had survived when the odds had been so against it.

My Dad spent most of my toddler years in prison. Mom ironed clothes, baby sat my cousin Tony and worked in a sewing factory to keep food on the table. My first brush with death was when we got word my cousin Tony had died of SIDS. I was about 4 and remember how upset everyone was. I knew Tony wouldn't come to play with us any more and I felt a sense of loss.

Then Dad got out of prison and promptly ran off with a woman he'd gotten pregnant. He divorced Mom and married Buddy because he wanted to give the child his name. Meanwhile, my brother Donny was born, the youngest of Mom's three.  Apparently Donny was born in time to have Dad's name.

I remember Mom was pretty torn up during the divorce. We walked downtown from our little apartment to sign some papers once and I remember she cried all the way home.  We were pretty well destitute, and bounced around the family for a while till they found someone for Mom and she remarried. We had all the usual adjustment problems adjusting to a new Stepfather, but managed to muddle through somehow.  I don't know how Mom held up.

Sheila
The very first memory I have was riding on the shoulders of a family friend at the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport, La. My family lived in Monroe, about a hundred miles away and had come there to stay with my parents' friends "Don and Louise" so we could all go to the fair together. Don an Louise aren't their real naes.  They are both dead now, but they do have kids and grandkids who aren't.  The trip to Shreveport was the first memory I have as a child. It was as if my mind "woke up" in the midst of bright lights, shouting, carnival music and odd smells of the state fair.

I was riding on "Uncle" Don's shoulders most of the day.  When it was over, we went back to their home to spend the night.  Looking back on it, I don't really think it was the bright lights of the fair that woke me up. The noisy trip to the fair just became part of the memory that was burned into my mind the next morning when I woke to find my self in bed with my red corduroy pants and underwear pulled down to my knees and "Uncle" Don in bed next to me touching me in a place I had only recently discovered myself.  Somehow, though I was hardly three years old, I knew something didn't feel right about it. Uncle Don kept telling me he loved me, but he seemed strange and he frightened me.

Tom
Mom added my sister Gina and brother Doug and then got pregnant again.  I was in middle school by then and my sister Debbie, Donnie and I all picked up the German measles during an epidemic that swept through the United States and my school. We gave it to Mom. I remember helping care for Craig after he was born. Mom didn't tell us about the hole in his heart, but I do remember Craig seeing a lot of doctors in the first few months of his life.  I learned how to change diapers and feed him. It's funny how when you do stuff like that, you really grow fond of a child.  When Mom and my step-dad came home from a trip to the hospital without him, we were all devastated. It was my first experience with grief and I yelled a lot at God that weekend.

Sheila
I was so happy when Daddy announced it was time to go home. My Dad was a good provider, drove trucks and supplemented our income by planting vegetable gardens.  He was also hot tempered and well on his way to becoming an alcoholic.  My mother had suffered a disease called erysipelas as a girl, before there were anti-biotics. The fever had lasted for days and the family said she was never the same afterward. She had to quit school and to walk again and always afterward had a very childlike mind.

Daddy was the parent in the family.  Mama was our playmate.  The night after the fair, I wanted to tell her what had happened, but I was afraid she'd tell my father and that scared me more than what had happened.  Even then I already feared his temper.

Tom
Shortly after Craig's death, the church bible study lady came 'round and signed me up for Bible studies. I got 100% on every lesson and was convinced my church understood the Bible correctly.  I just wasn't sure I believed in God - particularly not after he'd let my baby brother die.  The lady Bible teacher expressed shock, when I refused to be baptized.  I wouldn't make a commitment like that, I told her.  Not till I was sure.
As a kid, I attended public school.  It was where the kids went that got kicked out of church school in my town.  I didn't kicked out.  We just couldn't afford it. So I spent 10 years at Keene Public school, where  I made good grades, wore thick glasses and enjoyed school.  I might have just as well worn a big target on my back.  I was hated by the assorted thugs and bullies that made up a significant number of my classmates and went home with bruises pretty regularly. It didn't matter, though.  At school there was a library and books and studies that opened a window to my world. My kid brother and I lived in the tops of the oak trees in our back yard and enjoyed a vantage point that, for me, brought safety, privacy and peace.  I sometimes wonder whether I was looking for God up there or something.

Sheila
I kept the secret for years. When I had turned 7, Uncle Don and Aunt Louise visited us in Monroe. From the moment they arrived, I avoided Uncle Don like the plague. Despite my best efforts, I found myself alone with him in the car headed for the local A&W Root Beer stand. His approach was more apprehensive this time and he used words I knew were not meant for a child's ears.  I slid over as close to the passenger side car door as I could trying to keep as much distance between us as possible.

When we got home, I shot straight out of the car and ran to my mama.  I stuck to her like glue till they finally left.  That night I told my mother, not only what had happened in the car, but also about the state fair trip.

Mama listened to my story.  She didn't seem particularly shocked by it or even surprised.  She said she believed me, but I must never ever tell Daddy.  But I wanted Daddy to know.  I wanted him to go beat the snot out of Uncle Don. I wanted to be a child again, but Mama said, "No!"   And that was the end of it - for her anyway.

I cried myself to sleep.  It was the first time in my life I remember saying a real prayer.  It was simple but sincere.

"Dear Jesus, help me."

I didn't know a thing about the Bible, but I believed Jesus was real and that He could be my best friend and my new Daddy and that I could tell Him anything.  With that knowledge I was able to sleep at last.

Tom
I survived public school with only minimal scars and a vast thirst for knowledge.  My mom talked me into going to the town's parochial high school. I went along with the idea because she seemed so set on it.  I was working part time at a broom and mop factory in town, so I could afford to help pay for my tuition.  The Academy turned out to be a much nicer place than public school.  There were cliques I didn't belong to, of course, since I had come from the poor end of town, but nobody beat me up or threatened me and that was refreshing.  The only bully they had was an amateur up next to the future inmates I had grown up with down at the public school.  I simply brushed him and his blustering aside.  At this school the principal really did care about justice and bullying was not tolerated.  I loved my new school, though I was probably the only openly agnostic student there.

Sheila
That summer I began spending time with Mamaw and Papaw, my maternal grandparents. I loved them both, but I adored my grandmother.  Papaw went to church every Sunday and most Wednesdays found him in prayer meeting.  Mamaw never went to church, though she was the most devout Christian I ever knew.  She was kind, gentle but firm and read her Bible every night along with the quarterly that the ladies from the Alto Baptist Church Sunday School brought her every 13 weeks.  She kept an extra Bible in her room on the night stand. I think she kept it there in case I showed an interest in joining her worship sessions.  I think it was red.
One night I did.  I started reading very early, but I needed a lot of help with the big words. Mamaw patiently helped me master the sometimes difficult language of the Bible. She always said her prayers silently and so I did too.

I learned how to talk to God in my mind.  I memorized some scriptures and included the Lord's Prayer so that by the end of the summer, I would at least have some of God's word safely stored in my mind. Their home was a refuge.  No arguing, no yelling, no whippings and no foul language. At Mamaw's and Papaw's I never heard God's name used in vain.  I hated to leave when it came time to go back to school.

Mamaw and I would say our goodbyes two weeks before Daddy came to pick me up to take me home.  We both instinctively knew that it would be bad to cry or show sadness in front of Daddy.  I remember how miserable it was, sitting in that back seat as we drove farther and farther away from Mamaw.  I dared not cry.  I showed no sadness for fear of Daddy's temper. I learned early that survival depended on my ability to bury my emotions.

Tom
There was a moment at the end of my junior year, when I was seventeen years old in which everything came together.  As an agnostic, my Bible teacher despaired of me.  I made A's in Bible but refused to join the church. I didn't ask a lot of questions.  I knew he had no answers.  I'd heard him brush aside other students when they asked.  He seemed more interested in frightening us into the church than in introducing us to God. Nothing made me dig my heels in and resist more than a bully, even a spiritual one.

"Why not be baptized?" he demanded after class one day.  "You know the Truth."

I shrugged. "If the Bible is true, this church certainly follows its teachings."

"Then why?" he asked as if adherence to the Bible should be enough for anyone.

"I just don't know if the Bible is true." I explained.  I left him sitting open-mouthed at his desk, unable to comprehend how anyone could have doubts about that.

I knew a coherent, well-structured system of religion by the end of my first year in church school. I just hadn't met God yet. 

Flying Over the American Wilderness

We're in Seattle today visiting family.  My wife has forbidden me to talk about politics while I'm up here. So far, I've obeyed her.  I listened to snatches of conversation as I walked out of the airport and realized I was a stranger in a strange land. I kept my mouth shut so my Texas accent wouldn't give me away and since the airline frowns on you packing heat, I was unarmed at the time.

Reminds me of the last time I was in Washington, DC.  A group of angry women heard my voice and asked if I was from Texas.  They launched into a diatribe about George W. Bush and I thought for a moment they were going to lynch me right there in the taxi.

On the way up in the plane, we flew over Texas, Oklahoma Wyoming, Montana and Idaho on our way to Washington.  For a long time we were flying over miles and miles of uninhabited country with no sign of human habitation.  I'm thinking I may need to check this out.

Every day, this world becomes less and less my home.  Every where I go there are people who are mad at people like me simply because I'm a Christian and conservatives.  I'm tired of a news media that wants me to sit down and shut up and hand over my wallet so I can be happier and contented.

Well, I've got news for the media.  I don't want to be contented!

I'm thinking of heading for all that wide open space.  All I need is some quiet corner by a mountain stream.  I'll build myself and my family a little cabin.  We can grow vegetables and stuff.  I'll put up a couple of windmills or put a generator on the stream, hook up satellite Internet service so I can continue to work.  I've got a 4 wheel drive SUV for getting to town for supplies.

I'll camouflage the whole thing so you can't see it very well from the air and do all my business electronically.  I could be very happy.  The technology exists to be totally off the grid out there.  I won't bother the wildlife much.  I might dam up the creek and make a lake, import a couple of beavers.  I could write some books about the wacky antics of the local raccoons and bears.

Someone demanded to know how I ever thought I could be happy out there isolated like that.  I told 'em I'd just check in on all ya'll on the Internet.  Five minutes on the MSNBC website ought to just about do it for making me very contented living out there in the wilderness.

I'm not kidding.

Tom King
Flint, TX

Forward to the Past

"The Rebirth of the Divine Right of Kings"

Few people realize what a miracle of timing the birth of the United States was - as though God pulled together the right combination of historical pressures, the availability of resource rich land and the brief and brilliant flowering of a 1iberating philosophy.

For one brief shining moment in the 1700's and early 1800's, the leaders of an obscure English colony on the shores of North America, believed completely in the astounding idea put forth by English philosopher John Locke that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Locke's ideas were called anti-Christian by writers of the day who sought to defend the idea of the superiority of "noble birth" and by later writers who sought to discredit his ideas and establish divine rights for themselves. Almost immediately, the nobility and the gentlemanly class began to look for a weapon with which to undermine Locke's astounding idea that the ordinary plowboy had as much potential to be the leader of a nation as did the son of a baron or duke.

They found such a weapon in Darwin and the pseudo-science of eugenics. If intelligence and other factors such as "natural leadership" and ability to handle money could be inherited, then, joy of joys, men were not created equal after all. It meant, they argued, that there ought to be a privileged class after all based on the superiority of genetics.

But it was already too late. The United States were already firmly established, based squarely on the principle that everyone ought to have an equal shot at success.  Worse yet, they were promiscuously teaching this blasphemy in their public schools to generations of young plowboys and farmer's daughters.

In the late 1800's the wealthy and professional classes seized upon the twisted science of eugenics to justify the holding of power by elite families and scions of rich politicians and, ironically, some of the very people who had acquired their wealth thanks to the democracy of American capitalism. Ivy league schools began pumping out a new American "nobility" who began, in those unsophisticated times, to openly look for ways to sterilize the "feeble-minded" and marginalize the working classes.

They divided into two groups. The liberal elites on the left felt sorry for the poor in a paternalistic way and under the leadership of Karl Marx, studied ways to manipulate the proletariat shamelessly toward their own ends. They embraced the new eugenics as evidence of their own moral and intellectual superiority and justification of their moral right to leadership.

On the radical right, the elite disdained the lower classes and embraced eugenics as a guide to improving the human race through a kind of hybrid corporate socialism that marginalized the lower classes and, of course, justified their own natural superiority and place as leaders.

It explains why the Nazis and Communists were such deadly enemies. Both felt that they were the natural leaders of the world and there is not room for two "natural" leaders. Thankfully, the people of the United States still embraced the antique philosophy of our founding fathers and turned loose the massive power of a nation of free men and women and shut both enemies down - temporarily.

Sadly, it may have been a last gasp.  It looks like the paternalistic left and the iron-fisted right have risen up again.  The Ivy League is busily pumping out both elitist Democrats and country club Republicans, all trying desperately to justify their "natural" right to the mantle of leadership. The Tea Parties and 912 rallies frighten them to their bones. These guys are students of history. They know what happens when the "nobility" over-reaches. France and Russia stand as stark witnesses of the consequences of waking up the proletariat.

The reason the ordinary Americans who jammed the streets of Washington yesterday are angry is that they feel like something is being stolen from them.

And it is!

The last election offered no real choice for those of us who believe in the principle that all men are created equal. We were given a choice between two groups of elitists, both of whom proposed an increase in the size and intrusiveness of government; both seeking to increase their power base; neither respecting the voters as anything but a tool in their hands to insure their continued power.

After all, these are the hereditary great men of America.  They have inherited the mantle of leadership due to their superior genes, their superior education and their moral obligation to rule over those lesser than themselves.  They see themselves as uniquely qualified to play the "great game" of politics.

That's why the appeal to the constitution has little weight with them. The constitution is based on what they consider an outmoded idea. "All men are created equal."  What patent balderdash!

With the establishment of the United States upon that principle, God bought us a little time and created a refuge in which we could, for the first time in the history of the world, work out on a grand scale the grand principles of Christianity.

That all men are of equal value.

That you should treat everyone as you yourself would want to be treated.

That you have a right to life, to freedom and to opportunity.

That only God has a right to lead us. That a nation's leaders serve the people of the nation, not themselves.

The same folks who once argued in favor of the divine right of kings are today's socialists and facists. They are two sides of the same coin.

It's little wonder Americans are saying, "Enough!"

Just one man's opinion!

Tom King
Flint, TX

The Most Dangerous Man in America

A few weeks ago, I would have called the President the most dangerous man in America, but just yesterday, the Senate approved the appointment of a new guy that I think will put this president in the shade.  This guy doesn't worry me because of his charisma, his public leadership of his ability to lead.  It's his invisibility that is most troubling. It's the deceptively innocuous appearance of his job in the administration - Regulatory Czar.

Cass Sunstein, the president's appointment for Regularoty Czar would preside over a wide range of regulatory mechanisms.  This would make him arguably one of the most powerful figures in Obama's Wonderful World of Czars.

For one thing, he'd have regulatory power over the Internet.  About that, he said in his 2001 book, Republic.com, that the Internet may "weaken democracy".  Why?  Because it "allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups that share their own views and experiences".  Sunstein argues that these people cut themselves off from information that conflicts with their own preconceived notions and beliefs.  He even has a term for it - cyberbalkanization.

Sounds bad doesn't it?  Listen, I hang with conservatives a lot on the Internet, but I also read and hear from the other side of the fence as well.  Those people constantly come into our yard and throw poop on porch and run off laughing.  We may get together to share ideas, but there is plenty of give and take in a free market modeled Internet.  Sunstein thinks we ought to be "encouraged" to hear the full range of ideas (like the dozens of books he churns out on every subject known to man.  Sunstein would eliminate all such bunching up of like minds and artificially force us to spend equal time listening to the public debate.

On first blush, it sounds like something that would be a healthy thing, but unfortunately, when you get these intellectual guardians of public opinion going on what sort of things they want to do, they start out by eliminating sources of information that conflict with their own preconceived notions.  In Sunstein's media utopia, the debates would be controlled by regulation so that everyone would get a balanced view and extremist elements would fade away.  It's been described as a sort of, fairness doctrine for the Internet.

Isn't it lovely how these guys just want to make sure we get the "whole argument".  You have to wonder how that works when the first thing they want to do is eliminate the loudest and most effective debaters from the other side.  May God protect us from such politico-nannies.  They firmly believe that if everyone just heard their argument clearly without any effective noise coming from the right, that we would all just fall in line and accept what's best for us - like nationalized health care, gun control, animal rights, cap and trade and militarized civilian "security" forces just for starters. 

Even some of Obama's supporters are getting a little jittery about this guy - especially the guys who make their living blogging! If you put such a regulatory stranglehold on the Internet as it appears that Sunstein advocates, you better not hope we EVER elect another conservative to office.  What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  The same regs that silence conservative bloggers can also be used to silence liberal bloggers.  I think that's a mistake and so do some of my liberal colleagues.

The Wall Street Journal says that Sunstein's obscure job “wields outsize power”. In that job, Sunstein will be a key player in Obama's efforts to regulate financial services, implement global climate change "controls" and in implementing nationalization of American industry and business and the deployment of universal health care. You've heard the expression "The devil is in the details." Well Cass Sunstein is now Obama's guy in charge of the details.

What to do?

It's too late.  He's been approved.  We're stuck with this guy unless we turn a spotlight on him so bright he can't make a trip to the can without an audience.  At the risk of being branded a right wing "wing nut", I think we dog this guy till we can elect a new president.  By the way, I've always found wing nuts to be very handy and versatile fasteners.  If things get loose you can increase the pressure without having to drag out your tool box every time.  Wing nuts are great little gizmos for controlling the level of pressure you need to put on a big old screw!

Oh, well, if the Internet goes away, maybe I'll get more work done of the type my wife approves of.  If I can't blog anymore, maybe I can get in a little more of that manual labor my wife says I'm avoiding.  I've been wondering how long I'll last before I spontaneously combust!  Hey, if the news media suddenly goes 100% unicorns and flowers over the political news, maybe it will relive my blood pressure.

As it is, my long term survival may depend on whether we re-elect the Czar Maker on the next go-round or not....

Just one man's opinion

Tom King

No one should die.....................period.

"Except maybe old people, people with disabilities and the politically inconvenient."

There's this massive campaign underway on Facebook today where you get this post that says, "No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick." (If you agree, please post this as your status.)

The problem is that statement is based on a false assumption - at least here in the USA. I don't know anyone who's died because they couldn't afford health care. Many choose to for reasons of pride or because they just don't want to drag it out or whatever, but if you need help, there is some place to get it here in America.

You know what, for 30 years now, I've worked for charities and nonprofits. I'm broke most of the time. (They don't call 'em nonprofits for nothin'). Ironically, if I were a bit poorer, I'd have better health care than I do. I've had all sorts of periods where we didn't have insurance. When we started a home-based day care center to be with our kids after school, we were without health insurance for several months. During that time, my wife developed a tumor. I scraped together enough to get her to an OB/GYN. It's a lot easier when you just pay for things, you don't need layers of approvals that also have to be paid for. Anyway, we told the doc we couldn't afford the surgery and didn't know what we were going to do. The doc said, don't worry, I do several of these cases every year as my way of giving back a little. He did the surgery for free and the hospital also got us some help to write off the bill because we were in trouble. Nice people.

If you let them, medical people do that sort of thing. Most got into the medical racket because they wanted to help people. Remember how the old country docs used to work for chickens and bushels of apples and such. They've always done that kind of thing. But, if the government runs the system, the docs and hospitals won't be allowed to take chickens in payment anymore (or even give away services for that matter). Instead you and your tumor just sit and wait till some bureaucrat who doesn't give a rat's kneecap about your health decides it's your turn.

One government program does that by a simple regulation that never was passed by congress. Some bureaucrat decided it ought to be that way because he or she figured that was the legislative intent. The rule goes like this. If you take government reimbursement for a service, you can never charge anyone else less than what you charge the government. In other words, if you give one person services for free, you would then have to give the government those same services for free.

This rule effectively bans doctors from doing pro bono work and actually makes health care more expensive as a result. Not only that, but it makes it so that if a doctor did do something nice for a patient like not charge for something, and someone ratted him out, he could lose his practice.

Welcome to the twisted world of health care by bureaucracy!

So, forgive me if I don't "pass it along" even though I do believe people ought not die because they can't afford health care. I think what these guys are trying to do to the health care system is a big worthless fraud that's going to hurt more people than it's going to ever help. I think more people will die under government run health care than will ever die with what we've got now. In fact, if the government would get out of the way, we'd already have the problems solved. That's what we Americans do (and I don't count bureaucrats as Americans - I think they must import them all from Uzbekistan or Libya or somewhere like that.)

Besides, do we really need more bureaucrats telling us what to do?

Do we?

Besides there's only one leader we can follow who can guarantee that no one will die. And if you'll look at the system He set up, there weren't any bureaucrats, taxes, supreme leaders or even politicians. A few local judges they paid with sheep and chickens and some guys to run the church services were all they needed. When they needed a general, He called one up. When the war was over, everyone went home and banged the sword back into a plowshare. Every 7 years all the poor people had their debts cleared.

Personally, I think we ought to bring that system back.

Tom

The Screwworm Letters – Part 1

"with apologies to C.S. Lewis"

From:
Uncle Screwworm - Administrative Assistant
Office of Grand Marshall Goebbeleninstalin.
Bulgea 1313 Fifth Circle
Attila the Hun Memorial Administrative Complex, Hell

To:
President Wormtongue
The Whitehouse
Nation Whose Name is not Spoken Among Us, Earth

February 2010

My Dear Nephew Wormtongue,

Are you surprised, then, that your attempts to generate support for your reforms through open forums have been such a dismal failure. Have you actually begun to believe your own propaganda? Never assume the Americans are so completely asleep that you cannot disturb their slumber. I agree that the window of opportunity to initiate real reforms in this abysmally chaotic land is absurdly narrow, but you must remember the words of Caesar Augustus, one of the best reform leaders we ever had, "Make haste slowly." Using this method Augustus finished the Roman Republic once and for all and built an empire that lasted half a millennium.

Of course, it is obvious that intellectuals like yourself are best suited to lead the drooling masses. Our educational reforms have, over the past century, successfully reduced the intellectual capacity of the average American by some 20%. These sheep are so much more easily led these days. Most wander through life practically asleep, their minds fuddled with worrying over who is going to get kicked off the island, which girl the Bachelor is going to pick and who Brad, Jen and Angelina are dating lately.

Nonetheless, there are still large numbers of individuals in this plaguey country who slip through the educational system with the inexplicable ability to think independently. I blame that Andrew Carnegie fellow who tried to assuage his personal guilt for some small excesses as an industrial baron by building all those libraries. A nation with all those books lying about in the open is damnably hard to entirely control. Some of its citizens actually read for fun if you can imagine it!

If you overreach, grab for power too quickly, before you've adequately anesthetized the intellectuals, you may stir some of them to action. And by intellectuals, I don't mean the degree festooned boobs we've trained to run things down there. I mean the real intellectuals - the free thinkers; the ones that read things that weren't on our reading lists; the ones that don't ask what everyone else's thinking before they think themselves. If you wake these people up they will cause you no end of grief as you have discovered at your poorly planned health care forums!

Before the next phase of the transformation, you must move forward with the seizure of control of all sources of information. It must happen quickly, before an alarm can be sounded effectively. Remember, this useful argument. "The constitution is not a suicide pact!" You must escalate the climate of fear and urgency by fanning your two major smoke screens.

Catastrophic global climate change legislation needs a couple of good catastrophes to get it pushed through. The boys in disaster promotions are working on that, but you need to remember to insure that your people not don't call it global "warming". It's far too inflexible a term and leaves you no wiggle room. Stick with global climate change, then whatever happens, up or down, you can call you subjects greedy, blame them for the problem and give up some liberties to save themselves.

You've just about blown the health care ploy by moving too quickly without the proper preparation. Your plans to enlist children to help sell the idea is only going to rouse thinking Americans even further.  For now, I suggest you spend the rest of the month shopping with the missus, sailing and building sand castles with your daughters and let the home office see if we can salvage something from this mess you've made.

And since it's too late to cancel the public school speech, at least try to say something soothing and innocuous - preferably something Rush Limbaugh won't quote you on. And for goodness sake get some new communists for the Czar program - some that have the brains not to have admitted it on camera! We're really pushing fried foods with Glenn Beck, but he just won't die. In the meantime, tell your people to try and clean up all the embarrassing video, old books and tax problems before you have 100,000 farmers and truck drivers on the White House lawn with pitchforks and torches.

We won't be able to help you then.

Your loving uncle,
Screwworm