Newsbreak: Ron Paul Receives Major Party Endorsement

Disassociated Press

Official News Release

DATELINE: August 25,2011, Luckenbach, TX

- For Immediate Release –

Ron Paul Wins Texas Pot Party Endorsement



William Nelson, Spokesman

 Following a recent spate of cannabis-fueled blog reports that Ron Paul has been gaining ground in the presidential race, members of the newly re-organized “Texas Pot Party”, today, officially endorsed the Texas Congressman’s bid for the presidency. At a press conference at its headquarters in Luckenbach, Texas, spokesman for the party, music industry icon William Nelson, donned a red, white and blue tie for the first time in 32 years to make the official announcement.

The event, held in the pool room at the Luckenbach Bar and Grill, was the first ever “Get Out the Vote: political rally in the organization’s 34 year history. Nelson opened the ceremonies with about 30 minutes of music while reporters grazed the brownies at the buffet and sampled the open bar. Once the hooka fumes had thickened sufficiently, Wilson (or Nelson, or, uh, Billy Bob..............whoever the heck he is, I can’t remember), made the official announcement.

“Ron Paul is really the only candidate who makes sense after 4 or 5 joints,” said Mr. Nelson. “And the beauty of his candidacy is that the more stoned you are, the better his chances look.”

Increasingly woozy reporters asked few questions at the press conference, although MSNBCs Ed Schulz demanded that Willie, “…tell ush where da resh roooooooms went to,” and accused party organizers of “hidin’ the ding-busted thang!)

CURRENT TV commentator Keith Olbermann followed up Schulz’s harsh line of questioning with the observation that he’d “…sheen a resh rooooooom around h’yar somewhere old Buckaroooozy!”

Dr. Paul wasn’t present for the announcement today, citing some concerns as to whether or not the free reefers being offered at the hospitality buffet were, in fact, medicinal marijuana and had been properly procured from American growers. Paul even offered to bring his prescription pad if party organizers could document the source of the giggle weed and the ghangha-laced brownies provided as refreshments at the press gathering.

“Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate and welcome the party’s endorsement,” said the Texas congressman, “As I share the party’s concern over many issues including the legalization of drugs, the institution of a myopic foreign policy and the establishment of safer methods of extracting one’s head from places without access to abundant heliotropic radiation.”

In related news, reporter Martin Bashir and news publisher Ariana Huffington were married just moments ago in an impromptu ceremony at the Luckenbach Dance Hall. The Bride wore a charming burlap gown to match the Western-theme of the event. Bashir, wearing only ostrich boots and a rodeo belt with strategically placed buckle, wore a lasso for a necktie which Ms. Huffington held by the free end throughout the ceremony, applying sharp tugs whenever it was Bashir’s turn to speak.

Ms. Huffington explained the surprise union, saying, “He has a cute accent just like me.” Bashir will change his name to Bashir-Huffington, but is being allowed to retain his post at MSNBC. Ron Paul could not be reached for comment on the developing story.

(c) 2011 by Tom King*

* Please note to Ron Paul supporters who jumped over here to read this with hearts a-palpatatin'.  I'm truly sorry to have to explain this to you (but I have to anyway, just so I don't get into legal trouble for jerking around people with impaired mental function).  The above story is SATIRE. Not a word of it is true. Ron Paul hasn't a snowball's chance in Hades of becoming president and Willie Nelson isn't affiliated with any Texas Pot Party that I know of despite the rumors.

No such party exists in the state of Texas (at least not for purely political purposes) to my knowledge. I had to change the name of the fictional pot party several times (apparently you can organize a political party for any danged thing you want to and my first choice names were already taken by various California and Austin, Texas area groups - Austin being where we store most of the state's liberals so we'll know what they're up to). First it was the 'Pot Party', but there is already one of those. The Marijuana Party was just too obvious and doesn't have much of a ring to it. The Dopey Party seemed too offensive to Disney characters and mentally-challenged college students. There is an actual "Texas TeaPot Party" that was organized to support Willie Nelson after he got busted for cannabis possession at one of his big Fourth of July Parties. I finally settled on the "Texas Pot Party" which, at least has no presence on the Internet that I can tell.

Mr Paul and Mr. Nelson, themselves are considered public figures and open to ridicule, satirization and subjection to bad jokes under U.S. slander and libel laws. Nelson's image was listed as public domain on one of the pot-related sites I borrowed it from, so I'm sure there are no legal problems with me using the picture..

I have no money and a cousin Wally who's a lawyer and owes me a favor after I caught him flirting with that waitress over at the new Waffle House (Marybeth has already warned him once about that). Anyway, there's not much good in suing me. I'll just take this down and replace it with something serious about Ron Paul supporters having no sense of humor. Considering the nasty jokes some of them have posted about my favorite candidates, I figure ya'll owe me one shot at your guy anyway.

I don't even have that many readers so hacking me is basically pointless. Who's going to know? That said, have a nice day and try to stick to the stuff WITHOUT formaldehyde in it. That stuff'll make you blind according to my Great Uncle J.D. who used to operate a medical marijuana outlet from the back of his gas station back in the 60s. He was way ahead of his time was my uncle JD.

Tom

Why Hospitals Should Restrict Certain TV Channels

I don't know which is worse, passing a kidney stone or having to watch Keith Olbermann and not being able to turn him off.

While waiting for them to come wheel me into surgery, I accidentally rolled over onto the TV remote by my hospital bed and turned the TV channel onto MSNBC. Normally, I would have quickly flipped the channel over (under the 5 second rule) but in my morphine addled state, I couldn't find the button to change the channel or turn him off.  After 5 seconds, I began to get nauseous, developed cramps and blood shot out of my eyes.  My kidney stone was dancing like Charro on meth-amphetamines.

I finally managed to punch the call button for the nurse. I remember screaming at her to flip the channel.  I think I finally volunteered for an emergency lobotomy (a request they fortunately did not take seriously).  My nurse put on ear protectors (no dummy that one) slipped into the room, while avoiding making eye contact with the screen and pulled the plug.  I don't remember anything after that till I woke up from the surgery.

Sheila slept through it all, though she later reported having a nightmare in which an evil pygmy with bug eyes and a whiny voice extracted her brain through her nose with a sharpened stick.

All kidding aside, though, there should be some kind of warning label that MSNBC has to flash on the screen when that man is on the air.  I came onto him late one night and was just curious about what all the fuss was about (they get you that way - you know). It was the most painful thing I've ever had the misfortune to listen to. Thank goodness I had that kidney stone pain to distract me.  Man, if you were to go to sleep with him playing in your head, it could cost you some serious brain cells. That's all I saying.

Tom

Hey, do you suppose we could get a class action lawsuit against MSNBC for all the brain damage he's caused.  I mean all those folks on the left claim we're brain-damaged anyway.  We could blame it on Keith Olbermann. Even if they could find someone to testify that they've been watching Keith for years without damage, all they'd have to do would be ask them a few questions.

What to Do With The Tea Party?

I read several articles and listened to a radio rant yesterday about the future of the Tea Parties. How much of each piece was passion and how much was "audience carving" by radio hosts and pundits that are running a distinct 4th or 5th place, I'm not sure.  The thing boils down to two basic arguments.  

1.  We have a two party system - pick one! A third party is a waste of your vote.

2.  Both parties are corrupt and have failed us.  It may be time for something new. A third party can win!

So, let me muddy up the waters a bit with a third suggestion for what to do about the very powerful conservative forces that have martialed behind the Tea Party banner.  Admittedly this is a hybrid approach and would call for leadership that isn't in this thing to accumulate power.  My strategy would call for the Tea Party to lend its power to others without holding direct power itself. The leadership for this new "Party" would not take down the two party system, but would radically transform it without participating in the actual governance of the country.  Here's how it would work.

The Tea Party Movement should formally organize itself right down to the local level. It should elect local chairmen or women. It should hold state and national conventions. It should raise money to support itself. The one thing it should not do is run candidates for office.

So what would the Tea Party do?  Simple. It would formalize the power of the independent voter. It would pull together conservative Democrats and Republicans and independent voters into one body. It would seek out Republican or Democrat or, I suppose, even Libertarian candidates where that makes sense.  It would actively endorse those candidates whose integrity, ability and political philosophy matches what we value and could bring a solid body of voters down on the side of good candidates.

So how does that help?

1. It formalizes the conservative block under a single banner and gives Tea Party members the power to influence elections in a very real way.  The Tea Party vote would be courted by politicians who want to win the election.

2. It allows Tea Party members to stay with the party they already belong to and to work within that party for reform and yet maintain their connection to a solid body of conservative American allies outside the party that cannot be bullied by Democrat or Republican party leaders.

3. It lets us influence the entire field of candidates without the need to "throw away" votes on candidates that can't win. The Independence Party in New York does something similar. I think we need a national version of that.

4. By not running candidates ourselves, we help avoid the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" problem. The mission of the Tea Party then becomes, not securing and holding power, but holding politicians accountable, no matter what party they belong to.  You want a Tea Party endorsement and contributions? Do the right thing.

5. It formalizes strategic planning for conservatives. It gives us a mechanism for applying "behavioral conditioning" to politicians.  Naughty men and women in Congress are remembered at election time. Tea Party endorsements allow real conservatives who have Tea Party support to take a run at their party primary with a real chance of winning.  I see Tea Party endorsement as a balancing force standing in opposition to the party leadership's manipulative ability - both parties!

Though Teddy Roosevelt had an unfortunate flirtation with Progressivism, he did have one thing right.  "Speak softly and carry a big stick!"  We need a big, big political stick.  A formal Tea Party that doesn't run candidates could do that. The party leaders will weep and wail and gnash teeth, but they will pay attention.

The question is, can we find enough citizen leaders to pull the party together who have no ambitions to hold power, take bribes and graft or wear the trappings of power.  The Tea Party could act as "sergeant-at-arms" for the American political system. If our politicians are naughty, we rap their knuckles and fire them.

I think it could work.

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX

The Danger of Expanding Bureaucracies

Enough!

Stopping the uncontrolled expansion of the U.S. government has got to be the most important task facing conservatives today. The great danger in expanding the government is that doing so creates more bureaucrats. Once you create new bureaucrats, it becomes almost impossible to rid the place of them.

It is axiomatic that once you reach a critical mass of bureaucrats, the government ossifies and change back toward smaller government becomes virtually impossible. In fact, every attempt to reduce the number of bureaucrats only seems to increase their numbers. Nigel Hawthorne made a particularly enlightening comment about this phenomenon in his role as civil servant extraordinaire, Sir Humphrey Appleby on the BBC series “Yes Minister”. Here's the exchange with his boss the elected MP.

Jim Hacker, MP: Twenty three thousand! In the Department for Administrative Affairs? Twenty three thousand people just for administering other administrators. We have to do a Times-Motion study, see who we can get rid of.

Sir Humphrey: We did one of those last year.

Jim: And?

Sir Humphrey: It transpired that we needed another five hundred people.

Civil Servants exist to insure that nothing ever changes. They live in cubicles. They work seven days a week pushing papers around in an effort to basically avoid doing anything new or different. Change is meaningless to bureaucrats. It is anathema. Change means more work, something no bureaucrat welcomes.

Sir Humphrey on getting things done in civil service: "The Foreign Office aren’t there to do things. They’re there to explain why things can’t be done.”

Bureaucratic immobility is why every revolution in South America ends up replacing one corrupt government with a virtually identical one. They merely change the leadership. The civil service remains intact and in place. You can’t get rid of them. Bureaucracies are so hardwired into the fabric of a country that, if they were to suddenly disappear, we wouldn’t know what to do next.

Just look how much of our time is wasted appeasing bureaucrats. There’s standing in line at the post office, the DMV, preparing IRS forms, sales tax forms, forms your bank makes you fill out because some bureaucrat somewhere tells them you have to. In my years on the TxDOT Public Transportation Advisory Committee, I discovered that much of the paperwork, regulation and headache of getting transportation systems into place is not because someone passed a law, but because some bureaucrat in a tiny office somewhere decided they wanted some paperwork from you in order to justify their existence. And, because they have their ink-stained fingers firmly round your funding or approval for your project, you tamely submit.

I remember trying to find out why we were prohibited from solving transit problems with innovative, out of the box ideas. I was inevitably told we couldn't do that.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it is policy that we can't do it that way?"

"Well, how do we change the policy? Do I need to talk to my representative and senator?"

"That won't help."

"Why?"

"Because it's a policy, not a law."

"And who came up with that policy?"

"I'm not sure."

"Then, who do I talk to about getting that policy changed?"

"I don't know?"

"What if I talked to the Director?"

"You can't do that!"

"Why?"

"It's against policy!"

This seemed entirely logical to this person. I attempted to go around the system and actually had some success in getting some policies changed. It was soon being whispered about that I was anti-transit and I only lasted one term. A local bureaucrat wrote me a letter in which he said it served me right for being arrogant!

A few years back when the state reduced the bureaucracy for human service related programs from 22 agencies to 5 there was a hew and cry about the land. They organized a series of local anti-change forums trying to stop the consolidation of departments and programs. Their arguments was that it couldn't be done without hurting poor and needy people.

I went to one of the anti-change meetings and listened. After a while I smelled a rat.

I stood up. "If we reduce the bureaucracies, won't there be more money for people in the programs?"

Speaker: "But the social workers will be overloaded and won't be able to process them all, so many people will not be served."

"What if we reduce the paperwork needed to process them."

Speaker: "Then we won't know if they are really eligible."

"Wouldn't it be better to miss a few welfare moochers and serve more people than to spend all our money on people sitting in offices pushing papers around?"

He paled a little and made a face like a fish trying to breathe out of water.

Then, I asked the speaker who he worked for.

Speaker: "I represent Citizens for Social Justice, a coalition of agencies....."

“No, I mean, who do you actually work for? Who gives you a paycheck?”

Speaker: "Uh, my, uh, regular job is with the Federal and State Employees Union."

"I see...."

That’s what I had guessed. The reason we have to stop this expansion of government is that once it happens, we’ll never be able to get rid of all the bureaucrats. Then, if we get all those new bureaucrats, they’ll make us waste even more time waiting in lines and filling out forms instead of doing our jobs.

I’m about ready to sell everything, buy myself a schooner and become a tramp trader in the islandes. The problem is, I could probably never get all the paperwork done to even get my boat out of port. I’d run off to the mountains, but I probably need a permit. Last time we had a church picnic, we had to reserve the lakeside campground 3 months in advance and leave a large deposit and fill out an environmental impact statement, insurance release, show proof of liability and proof of financial responsibility. I’m probably exaggerating, but not by much.

The only thing they didn’t ask for was proof of citizenship. That one I might have understood…

Tom King
Flint, TX

P.S. Also you might be interested in one more gem from Sir Humphrey on health care strategy in Britain:

“Yes, but we’ve been into that. It has been shown that if those extra one hundred thousand people had lived to a ripe old age that they would have cost us even more in pensions and social security, than they did in medical treatment. So financially speaking it is unquestionably better that they continue to die at the present rate.”

The Road to the "Mother" land.

Socialism is like government by your mother. Let me explain how I came to this conclusion:

1. Everything is provided for you (including your laundry).

2. You are told what kind of job you need to have.

3. You are told where you should live (usually mother provided housing)

4. You are told who to date (and don't worry about getting married - no rush. Your mother loves you, that's all you need to remember and use protection).

5. You are told how to spend your money.

6. You have your health care paid for.

7. You have free food, but they make you feel guilty for taking it.

8. Mom & Dad pay for pretty much everything and Dad gripes about it all the time.

9. If you try to move out on your own, Mom cuts you off the free stuff and you have to start paying for everything.

10. Eventually, you wind up 40 years old and living in your mother's basement eating Ding Dongs, playing Halo III 12 hours a day and trading Pokemon cards on eBay to earn spending money.

Welcome to Socialism!!!

Now if they'll just legalize marijuana, how sweet would that be?

Tom King
(c) 2009

Much Ado about Posse'

The new 'powers-that-be' in America are talking about a fundamental change in role of the U.S. military in homeland security. You'll hear a lot in the coming debate from the conservative side about something called "Posse Comitatus", an 1878 act of Congress which supposedly prevents the US military from being involved in homeland law enforcement. You'll also hear from the liberal side that the Posse Comitatus act is 130 years old and doesn't actually have anything to do with the military being involved in law enforcement. This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the arguments they all took in this debate just 5 short years ago.

As usual, the truth is somewhere floating around in the political-philosophical plankton. In 2003 the ACLU set up a hue and cry at the establishment of US Northern Command (NorthCOM) by the Army as a response to the threat of terrorism in the U.S.. There was a lot of discussion about the Posse Comitatus act at the time, with folks on the left citing Posse Comitatus as their authority for opposing this terrible grab for power by the Bush administration. The furor eventually died away, especially after the 2006 elections made it evident that the tide of power was shifting left.

Turns out they were only concerned about military intervention on American soil if President Bush was president at the time. Seems they have no such qualms about President Obama. Recently Barak Obama suggested that we establish a couple of quick response Army battalions for use by homeland security in the US in the event of a large scale terrorist attack. This proposal garnered no howls of protest from the guardians of our liberties on the left. I think I heard crickets!

Seems the argument is not about having the club. It's about whose hands the club is in. Jack boots do not enslave people. People enslave people.

So let me wade into this quagmire and see if we can fish out some facts.

In the first place, the military does on occasion dabble in law enforcement here in the good old USA.

Don't you people watch NCIS? Anybody remember the National Guard's participation in the Civil Rights unrest during the 60's.

Second, Posse Comitatus doesn't provide us any protection against the military meddling in stuff that happens on American soil. The original act simply forbids local law enforcement from calling up US troops (the US Cavalry at the time) to act as a posse (hense the name Posse Comitatus). The law says Sheriff Smith can't order the local Green Beret to join in a manhunt for the bootlegger that slipped out the back door of the county jail without the president's permission. That's all!

Over the years, military commanders stretched their interpretation of the law to keep thier troops out of local politics and legal entanglements. It was convenient for them to do so. It also got them out of the nastiness that was going on in the South over reconstruction.

Over the past 130 years, Americans have come to view the Posse Comitatus Act, however, as a protection against the kind of jack-booted thuggery against our own citizens that we witnessed in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the 1878 Act provides only a false sense of security. Posse Comitatus offers us no such protection from the military. Military experts have been busily "clarifying" Posse Comitatus for the past decade and with the rising threat of terrorism, the US government and the military, through the offices of FEMA and Homeland security, have put in place the equipment and facilities that could easily be misused by a despotic administration. This includes:

• Prepositioned internment camps designed to house disaster victims or disruptive elements of the populace in a national emergency (can you say "martial law").
• Army plans for training and prepositioning regular troops to reinforce state or national guard troops and to assume populace control responsibilities in an "emergency".
  
• A recent discussion about giving the president power to over-ride state governors and order both national guard and regular troops into "crisis zones" without permission from the states. Some commentator maintain that he already has the power to do that. You may remember the Civil War was fought partly over the use of Federal troops against US citizens.
  
• A recent Obama proposals to create a 200,000 man "military style" security force that has all the equipment, training and power of the military that is moving forward as we speak.
  

Till now we've been happy with a small FBI. Apparently not so, anymore. The FBI is growing by leaps and bounds in both capacity and authority. CIA is even running radio commercials to recruit operatives. I've never heard that before. So why are we increasing national security resources instead of leaving it in the hands of the locals.

One word: Terrorism

Thanks to fears of terrorism, we had more US troops at the Salt Lake City Olympics than were in Afghanistan at the time, all on the president's authority. The Posse Comitatus tradition and law is so riddled with holes that the President can decide to deploy the armed forces and the National Guard on his own authority whenever he decides something is a national security issue. President Bush started it. It looks like President Obama intends to take it and run with it.

Unfortunately, there is a very big danger when we put people, whether they be soldiers or policemen or ordinary citizens in positions of power and authority over their fellows. I worked for almost a decade in residential treatment centers for children. During that time I saw people who were the soul of kindness and charity turn into something I did not recognize. Institutions where human beings are incarcerated against their wills and made to follow a regimen almost invariably "set up" the staff who must enforce the incarceration and maintain the regimens.

I saw staff members speak to kids and handle them in ways that would have done the Gestapo proud. I worked at a very good institution too. I did a lot of the training and constantly had to work with my staff to help them remember that they weren't prison guards. The environment set them up to believe that was exactly what they were supposed to do. We emphasized empowering the kids, giving them choices, helping them become self-governing. It was hard to keep that going because the need to corral difficult kids and control the violent ones kept pulling staff back into the "guard" roles.

Two famous research experiments, the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment delved into the psychology of the prisoner/guard relationships. Both were terminated early when the "guards" became overzealous enforcers and became abusive. There is abundant evidence that when you give a person authority and power to punish and a mission to control the behavior of another person, you undermine their principles. They may believe in the Golden Rule everywhere else, but within the context of their "guard" role, they enforce an "Iron Rule" that bears little resemblance to the principles they think they truly believe in.

The guards at Abu Graib were not the instigators of abusive treatment of the prisoners. They were never trained to resist the impulse to abuse. They were discouraged from seeing their charges as anything other than vicious animals. Consequently they treated them as such and got in trouble when they did.

Now, we're talking about training our young soldiers to look at Americans as potential enemies and to view their new role as guards and enforcers of law. My concern is not only for what that is going to do with to heads, but also what will be the effect of putting "military style" power into their hands while they are under this kind of pressure.

You don't want soldiers who are trained to unfettered warfare, to use those skills against the very people they have always before been charged to protect. It fundamentally changes who they are. It was disastrous when we used troops against kids at Kent State and against ordinary civilians during the civil right riots of the 60's. It will be disastrous again. I don't care who's the president.

When the guns are pointed at us on the inside instead of at our enemies on the outside, the gun-bearers change and we change too. It's a recipe for revolution. We went through that once in our history. So profound was our repugnance for what the British did against the colonists that we wrote into the constitution a provision that the government couldn't quarter soldiers in our homes.

In principle, I believe that using the military as a police force or even giving the police force the power of the military is just setting us up for trouble. It's giving law enforcement too much firepower. We don't think they can handle it and Americans won't stand for it. That's why the gun stores are selling ammunition as fast as they can stock it. That's why I can walk 3 blocks from my house out here in the country and buy an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, if I don't mind waiting till they get another shipment in.

I'm just afraid that this time the revolution that's brewing won't be a 1776 style revolution lead by wise and courageous men becaue of a love of liberty and high moral principles. It's going to be an angry mob-led French style revolution and a bloody awful thing to see.

Using military power against the American people is a mistake. If we turn the guns on ourselves, we are asking to have our liberties stripped away from us.

As that imminent philosopher Han Solo said once, ""Hey, point that thing someplace else."

Good advice!

Tom King

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/brinkerhoffpossecomitatus.htm

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/articles/Trebilcock.htm

The Obama Administration Grabs for Power Over Charities

The Devil is in the details, especially when it's a Democrat Budget Proposal.

President Obama's new budget plan has a sneaky little scheme buried in it to cut tax deductions for charitable giving by the so-called wealthiest 1%. The plan will help the government increase the taxes collected by the IRS from all those evil greedy rich people by discouraging them from giving to charity.

You know who they are - the people who make over $250,000 and do most of the hiring and creating of new business. The loss of funding to charities, Obama's staff says will be offset by increases in funding by the government.

Huh?

Okay, let me get this straight.

The government is going to provide a tax DISincentive for couples making more than $250K. Obama thinks that will raise some $179.8 billion in the next 10 years while at the same time reducing nonprofit charitable funding over the next decade by $179.8 billion.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag says Mr. Obama takes care of the losses by giving charities government money to make up PART of the difference. So, then, the government is going to TAKE part of the money that now goes to charities and do what with it? We are asked to trust the government to do the right thing with this money.

What could be wrong with that?

Just this:

1. Instead of the money going directly to the charity which uses it all for expenses to run programs and the charities, the money will go through Washington, be given to a vast unwieldy bureaucracy, where, if the charity spends hundreds of man hours writing a complicated and restriction filled grant in competition with thousands of other nonprofits and maybe a few faith-based ministries, this bureaucracy might actually give some of all that money back to the charity. Of course the amount of this "give back" will be less than what the charities lost because the government has all those administrative costs to support the vast unwieldy bureaucracy that may or may not give them some of their money back.

2. The government WILL add restrictions to the funding and ban certain types of nonprofits from receiving government funds. THIS WILL ELIMINATE ENTIRELY, CERTAIN UNAPPROVED TYPES OF CHARITIES.

3. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin says "Contained in the recovery act, there's $100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period of economic difficulty," he said. If that's an annual figure, then that's a ten year total of 1 billion dollar. So, they're taking 179.8 billion dollars from the charities and giving them back 1 billion dollars. According to my calculations that's a 99.388% administrative fee the government's charging there!!!!

Only in the Fantasy Land that is Washington could the Obama administration say that they would take almost 180 billion from the philanthropy community and see no drop in giving and then have the further cheek to suggest that their tiny one billion dollar "economic recovery fund for charities" will actually help charities.

Okay, the government plans to "take over" many of the functions of nonprofits and churches in America, so they won't be needed. Anybody think the government is going to be able to do what nonprofits do and deliver the same level of service. I've seen what government run programs cost. I worked at a residential treatment center for kids. We were paid $59 a day for caring for a severely disturbed kid. This included treatment, 24 hour staff, food, shelter, recreation and virtually everything the kid needed. They paid us 90% of our actual costs and we had to raise the remaining 10%.

Want to guess how much it cost the government to provide the same service"

$180 per day! That's 3 times what the nonprofit sector cost to do the same job.

Does anyone think that's a good idea???

Everyone who works for, with or is a member of a nonprofit, faith-based ministry, church, civic or community group, foundation or charitable organization or who is a person of means who donates to any charity should contact their congressman and both senators TODAY and tell them to pitch out this clause from Obama's budget.

It's bad for charity. It's a grab for more power over charities by the government. It's going to close thousands of small local charities who depend on the largesse of the philanthropy community to meet unique local needs.

Don't let this go by. It costs you some stamps or a phone call or, if you can use the computer, nothing but a bit of electricity. SEND AN E-MAIL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

Some Democrats and a whole bunch of Republicans have caught the administration doing a bit of political engineering here. BUT A LOT OF THEM HAVEN'T. Make sure your delegation is howling very loudly about this in the halls of Congress!

STOP THE GOVERNMENT FROM ROBBING FROM CHARITIES!!!!

Tom

Iran's Gonna Make a Bomb!

I am shocked!

After all we did for them, the Iranians have gone and made up some fissile nuclear materials. That's atomic bomb making stuff for those of you who aren't technical.

I mean really....

1. We got rid of George Bush and his toadies and replaced all those nasty Republicans with a bunch of lovely Democrats.

2. We elected the first Black President who understands Muslims because he once attended Muslim schools and had a Muslim dad!

3. We ended the Iraq war of aggression the first day he was in office like he promised. Didn't we?

4. We're busily impoverishing ourselves in the name of global warming so that we too can be a third world country and no longer have any economic advantages over anyone.

5. We're going socialist!

6. We're going to talk to them without conditions. We've explained that we're going to be nice now and negotiate.

7. We're going to strip down our military and mostly have them point their guns at Americans instead of picking on all the innocent people of the world.

8. We're going to stop hogging up everyone's oil and using more than our share of the world's resources.

9. We've spoken sharply to Israel and told them they shouldn't be picking on Hamas like that AND we're giving 9 tenths of a billion dollars to Hamas to refurbish the Gaza Strip.

10. Besides, we told them how nice we all are now that the evil Republicans have been defeated.

So why are the Iranians working on a bomb? I thought if we did all that stuff they were going to suddenly love us and become all peaceful and sweet.

Odd..........

I'm just sayin'

Tom

Articles of Faith - The Democrat/Environmentalist/Socialist Agenda

I believe there are two types of religion.

1. Honest religions - Those that tell you up front what they believe and what it will cost you before you join up and leave it up to you as to whether to become a member. Then, they let you go whenever you want to part company with them - no hard feelings.

2. Dishonest religions - Those that won't tell you what they really believe till they already have you signed up, that use fear-mongering or other forms of pressure to induce you to join up and either won't let you go or punish you for leaving.As far as I'm concerned any formalized system of belief, a significant portion of which must be taken on faith, is a religion. This includes atheism, agnosticism, liberalism, socialism, environmentalism and (Heaven help me) conservatism. Various religions have greater or lesser percentages of their beliefs that are based on fact or faith.

My friends on the left claim their articles of faith are entirely based on fact. The problem is, I can't seem to pin them down on anything you could actually identify as fact or faith-based. Instead you get statements like:

"Things are bad. We have to do SOMETHING!"
"The people are tired of 8 years of failed policies - they want CHANGE!"
"Only the government can save us."
"If we don't do something the planet will die."

The problem with all of these statements is they assume a disaster is coming and that doing something about it will help.

So the next thing they say is: "Well, we have to do something!"

Why?

Why must we do something? Why do we need to meddle? Why don't we let everybody fix their own little corners of the world? Will things not inevitably get better if all of us individually get better? This makes sense to me.

I do realize that leaving it alone doesn't satisfy the need to scratch that folks have who love power and position. Even though our Mom's told us we shouldn't "pick at it", we do anyway!

When I challenge members of the Obama nation, I get counseled to 'give him a chance'. Why should I? I believe that he wants to do things that are bad for the country. If he does something good for the country, I'll praise him. But why would I want to wait for him to fail before opposing him? If he fails, he takes us with him!

If I had a headache and someone pointed a gun at my head and said, "Hold still. I'm going to shoot a hole in your head. You'll feel much better."

How should I react to this proposal? After all, it's still only a proposal. Should I give it a chance? Should I wait till he ventilates my skull or should I do a quick duck, bob and weave.

Me, I'm from the "bob and weave" school. Same with the approach the president and congress have proposed. I think it's going to be about as effective as putting a bullet through out collective heads. I think we need to avoid this if at all possible.

The guys on the left may complain about my not "giving it a chance" on the grounds that they haven't really said what they are going to do yet. Well, it's true they've danced around the issues pretty well, but we can identify some pretty basic beliefs common to most members of this ragtag alliance of atheists, spiritualists, environmentalists, socialists and new age Christians. They seems to share a new religion - one they believe that Americans have elected to govern the country. These are some of the tenets of that faith that I have teased from all the rhetoric from the politicians, the pundits and true-believer bloggers:

1. That the planet is dying from global warming caused by man
2. That man can and must do something about it or the planet will die.
3. That a massive change in our behavior will fix global warming
4. That we must do something to fix the economy or everything will collapse and probably permanently if we don't do it right now -you don't need to look to closely at the details (see principle #10).
5. That spending a bunch of money on social programs will "fix" the economy
6. That the government must take over the health care system or it will collapse unless it does.
7. That Democrats are incorruptible and can be trusted to take good care of you if you give them more power and authority.
8. That centralized power and planning will work better than decentralized power; that more regulation is better for us than less regulation.
9. That government control of the auto industry, the banking industry, the energy industry and the health care industry is a good thing.
10. That government controlled by Democrats is inherently good and benign and you can trust the Democrat party with your money, your health, your job and your freedom.

So, tell me where I'm wrong.

What part of that don't you guys on the left believe? Because if you believe any or all of the 10 things listed above, I think you're crazy and shouldn't be running the country. I don't find a shred of reliable evidence that indicates that a single one of these ideas works or even makes sense.

Most of the argument I get from people on the left is that we should believe all these ideas; that they have been proved beyond doubt and everybody knows it. Now, the left would never lay out the above tenets of their religion in anything like this clarity. These are ideas that are repugnant to many Americans and have cost Democrats their seats in government when some enterprising conservative has pinned one of the tenets on them.

That's why I say that the new religion is dishonest. It doesn't tell you what it really believes. Instead it tells you that anyone who disbelieves is wrong, that everybody believes the new religion and pressures you to serve it. It tells you that the planet will die and the economy will collapse if you don't let the new religion have it's way.

So tell me which of these 10 tenets of faith is not what you believe. If you think I should support Obama's agenda, then as near as I can figure out, these are ideas that he and his supporters ask me to believe and accept by faith. Is this what you mean by hope and change?

If so, I'm still convinced I should oppose Obama's agenda.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

The False Promise of “Economies of Scale”

Our new masters in Washington have hit the ground running, you can't argue with that. The question really is, "Where are they running to?"

We here a lot from media pundits and in clips from political speechification about plans for centralizing planning, creating smart grids to run our power systems, new regulations and new agencies designed to get our economic system "under control" and an improved military style homeland security force and rapid response force in the event of something called "a national emergency".

Here we go again.

I thought we'd learned our lesson in two world wars, a civil war, a revolutionary war, two gulf wars and 232 years of American history that too much power at the center is almost always a bad thing.

George Washington rejected this idea when some of the Continental Congress proposed creating an American nobility with Washington himself as the hereditary king.

Thomas Jefferson rejected this idea when he read the constitution and discovered it didn't protect the rights of the individual adequately. He immediately wrote a bill of rights and saw to it that this became part of the constitution so that government did not have the power to stifle the liberties of the very people who gave our new country energy, brains and ambition.

Abraham Lincoln found out about central planning when he finally got so fed up with Secretary Stanton's and General Halleck's meddling with the armies that he found the feistiest, most stubborn man in the Army and made him commander of all the army and then stood between U.S. Grant and the Washington bureaucracy so that he could get his job done. Which he did. Grant won the war by finding good commanders and giving them the freedom to win battles and thus won the war.

Theodore Roosevelt saw that giant companies and their robber baron masters were grabbing power and trampling on the rights and freedoms of small business and entrepeneurial Americans to conduct business in freedom and without persecution. He waded into the fray busting trusts and illegal conglomerations with a fierce determination that got him carved into Mount Rushmore.

Ronald Reagan saw that America was losing its liberty and with it the fiery spirit that had made America great. He started his fight in the midst of a crippling recession and fought punitive taxation and stultifying regulation, triggering the longest sustained period of prosperity in American history.

In World War I and II, American forces, often called "cowboys" by their opponents who were highly regimented and centrally controlled. The American forces featured highly trained ground commanders who knew the mission, understood why it was important and went in with the troops and fought beside them. We learned quickly with the Japanese and the Germans that if you cut off communications with headquarters, their troops had no idea what to do next. When the Germans tried the same thing at Bastogne, the cut off and isolated American commander told his German opponent "Nuts!" when asked to surrender. Meanwhile, George Patton was standing at a crossroads directing traffic and praying for clear weather and kicking his tankers collective butts to relieve Bastogne. They found that when you try to bite off the head of the American Army, it's tail had teeth as well. We were like the hydra of mythology. We just grew a new head.

Other of our country's leaders like Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara bought into the socialist idea that central control and top down management was the way to go. They fought the Vietnam War, not to win it, but to manage pressure on the North Vietnamese hoping they would stop bothering South Vietnam. Every thing that happened in Vietnam was controlled and approved or disapproved from Washington. If somebody shot at you, LBJ had to give you permission to shoot back. Through their centralized command and control system, they succeeded in reducing the most powerful military in the world to a demoralized, inefficient mess that couldn't even rescue some hostages without crashing into each other in the desert.

Air Force generals like Bill Creech and Chuck Horner learned that decentralization of operations was the best way to make our Air Force run efficiently. They went from having often less than half our aircraft operational in the late 70's to 90+% efficiency during the Persian Gulf Wars. They went from units that were lucky if they could fly 2 missions a day to units that could fly 100 sorties and whose maintenance crews painted their names on the sides of "their" aircraft they were that proud of the work they did.

Our telecommunications industry learned the hard way about the hazards of centralization with the creation of the Internet. At the same time that the U.S. military was learning that decentralizing operations control was the best way to fight a war, a related group were coming up with a communications system designed to survive a nuclear holocaust. It had to be decentralized. It had to be simple - almost stupid. There were tons of telecommunications networks out there all complex and based on proprietary software. Every few years those complicated systems became obsolete. So they built a stupid system with no central control. Instead of one way for your message to get where it was going, there were thousands. Nobody could bomb it because it was everywhere.

They called it the Internet. The cellular telephone industry learned from that experience. Now, going on 3 decades later, the Internet and the cell phone systems are still working like a champion. We've gone from $200 a month mobile phones that you couldn't take out of your car and had to wait years on a waiting list to get, to being able to buy a phone in the Dollar store that you can carry around in your shirt pocket, take pictures with and send letters to your friends from anywhere. We've got Internet communications tools that not only let you picture phone your friends, but the service is free - it doesn't cost you anything extra.

The Internet is amazing. If I hook up a server in my house, I can become part of the Internet. When I'm working on my laptop wherever, I'm part of the vast storage capacity of the Internet. And the system is incredibly stupid as telecommunications go. There's no central brain telling everything what to do and how to do it. Instead there are a bazillion programs on a bazillion computers all sending packets of information around this wonderfully simple system doing whatever the owners of those programs want to do.

And people as a result are busily creating new things, talking about ideas, sharing recipes, photos and news without censorship. All because we created a simple system (the Internet) that lets individuals do what they want, when they want to in whatever way they can figure out to do it. And did we learn something from all this?

NO!

So now, what are the folks in Washington want to do is create a "banking system" that is centrally controlled by the government, a health care system that is centrally planned and controlled AND a new "Smart" power grid system that is centrally planned and controlled and terribly smart and complicated.

What a recipe for disaster that is!

It looks like, as Americans, we'd have learned how dangerous it is to place too much power in the hands of too few people. We think that by creating so-called 'economies of scale' that somehow things will run more efficiently.

They won't. There are a couple of key reasons for this.

1. Central planning assumes that all the components of a system are identical (notice I did not say equal). It assumes that people and circumstances are interchangeable. Their responses are assumed to be all alike. Their motivations identical.
2. Central planning is assumed to create economies of scale. In other words it assumes that piling all supplies up in a central place makes them easier to keep track of and control and that, therefore, money will be saved and supplies delivered more efficiently.

The problem with both ideas is that they are wrong.

1. People are not alike. Situations are not alike. Humans are so diverse and their motivation and responses are so different that it is impossible for someone thousands of miles away in a distant office to design any sort of program that will work in the same way for all people in all places. It just won't work. Nobody is that smart. The only way you can exercise efficient control from a central place is to change the nature of people through some sort of oppressive carrot and stick approach that reduces people into automatons with no brains and no will of their own.
2. The problem with so-called economies of scale is that they wind up generating huge volumes of paperwork designed to keep track of the piles of supplies and you have to deal with the "Smaug the Dragon" syndrome in which supply depot masters sit like fat dragons on their piles of supplies like they were treasure and they don't want to give them away. To keep from giving away their treasure they create purchase order systems so oppressive that it soon becomes more trouble than it's worth to get the supplies you need, so people that are supposed to be doing the work actually give up trying and sit around their offices all day playing Tetris and trying to look busy. Central supply systems ironically can be shown to actually reduce efficiency at the front lines AND piles of stuff make it easier for a bad guy to destroy stuff than if it's scattered out there in the hands of the people who need to use it. Today's businesses have learned that "just in time" supply systems where stuff comes straight from the factory to the guys that are going to use it without going through a central warehouse saves the company tons of time and money.

But for goodness sake, don't let any of this bother your pretty heads. The great brains that gave us the mortgage banking industry collapse and the worst recession in nearly 3 decades have everything under control. We just gave them more power, all our money and stuck our collective heads in the sand and our behinds in the air.

The government's going to take really good care of us.

COUNT ON IT!

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King

The Gitmo Argument

War or Not War?

Barak Obama's order to close Gitmo makes one thing very clear. In Obama world, there is no war on terror. It's a police action!

Anyone captured on the battlefield fighting against American soldiers or conducting guerilla terror attacks against our country is to be arrested, charged and given due process as though he or she were an American citizen, conferring the rights of citizenship, if not the actual status of citizen upon those who would destroy us.

Obama argues that this is only right and just. By this reasoning, when we brought German or Japanese soldiers to U.S. soil as captives during WWII, should we have put them in county lockups or in state or federal prisons and conducted individual trials to determine their guilt or innocense.

If so, then, technically, if we could prove one of those soldiers actually killed an American soldier, we could have set 'em up with an appointment in Old Sparky. Given the mood in WWII, captive enemy soldiers in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, The Gulf War, etc. would have kept Old Sparky humming night and day.

Is that where we really want to go? Is it really more fair to expose enemy combatants to the court system in our country where in some cases, they would face the death penalty. Remember a recent terrorist we tried here in America - Timothy McVeigh. We executed the boy!

Are we going to do that to all non-uniformed soldiers we encounter on the field of battle?

I want to repeat the logical outcome of all this. If we treat ALL Gitmo detainees as criminals, that means any of them who killed or injured American soldiers, civilians, etc. should be tried under the laws that govern this country or the country where the alleged "crime" took place.

This means that if peace is declared, these guys can't be released without being tried first for their crimes. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, BY IT'S ACTIONS HAS DECLARED GITMO DETAINEES CRIMINALS AND NOT ENEMY COMBATANTS.

Now we have another problem. The American military is being, in essence, called upon to do police work. Does that mean we withdraw our regular troops and send NCIS over to arrest suicide bombers?

Oh, yeah, that'll work!

And if the Obama administration decides it's okay for the military to do police work, does that not violate a principle, long held by the U.S. government that the U.S. military is not a police force. Does that signal the real view of the American military by the new administration - that it is not essentially a war-fighting body, but is actually a policing force.

BHO did signal his intent to do just that during his campaign. In at least one speech he called for the deploying of a military "security force" within the border of the United States with all the equipment and firepower of the military. Well if he's going to do that, why not save a few bucks in these hard times and just deploy several battalions on standby within the states that could go anywhere, anytime to do a little heavily armed "police work".

As a matter of fact, that is precisely the plan that is already in the works right now.

My question then becomes, "WHO IS THE PRESIDENT INTENT ON POLICING?"

There are two possibilities, both disturbing.

1. A confused and panicked populace in the aftermath of a major attack on home soil or a disaster.

2. Troublesome elements of the American populace (can you say "Gestapo")

The U.S. military has no business doing policework other than the usual MP stuff, and especially it has no business policing on home soil. Either the Obama adminstration feels like it needs to have a powerful force at its disposal here at home to enforce its will OR they're pretty sure that when they pull the troops from the Middle East, the terrorists will be coming here in a big way!

Under George Bush, we have not had a single attack on home soil since 9/11. Something he has done has worked. This president seems intent on lowering our guard, withdrawing our military from contact with the enemy and turning the guns on our own people.

Ask the Israelis what happens during a cease fire or immediately after a peace treaty with these folks.

THEY REARM AND RELOAD! Then they come at you again.

If running the terrorists at GITMO through the courts in the US would get a bunch of executions and life sentences and get these people off the streets, then okay. My guess is it's going to make a bunch of lawyers wealthy and turn a bunch of "terrorists on probation" loose on American streets. I don't see Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan taking them back when we try to expell them and if it goes like it usually does, they'll be back again in a year blowing up embassies and US naval vessels.

One liberal caller to the Glenn Beck talk show yesterday objected to Gitmo because we "weren't charging them with anything". When asked what we should have done with them, he said that if they were our enemies, American soldiers should have killed them right there on the battlefield.

What a frightening peek into what these guys mean by "change". Perhaps we'll need more bulldozers in the Obama military so our soldiers can more efficiently rake the piles of bodies into the mass graves. One thing you can say for socialist governments. They certainly are efficient at thinning out the ranks of their enemies.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

A Modest Proposal for Saving the Planet

Okay, guys, Al Gore has told us that global warming will destroy the planet. Pay no attention to the falling temperatures world wide. You see, the rising carbon levels have actually caused the falling temperatures which will cause the rising temperature levels which is why the polar ice caps will melt completely away even though they are at their largest expansion since 1979 which is, of course, because of global warming. Don't think about it too hard, it'll hurt your brain.

So, obviously, it's time for us to save the planet. But how, you ask?

Easy peasy according to the much respected Global Commons, Inc.. The Secret is contraction and convergence (C&C) GC's exciting proposal for saving the planet and (coincidently) turning the planet into a vast worker's paradise.

How does G&C work. Global Commons recognizes two principles for saving the planet:

1. That global emissions of carbon dioxide must be progressively reduced

Why? Because a bunch of UN scientists say so.

2. Reductions must be based on justice and fairness

Why? Have you people never read Karl Marx?

Global Commons says we need to answer just two questions in order to save the planet.

1. What is the maximum level of carbon dioxide that can be permitted in the atmosphere without serious climate destabilisation?

What Global Commons is suggesting is that we figure out how much carbon we ought to be allowed (gotta keep the fearless leaders' swimming pools heated after all - they work so hard for all of us). They propose coming up with this currently imaginary number and then assigning every person a carbon ration. These rations could be traded, bought and sold and generally used as chips in the great global game of wealth redistribution.

One potential political problem with the whole carbon allowance scheme is this: Small, poor countries with big populations which have little industry, transportation and low energy useage would inevitably sell their large unused carbon allowance to wealthy nations, thereby transferring wealth to poor countries from rich ones without having to resort to war or extortion. The only problem with this idea is that in order to keep the carbon dollars flowing, how many benevolent despots in third world countries will want to risk passing those dollars along to their people who will (selfishly) want to spend it on goodies that increase the country's carbon footprint. There ought to be some nice presidential palaces built with all those carbon bucks and the military industrial complex ought to make a nice living building weapons for the presidentes, but then I'm sort of a pessimist about human nature in that way. Better yet, instead of extorting taxes from the peasants, the third world dictators would simply extort it from wealthy energy using western nations and ease up on the peasants a little so they will be less discontented with their poverty, the 3rd world regimes a little more stable (with all those new soldiers and tanks and stuff) and the wealthy nations a lot less economically healthy. Of course, when the western economies collapse and can't or won't pay the carbon offsets to the third world countries, there will be a lot of hungry little despots with big weapons running around looking for someone to shoot.

The second question the global warming enthusiasts say we should answer is this:

2. By what date should global per capita shares converge to the level that we're all equally poor/rich/using energy?

In other words when will everyone in the world be emitting carbon equally (except of course for the fearless leaders who must heat their jacuzzis after a hard day unselfishly running the lives of billions of human beings)?

Another problem: As we said above, the transfer of wealth in the form of purchased carbon credits from the rich nations to the poor cannot continue forever. Money spent on something which is of no intrinsic value is ultimately like blood being dripped out of an open vein. If you don't stop it, the person soons turns pale and drops over dead. Since rich nations are not in the habit of dropping over dead, it's unlikely that anyone is going to willingly volunteer to open up a vein (other than to donate the occasional pint of foreign aid). The plan depends on wealthy, comfortable nations being willing to become poorer and less comfortable to work.

Now there's only so much fear of the planet being destroyed we'll accept without evidence that it is, in fact, being destroyed. You need to do something about the National Geographic Channel and the Discover Channel and Animal Planet. The keep showing huge herds of wildebeests, flamingos and not yet dead migrating whales. Unless people see some flooded coastal cities or a couple thousand dead zebras pretty soon, they're not going to buy the whole global warming deal - especially if they are doing without food or their government starts telling them they can't have kids and stuff. That kind of thing is really gonna be unpopular in the western ghettos and slums where the number of kids you have determines how large your welfare check is going to be.

It's like my great aunt Agnes. The preacher one Sunday preached a sermon about sin.

"It is a sin," he said, "To drink alcohol in ANY form!"

"Amen," she sang out from her back pew.

"Oh, and brothers and sisters it is a powerful sin," he said, "To smoke those cigarettes and those nasty old ceegars!"

"Preach it, brother," Aunt Agnes shouted and stood up and held her hands in the air in praise!

"And it is also a sin, practiced in secret by some of our congregation," he warned, "To be dipping snuff and chewing tobacco!"

"Oh, damned," Agnes sat down shaking her head and frowning. "He done stopped preaching and done started meddling!"

Let me here make my own modest proposal for saving the planet: There are only two elements to the proposal (so that even Democrats can keep track).

1. Treat others the way you want to be treated. This means cleaning up your own mess whenever you make one. If you spill oil, you get to clean it up. If you're the CEO of the company and the company goes bankrupt and can't pay for it, some judge puts you and your entire adminstrative staff, the captain of the tanker and all your accountants out on the beach with soap and rags and shovels and bags, scooping up sludge and scrubbing down oily ducks and otters. If you stink up the air, you fix your pipes so you don't and plant some trees or something to help freshen up the atmosphere around your plant. If you dump your trash willy nilly into the sea or your sewerage in the river, we make you stop and pay for cleaning it up. In all cases, whoever made the decision to mess it up gets to put on hip boots and help with the cleanup. Pollution would be over pretty soon if that were the policy.

2. From today on, everyone's borders are the same. No one gets to take land from anyone else. No one gets to take over anyone else's country unless they want to become a state or something and we all vote to do that - I'm thinking Tawain would make a nice 51st state. They're loaded and I'd really like to hack off China.

If you don't like where you live, find someplace where they'll let you move to where they do things you like. If you like misery and oppression, good for you. If you don't, we'll help you start over. Instead of war, we could get Bekins to just move people. Or you can clean out your own government. The U.S. did it back in 1776. So can you - especially in those small countries. Those guys in charge aren't that tough - not when there are 3 million of you and just a handful of them. You just have to believe freedom is worth fighting for. I think this proposal would cause peace to break out inevitably.

Just One Man's Opinion.

Tom King

Reaching Critical Mass

I've been participating in a fascinating and surprisingly civil debate over Anthropic Global Warming (man-made global warming) over on the Banjo Hangout. You'd be appalled at how many smart people play banjos. I want to complement the participants on keeping it civil if not entirely apolitical. Nobody changed their minds among the debaters, but perhaps some folks on the fence were able to understand the issues a little better before they went back to practicing "Foggy Mountain Breakdown".

This is one issue where I think we folk are going to have to agree to disagree until all the evidence is in. Some have said that because the 70's era hysteria over global cooling has been discredited that we should automatically discount the turn of the millennium hysteria over global warming. I don't think that's very wise. After all, the scientists might be right this time - or they might be wrong. I just think we have to wait till all the data is in before we wreck the world's economy in the name of "saving the planet".

As someone points out in the new Keaneau Reeves movie, we can't save the planet. The planet will still be here, we can only save ourselves. How we do that is problematic. There's a lot of factors that go into keeping humans alive. Things like:

1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter
4. Oxygen
5. Protection from nasty radiation coming at us from the sun
6. Nasty things that fall from the skies
7. Nasty things that will kill us here on Earth (disease, toxins and evil power mad murdering despots)
8. A stable economic system and effective trade between groups of people
9. A self-renewing ecosystem
10.Sufficient numbers of us to renew the population indefinitely without overtaxing the previous 9 factors.

If we could focus on addressing these factors, I believe we could get beyond the politics and actually make a decent world for us to live on. We have one already - the best within light years of here. The challenge is to come together on what's important and quit worrying so much about who's ideology is correct.

Everybody do their bit to clean up after themselves, protect each other's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and stop trying to be the big powerful kahuna all the time and life on this planet would be a lot nicer.

But, somebody said once that that's pretty much what would happen inevitably - that the meek would inherit the Earth. Those meek folks, He said, would be folks that lived by pretty much one simple rule - "Treat others the way you would want to be treated."

I have faith that that is precisely what will happen. I believe that evil will inevitably destroy itself at some point.

So it comes down to each of us doing his or her bit to be a decent, honorable person. A famous picket sign in the 60's proclaimed, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came". Well, suppose they gave an unjust order and nobody paid attention. Suppose they wrote an unjust law and nobody obeyed it. Suppose they proclaimed themselves our leaders and nobody followed them. Suppose good people simply stopped doing what bad people told them to.

Just need a critical mass of good people, that's all.

Just one man's opionion,

Tom

.

What's Wrong with A Battalion?

The Pentagon announced it's going to post a 20,000 man rapid reaction force in the U.S. to respond to large scale terrorist attacks - particularly nuclear.

This makes me nervous on several levels.

1. Somebody really believes we're headed for a large scale biological and/or nuclear terrorist attack - enough so that they're ready to deploy military units whose primary job will be controlling panicky Americans rather than fighting enemy combatants.

2. The founding fathers were particularly nervous about standing armies being used against US Citizens. Last time that happened was during the Civil War. We have very wisely decided that in cases where a military presence within the United States is necessary to maintain order or cope with disasters, that we will use the National Guard and that only Governors of the individual states can call out those troops. Whenever the feds try to call up troops to cope with riots and such, the governors get rightly unhappy about it. They are closer to the problem and probably better suited to make the decision to deploy the troops. The standing military is supposed to be spending its time getting prepared to handle an external invader not our own citizens.

3. Colonel David Hackworth used to get really unhappy with military officers he called "perfume princes", political officers for whom military service was about advancing their careers more than it was about defending the country. For them military action is about posturing to intimidate, not about actually using the military. They don't believe in taking risks. They find it impossible to act quickly. They never move unless they have overwhelming force. That's why the mark of the perfume princes is all over this idea of having a battalion for use against a terrorist attack. Instead of the military developing plans to deploy more appropriate troops like SEAL teams and Delta Force special forces groups, trained in hostage rescue and rapid response, quick insertion missions that would be needed to respond to terrorism, the princes want to deploy large overwhelming groups to make sure they crush whatever opposition they have with little or no casualties. The problem is, moving these sorts of large groups is slow and often ineffective where you need surgical strikes. We don't need a battalion of storm troopers, we need a highly specialized group like television's "The Unit" - one that works fast, hits hard and is willing to take casualties in exchange for saving lives and winning battles. Big military responses often sacrifice lives in exchange for playing it safe. Remember how slow they were to get moving in the aftermath of Katrina. Large military groups don't move quickly. The Perfume Princes won't let them. They had the equipment, they had the capacity, but the generals wanted to make sure nothing happened too quickly lest soldiers' safety be threatened.

Since Vietnam, American generals have been reluctant to put soldiers in harm's way. This happened after the US/Mexican war too. As a result, General Grant had a real problem with the generals he had to cope with during the Civil War. It wasn't until he promoted cavalry guys to command who had a special forces kind of attitude, like Phil Sheridan and Bill Sherman was he able to get the job done. They moved fast, hit hard and took risks when it advanced the mission. Other generals had to be poked, prodded and sometimes threatened to get them to move quickly and do things they considered risky. Thank God Lincoln found a commander in U.S. Grant who wasn't afraid to win. Had Grant not been focused on winning the war instead of furthering his future political career, the Army of the Potomac would still be wandering around Northern Virginia trying to find Robert E. Lee.

Liberals understand the perfumed military. Real warriors make them uncomfortable. I worry that under a liberal administration and the sunshine generals who will rise to the top in such a military, a battalion of soldiers that is tasked with crowd control will be used for the purpose of advancing political advantage. That is a valid purpose for the military in the leftist mindset and the temptation may be far too great.

Left leaning presidents have consistently turned the US military into some kind of community service/jobs program, using money that ought to go for weapons and training, to do social engineering in the military. Because of that, the Vietnam war was never about winning, but about gaining political advantage and testing new weapons systems for the military industrial complex which poured money into political campaigns. After 4 years of Carter's gutting of the military, they so screwed up the Iranian hostage rescue mission by trying to make sure the political needs of the 4 services were met. They wound up with a team so poorly trained and coordinated that they wound up crashing into each other and getting themselveskilled out in the Iranian desert.

A particularly telling exchange happened during Clinton's first inauguration. The Air Force sent a formation overhead to salute the president. One of his staffers complained. "What are those AIR FORCE PLANES doing here?" he complained with all the self-righteous disgust of a member of the peace movement.

Ron Silver was standing close by answered him. "But don't you see? Those are our planes now!" The guy was happy after that.

After 8 years under George Bush, we have a military in place with experience and the ability to do what they are supposed to do - seek out and destroy America's enemies. They've successfully replaced an evil dictator, wiped out tens of thousands of terrorists and freed the people of Iraq and Afghanistan from tyranny while keeping terrorists so busy that we've had not one terrorist attack on the homeland since 9/11 even though Osama has been threatening us for 8 years.

I fear that for the next four years, the perfume princes will be back in power in the Pentagon and they'll change all that. Instead of improving weapons systems, training and military planning and execution, they'll be back to changing the color of the berets and making sure they count how many women and gay people are in each unit so things will be "fair". Maybe they'll create some exciting new shoulder patches or some of those tight britches with the stripes down the leg.

I know - jack boots!!!!

Ulysseys S. Grant must be rolling over in his grave!

.

We've got Democrats in the Congress once again

A Post Campaign Song

(Tune: We've Got Franklin D. Roosevelt Back Again - 1936, Bill Cox)

Just hand me my old banjo,
For pretty soon I can go,
Back to dear old Washington far away.
Since Obama's been elected,
We'll not be neglected.
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again. 

Chorus:
Once again, once again,
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.
Since Obama’s been elected,
The Economy’s been corrected.
We've got bucketfuls of money pouring in.

We’ll take ourselves a little toke
We’ll eat our veggies till we choke.
The diet cops will watch us night and day.
You can tell a dirty joke. Fornicate, but you can’t smoke.
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.

Chorus:
Once again, once again,
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.
Rush Limbaugh will be buried.
Gay folks can all get married.
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.

No more mortgages to pay.
The donkey won election day.
No more workin’ in the blowing, snow and rain.
Security is watching us.
We’re all riding on the bus.
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.

Chorus:
Once again, once again,
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.
Since Obama’s now above us,
The whole world’s gonna love us.
We’re gonna all be just as poor as them. ...

Poor as them, poor as them
We're gonna all be just as poor as them.
And if you're not a socialist
You're name is on the enemy's list
We've got Democrats in the Congress once again.

© 2009 by Tom King

Oh, The Big Obama Mountain

Mount Obama, Antigua
(formerly Boggy Peak)

DATELINE: Nov. 6, 2008 ST JOHN'S, Antigua - Antigua's prime minister wants to rename the island's highest mountain peak "Mount Obama" in honor of the U.S. president-elect. "Boggy Peak," as it is currently known, soars more than 1,300 feet over the island's southern point and serves as a transmission site for broadcast and telecommunication providers. It also is a popular hiking spot. Political analyst Avel Grant says the name change could draw more tourists to the island.

---

So, I wrote this song (with recent revisions)....

The Big Obama Mountain
(tune: Big Rock Candy Mountain)

by Tom King

1. Election Day as the sun went down and the stadium was lighted
    The mobs all shout with joy and tears, interviewees were delighted
    Oh I never thought I'd see this day, on Barak Hussein I'm countin'
    I know I won't have to work no more
                                                           ... in the Big Obama Mountain


Chorus:

In the Big Obama Mountain it's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes and you party every night
Oh the jingling of the keys in the Cadillac Trees
    and the mortgage bailout fountains
Where solar power blinks and my carbon footprint shrinks
                                                           ...in the Big Obama Mountains

2. In the Big Obama Mountains security's on its way!
    Dissenters wear 'lectronic tags and we'll take their guns away
   The radio waves are full of truth, Rush Limbaugh had to go
   Oh, I'm bound to do what the party says to
   When they tell you what kinda job to do
                                                            ... in the Big Obama Mountain


Chorus:


3. In the Big Obama Mountains you don't have to change your socks
    Well that's okay since you can buy none
                 cause they snapped shut Wal-Marts locks
    The bossmen have to tip their hats since the unions took command.
    Now our pay is higher and and we can't be fired
    But there ain't no job and we don't get hired,
                                                           ... in the Big Obama Mountain


Chorus:

4. In the Big Obama Mountain the jails are not for you
    But they keep the cells for those that cling to guns and religion too
   There ain't no Gideon's Bibles, we've been declared religion free
    Oh, I'm a goin' to stay where you sleep all day,
    Where there's love and peace and our health care's paid
                                                           ... in the Big Obama Mountain


Bridge:

Oh, I'll be happy and gay come election day in the Big Obama Mountain!

(c) 2010