Liberty is a wondrous thing when gained.
     Americans first celebrated July 4th in 1777 still early in the War for Independence, and long before independence was guaranteed, much less won.
     At least we know how precious a thing it is, when, like gold, there's not a lot of it laying around, and it is still new and fresh.
     On the other hand, Liberty lost seems to go out with little more than a whimper.
     George W Bush will go down in history as a lot of things, both good and not-so-good, but he may well be remembered as the president who last presided over a 4th of July celebration, in 2008.
     Today, July 4th, 2009, is more an observation or a memorial, than a celebration. A floral bouquet solemnly cast upon the sea would be more appropriate than fireworks and loud huzzahs.
     As freedom hobbles down, we see no purpose in celebrating an independence that only once was.

      The answer:
      An ounce of courage.

      This isn't a comment, but a poll.
      Elements of the Democratic Party have done and are doing, and will do things that got the Rosenbergs hung, especially in the area of conspiring to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.
      Admit it, they really are.

      Our poll, excluding Joe Lieberman, who's already established his bona fides in this area, who will be the first to flip and also expose an ounce of courage?

      So far, with mixed reviews from our staff, we've had Joe Biden and Bill Clinton nominated as early candidates to yell, "Enough is enough".  
      Interesting.
      What's your opinion?
Bernard Chumm

     Yip Harburg wrote this song in 1931, and by the end of the decade had been recorded by several artists. You can listen to the lyrics (by Bing Crosby) at YouTube, but we like Rudy Vallee's version better.
     No matter, during the Great Depression it had become a genuine socialist marching song, a drumbeat that drew tens of thousands of American into communism's service before the war.
     OK, listen to the words, bookmark it, as, over the next 4 years, you watch millions of dam builders, railroad workers, small business employees, and soldiers thrown into unemployment, and bread lines, by the very came socialists this song begged to come rescue us all in 1931.
     The big lie finally exposed.
 Bernard Chumm

     In Honduras, the about-to-leave President Zelaya tried to pull a Chavez and hold onto power. The Supreme Court disagreed. So did the majority of people. The army stepped in. He's out...and guess who claiming foul? Guess who's meddling? Well, sure, Ugo, but also Hillary and Obama.
     In September, 2008 I wrote this about then-candidate Obama and the Democrat Party:

          "In the 1960s-70s, the American Left adopted the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" line of political alliances and began hugging communist dictators, hoisting their flags as a big "in yer face" to the establishment. In those days the Democrat Congress kept these radicals at arms length as useful idiots, then were forced to turn their backs and hold themselves blameless as those dictators turned genocidal. It had become a matter of face, and a slow down-hill slide since. For you see, ever so subtly, the party of the Civil Rights Movement, did not want to have to belly up to the truth of the obverse of that line, namely that "the friend of my enemy is my enemy".
      They have now. The American Left was always indifferent to the massacre of innocent life if it brought about a desirable political end, even back to the days of Stalin and Walter Duranty. By the 60's they had enlisted an army of cannon fodder from the more affluent sectors of American society who simply could not, by a tortured self-delusional teat-fit sort of logic, allow themselves to see the end results of things they set into motion. Today those armies have swollen, probably in numbers, but most certainly in decibel levels (thanks to the internet). So now it is official...
      ...the friend of their enemy is now officially their enemy. To hell with the old sentiments of the civil rights movement. To hell with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." To hell with John 15:13, once upon a time a liberal call-to-arms. The answers are no longer blowin' in the wind. You see, the 'friend' of their enemy happens to be human liberty in Iraq (and elsewhere). The Iraqis know it and are grateful for it, but the Democrats, Obama, dailyKos, et al, will have none of it."

   Seems I nailed it.
VB

   This new sign erected over the House Financial Services Committee gallery.
BC

   Two lessons about moral cowardice learned from last night's House vote on Cap and Trade bill:

   1) Most Democrat congressmen (and eight Republicans) voted against their own best interests, and against their own constituents' will on a bill none had read and will deny all responsibility once the fine print is revealed, should it become law, in whole or in part. That is a kind of arrogance and cowardice we've all come to expect these past few years. We should not hold ourselves blameless in allowing things to have moved this far down the path to self-destruction.
      On these Yea-votes, the main reason they voted that way could be that Obama has promised them re-election, notwithstanding voter anger. Obama needs this legislation, so promises the ultimate kickback, and with one-party rule, repeat RULE, on the horizon; that's a swift kick.
      By crossing that line they have become aidders and abettors in the socialist/fascist conspiracy that is the Obama administration. They now ride in his boat...but with only one oarsman. If it should prove un-seaworthy and they find themselves adrift in fast, high muddy water in need of a lifeline, he will leave them for gator bait, just one of many lessons learned at Alinsky's teat.
      It may prove to be the most stupid vote Nancy Pelosi ever brought to the floor of that House on this account alone, if voter ire can prove more powerful than Acorn (and others') stealth and thuggery. If so, most of those 219 aye-votes, and a dozen or so "permitted" nay-votes, just for being in the same party, will find themselves back to hanging shingles in seventeen months.

   2) Notwithstanding the overwhelming GOP votes against it (with 8 turncoats), this vote was a culmination of over ten years of cowardice...repeat COWARDICE, by the GOP...by effectively ignoring a crime for over a decade, then screaming bloody murder when the punishment, to be levied against us, has been shown to be draconian and painful.
       Let me explain this more clearly, for already, the stalwart, nay-saying end of the GOP is getting kudos from Rush Limbaugh, among others, for standing up...way tardily and rather tepidly I might ad, and yelling "Ouch" last night when for at least a decade the proper cry should have been "Liar, Liar, pants on fire!"
      I was in state government when the major environmental legislation was first passed, Clean Air, Clear Water, EPA, 1968-1970. I was a movement environmentalist then, with something of a regional cachet. I was in the papers.
      By the Clinton Administration, 1993, air quality in this country had improved by 95%. Repeat, 95%! So much so that the environmental movement apparently had to come up with new problems to solve that would justify spending roughly ten times more money to reduce air pollution 1% more than the aggregate spending to reduce it the first 95% those first 20 years.
      The Global Warming Scam arose out of that need. In 1992 Rush Limbaugh had a famous debate/confrontation with Al Gore on ABC's Nightline, so we can use that as good a jumping off date as any. (We like to call Gore the Calvera, from The Magnificent Seven, of environmentalism, "If God had not intended them to be sheared, He would not have made them sheep.")
      Rush said it well enough, but in hindsight could have said it better, for Al Gore lied through his teeth and we'd all been better off had Rush said that, plainly, to Al Gore's (and the nation's) face.
      Let's break the lie down.
      The fact (or non-fact) of global warming exists at three levels: 1) Does it, or did it ever exist; 2) If it did, was it man-made, or an occurrence of nature, or both, and 3) Can Man do anything to alleviate it?
      Understand that last night's Cap and Trade bill was a legislative lip-service attempt to alleviate it, so was predicated on the assumption that Man, no, the United States, can alleviate global warming, no matter what its cause. This is not do-goodism, it a lie, and the liars know it.
      In the 1980s air pollution (remember the ozone layer and aerosol spray cans?) was forever associated with global warming, or "climate change" as it is called now, but no credit was ever laid at the feat of air quality improvements from the 1970s, for it is a lagging indicator of global temperatures. It is entirely plausible that improving air quality would eventually slow down, even stop rising temperatures from that giant shield of pollution covering the earth, but it would not be instantaneous. In fact, it took almost thirty years to stop it...if it actually did at all.
      Problem is, only about a third of the globe the US joined in this effort back then. Western Europe, Bermuda, and one Pacific atoll, that's about it. Visiting Russia for the first time in 1991 I was stunned at the dark cloud that hung over the Polish border and eastward, enduring all the way into Siberia (I'm told) and as far south as the Black Sea (I saw for myself). It was worse than anything I'd ever seen flying out of Pittsburgh in 1971. I spent a winter in Russia then, and never saw the sun once, and the snow was a coffin-colored grey...all the way to Gorki.
      That cloud has only now begun to dissipate, for still the sky darkens when one leaves the alpine airspace of Austria for Hungary and Serbia. Trucks with '57 Fiat engines, farm tractors, and old commie cars still chug along the highways, and factory smokestacks without scrubbers still belch smoke that could even curl Pelosi's false eyelashes. In Russia, rivers still run red with acid and toxic waste, where generally things are much worse than the Balkans. And in China and India, the air is getting worse, not better, for theirs are economies with boots still going up the stairs, not bedroom slippers coming down. (Paul Harvey) They have no intention of slowing down.
      So, while two thirds of the globe hasn't improved in terms of air quality, still mysteriously, around 1998 global air temperatures leveled off and have have even retreated some the past nine years. The world is getting cooler, not warmer. Did America do this?
      The point here is, the stated chief cause (air pollution) of a global warming that ceased almost warming ten years ago (1998) has been proved not to be the cause of global warming after all. So then, what is the cause?
      Well, there's cow flatulence, which, is "man-made", they say, because there wouldn't be so many of them if we didn't raise them to eat. If we were all vegans there might be just enough cattle to fit into all the state-run zoos in the world, putting PETA in the uneasy predicament of actually favoring killing off all the cattle in the world just to keep us from eating a few of them at a time as renewable resources. (Now there's a life-is-a-precious-thing policy I can chow down on!)
      And now there's carbon, which composes about 19% of the human body, and so much of the atmosphere that every time we breathe in oxygen we "breathe out" carbon dioxide, which plants then breathe in so as to breathe oxygen back out, thus completing the cycle. Stunning in its simplicity, eh? I learned that in eighth grade. Congress still hasn't for that is exactly what Congress wants to tax in order to alleviate global warming. Maybe eighth grade ain't what it used to be, but Obama actually said all that crap with a straight face, so I assume he was serious.
     And what do we do about all those people who, from 1960 into 2000, or maybe last week, who told us that air pollution, American air pollution, was the main cause of global warming? What do we do with scientists who are wrong? Who didn't read the tea leaves correctly. Who fudge the numbers, jimmy the system, feed the models with made-up stuff? Who lie? And what do we do ("should be do" is more appropriate) about the politicians and bureaucrats who egg them, and have lured them into this life of scientific apostasy and sin with money, power and fleeting prestige?
     On the issue whether global warming exists now, or ever existed in the past thirty years, there is a majority of scientists who agree it did exist. Around 65% I'm told, but certainly not a consensus, as Henry Waxman allows. But when it comes down to "does it exist now?", that number falls below 50%, for even the most politicized of scientists can't deny the fact that global temperatures have been dropping for nearly a decade. They just simply have to find ways to spin the fact in such a way they can continue to get grant money, which means keeping the political "discussion" (Obama's favorite metaphor for shooting people who disagree with you, as in Iran) moving forward.
     And as we've found out, over the years there has been a lot of scientific cheating going on, such as placing thermometers next to the tailpipe of  '51 Studebakers rather than hanging them in a pine tree in the forest to get a clearer sense of real temperatures. (Computer modeling "scientists" are not like real scientists in that they really don't like having to trudge out into nature to check those things every day. It's more preferred to stop off in an alleyway on the way home from Moe's after a few drams of Guiness.)
     For the longest time, because we believed science was incorruptible and never cheated, no one really double-checked these processes. Now we do.
     At no time was there ever a consensus in the scientific community that global warming is a fact. You don't have consensus until you get into the 90%-95% range of agreement. There is more of a consensus that Al Gore is a fool than his own opinions about global warming.
     So then, let's look at whether global warming, if it existed at all, was man-made. Here the numbers fall into the 25% range, which is a minority, and nothing like a consensus, unless we're only counting left-leaning scientists with no neck.
     From everything from cow farts in Africa to termites in the Brazilian forests, from sunspots to minor variations in the way the world spins on its axis, all natural causes, we've had to come to the conclusion that Man, tops, is responsible for maybe 10%-15% of the world's pollution...and worse, in trying to answer the question whether Man can do anything about it, we have to draw the conclusion that the United States and Europe, even if we returned to an aboriginal state, could only effect about 1% of it...for nothing we do will stop China and India from burning just about everything, Indian brahmas and Masai longhorn from lifting their tails and tooting, Brazilian termites from exhaling as they chew, or that lucky old sun, from still doing what he's always been doing.
     Think about it, we reduced air pollution in the US by 95% between 1970 and 1990, yet worldwide pollution didn't drop more than a degree.
      So let's indict the analysts instead of the users or producers of energy. After all, the people who said air pollution was the major cause of a non-existent global condition (and they were wrong times two) are now telling us it wasn't really air pollution after all but other things that are the real problem, but we should now (keep on) believing them because they are being really diligent in updating old news, even though most of these same folks were telling us in the 70s and 80s that global cooling and new ice age (remember Carl Sagan?), not warming, would be our next environmental catastrophe?
     Yes, I know things would be much better if we resorted to the old biblical practice of throwing prophets over cliffs once they'd proven to be wrong more than once. I'm about to revisit that whole theme, in fact. I have pictures of Mussolini and his lady-friend dancing in my head right now.
     But first, as Shakespeare said, we have to shoot the liars. Well, that's not exactly what Will said, but he was in the ballpark.
     You see, the global warming hoax has been moved along as a long, oft repeated, and easy-to-believe lie. Actually, up and down the political and scientific ladder, more than one lie. And the biggest lie of all was known, "out there" as they say in the press, since Al Gore wrote his first book.

     Last year we opened a website, GreatAmericanZeroes.com where we hoped to hang liars. It hasn't gone very far because, in part, we couldn't keep up with the lies with our small staff. But I wrote an opening essay on the nature of lying, which you may want to look at, as reminder of the types of lies out there.
    Consider lying for a moment. We all know the lie when someone states a thing to be so when he knows it not to be so. That is the ordinary, "Mommy, I didn't take a cookie from the cookie jar" lie. It's the kind of lie that not only Bill Clinton, but any cheating, lying husband would tell his wife when he came home from a business trip with gray slacks with side zipper in his bag instead of his big boy, fly-in-the-front Robert Halls he left with. You know, the think-fast, CYA lie.
    Now, it took awhile to believe Science would engage in that sort of lie, the eye-bulging whopper, in part, because of the peer review system and the Scientific Method, not to mention a rigorous kind of ethics in science lawyers only talk about (and insist on in others in court) but never seem to be able to summon in themselves. But then again, no one ever really considered statistical modeling to be a science, no more than it was a math. Statistical analysis is math every bit as much as Madonna is blond.
    As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damned lies, and Democr...er, nope, Statistics. Statistics was always the brothel where Science and Politics meet on Saturday night in a sleazy hotel just off Baltimore Street. Their off-spring are many...and every one's name begins with "B".
    So, as we're learning, now that we're able to track down some of those little B-is-for-bastards, B-is-for-Bureaucrats, in the global warming presentations over the years, it's stunning just how many of them are lies...falsified studies, reports, skewed result, etc...and most served as the bulwark of the early studies that buttressed global warming theories, especially as input for computer models.
    But still, the far greater lie, and the one Rush Limbaugh allowed to pass with Al Gore back in1992, was the most notorious of lies, and that is when we insist a thing is a fact and 1) we know we can't prove it. At that point it has to be a faith (a religion) or a lie, only a faith can't be disproved either. (I've just given you a short course in the mathematics of lying, by the way.)
    That is the Viral Lie, a lie that would have a life expectancy of less than a minute in ordinary social intercourse, yet is found everywhere in politics...and the courtroom. In both, it is a lie of conscience, a lie of vanity. And today it's catching.
    Now these kinds of lies have for years been associated with the political arena, but when it insinuates itself into the science (also medicine) community, with the seeming "approval" of the Scientific Method, then our entire civilization is at risk, which is a much greater threat than anything a little dirty air can bring about.
    There's a Pulitzer Prize out there for someone who wants to track these Class B lies throughout the global warming debate. And while you're at it, look into second hand smoke, which has already transferred billions from the private to the public sector. For it is the same model, the same scam.

     I'll bet you thought this was going to be a rant about these lies and liars.
     No, it's about those who abide the lies, and a quick inquiry into why allegedly smart people do indeed indulge such lies in others...when it is their sworn duty to resists them.
     The lie of global warming has been out there, growing more twisted for over 16 years, yet, Republicans, most of whom are lawyers, and who are supposed to have at least passed the required Evidence courses and know something of hearsay, primary evidence, secondary sources, what's admissible and what's not, allowed these things to pass without comment for sixteen years!.
     The question becomes, do they, as lawyers or congresspersons, really know anything about lying then? Did they just see all these lies as "evidence" being proffered up by one side of the argument, and when, upon looking around found no one to rebut it, just let it ride? Did they forget that in the adversarial courtroom called Congress it was their duty, their sworn duty, to do the rebutting in the first place?
     Last night's vote was a culmination of twelve years, and yes, I'm including that sainted class of '94, of sitting idly by while a lie as big as Clinton's ego was being floated under the noses of their own constituents, without some much as a "by your leave" in rebuttal.
     You didn't have to be an environmental expert to see this in the plainest of terms. The Enviro-lobby, Al Gore, the entire Democrat party passed whoppers around that a third grader could have spotted. My sons knew how to spot that kind of lie by the time they were twelve.
     So, when the big vote came up last night all Boehner & Co could carp about was tax increases and lost jobs and the general unfairness of having to vote on a law that hadn't even been writ yet. My suggestion; instead of trying to indict a fellow for a tax injustice, why not hang the sumbitch for telling dastardly lies?
     High taxes and lost jobs are not the crime here, they are the punishment, our punishment, not yours, Congressman. The crimes were the lies, the damned lies and statistics we hired you Casper Milquetoasts to expose.
    You didn't just fail. You chickened out....not yesterday, but years ago, sinking a little deeper with each passing year of not calling down thunder on this lie. That's a hook Marxists have used since the 1930s...once you run a dirty smell under a fellow's nose once or twice, and for whatever reason, he doesn't cry "Fart"...he's forever barred from crying "Fart" without losing face, for having missed it the first time. This failure (actually it's an attempt to appear cool) is a vanity just as big as the Al Gore vanity of saying a thing to be so he cannot possibly know to be so...and the Left plays that vanity like a Stradivarius, for it is all build on cowardice.
     The Dems have known they owned the House GOP for 16 years. Always did. Smartest people in the district, my sister's black cat's arse. They're cowards and you can pile all the J.D.'s in Congress on top of another and you still can't build a single spine. Bill Buckley was right, we'd do better by electing Arnie Aardvark out of the phone book to their seat...just anyone with enough sense to spot a confidence man and a pair big big enough to call him on it..
   
      Now you know where I stand. I started this essay out trying to be analytical and now am mad as hell. I need a beer. No, three.
      To hell with just coughing up that chronic whine about lost jobs, taxes and all the other GOP nostrums. These are liars, even criminals, (since that's what liars become when you indulge them long enough) and even if it cost your jobs (it probably will anyway, count on it) stand up and say so. All you have to lose is your job and all you have to gain is your self-respect.
Vassar Bushmills
    
     

     

       The death of the King of Pop yesterday was reminiscent of the death of the Manchu Dynasty in China in 1912 in one major way. With a single stroke, a lot of people who were otherwise engaged in worthless endeavors, suddenly lost their rice bowl.
Bernard Chumm

       First, we should all know that five months ago Mark Sanford knew he was not a rising star in the Republican Party even if we did not. So let that notion go. He knew yesterday had to come at some time, his wife knew, and I suspect, even the rest of his family. I just wish it had been some other tomorrow.
       His reasons for infidelity can range from just being a swinging horn-dog to a loveless marriage built around political careerism. I'll leave that answer to the muckrackers these nest few weeks.
       It's just as well. They say love is a kind of madness, and the sweet aroma of sex to an almost fifty-something certainly is, and there are times and places when a man will risk almost everything, including family and career to bathe...just one last time...in that scented pool in the secret garden.
       Mark Sanford was, probably still is, an able politician with a conservative bent, but true conservative never, and it's best we found this out sooner than later, for in a time of real war against an evil that has set out to destroy the very essence of liberty in this land, a true conservative would have passed on the Latin broad and clung to the cross of Liberty, standing firm at the wall.
       Instead, at a time when all our forces need to marshaled at the barricade, Cap and Trade, health care, Iran, all the marching bands and cheering throngs suddenly stopped and fixed their eyes on Columbia...where they will dutifully remain until all the really serious threats have been safely sneaked past our guard posts.
       With a selfishness that truly does seem to bespeak the era, Mark Sanford couldn't wait...and with impeccable timing...if you're a Democrat....drove a lance into the body of the republic in a maner in which his self-centered little sould could never imagine.
VB
      

    A postscript to my post just a few minutes ago, the White House announced it had rescinded the hot dog offer to Iranian consular officials around the globe.
    Since we're doing  insights today, another good one was gained here on Day 12 of the Green Intifada.
    Known, even congratulated for his wisdom, sense of justice, fairness and righteous indignation, especially as regards the rights of Man, it was none of these things that caused the president to turn away in dismay and disgust and finally withdraw the tongs and fork of civility.
    It was good old public opinion, with a little squeeze from the press...a very little squeeze (Thanks Major Garrett).
    At least we know what really winds his clocks.
    So now it's Business-As-Usual in the Democrat-Obama White House...redux.
    Didn't he promise against that, too?
BC
   
   
  

     We have to ask this question a second time.

     Candidate Obama told us that he wanted to rebuild America's image abroad. Since then he's given the finger to the British Prime Minister, the Queen, the entire British Isles, President Sarkozy, and apparently German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn't like him out of sheer common sense. Respect, repeat, "respect" for Obama is dwindling twice as fast in Europe as it is in Iowa.
     So, did he lie during the campaign? We doubt it. Apparently, candidate Obama didn't give a hoot in hell about our relations with the First World (there's that vaunted doublespeak again). It's the Third World where he wants to repair our sullied image; the Arab street, the Kenyan street, the Indonesian street, etc. But not actually "the street", mind you, for Democrats in general and socialists in particular could care less about better relationships with the man-in-any-street, or "the drones" as they are affectionately thought of in Washington. It's the Petty-Potentate-at-One-UN-Plaza crowd who Obama wants to repair America's sinking image with...as one statist to another. Outside of a few pajama-clad bloggers in Ames, I don't think that's what Iowa voters had in mind either.

     With that in mind, I'm trying to sort out what and who he was talking about by defending his tepid inaction about the bloodshed in Iran at yestderday's press conference.  VB stated correctly that Obama was waiting to "see how things played" in Iran, i.e., to see who wins, and "Hey, guys, the hot dog invitation still stands", while Tehran's streets run red.
     Who was his intended audience in defending this strange (and cowardly, per Vassar Bushmills) statements yesterday? His defense of "appearing not to meddle" was so as to deny Tehran's government from claiming US or CIA or worse, Obama involvement in ginning up the street riots in the first place. Tehran did anyway.
     But to who that mattered?
     Europe had already "meddled" more by decrying the slaughter in tones that befit major players. Who was Obama fearful might be convinced or swayed by this charge of meddling? Not the Iranian people. They already know better. They know their own minds even in the Great One doesn't. We doubt even the Sunni Muslim world ( a huge part of the Arab street) would either, for they don't really like Iran very much, anyway. Those two guys in bathrobes in Ames? A strawman?
     My only guess is Hezbollah in Lebanon. Maybe he's afraid that the Hezbollah street in Beirut and environs will believe this dirty CIA-Obama lie. They might, you know.
     But why?
     Simpatico, or fear?
Bernard Chumm

    Moses Sands said several times that things always come in twos, sometimes threes. Years ago he said that in every fight there are three parties, two sides which are committed, and a third which sort of saunters over to the side waiting to see who's getting the upper hand...or as Mr Obama says, "see how things play out."
    You see, from his point of view it makes no sense to take a side if that side is the one who is more apt to lose. The Left congratulates this position as "pragmatism" when their guy's in charge, but in a world when good finds itself pitted against evil, or liberty against tyranny, this pragmatism is nothing more than cowardice. This isn't the Steelers versus the Colts. It's the planting of a deeply held value into the ground, as a position from which one will not retreat. It is a position of Men, and every American president has had to at least try to fake it, just like sincerity, in order to insure that circle in never broken.
     It's what the townsfolk did when the bandits lined up against the sheriff in High Noon and a hundred other westerns. They were secretly rooting for Gary Cooper, but they didn't want to overly-aggravate the bad guys, either, just in case they should kill off the sheriff. They wanted to put themselves in the position to sidle up to the winner, no matter who it was, so as to secure themselves. Life among average folks usually works out that way.
     This is what weak townspeople do, by the way. A kind of cowardice, not really to be scolded, but rather pitied, it is founded on a lack of experience of looking evil in the eye...and spitting in it, when the situation calls for it. To do so requires not only experience, but the skill to confront confidently...and townspeople usually don't have it.
     So why then does the President of the United States, the putative leader of the Free World, who professes to have none of those shortcomings, and every imaginable "skill" covering his back, amble off to the side like an ordinary frightened citizen?
     Because he is just like them, that's why. He is ordinary, oh so very ordinary...so ordinary he was described by many great authors so many times years before he was born, and today, as then, way, way out of his league, trying to walk among Men.
     I am speaking about Iran, by the way...or am I speaking of much more?
VB

       From the very beginning, we asked the question whether Barack Obama was 1) a true-believing Socialist, (with an edge), 2) a marionette for some unseen puppeteer behind the curtain, or 3) just a another shill for still a different ring of thugs merely out to clean out the treasury...or 4) a combination.
       Can't make up our minds yet, but watch Acorn as it has gone global. It has all the makings of a criminal enterprise that would have sent Ian Fleming or the writers at DC and Marvel Comics reeling. No wonder Jessie Jackson hates Obama. Their target isn't just the American cash box, but the United Nations' as well.
       We still don't know whether Barack is its CEO or just its Ed McMahon (RIP), hawking sweepstakes tickets. Stay tuned.
Bernard Chumm

      If you haven't seen, heard or heard about it, Barbara Boxer, hereinafter never referred to as "Senator" on this site, did a Scarlett O'Hara by requiring a testifying member of the Armed Forces, Brig Gen Michael Walsh to refer to her as "Senator", not "Ma'am" as military protocols require.

      The press, even friendly press, were a bit embarrassed, and laid it off to Boxer's "feistiness" (Left-wing speak for "petulence"). It was much more, however.
      I believe Ms Boxer read Vassar Bushmill's piece last night on the Alpha male, for she did exactly what a Beta does when 1) in a position of power and 2) in the presence of an Alpha-male...she cut him off at the knees as quickly as possible so as to require a kind of public, very public, genuflection to her rank. (Incidentally, The United States Senate is not in the military's direct chain of command.)
      Think back. You've seen this hundreds of times, at college, in the workplace, and always from the same sort of person...always relying (throwing the dice) on the good manners of their victims to let them get away with it. Barbara Walters and her crew on  "The View" did the same thing to Glenn Beck a few days back, and while Beck claims to have taken the high Christian road, we beg to differ. Had he seem the ambush coming (and he should have) he could have sliced and diced those broads...just like Jesus did to Satan in the Wilderness...without one single "shucky-durn" or "H-e-double-toothpicks". In ten seconds he could have turned the entire issue to be about them and their thin (sic) positions.

     It's a sad thing to have to say, but forget Republicans, forget conservatives, but to all honorable men, if you are going to appear in any public venue alongside the ruling elite, you are going to have to adopt the street vigilance of a kid on the lower East Side. Expect an ambush. Prepare for it.

     We all wish Gen Walsh had had the presence of mind to say "No...er, Ma'am" and proceed. There are a dozen ways he could have done so, and left Ms Boxer with her pantyhose down around her ankles.
     First, he would not have been in contempt of Congress had he respectfully declined (and wouldn't Boxer's comeback have been even a more printable moment)? Referring to members of Congress exclusively by that title is not required by either House/Senate rules, nor military protocol. Nor is obliging the single whim of a sitting congressperson.
     Beyond that, and depending on how far he wanted to push the envelope, (he would have first considered whether his bosses in the Pentagon would have backed him up, and/or, whether it was worth being a career-ender), he could have struck a blow for freedom and good manners. How would Sec. Gates have handled a screaming-Mimi Boxer on the phone after the exchange?
     And how about the Republicans on the committee? En masse, they could have risen and with an extemporaneous comment about the obseemly behavior of the woman from California, about-faced and walked out. Yeah, I know, don't look for that anytime soon. I'm quite sure Barbara Boxer could have brought a baby seal into the committee chamber and clubbed it to death with a baseball bat, and the GOP members would simple have looked at one another as if to ask each other whether it was OK to gag on camera. I've seen this among corporate little-leaguers man times..."What to do, what to do!!?"

     Visibly resisting this sort of pompous and aristocratic display isn't just theater. The Pompous Class expect what it seems they always get, total and complete compliance. Sure, maybe Boxer will receive a phone call from Reid later on. But a public resistance, no matter how polite, puts the onus on the offending party, especially the abject teaty-baby Boxer, but also the Dems to come up with a spur-of-the-moment Plan B retort, which they usually don't have. Or they can retreat.
     While we lament the bad manners by Ms Boxer, we regret even more the lack of any show of spine by the real defenders of the offended party (the GOP, not Gen Walsh), while institutions and honor continue to hobble down.

Bernard Chumm

    "I'm sorry, ma'am, er, Madam Senator, but I have to respectfully decline. I know full well how hard you've worked for your title, it's drilled into us daily, and while I've worked very hard as well, I fully appreciate the intellectual differences in our class.
   "It's just that we are are a simple minded lot down here among the citizen-soldiers, and I was summoned here to to answer specific questions about things that are within my expertise, limited as it is. When, as you ask, that I also remember special names all of you require, Your Lordship here, Your Grace there, Lady Bottomly, and others, it clutters this poor mind and I am unable to perform the principle task to which I am assigned. This is why the military granted all of us license to simply refer to you as gentlemen and gentle women, sirs and madams.
   "I hope you will accept my declination of you request as that from a simple soldier, just doing his duty."

 
   
      

    A recent poll (6/17/09) stated more Americans were concerned about the budget deficit than they were the economy, or any other leftist cause. You can look it up.

    This can be significant, for as Moses Sands reminded me about the 1990 Nicaraguan election, when the people threw out the communist Sandinistas. As a way to chide Americans, Moses pointed out that the Nicaraguan people had figured out the fine print of the socialist contract, and rejected it, which he was unsure the American people would even be able to figure out, let alone reject.

    He put it this way:
    The Communists offered the people all sorts of things they'd always been denied, but with strings:
    Education, but you can only read what we say you can read. Si!.
    Better housing, but you can only live where we say you can live. Si!
    Jobs, but you must work where we tell you to work. Si!
    Where do we sign up?
    The fine print, to be disclosed later... Oh, and this contract shall be binding on your children and your children's children.
    No, no, no!

     The deficit, and it's gonna be a whopper, is a contract on our children and our children's children, and it seems the American people are beginning to figure this out.
     VB

   

     In March I wrote here that we should look for there to be a shrinking (bulldozing) of suburbia in order to placate the enviro-mass transit bloc. Smaller cars, yeah. Less sprawl, yeah. More mass transit, a la those pitiful looking electric streetcars you still see plying east European cities, yeah.
     We called it, and you can look for the first Mugabe-Blades (bulldozers) in Flint, Michigan, soon. It's already been declared a success, so look for Phase Two, against less rundown neighborhoods coming to a city near you by 2012.
     Only one question lingers; will Michael Moore come to Flint's aid once again?
VB