PART II:
    When you woke up Wednesday morning you may have been surprised to see it all seemed like business as usual. There were no burning cars in the streets. Regis was still on NBC yammering mindlessly on about how well Kelly looked in her new pumps. Only on 24/7 news stations was there that little afterglow, like a recently de-virgined bride the day after her wedding night. You can expect the media's oral congress given this story to last another 6 weeks, but if you're not a news junkie, things will seem altogether normal.
    And it will be the same on the day after Obama is inaugurated.
    But soon after that things will begin to change. There is actually a plan (we don't know what it is, but have two-three ideas as to how it might play out) and if things are allowed to go according to plan, the changes will be subtle, or least reported to you subtly, as no big deal. That will be the new role of the national media, to pull a veil over
    We report this in three parts. Yesterday we looked at those things that can throw the Plan off course from acts outside the US. Today we look at the soul of socialism.
   
     America becoming a socialist nation is a case of first instance, as the lawyers call it. It's never happened before. So how we will navigate the seas of socialism will be a work in progress. To be sure, we've had some heavy doses of socialism since the New Deal, in the 1930s (only we didn't know it) just as we had some smaller doses of fascism in the early 1900s (according to some history revisionists) where, once again, we never knew it. But we've never had the Full Monty.
    But first a little background, especially since part of the game that is about to unfold will be based on 1) how many people know what socialism is but don't like it, 2) but do like it, 3) how may people don't know anything about socialism but heard it was bad because they heard their daddy say something about it at the dinner table, 4) how may people don't know anything about socialism but don't care as long as the check's on time, or a black man is finally in the White House, or Dick Cheney finally gets his, 5) how many people believe they're  finally going to get to go over and kick their rich neighbor's behind, or 6) how many would change their minds if we called it "communism" instead of "socialism".
    Once upon a time we were run by kings, and a lot of Americans died to be free of that king, but rather than just hang enemies (or chop off their heads) those early Americans sat down and crafted documents listing what the king had done wrong, and why, in God's nature,  it was fit an proper to rise up in arms and throw him out. Once done, many of those same men then crafted a document that established principles by which they chose to live by and govern themselves. They were built on the freedom of the individual and reciprocity with his neighbors, and the limitations on government, especially its powers to interfere with those men's private lives.
     I know you know all this, but this is no longer commonly accepted, much less approved history in America. If you know these things, and you are under 40, you probably learned it somewhere other than school. Even a lot of kids in college don't know this simple stuff.
     The ideal of freedom is as ancient as Man, but it has never been expressed as well as those men who crafted the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. What probably has never been taught well enough in school or at home is that this new ideal of freedom was always considered to be a bad thing in many parts of the world and parts of our own society. For one, clearly nations with a history of royalty and aristocracy don't like the idea of common men and women managing their lives without their oversight. Even among men who became rich by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, many become so full of themselves they believed what they had accomplished could first be bottled, then second, force-fed to others...at a price, of course. Elitism and wannabe-elitism.
      Karl Marx, however came at this kind of elitism from a different route. But he was no more, no less an elitist than JP Morgan. He hated what European capitalists were doing to their workers. You would, too, come to think of it, but German capitalism never quite caught on in America. For one, some of our finest engineers in 1890 were Germans who came here to escape it, just like Indian engineers come here today to avoid India's political "merit system". But Marx never saw this. He never had a chance to see American capitalists go through their paces, which totally invalidated many of his most solid "laws" of how capitalism worked. Marx missed entirely how middle management "added value", or how through stock markets ventures turned into risks that earned rewards when they succeeded. Marx never understood risk. Marx missed entirely how money was actually created in American capitalism, especially by the middle class. Marx only saw the middle class as petty bourgeoisie; retailers and middle man brokers, who he generally associated with Jews...who he also despised. He saw the middle class as adding price without adding value. He was wrong. In fact, American capitalism totally repudiated Marxism from the git-go...except at the university, where, unless you haven't been paying attention, they all, even the good ones, produce nothing except better minds who do.
      Karl Marx missed it, but being an elitist, he would never have been able to admit this, even to himself. But his error was not based of miscalculating the technical aspects of capitalism (Das Kapital is a dreary read, one of the few books we suggest Cliff's Notes as a preferred substitute.). Marx's central error was in his general disdain for the proletariat (the working classes) he said he hoped to see raised up...to his level. (In a kindly, narcissistic way, I think he actually meant it. although, in much the same way the French say to be French is to be francaise.). Marx believed he could design a type of government that would some day raise the working classes up to be more like him, in harmony with their intellectual potential, where one they too could all sit in a coffee house debating the topics of the day, never stopping to seriously wonder just who it would be that would be cutting the coffee bean, grinding it, setting the table, laying in the glass windows, sweeping the floor, and finally cleaning up after he'd gone home. Like his counterparts today, Marx never stopped to think where his physical world ever came from in the first place. He never stopped to think where the mental acumen to create a simple bar of soap, and the need for it, came from.
      But at a more personal level, he never stopped to think that of the hundreds of people who actually knew him, not to mention the millions who didn't, not one ever wanted to be like Karl Marx. For you see, no one liked him. He was an arse...and we've found this to be the case with most socialists as they wind their way through academe and the bureaucracy. They are very unlikable and come into puberty with a Them versus Us attitude fully developed.
     So it figures, Marx's suggestion, called communism, became an instant hit with people just like him, especially in universities around Europe. They were all intellectual prigs, arrogant losers anyway, who assumed, because they couldn't get a date with the Homecoming Queen it was because they were oh, so very smart...instead of being just oh, so very boorish. The great irony here is that Marx hoped to create a society built on true equality and harmony, but in order to get there it required a government built on massive layers of bureaucracies, almost completely armed with minions whose greatest hatred were for the same coarse, brutish masses (the working class) they were charged with elevating and saving...and who always seemed to get the girl. You can't get there from here.
     Consequently, in America, men and women who actually went out and built a thing, or worked for men who built things, a business, a hotel, a car, a bridge, a highway, etc, etc, etc, by 1890 found war being made against them on two fronts. Every generation has had its nouveau riche who believed they had a better idea about how men's lives could improve, but once they wrote the book the mood usually passed. A few moved onto Congress. We also had our Leona Helmsley's and John Kerry's (the mere spouses of others who built things...or with Kerry, the spouse of a spouse, which is as close to gigilo as Senate rules will allow); Lady and Sir Disdain. But then came this rising tide of ne'er do well bureaucrats, professors, and other clip board carriers, who bore a deep seated resentment, a la, Karl Marx for people they considered to be beneath them in intellect and perception, but who nevertheless, always seemed to make more money, drive bigger cars, find time to play golf, go fishing, laugh, and get a date with the Homecoming Queen. Damn their eyes! There has to be something wrong with any system  that allows this sort of fundamental unfairness exist and persist, where the boobs have all the fun. After 100 years this has turned into a sort of pathological narcissism, and as we wrote in these pages earlier, has now become part of a consensus majority in America.
       Trust me, there is a difference, although often hard to see, between say John Kerry and true socialists in America. This is why we predict some interesting internal struggles in this New Messianic Era that would be fun to watch, if only we could.  But we doubt we'll be able to, and, unlike tell-all books when administrations end, those sorts of squabbles usually are not reported until the whole regime falls, which may take 40-70 years, if at all.
       Socialism at its heart is all about getting even  about fundamental unfairnesses in society, not the economy, and while it pretends to elevate, it demeans...everyone... to the lowest common denominator to a kind of suffering you may not be familiar with and which we will spell out in Part III. Socialism is and always has been about the rule of the many by a select few, and this is where, for awhile at least, 1-2 generations, there will be common ground between the John Kerry's of the America and the brown shirts of thug socialism.
BChumm
    

    PART I:
    When you woke up Wednesday morning you may have been surprised to see it all seemed like business as usual. There were no burning cars in the streets. Regis and Kelly were still on NBC yammering mindlessly on about how well yellow underwear look on fat women. Only on 24/7 news stations was there that little afterglow, like an ex-virginal bride the day after her wedding night. You can expect the media's oral congress given this story to last another 6 weeks, but if you're not a news junkie, things will seem altogether normal.
    And it will be the same on the day after Obama is inaugurated.
    But soon after that things will begin to change. There is actually a plan (we don't know what it is, but have two-three ideas as to how it might play out) and if things are allowed to go according to plan, the changes will be subtle, or least reported to you subtly, as no big deal. That will be the new role of the national media, to put mustard on your shite sandwiches.
    We report this in two parts. First, we look at those things that can carry the more peaceful plan completely off-course, for short of a national uprising, they will be things external to the US, things beyond Obama's administration to control.
     Interestingly, we see Hugo Chavez, not Israel as potentially the greater fly in Obama's ointment. I say this because Chavez feels some sort of socialist comradeship with Obama, but trust me, left wing Dem's in Washington will have no truck with hoi polloi, no matter how socialist their rap. Right now, Chavez is making nice with Russia in a gold deal to bolster Moscow's banks (receipts are off), not understanding that while his own animus is toward the old America, about to pass, and not the new emerging America, Russia's beef is with the USA. Period. No socialist will ease the animus felt by the old Russian guard for America. Chavez will feel the squeeze, and Obama is most likely to dis Chavez at exactly the wrong time.
     To better understand this, the Clinton's were hegemonists, but were unable to execute a global plan. The world was supposed to have been split into spheres of influence, China getting Asia (yes, not just Taiwan, but also Japan and South Korea would eventually have been sacrificed of the altar of this scheme), Russia getting Central Asia, including the Middle East, Europe getting to die the slow cancerous death it is already engaged in, the US getting the western hemisphere, and the United Nations getting Africa.
     An old World War I political idea conceived by the French, and (I thought) long ago proven to be pretty stupid (which may explain why Madelaine Albright embraced it) the Russians like it, the Chinese like it, the UN likes it, and the Europeans I think, are pretty much out of the loop. There are two major components of hegemonism that made it palatable to American Democrats both then, and now. First is that America would abandon mideast oil, under the still startling illusion that we could run our country's fuel needs on windmills and stagnant stump water, and never once have to drill another hole anywhere in the earth's crust. But wait! There is much truth to this analysis if you stop to consider that under a far more strident socialist regime than the Clintons imagined, if the political elites and their select friends (and no one else) will have any need for motor fuel. This is now doable, though not without a lot of pain. Calvera the Bandit, (Al Gore) especially will be pleased to see 30%-40% of the cars taken off the road, and not one of them his.
    The second part of this new hegemonism is that America and Europe would cede most of their interantional military planning over to the UN. It would be the UN's duty, not multi-lateral pacts such as we now see in Iraq and Afghanistan, to muster troops and shuttle them off to the world's hotspots. (Feel better now?) NATO would be dead, pleasing Russia, who's never had any evil intentions toward Europe anyway, and most of all, hundreds of billions in defense funds could be transfered over to domestic needs back home. This would include shifting men, materiel and dollars into the new national police force (Americorps) a concept I don't think the Clintons ever enteratined. Obama will have his Praetorian Guard, Stormentruppen, Janissaries. Whatever.The good news is that profiteering defense contractors won't really mind who's driving their tanks, and who they're being aimed at. (see Part II)
    The Afgan war will continue, but it will be fought with absolutely no intention of winning. Obama will hunt for Osama in much the same way OJ hunted for his ex-wife's killers. Afghanistan is the perfect contrived Vietnam, a no-win terrain (after Petraeus is fired), but one where the few remaining patriots in America can feel we are still looking for a final reckoning for 9/11. Afgahnistan will be the bone Obama throws to the American people. But what if Pakistan nukes Waziristan, thus killing everone, including a few bad guys? Or, what if the Taliban steals a nuke and blows Amedabad off the map? These are problems. And I doubt if Obama has a Plan B.
    Then, finally, there is Israel and Iran. We've mentioned this before, but should Iran take any provocative action, publicly or privately, Israel will likely test Obama's new Secretary of State only once. One he/she drops the ball, they will act alone, possibly thrusting the whole region into an Armagedon of biblical proportions. Why? That region, remember, belongs to Russia, under the "hegemony pact.". It is likely that Obama will not confront Russia, who will almost assuredly side with Iran. Americans will sit here dumbstruck, depending on how the news is presented to us, if at all, wondering why we have abandoned Israel or alternately, what it was that made Israel turn so "bad". It won't be long then before Iraq will fall to the forces of Islamo-facsism, and, after all appropriate retribution has been exercised (1-2 million dead), the middle east and Russia in full fascist handshake. Or, worse, what if the people of Iran take to the streets, and the Army sides with them?
     Like Cambodia, no American will stand in the well of history for yet another million or so deaths for no other reason than the puny pursuit of freedom. But the pacific plan for socialization may jump the track early. And often.
     Next time, three domestic scenarios.
Bernard Chumm

   After years of hearing screams from the right calling for this, won't it be ironic that the first trials for treason since the 1940s will occur during the Obama administration?
   Look for it, only the charges will titled something else.
   Funny, too, is that Rush Limbaugh may be among the first. He hated the Clinton Administration, but had an aw shucks about Bushel Britches, the individual. But he is already taunting Obama. I think he really dislikes him and it is visceral; the arrogance, the snobbery, the phoninesss.
   We'll see. Just watch your top knot, Rush.
Chumm
  

     Barack Obama openly chided the pursuit of self interest in national politics. Of course, it's a lie, for when you take from Peter, even if he is a selfish pig, to give to Paul, you are simply feeding another's self-interest.
     The second cardinal rule of the Constitution is that the government keep men from having power over their neighbor's house, and vice versa. Instead, for years now, government has actively pursued taking from one man's House to give to another's. It is the deepest knife wound in the heart of the Constitution, and to cover up the crime, the act has been turned into a kind of religion. Sadly, during two years of campaigning, we never heard this crime exposed for what it is by any candidate!
     After posting (last night) my brief piece on Limbaugh's fight to revive conservatism, and my plan of action, I got a phone call from a friend who asked about how we could replicate in the laboratory, so to speak, what existed in nature during the first generation of the Republic. Moses Sands always struggled with this, for he knew that the idea of building and owning and passing on one's own House was second nature to the men and women of America in 1800. He worried, once it's lost, and we all agree, with over 50% Americans, it is lost (and with many more, the blueprints damn near unreadable), how can you re-inject it into the national bloodstream?
     We all agree you can't do this with contrived "programs", for in time, they take on the qualities of cancer themselves, no matter what their purpose. By spinning off a natural aspect of our free society, i.e, schools that had at their heart the desire to replicate, generation after generation, the same set of core values and spontaneous qualities of liberty, and get them to childrten early enough, I believe they will re-ignite that thirst for the House and Liberty, for, as Moses Sands often said, they are natural to the innermost desires of men and women worldwide. Even today people migrate here and immediately take upon themselevs the new blueprint without one look back as to why they could never have done the same thing in Mexico...or Germany. We see all the time, in the small business sectors of Russia and east Europe all sorts of people who have condensed free markets and liberty to the lowest common denominators and moved forward in whatever fashion their still-authoritarian governments will allow. They do business much as the Irish might have done on the sidewalks of New York in 1896. It is very energetic, and very free. But they have no time to wait for an enabling Constitution. They just do it, sort of in the same sense of our own forebears, knowing that there will eventually come along some high-minded men and women who will put their quests to paper and make a true Constitution out of it. That's what we call "trickle up" democracy.
        All men and women live according to self interests. The American culture c1787 was a spontaneous democracy, shaped by the pursuit of self-interest by moral men with a common purpose and reciprocal understandings about their relationships with one another, especially what they could not do to each other. (There's those negative liberties again.)
        Pop culture has simply re-directed self-interest toward the appetites of citizens. Hedonism. This is why of all the threats to the 1st Amendment, we've believed commercial advertising to be the among the most sinister. But we think this is also intentional, with the consequences of seeing citizens deflected from pursuing the real purposes of their lives, building their House, to pursuing their appetites. There are all sorts of great political benefits when this can be achieved.
        To combat this requires a concerted action plan, for there will be no spontaneous revival, as the radio talk show titans such as Limbaugh and Beck suggest. Being a better person won't cut it. Praying harder won't work, either. It will take some concerted action. As we've stated all along, what we've seen defeat us is a well executed plan, and well paid for. Almost any Russian could look at the last 10 years in internet politics and describe for you the chessboard as George Soros might have laid it out. (With them, it's a gift.) The good news is, we've argued, you can undo much of it for a fraction of what Soros paid to build it.
        We still think much of it can be undone, but as of Tuesday, the hill just got steeper. And when control is actually gained on January 20, if a plan is not in place by then, well......
VB
    
    

       A couple of days ago, Rush Limbaugh stated that the day after election day, he would begin rebuilding conservatism.
But can he? Can it be done?
       We've been writing about this for nearly eight years now (Moses Sands and myself), then on this weblog about one year (with Bermard Chumm) and have opened a website, The Sands Institute for the Constitution and The Common Man (thesandsinstitute.org). We've been harping about the failure of the Constitution's Protectors (conservatism), including the talk show titans, as well as sending out warnings about the rising demographics that favor the Left, especially with their control of public education, and their permissiveness in the popular culture.
        We introduced Commie Math some months ago that laid out the demographics that just won the presidency for Obama (with a little help from his friends at ACORN). It joined the old Democrat coalition of elitists and client-sector voters, making up about 30% of the electorate with a growing new segment, almost half of the nation's college students, ne'er-do-well, pottie-mouthed layabouts (le Lazarons) raised only by their mothers. Together they may well be over 50% of the voting population.
        Elitists will always be socialist in any free economy that is built on the common man and woman's right to build and own their own House and business. Elitists think it unfair that such a large pool of people be free of their management. Lawyers and college professors some to mind. And people who are on the receiving end of the state's largesse are bought-and-paid-for socialists. That sector also continues to grow, as in the intention of politicians.  Finally, conservatives have been tardy in learning the obvious, that women are born socialists unless they can join with a man in the common enterprise of building and passing on their House to the next generation. This is what the institution of marriage brings to culture and to constitutional politics. It is a sine qua non of liberty. The fambly. Popular culture has redefined all this, in that casual sex, infidelity and other appetites are encouraged. Therefore the chances of any marriage surviving is diminished with each generation, now almost 50%. Do the math. 50% of the voterkinder out there were raised only by Moms, so when they finally turned 18, they vote as Mom votes, as dumbed-down socialists. Some are angry, too, we've found.
        Many years ago Moses Sands said that American politics is dominated by women without men (and now their children) and men without willies. And they are more likely to vote. Unless we can turn this around in the culture, there will be no conservative counter-revolution. Forget that socialism will fall under the weight of its own shite in another 50 years. It won't be conservatism or the Constitution that will replace it.
        So, can conservatism come back when it may well be in the minority now, with no real signs as to how it can take that position back?
         We agree with Mr Limbaugh that the Constitution must be saved. Indeed, above all things, the Constitution must be saved, if for only posterity and other peoples somewhere else. But America herself may be lost, at least for a generation or three. But, since Limbaugh still has that fire in his belly, and there isn't anywhere else I'd rather be than in the middle of a good old shilelagh fight, why not hang around and use what stick I can?
         But let's do this to win. And win with finality.
         Ceding the national vote to the Left for possibly 3-4 cycles, there still is much that can be done at the lower levels of power. Unlike Obama, who believes wealth should trickle up, we believe political power should trickle up, and wealth down. So, the two things that need to be reshaped are public education and the integrity of the American family, both of which are joined at the hip.
         First there is the problem of public schools, where the values of building the House and self-reliance are no longer reinforced in the classroom. In fact, they are derided. American history is jeered, the Constitution played down, basic economics expelled, and science is taught with Al Gore films. Yes, there's home-schooling, but the Left doesn't fear home-schoolers now, mainly because there are so few of them. We believe a wholesale walkout of say 20%-30% of public school children opting for more streamlined, hardcore curricula of the 3 R's (not Respect, Respect, and Respect as I recently saw on a middle school bulletin board) plus American history and government taught with enthusiasm could be the shock needed.
         And ethics too! We believe that even in a secular, non-parochial setting fundamental and universal ideals of right and wrong (ethics) can be taught, and if taught early enough can re-shape society within a generation.
         School choice has been around a long time, but we believe it's time for citizens to quit asking states and school boards for permission and just start building their own schools. Build them and they will come, including some single moms and people from the client sector. Mommie-politics begins to fail when those "other kids" getting the better education.
         You can see why holding fast in the Senate and House can mean so much. 43 committed senators can buy America the time it needs.  But the state has its weapons, too, as we noticed in Tennessee, where they've proposed denying state jobs to home-schooled graduates. Since the private sector will constrict the next several years in favor of public sector jobs (that's how the socialists do it) we may be asking parents to undertake great risks, but I think they will if they can see a light at the end of the tunnel, their political power growing locally and the popular culture turned around. They must see a link between local political gains and state and national changes.
         If held fast, in time, we could see divorce rates fall, replaced by a more conventional morality. We believe many of the voting 20-somethings will drift away from the Left anyway, as they grow older, thus creating a little squeeze on the Commie demographics in only a few years.
         Moreover, while the Left may control national elections, their power will diminish at the state, district and local levels. This is true trickle-up democracy and will replicate what our forefathers found in nature in the first generations of the Republic.
         I'm sure Mr Limbaugh can think of many other things that need to be done, but if we can't reverse public schooling and the one parent home, forget it. We've been working on curricula for 4th and 9th and 12th grade American government and history classes that return children to a world of heroes, not demons. Let's get it out there. And when they are 18, they will vote with those sensibilities. When they are 30 or 40 a few may feel like trying public service. God knows our county government here could use a few of those kids now. And there are at least 50 congressional districts that could use a coat of spic-n'-span.
        But that's how it works. That's how you go about restoring constitutional conservatism to the political base.
Vassar Bushmills

       

    Remember how the deft, nimble fingered Robert Mugabe took the breadbasket of Africa and turned it into a basket case?
    It seems with the release (only this weekend?) of comments by Obama  made in January, that he intended to bankrupt energy companies that used coal fired plants and that he expected (intended?) electricity prices to skyrocket.
    You can imagine the results, with even more foreclosures as people can no longer afford to heat their houses. This is strident stuff. Tough love?
    If such results are intended, as I suspect they are, there are only two possible reasons...1) he is incredibly stupid, aka Chauncy Gardiner or 2) as committed a Marxist as Lenin was...a Marxist that even Pelosi and Reid will not be able to bear. Maybe we need to relook at the Fannie Mae/Sub-Prime crisis that wrecked the economy at just the right time. Could that have been intended, too?
    Get ready to reap the whirlwind, for it is the time of the Quickening.
B Chumm

      We recommended this book some weeks ago, and suggest you visit Amazon.com where, trust me, it may not be available this time next year.

     Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945 by William Allen

      Read it, then pass it around. If Obama wins, it's time to start tittying your cards. A thing we learned in the Soviet Bloc, even twenty years later, is that no one trusts government, and no one, no one, talks about personal insights, especially business, in front of anyone who can do them harm. This is good rule for you, too.

      In our little series about things that happen when socialism gets in control, we mentioned only a few days ago that it seemed the Obama socialists were pushing the red flag a little prematurely. Obama seems to be convinced that enough Americans are comfortable with it, ambivalent or just plain stupid about it, that he can carry the top even while admitting it. But there is the "speech" thing. As we remind people, this is not sweet, gentle Denmark. What the Obamailis are about is getting even. So expect a socialism with an edge, so to speak.
     Today three reporters from newspapers that made editorial endorsements of McCain were tossed from his plane. No big deal, unless you square that with this: the black balling and public trashing of reporters who have asked especially tough question of Obama and Biden.  And there's the use of state computers to dig up dirt on Joe the Plumber. (Will anyone go to jail for that? Not if Obama wins.) Finally, just today, there's the release of Prop 8 supporters' names in California, who've suddenly found people carrying placards in their front yard, yelling "Bigots" or somesuch. Gays are overwhelmingly Obamailis, and have much to get even about, it seems, especially that it has taken a thousand years for them to finally be able to redact those portions of the Bible they don't like. It's about time.
     So, in the new, "changed" America , expect the right of free speech to disappear first. This includes the internet, and places such as this blog website. It's easy unless we all start communicating in Yiddish. I say this, because in Germany Jews had their own inside-speak to talk within earshot of bad guys but never tipping them off. If Chinese dissidents had only learned to speak and write in Navajo, Yahoo would never have been able to rat them out.
     We've warned you all, there will be no do-overs if Obama wins. You will find a slippery slope of reduced ability to communicate around the country. We've long supported fighting the pottie mouths from the dailyKos, et al, face to face (sort of) but not banning them. Once in power, they won't play as fairly. Even in casual conversation, e.g, having a beer with your pards, you'll find others staring at you quizzically if you say something political that strays from received wisdom. Cool it. No, you won't go to jail. But you may find yourself looking for a new job. Or, if gays in California have their way, going off to camp for a month-long re-education.
     Get ready for it, or defeat it before it starts.
Blakely

    The point is you can't.
    I know, you can't watch the game without knowing the Players and you can't tell the Players without a program. Well, there won't be one, and that's the point anyway, you're not supposed to be able to watch the game. It's all very secret, as security is a major driving force of socialism...even in Sweden. After twenty years, they're still going through millions and millions of files just to find out who was and was not Stasi in old East Germany. In communist regimes it's the names that don't appear in files that usually run things.
    Let's start from the beginning. How many committed socialists does it take to run a country the size of the US? Probably less than a few thousand. It takes even fewer, as we're seeing now, to actually obtain power. The rest are hirelings or useful idiots.
    In the USSR app 6% of the population were Communist Party members, but over half of those were farmer and industrial workers. Their only party duties were to rat out whispers they picked up on the production lines. Their powers were none, except to vote a member forward to represent them.
    The rest were apparatchiks, people who worked for the state in some capacity, not unlike Federal and State Employees, only in the US they're called a "union". Unlike industrial unions, who still have strong pro-American sentiments among the members, the state employee unions and teachers unions are true apparatchiks and generally hold their positions and their role in government above that of the common weal of the people they serve as laid out in the Constitution. Out here in fly-over country they are also called "skirt unions" They comprise the greatest political weight in American labor today, and decidedly are bent toward socialism. It is their rice bowl.
    It is the world of the apparatchik that people vie for higher and higher positions in government, layer upon layer, thus proving the Peter Principle that in such hierarchies, people tend to move up to their own level of incompetence. For now, and the past forty years or so,  lawyers move up faster in this world, since they wrote the guide lines.
    Thinning the field still further, and highest among the apparatchiks were what the Soviets called the nomenklatura, who were the insiders of their system. Of approx 300 million, we're now down to a few hundred thousand. But even they were not necessarily Players, since apparatchiks and the nomenklatura usually see government as a means to personal ambition, especially when there is little opportunity anywhere else. (You will see this same process; an acceleration of the best, brightest and most ambitious in America moving to the government sector in the coming years. The private sector, especially small business will be marginalized, as it is in say, Kenya.) Behind the ambition of the nomenklatura is a relatively small army of true believers, who move pieces around as on a chess board. They hold the keys to true policy in the country. The rest are just go-fers.
    In global politics, of course, the USSR couldn't keep the US, Britain, France and China, etc from constantly probing into who the real Players in the USSR were. We spent billions trying to find out, just as, after January 20, 2009, France, Britain, Russia and China will beging spending billions trying to find out the same thing about us. You see, the first thing that falls when socialism arises is a curtain. With Russia, Churchill proclaimed it to be iron, but it could also just be a dark bedsheet. That remains to be seen, but in either case, all transparency in government ceases. To the tiniest, lowest appratchik, everyone knows that his rice bowl depends on secrecy. The one true thing we know, though, is that no one inside in the USSR ever knew who the Real Players were. Not even other Players.
    Except, in the USSR we generally knew one sure Player, and that was the head of the Communist Party, who usually also headed the government. He was always elected by the leading party members. Gorbachev ruined everything because arguably, he was not a committed Communist (in our view) but rather a very skilled and able member of the nomenklatura. He was the sucker-fish that escaped the seine net.

    How this will play out in the US is interesting, for we believe that you shouldn't look for the major names in the Democrat Party to be among the leading Players of this new government. We're not even sure Obama is, for there are clearly handlers behind him. He may be The One, driving this engine himself, but he may also be just a Chauncey Gardiner. Time will tell.
    For instance, the Clinton's weren't Players although they would consider this an insult. They were merely very successful members of the nomenklatura, who, like the vast majority of party membership in Russia, chose that track to stardom because for one, it didn't require a whole lot of real work to succeed. They were pursuing their own self interests in a playing field suited for the bright, ingenious and the lazy. Social concerns were the farthest from the minds. But you can also see, the great failing of any hierarchical system, socialism especially, but also big business of late, is the fast track accorded to those who can best fake sincerity to the party line. To the Clinton's, and many senior members of the Democrat Party, leftism has simply been a means to a self-aggrandizing end....a cush life of (sic) "public service" with which they can manage other men's lives and never be held to the same rules they impose on others. The mindset is not that of service, but rather of aristocratic privilege.
   We actually foresee several struggles early on in an Obama administration, both with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, neither of which we believe to be smart enough to be Players. To be sure, we're not sure the Speaker or Senate Leader will ever be Players, but we do know they will be installed by them, so that switcharoo at least would be fun to watch...only, with transparency gone, we'll never know the inside game, which means we don't think there are any real Players inside the mainstream media. News will turn more and more titillating, heavy on the T&A in fact, and less insightful (reading up on some old Pravda rags would help teach you as to what will and will not be "seemly" to print in coming years), the surviving media companies being those who recognize who's filling their rice bowls. They will all be agents of the government, although the shaking out will take a few years. It's the Players who are right now drawing up the X's and O's as to how that will be done.
   We consider some people inside ACORN to be Players. We also consider Bill Ayers to be a Player, but not Wright or Farrakhan. Soros may well be a Player, for this is the sort of rubic's game he likes to play.
   Beyond that, it's a crap shoot. But I'd say, if you want to make some money, set up tontines and start taking bets now as to who will be Players and who will not. Then shoot for a 2075 pay-off date, once the files are thrown open. Somebody's grandkid could be rich.
BChumm
  
   
 

    We've concluded  that Joe Biden's slip of the tongue about a great test of Obama means a specific, and generally understood by insiders, probability; i.e., a likely scenario of Israel preemptively attacking Iran if two things happen, 1) Obama wins (which will take until mid-January to be set into stone) and then 2) Iran does something provacative, either publicly or clandestionely. They are not likely to do this while GW still sits in the White House.
    But Biden went onto say that America would think he had decided the wrong thing and it would take awhile for American's to understand this. In other words, Obama will side with Iran.
    Plausible? Possible? Probable?
    Answer: Yes, Yes and leaning Yes.
    New found evidence of a close relationship between Rashid Khalidi, former spokesman for Arafat and the PLO, as well as a long and documented history of anti-Israel writings cements these leanings. Obama is currently succeeding in suppressing video proof of this relationship, and we wonder why, since no major news organization would air it anyway. But his success in suppressing it says volumes about which side a Pres Obama would choose should Israel and Iran clash.
    Moreover, there has been the fund-raising going on for Obama inside the Gaza Strip (we saw our first story on this during the primaries) and God knows where else in PLO-Hezbollah land. And we also know he is receiving money covertly from those territories, just as Bill Clinton did from Communist China (and he sure paid them back in spades), among the almost $200M un-detailed
donations Obama has received so far. And then there's Louis Farrakhan, who's declared Obama to be either the Messiah or the herald of the Messiah, we're not sure.
    If you pour enough meat into any stew it will define the stew; not the carrots, not the onions, not the potatoes.
We think there's enough anti-Jewish meat here to call it what it is.
Bernard Chumm

  Tonight, Barack Obama is doing what we suggested some weeks ago the titans of talk radio should do, buy 30 minutes of prime time television and make a statement.
   In fact, I wonder, since the Fairness Doctrine has not yet been re-enacted, if the major networks would even allow it. And what about McCain-Feingold?
   Well, that at least is one non-issue, since I know I could, so better scribes certainly could also, put together a 30-minute celebration of the Constitution, American exceptionalism and an explanation of just how socialism works once in power, and how it almost always stays in power 2-3 generations once in power, how it drains pocketbooks and spirit, etc...and never mention Obama even once.
   Isn't it funny that just as we are turning towards it, many Euro countries are turning away from it, having already ceded almost all national identity, and going broke in the process? Their 60 years is up, and they are entering the final phase of degradation...and they know it. For once, God bless the French for having figured it out first.
   Obama has almost proudly (arrogantly) begun to strut his socialist stuff, so it begs comparison with what we were and once had, and no McCain-Feingold law will ever be broken. The message would be clear. Everyone who watched would then could away with a clear choice. And that's all we can ask in these waning days, that everyone know clearly and concisely what they are voting for, for they will find, if they vote wrong, there will be no do-overs in four more years.
   What a show it would be, too, Mr Limbaugh. If this is to be the last free vote in America for three generations, at least there will be a lasting video record out there on the samizdat network, to be hidden away, kept in the back of a drawer, amidst underclothes, and pulled out from time to time so the children might know of what once was in America, then passed on as a treasure as so many millions of mothers in East Europe passed on their silver crucifixes, until that day when they would be brought out and worn again.
   It's a thought.
   Vassar Bushmills
  

   St George made a good point in his analysis of the Bachmann hanging at greatamericanzeroes.com.
   In short, one can not be both a socialist, even a milquetoast Swedish socialist, and also be pro-American in any historical and constitutional sense. Liberty as we have known it has to be "changed", as does the Constitution have to be rewritten so that all we will have is a document carrying the same name, but about as linked to the original piece as a candy cane will be if it named the new symbol of Christmas.
    We already know Obama understands this. His words have spoken loud and clear. And his socialism is not of the innocent Scandinavian variety. His, as has always been his colleagues', is a "get even" socialism, which is why so many layabout college kids support him. It will not be pretty.
    But, unlike most of our missives here, we'll open the floor to comment. We may join in.
VB

    Earlier today, http://greatamericanzeroes.com/ "hung" Rep Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn) for telling the truth then recanting, an especially egregious crime in these waning days of liberty.  Below is St George Frederick's explantion:

    We've never hung a person then recommended her re-election at the time, but when one speaks a truth, then recants, what else can we do?
    The facts: On Oct 17 Rep Bachmann appeared on Chris Matthews Hardball, and being pressed said that modern liberals are anti-American. Of course, she was wrong...for perhaps 10% of modern American liberals, but the logic is clear...one cannot be both a socialist and pro-American in the historic constitutional sense. Socialists are by definition anti-Constitution and therefore, anti-American.      
    She was right. And she was even proved right when the same people who have carried out some of the most vicious McCarthy-ite attacks over the last several years, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber only recent demonstrations, accused her of McCarthyism for advocating the public lashing back at the mainstream media (which we wholeheartedly agree) for the lies they have purveyed in this.           
    The sad thing is she quickly recanted and has spent the last week or so apologizing for saying what is true.
    She is a craven coward.
    But there are bigger, much bigger things at stake in this election; the salvation of the Constitution, and at least one more free election 2-4 years hence, among them. Therefore we recommend that the people of the 6th District re-elect Rep Bachmann...                          

    ...then quickly look for a replacement in 2010 primary, once she has been safely sworn in. 
    Congresswoman Bachman is a type, not very different from Katherine Harris of Florida or the current Secretary of State of Ohio, who in four years will either be in jail or seeking her own Congressional term. She is as shallow as a pool of warm spit and as ambitious as a pickpocket in Khartoum.
    We can't know her heart, but believe her personal vanities and ambitions far outweigh any deep seated reverence for America or the U S Constitution. Too bad, but her type needs to removed from public office, at every level...only not to be replaced by anti-American socialists.
St George Frederick

     We were supposed to only know about the Marxist connection of Obama and several members of the Democrat Party leadership after the election. But Barack's slip with Joe the Plumber made the redistributive aspects of socialist out for all to see.
     The Obama campaign faced a crucible of sorts, 1) to deny, deny, deny (which in select markets, i.e., older folks, they have, sort of) or say, what the hey, America's ready for this "change". Besides, in Obama double-speak that's exactly what he's been talking about all along. Almost all of Obama's lingo has a double-meaning if you look for it.
     It seems in many quarters, especially the under-40 crowd, there was a certain amount of ambivalence about socialism. For one, McCain underplayed the Bill Ayers connection, the same with ACORN. He went after both for the wrong sins. So it seems the Obama crowd seems to be riding high (and dirty) with a new found sense of relief that at least to a lot people, they no longer have to lie.
     I remain constantly amazed at how poorly the message is getting out as to just exactly what happens when socialists get in control, what they must "confiscate" in order "re-distribute" wealth for instance, or the jobs that must shift from the private sector to the public sector, and most of all, what socialist do to make sure the people can't so easily throw them out office once buyer's remorse sets it, two or three years hence. It will take three generations to undo it. And yes, if you think Ol' Betsy over the mantle will fix it, think again. They have a plan for that too.
    Blakely
    

    Does anyone remember Edward G Robinson's character Dathan in "The Ten Commandments"? He was the house "colored man" before slavery was turned into an all-black cultural memory. If the Egyptian Captivity could be called a prison, he was a "trustee". When Moses came to ask Pharaoh to let my people go, he was against it. He had a cush life and job serving as go-between slave holder and slave. Even after the miracle of the Passover (you might want to bone up on that story, if you aren't Jewish), and Pharaoh finally let them go, he had to be drug kicking and screaming to join the rest of the children of Israel as they headed toward the Red Sea.. And even after seeing miraculous event after miraculous event, still, when things got dull in the place, he whispered in everyone's ear that maybe they should go back and Pharaoh would forgive them, or, the final straw, to melt down the gold and build new idols to old gods.
    Hold that thought.

    When I was in college I recall a late night studio public television broadcast (I was sweating off a hangover) in which one segment showed a b&w clip of George Beverly Shea singing "How Great Thou Art", followed by a discussion by various churchmen. Most spoke to Shea's baritone style and the music quality. But one I remember, a Methodist cleric, commented on the song itself, and said it was "theologically shallow." I went out an bought an LP, and played it over and over again, and wondered, not being a theologian, what was so shallow about it?
    A few years later, in a totally unrelated incident, I was in my car thumbing through radio stations and I picked up the tail end of a really happy song. This was the Vietnam War days, so there wasn't a lot of that in the water. A girl was singing about how lucky she was, a husband who loved her, a home, a little house, and how goddamed happy she was. And thankful, too. A complete anachronism for the zeitgeist of the times.
    I searched out the song, it took about a week, and found it was a country song by a girl named Donna Fargo. I got a 45 and loaned it around. "She's a country singer. A hick, " they all said. No one I knew thought much of the song. I scratched my head, listened to the words several times, and wondered, what's hick about being happily married in a home with a spouse who loves you? Still, wanting to be in, I suspended common sense and discarded it. I found it again on a CD collection only a month ago. It resurrected those old memories.
    A few years later I taught American Government in a small business college to young black men and women. I had to carry the show three hours straight, three days a week. It was tough gig. But it ended up the most gratifying three semesters in my life, and today I'd do it for free. You see, I had to "really read" the Constitution, and make it understandable to college students, many of whom had never read a book, and certainly had never had any of this material taught to them when state law required that it be taught to them, in middle school and high school. I decided to try to make it relevent. My one regret was that I couldn't have had them in the 9th grade instead of the 13th.
    Reducing the high-minded to the level of lesser minds is an ignoble pursuit in many peoples' minds, I've found. I've searched Christian, Hebrew, Muslim, and even oriental religions, and can find nowhere that this is discouraged. In fact, it is encouraged. A full 50% of mullahs in the Middle East are illiterate, having committed the Qu'ran to memory. This is a bad thing only if you confuse the Qu'ran with men-who-would-be-kings who wish to hold men in thrall. Christ said "suffer the little children to come unto me" and this likewise has been considered a bad thing by generations of Christian theologians, who found in that one phrase no special place for them.
     Looking at the Bill of Rights with one eye, while watching 22 innocent but cynical black faces with the other, one comes to see the Constitution differently, for it is indeed the highest-minded secular document ever written in anytime, in any place. Yet it was written by men, while learned, could not qualify to sit at a Harvard Club black tie banquet, amongst far lesser men who only sit in iconic praise of them. I've been to such places (having sneaked in), and felt like Captain George Taylor at an ape oratorio.
     The Constitution was written by high-minded men who were not high-brows. And they certainly didn't write it so as to enfranchise an elect levitical class to carry forward its message to the hoi polloi. The Constitution always should have been taught, and just as early and repetitively, as a Sunday School lesson. That it hasn't been taught in this way has alway been intentional, for that would deprive so many vain, but learned snobs their sinecures.

      Somehow this all leads me to Sarah Palin, and back to Dathan.
      The Constitution is a guide to lead men out of slavery. Above all things it must survive...intact. Yet it has been hijacked by a bunch of "house servants" (you can fill in other terms) who only want to hold onto their rice bowls. I'm not just speaking of John Kerry here, but lamentably of Peggy Noonan and Christopher Buckley, whose father would agree with me, not Chris.  I can find all sorts of metaphors to describe how hard it would be to find a leader out of this brood; a leader who can actually lead our children out of the wilderness our own vanities, appetites and lack of faith have condemned us to. Remember, God got so pissed he finally let the Children of Isreal sweat it out in the wilderness until not one of the original captives survived to enter the Promised Land. Hell, even Moses, for all his effort, all he got was a steep climb and glimpse from Mt Pisgah. This may be all we get, too.
      Never, never, never forget the shoulders you stand on...and all of those shoulders, all of them, saw God as George Beverly Shea sang about God, and saw hearth and home, family and happiness as Donna Fargo sang about life, as simple treasures. And all of those shoulders are cut out of the same mold as Sarah Palin.
BernardChumm

  

     In House testimony this week Alan Greenspan stunned the world, in answer to a question by Henry Waxman, that much to his surprise, capitalism did fail in ways he'd never predicted. Rush Limbaugh was apoplectic. I was a little sad, but also understanding. After all, Alan is getting on his years, and I suspect he could lose what few num-nums he's still getting from the handsome Andrea Mitchell unless he caved to the inevitabilities of the Left. Empires have fallen for less, so cut him some slack.
     So, was Greenspan right? Well, Limbaugh says not only "No" but "Hell no!",  and in the philosophical sense, I agree. But internally, inside the corporate culture, including banking and certainly Wall Street, Greenspan has a point. For no longer is capitalism, top to bottom wrapped in an enterprise, protected by the common purpose of self-interest as laid out by Adam Smith. Middle and upper level managers routinely risk well beyond what would normally be called prudence in a for-profit business, and they do it, well, with indifference to the corporate mission and ethic. It's one of the reasons we, and the Constitution, I'd wager, has always favored small business, where capitalism is still alive and healthy.
     I actually wrote a letter about this in the late 1970s, after I left private law practice to enter the corporate manufacturing world, ...as a manufacturer. I was in my mid-30s, and was stunned to find in this Fortune 500 company's front office; Planning, Finance, Marketing, a complete detachment to the purposes of the enterprise, which was making and selling a thing well. The word "manufacturer" was used as an epithet in most front office circles...out of earshot of the CEO. That letter in 1979 was to a New York Times columnist, and ended with "wait til these guys move into upper management in their forties and fifties." His reply, I recall, was "Ho-hum".
     Well, they did, as we saw with Skilling and Fastow of Enron, who took a great company built by a really fine man, and with the indifferent morals of an horny orangutan, destroyed the lives and fortunes of thousands. What about Ken Lay? Well, Lay stood vis a vis Skilling and Fastow the same as Chris Dodd did with Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and sub-prime lenders. Once he saw he'd been bribed by criminals in the middle of a heist, he had to choose between his reputation and the stock holders. Guess who won? Dante created the Nine Levels of Hell just so we can differentiate between a Ken Lay and a Jeffrey Skilling, or a Chris Dodd and a Franklin Raines. There are crooks and vain facilitators for crooks.
     The banking mortgage meltdown started out as a swindle, a heist. It wasn't from a loop-hole, it was a planned  theft, and some members of Congress knew it. (Some day this will be proved.) But worse, it was designed to assist bag men/community action groups, among them ACORN, who were known criminals, and to insiders, known Marxists.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were already wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democrat Part and the Congressional Black Caucus, so it was a perfect political fit? The fly in the buttermilk was the creation of the sub prime mortgage market. That too bears all sorts of fingerprints of ACORN and other Marxist groups, but no one knows until the final book is written or the judge hammers down the final gavel and sends them all to prison (assuming the good guys reclaim Congress), whether the crash was intentional or just an unintended consequence of typical liberal poor foresight.
      But among the facilitators were also scurrilous men and women in the private sector, carried away not so much by greed as an indifference to their fiduciary responsibilities, and that, my friends, was because they had come up through the system knowing how to game the system. There were no moral ethical ties to hold them back. This was what I (inarticulately) warned about in 1979, when they were all just pups.
      Adam Smith wrote quite a bit about the ethics underneath the pursuit of self-interest. And he had Anglo-Europe, not China, in mind when he wrote. If you want naked capitalism, with no bonds of ethical behavior, go to Albania.
     When corporate business was reduced to a template to be learned, it became little more than a board (or today) video game. Compartmentalization meant that no manager really knew much of the corporate mission until he had a "need to know". The Reagan years were surprisingly naive and innocent on this account...we were still under 40 and our bosses part of that classical post-war generation of managers who knew so very, very much about so very, very many different things. Yet it was coined an age of greed...followed by what could you then call the Clinton years of the 90's? By then managers were aware their bloomers were showing so someone came up with the "Mission Statements" that read like the old police academy catechism, "to protect and serve"....when  in fact they were designed to honor the precept, "Sincerity is the key. If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." I ask again, was that Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton's legacy?
      By 2000, that classical generation of post-war managers had all died or retired. What honor and ethics remained out there in the corporate world was due to the lucky ones who went to Sunday School as kids or graduated from some mid-western or southern school, instead of Wharton. Blame public schools. Seriously, how can you teach ethics when the public school system will not allow there to be a firm notion of right and wrong...except that you can't call Rolley-Polley "Fatso" or pinch Jennifer's behind? How else can you expect the corporate world to fare when the first time those students look at an ethical conundrum is on a final exam in a third year Business course?
And while it "remains to be saw" whether the financial meltdown was an accident or intentional, the public school meltdown and its consequences are intentional.
     I'm not writing this to complain. My generation is fully in charge now, and quite frankly, we are incompetent in all the ways that matter for the survival of a company, an industry, or even a nation. As much as he disappoints me at times, I'm happy to know there are men and women of my generation who can see things larger than themselves, and understand the Big Picture, in which ethics and reason play a key, even universal role in survival. I am speaking of George W Bush. Who'd you think I meant? Harry Reid?
     Nor is this a call to action about teaching ethics again in college. In the first place, you can't teach ethics unless you can also link it to a general understanding of our roots in western civilization, and our own roots in American history. Yes, both should be required for every college student in the US (four courses I recall, app 16 hours). And they should be taught with enthusiasm, as Moses Sands liked to say. (He actually could make the Constitution sound like an old time Methodist tent meeting.)
      But in truth, 18 is a little late to start on kids, I'm afraid. Oh, 50 years ago, it might have been just fine. But today kids are cynical about any sentiment by the time they reach 8th Grade. So you gotta get to them earlier, 4th-6th grade, and since most kids don't go to Sunday School (those who do don't go round robbing pension funds), we suggest some fine old textbooks. I just ran across one this week, which put me in mind for this piece: 1902, Guide Right, Ethics for Young People, by Emma Ballou....written to be taught to 4th and 5th graders. Wow! Watch the Oakland School Board squirm over that one.
     Seems we need more of this, and I wish someone would pick up the copyright, bring it up to date, then publish it for public schools. Home-schoolers should especially want to use it. The Sands Institute will do what it can to help raise funds.
     Oh, and yes, that is how we turn the train around...in another 15-20 years. Not overnight, we have to be committed to the long haul. And yes, there's a lot of other things that need to be done, too, but I wrote earlier about the fact that God never turns His back on America or Americans, but he does turn His back when Good turns Bad. While a lot of us are begging for that Come-to-Jesus-moment in our country, when the film will drop from out eyes and we will begin to see once again, for my generation all we might be granted is that climb-Mt-Pisgah-moment, from where we get to see our children and our grandchildren marching into the new promised land...a land we've  been denied for past sins.
Vassar Bushmills