Posted simultaneously on RedState.com

Ordinarily we only like to publish what I call "findings", but I admit a difficult time getting my arms around this subject, so will just throw it out there, as a way of trying to dissect the elements that takes a one-time robust conservative like Mitch McConnell and turn him into a country-club accommodationist. Or was he a true conservative, in the first place? McConnell is only a foil in this regard.

Why this is important is that fairness requires us to be careful and correct in the brickbats we throw in the direction of anyone, especially McConnell, Cornyn, Michael Steele, the GOP congressional leadership and the entire "culture" of leadership in the Party....excepting maybe Lindsay Graham...who I've found brings out both an instinctive and intuitive dislike in many people.

They occupy a position of leadership we would like to see true conservatives occupy some day, and unless we want to stampede GOP headquarters like the Wahhabis did Medina, stomping Qu'rans in their wake, it might be worth our time to consider just how a fellow like Mitch McConnell, who I watched when he beat a fellow named Todd Hollenbeck for chief executive officer of Jefferson County, (Louisville) Kentucky back in the 70's, could become so, well, whipped.

We would do things very differently, we say. There are things inside the GOP that are vile and insipid. But there is also a "culture" there, a culture we need to know, as a surgeon might know a cancer, just so we don't cut out perfectly healthy organs in the process of removing the bad ones. So many have gone there as true-blue conservatives, then been reduced to this. How?

First, there's no turning back. There has to be a change at the top. As I've said before, I'm a December 8th'er, and have long been thankful that when America found her back up against the wall she could always rely on having a Lincoln who would by-pass a dozen generals to bring in a whiskey-drinker like Grant, or a Marshall, who would elevate an unknown brigadier to five-stars (eventually) to carry an entirely different kind of war to Germany. In all likelihood only Ike could have done that. It was George Marshall who made it all happen. And it was Marshall, who, on December 8th, 1941, decided US military forces could not fight or win with the "culture" that had existed before Pearl Harbor. So, for the most part, he fired the whole lot of them. History bears witness to the correctness of that call, no matter the wounded egos and ruined careers.

The formula is clear: Have a decision-maker who 1) knows the Enemy, 2) knows the stakes and 3) is not afraid to step outside the box to make the hard calls.

So that part of the Republican Party culture, we know, has be be changed. On all three counts the Republican leadership, up and down the line, seem to have failed in these three simple criteria that matter when survival is on the line. Well, not Party survival, and that may be problem here. While we all know there are no "profiles in courage" to be found in the Democrat Party, the same can be said about the GOP, it seems. Ben Nelson, and really, many others, came to a crossroad, then, as Yogi Berra said, "took it." And will again, in all likelihood. But the GOP came to the same crossroad and bared its belly like a whipped dog, really unsure about taking either. Why?

Part of the answer may lie in the most recent Democrat complaint that this new health care overhaul plan, other than being deficit neutral (a lie so big only Al Gore could embrace it without a smirk) is no different that the half-trillion dollar Medicaid plan run through Congress in the Bush years, which the GOP backed. The GOP will huff and puff, for it's true, the plan added billions to the deficit. But let's wait and see in coming days how many GOP members actually draw the most glaring lines between their Medicaid Bill and this one...1) that gun at the head of every American who must now buy it, and the constitutionality of that sort of coercion...what's that all about?...I could stop here...2) federally funded/mandated abortion, 3) the Medicaid Plan worked, and is popular. This plan cannot work, and everyone knows it, and 60% is only the tip of the iceberg against it. It will work so well, in order to get some senators to vote for the bill their state had to exempted from all or part of its provisions, another constitutional overreach...and expect that number to grow as the bill works its way back to the House, (The Bill is beginning to look like one of those "special dispensations" the Catholic Church used to dish out, "This Bill is eternal...except next Thursday for anyone participating in the scrap drive...George Carlin, RIP). 4) make your own list. Simply watch the GOP hem and haw, and I guarantee 3 or 4 senators are sweating blood right now over this apparent image of hypocrisy, as leveled once again by the Democrats

I know many of you, just by your tone, would like to string many of these folks up. Moreover, many would prefer to take your ball and bat and go form your own party, in part, to rub the GOP's nose in its historic but jaded brand. Get even. Let me dispense with that notion here and now. While fine minds can always disagree intellectually about the shape of a perfect world, this quickly evolving imperfect one simply won't allow us that luxury. To me, that's a given. You at RedState (and other places we visit) need to arrive at a strategic consensus among yourselves very soon, that it is the Republican Party or nothing, for unless you are willing to suspend this battle with the Left over to say 2032-2040 or so, the Left is within just three years of being able to insure that will be your next window of opportunity.

In other words, as much as the fire of anger burns deep in your soul, the simple truth is, the Left is by far the more dynamic of the contestants right now. They have a plan, they are sticking to it, and with each passing day, their strength grows. So far they have known all our counter moves, and had a plan to counter them. They have a solid leadership which to date has been so good, for the most part you (we) still don't know their names...for sure. And worst of all, a significant portion of the GOP still isn't even sure there is an enemy, let alone who it is.

Finally, they are certainly using speed to their advantage. We don't have time to do the third party thing...again, unless you are young enough to be looking forward to those 2034 midterms. It's now or never, with whatever tools, intellectual and otherwise, we can muster. (Again, we still have certain advantages, which no matter how hard they try to defend, they can't. But we have to employ them, first.)

Besides, the Republican brand isn't so much tarnished or jaded as it had just been put away into cold storage along with grandmother's old mink. It can be brought back...and in short order, I might add. With the right stride, posture, set of the jaw, steely gaze, wry grin...you get my drift...the party can be back within 90 days. But that's just the image stuff. Cosmetics.  But that won't work if Mitch comes back in January dressed and grinning like The Kurgan in Highlander. He has cast an image that is quite frankly, unerasable in the public mind; quiet, pleasant, well mannered, accommodating, and ever so gracious in defeat. The slumped shoulders of supplication do not inspire.

Then there's the substance. The Republican Party ended slavery. The Republican Party made the death of Jim Crow a reality. And the Republican Party has stood fast against all the enemies of Liberty and democracy, from Stalin to Al Qeada. It is the originator of the "American Doctrine of Liberty" (George William Curtis, 1863.) The Republican platform, whether anyone there actually believes it or not, still reads like a final exam on the Constitution in high school.

And yes, even as it is the party of the true engine of freedom in America, and greatest repudiation of Karl Marx...small business...it is also the party of big trusts, big business, big banks, and big, big, big, all dressed out in the black tie and tails of an upper class that somehow some randy Irish gigolo from Massachusetts and a Wikipedia-intellectual from Nashville actually want to call their own now.

So then, there are two Republican Parties, and there always has been...just as there are two kinds of conservatism.

To me conservatism has always existed on two planes.

First of all, conservatism is logical. It requires critical thinking, and the ability to reason....whether you are discussing foreign policy, taxation, limited government, or abortion. This by itself these days is a recruiting tool, those things being so far out of fashion for years. Scientists who love the "science of it" tend to be conservative while scientists seeking grant money tend to be liberal.

But this also means of course, you can be a conservative and still not really give a hoot in hell for your fellow man. The GOP platform is still conservative, containing planks that have stood so long we can recite them as a Methodist recites the Apostles Creed, a Scout his Oath, or a creepy-crawlie Leftie the first four lines of The Internationale....in other words, as a rote remembrance almost devoid of substance, which many in fact do.

Conservatism is clinical and correct, so touches a part of many of our inner souls, including our vanities. We like people who can think, and we don't like empty recitations, which for many years now has been the domain of the Left, but once was what they said about us...well, they still say about us, except a generation ago it was more often true. And many of them are just as maggot-infested as their parents were at Woodstock. We prefer more hygienic company.

In the end, conservatism is a body of cold, clear rational thought, which like laws on the book down at City Hall, can be bought and sold as easily as Judas did Christ, for a bag of nickels. Just as a cop can be paid to look the other way, a conservative can be seduced to do almost anything that doesn't require selling off a piece of his own soul...and if the Constitution is not a piece of that person's soul....? I submit, for most, it is not.

Sorry, that's how I see the culture of nice.

But below the fold of a line-by-line recitation of the elements of conservatism there is a fire...a fire that seems to have all but vanished until the rise of the Tea Party Movement.

Ben Franklin proved that you can have that fire in your belly until you close your eyes that final time. Malcolm Muggeridge, C S Lewis, Buckley, to name a few, proved likewise. And all proved that the fire is what makes up much of the handshake between the brightest of minds in the world, and the most ordinary. It is what binds us.

Just don't confuse that fire in the belly with being full of vinegar. To be full of vinegar suggests the intemperance of age, which is a different set of luggage altogether.

Since Reagan, the conservative (I prefer "constitutional", just to end the quibbling over what a conservative is or is not) fire has been mis-defined, i think, as many portray it as a raging cauldron that makes snot bubbles come out of your nose, and drool run down the side of your mouth. That's more often the aforementioned vinegar, or rage, but as we can tell from the feedback, that image doesn't sit well with a segment of the population, even when it is justified. And it doesn't sit well within the the current culture. Makes us appear "red-throated". Indeed, I've been confronted by enough "constitutionalists" who, had they not taken up studying the fine print of the Constitution would have been hanging out in biker bars correcting everyone's grammar, to know much of this disdain is hubris, me-smart, you-stupid, and not unlike the symptomology of the Left, defining oneself by what one hates. (We all do this from time to time, by the way...it's just a tic we need to be aware of, since it makes us no better than them when we put it on display. It comes from having read a book we think no one else has.)

In Mitch McConnell's day, conservatism was much less "me-me-me" than it is today, this I know, but despite Ronald Reagan, conservatism's true fire could only be found in certain quarters, mostly intellectual, back then. As a fan of both Aquinas and von Hayek, I found that Aquinas had it, while von Hayek, at least as a spiritual element, did not. I admire them both, but as Kirk and Spock, coming to the same conclusion by two entirely different roads. Their blending, then reduced to common sense, which Ronald Reagan did so well, is the perfect conservatism. But among most chapter-and-verse conservatives, that deeply felt  passion is hard to find...in their speech, their tone, their body-language.

By that fire, I mean a white heat, no flame, just heat over white coals, that sits there all the time, only to arise to remind ourselves and others of the rightness and wrongness of a thing because of a code we swore fealty to years ago, and to choose a course for us...in the hope others might follow. It is indeed spiritual, inasmuch as the idea of Liberty, especially to those denied it, is spiritual. Once realized, the fire is built, then stoked, and over many years, banked, so as to burn endlessly. Without it, I was once reminded, the Constitution reads like the articles and by-laws for a high school history club. It's the meaning behind the words, found in many sources, The Federalist, but also the Bill of Rights, Jefferson's Declaration that define it. DeToqueville recognized it in our people in the 1830s, a Frenchman no less. Dvorak saw it also in the 1890s, and penned no less a declaration of love for this new sense of freedom as DeToqueville had. Listen to the 2nd Movement of his 9th and you will see what I mean. Dvorak saw what 95% of American law professors and constitutional scholars still are unable to see. The Declaration of Independence was that handshake with the Bill of Rights that provided a continuity between the spiritual notion of human rights and law....thus making the Constitution, and whole ideal of Liberty both a legal and spiritual one. Artists and philosophers saw this before most lawyers and politicians. That is almost always the case.

You can tell this fire by the way the way the Constitution is mentioned, as well as its underlying themes, human dignity and Liberty. Just in mentioning it, there is a hint of reverence as well as defiance, for free men are always defiant to tyrants just in the way they walk. I haven't seen a modern politician speak in that manner in years....nor stride that stride. The Senate has all but barred that scent from its chambers since LBJ. I haven't seen defiance in the tone or stride of any Republican since Reagan, (well, maybe a couple) still, that "defiance" is a officially a part of the Party platform.

Ronald Reagan had that fire, and many of us recognized it in him almost immediately. His tone when he mentioned "America" was from one absolutely smitten with freedom, and unabashedly sentimental about human dignity and the prospects for the down-trodden once cut loose from the binds of statism. We also recognized it in the writings of William Buckley, even as he was spinning some dry yarn about what to do with the USSR. It was that fire that set WFB apart from neocons. Like me, WFB was always willing to make common cause with them, always because of the Enemy of course. But intuitively, they were at arms length. Buckley knew that Communism really does mean very little without the fire. He wrote for years, but never about being right, only about defending the right.

But he also instructed us in how to work alongside those without the fire, who like old dogs, are probably too old to ever be taught...which sounds a little like Mitch McConnell. I see this fire all the time on RedState. In the ordinary course of day-to-day business, which is politics here, it plays little role. But it always heats up when we come to a crossroads, a choice where the rightness and wrongness of a thing means turning one way, while the profit of it, e,g., wealth, status, success, may mean turning another way. We all came by our fire a little differently, but no doubt the ways of passing that fire down have all diminished over time. Every institutional vehicle for transporting that fire has been attacked, as Judgmentalism, just for saying "that's just plain wrong". As we know, the defiant can weather that criticism but the others cannot, which brings us right back to the "culture of nice" inside the Republican Party.

This is why we lament the loss of Ben Franklin, our keeper of the flame, in the councils of power, while noting Mitch McConnell had at least three, but ignored them. This is a clear signal for a needed intervention.

We have been sending "findings" to state GOP HQ's, congressional district GOP HQ's, and RNC for over a year now, asking them to reach out to their local Tea Party groups, by whatever name they go by, and ask them to join them around the council table. Some may even have done this, as that is clearly the common sense thing to do. I suspect a few have, (not at our bidding, I think), for what's an extra seat at the table if their own self-interests, the apparatus, is protected.

But by inviting us to sit at the table, there is still that "culture" thing, which to many of the RINO's, is little more than the same of sort of class consciousness that has owned the Left since really the 1840's. And there is also the bureaucratic angle to consider, the apparatus. The party apparatus to a lot of people represents a sweet gig. So sweet, in fact, I am quite certain that many GOP staffers would be quite willing to be perpetual No 2's to the Dem's, just so long at they can hold onto their clubhouse privileges at National Country Club. They've been Michelized to the core.

So, more than a few GOP party staffers deserves at least a bum's rush out the door.

The plan, of course, is that we (you) will take the party back, one precinct at a time, from the bottom up, rather than storming the Summer Palace in St Petersburg. In a perfect world, come November we (you) and the GOP would take forty plus seats away from the Democrats in the House, sweep the Senate...but also toss half a dozen or more wishy-washy Republicans in the Primary, strengthening our place around the table.  That way, everyone will play nice. Rather than storm the party, we have a solid conservative caucus inside it which one day will be the core, the heart and soul of the Party. I like Fred Thompson's idea of a magnet rather than big tent.

I like this strategy. I even think it is doable. But if we fall a little short, there is still that troubling, pregnant silence around the conference table of power within the Party...of the two forks, whither do we take?

Take solace in knowing that you (our side) will be the only ones with a plan to actually go out and meet the Enemy. Their plane will be to protect their culture, their apparatus, and their world.

I can't explain the state of mind that causes a person, under assault, to choose to wait until the front door has been kicked down and is backed into a corner to begin to fight..after all hope is gone, versus, knowing the Enemy is out there, to go out and meet him at the edge of the town, the county, or even the water's edge. Natural laws of behavior (territoriality) might explain some, a female only fighting when her cubs and nest are in imminent danger, the male sallying forth sometimes just for a joy ride, to pick a fight just to cut the edge off an otherwise dull day.

But this explanation probably belongs more to the natural world than the human, since, from the rise of Obama, I've seen as much, if not more, Alpha behavior in women than men, along with more extraordinary powers of observation and reasoning. The old laws don;t apply and that is probably a good thing.

I do know, however, that once a home invasion has been made complete, the confinees' behavior becomes predictably placid, for survival is then reduced to the lowest denominator. That is where one bare's his belly every time he hear's a snarl...or is shown a Queen of Diamonds. Or maybe he is shown a dirty 8 x10 glossy of himself and his neighbor's goat. (The only limitation on this is what in your own mind, you think the limitation's would be on Harry Reid's conscience.) A kind of Stockholm's Syndrome sets in. There is an old saying that if your best friend is beneath you in rank and power, and lies to you, you will end it. If he is your equal, you will set a greater distance between yourself and him. But if he is your better, and sometimes this is only known psychologically, you will ignore the lie. That he was ever your friend will never enter the equation. You will bare the belly when he barks. He will own you. Accommodation sets it. Yes, Boss. No, Boss. Begging your Lordship's pardon. It's the only explanation I can find as to why an entire body of people can be b***h-slapped for fifteen years, but still begin every sentence, describer their tormentor's as "My dear friend"...

One final word about that fire... it began in a cave in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago.

  Posted on RedState.com on 21 December

I hate to ask others to do what I can’t but I think only doctors can still stop this now as well as laythe groundwork for a constitutional challenge.

About 3 weeks ago I met with some Richmond area doctors. They are apoplectic, and a few have signed petitions. Some have called their legislators. We have two senators in Virginia who will vote with the plan, but have been so quiet, so absent, and unavailable for public comment…

…but the message they are getting from senate staffers, and the general scat from the Administration, is that they are rich and spoiled doc-brats. Shut up.

So the tendency, since doctors are rarely politically active (unlike lawyers), is to back away, knowing they can do little as individuals.

But how about as a bloc?

I mentioned this to my group, and they looked at me as if I’d suggested they take up chiropracty. Still, the idea here is on the table.

I told them if as few as twenty or thirty of them went public on local media and declared a strike, say for a week, 2 weeks, except for emergency care, within a few hours, maybe days their number would double, triple.

And with another day there would be at least ten more cities declaring as well.

I lied. I didn’t know any of these things to be true, and realized it would be these doctors, not me, putting it on the line if they did come out and declare.

Doctors are the one group that have a vested interest and legal complaint, legal-constitutional complaint, over this health care package. They can sue.

I think they can get all kinds of media, with the people, their patients closing ranks behind them, 20 to 1. If “Doc So-and-So says it’s bad, it’s bad.”

Your thoughts?

VB

Richmond, December 19, 2009

           Funny, I just posted a long-winded piece on leading too much with mush with our want-to's, yet here I am.

           But I do think it is appropriate to make the record complete by reminding politicians from time to time of what we know, even if they think we don't, so that, when and if they embark off in direction contrary to all their high-sounding rhetoric over the years, yes, we know. It's just for the record, mind you.

           Joe Lieberman owes Bill Buckley a lot, virtually his entire political career, to be precise. Although at the beginning I'd guess that Buckley disliked Lowell Weicker more than he liked Joe, a genuine, deep and long lasting friendship ensued. At the heart of it was a deep and abiding religious faith.

           Buckley was close to several Leftists over the years, for he admired integrity with articulateness to ones beliefs, more than one's unfortunate choice of secular "gods", who as we all know, can muddle all logic and reason. So becoming a friend with a mere classical Liberal of the 60's kind was never much of strain.

           I know WFB was publicly a little disappointed that Joe backtracked on some of his positions while Al Gore's running mate, but how they got on about that in private I can't say. I hope Bill's biographer will include a few pages, as it is important to understanding the evolving psychology that is the U S Senate, for all us analysts out here.
 
           But even if they had a row, and never spoke those last five of six years, Joe Lieberman owes Bill Buckley a bunch, for like Krauthammer and Limbaugh now (thought you'd never see those two names in the same sentence, eh?), in a line running back through George William Curtis to Ben Franklin, Buckley wasn't just the conscience of a movement and an ideal, he was the conscience of just about everyone who ever bumped into him, which I did for bi-monthly for over thirty years.

           What passes for a soul in Joe Lieberman is partly attributable to Buckley, so yes, he owes him.

           That said, everyone already knows the scam Ben Nelson is about to play on the people of Nebraska. He will get some piece of wordage from the leadership, which he knows will never see the light of day in a final bill, (plus other enticements which, like Mary Landrieu's, will be his to keep, no matter what) then vote with his party on cloture, then, in a snit (mock-snits are always fun to watch and record) vote against the final bill after either Harry Reid or the conference committee tosses his language out. Woe is me, Woe is me.
      
           What will happen next has already been telegraphed to Ben. (About the only way Congress is taking messages these days.) Alexander King, the Greenwich Village artist and writer from the 50's, had a great cartoon of a naked man rolled up under his own legs, about to kiss his arse good-bye. You see, this time, the people of Nebraska and the whole country see past this fraud even before it is perpetrated. Ben may finds himself in a quandry, so may yet roll with the Plains Punch rather than the Beltway Smackdown.

           Who can say? We're betting, as so many Democrat traitors-to-their-constituents have proved, a bunch of angry, screaming, cussing Nebraskans ain't really that big a deal if you just buy a nice estate on Chespapeake, and stay the hell away from Lincoln. In the end, Ben will follow the lucre, not what's left of his conscience. That's our bet.

           But Joe Lieberman is different. And he is different because of Bill Buckley. Just by calling Bill Buckley his friend for over 20 years, Joe Lieberman was known to actually believe what he said. Joe Lieberman was known to actually believe in the things he said he believed in. So, unlike Ben Nelson, who is in all likelihood (I can't know the man's heart, only his track record), only looking for a safe way to please everyone today, and cast blame for their failing him tomorrow, Joe Lieberman holds himself to a higher standard.

           Today, Joe Lieberman already knows that the things he has asked for (dumping the state-run plan) is a canard, and that by the time the law goes into effect the privately run insurance companies will either be out of business (most will anyway) or wholly-owned utilities of the United State government. Either way, "competition", which serves as the founding principle of Lieberman's position, will be non-existent. Ben Nelson may not be smart enough to get that,. Al Franken certainly isn't smart enough to get that. But Joe Lieberman is...in part because of Bill Buckley.
 
          Joe also knows that he has a target on his back by the loony Left (actually rather mainstream, these days), from DailyCuss to Howard Dean and the ever-beautiful Ariana to Cliff's Notes intellectuals like Keith Olbermann. They will not be called off. So watch your back, Joe, as they will actually get meaner in weeks to come, no matter what.

          Finally, Joe now knows, if he didn't already, the endless capacity for dishonesty by Harry Reid and some of his closest associates in the Senate. Even he has to be alarmed at the ease with which they simply ignored rules of the Senate rules dating back to Cicero in order to move the process along. This has never been done before. He now knows they have no boundaries...including (especially) being honest with him. He also knows Harry Reid has a personal grudge against him for dragging this out as long as he has. So get a taster for your soup, Joe, and stay out of fugu restaurants.

          So, in the end Joe Lieberman has to know that he will be voting with the Democrats to achieve a thing he already knows in advance will never be a reality. Only, he is not Ben Nelson, or Mary Landrieu, who in the end can always be counted on to take the money and run. He doesn't need a halo, or a get-out-of-jail-free card to show the folks back home.

          He has only to live inside himself...

          ...because he was friend of Bill Buckley.

         Oh, and did I mention that Jim Webb used to work for Ronald Reagan? There may be a conscience there to.

Vassar Bushmills

Richmond, 16 December, 2009

        

We're analysts by profession. But we also have a dog in this fight, so are always cautioning ourselves about putting our want-to's in front of our findings.

I've found that analysis by consultants is made mostly in light of their own self interests, and those interests are most often tied to their rice bowl; money and rank. We most admire those who can step back and detach their own interests from any outcome, as the first duty of a consultant is to tell his client how it is, before rushing into solutions or cures, where the big bucks lie.

But there are other interests that are more difficult to step away from. Augmenting financial-based interests, and at other times, standing opposite them, like that little angel on one shoulder, and little devil on the other, we find philosophical, some may even say instinctive (territorial), interests that are very personal to us. Family, love of country, the Constitution, liberty, a sense of justice, honor, ethics, integrity, also are closely-held interests...even when held in the negative, as things we want to circumvent. Sadly, in a world now redefined by the Left, that all human behavior should be subject to the political process (Mary McGrory, c1976), even the most ancient planks of human society are now part of a "partisan" dialogue. Truth...are you for it, or against it?

Americans, probably more than any other race, have been driven by non-monetary considerations in so many of our human endeavors. We marry for love first, money and station second, despite all our European forebears tried to teach us. We are the most color/religion/rank-indifferent society that ever existed. We will walk over a thousand years of Greek, Italian, Roman Catholic, Irish, Baptist, Lutheran or Muslim heritage just to be with Tayshaun. We do it all the time. We still think Someone Up There is watching and that we may be punished even if no one else is watching us. We believe in a Final Judgment, and as Bill Clinton proved, will line the walls of our closet with plaintiff's brief to God that a b-j isn't really sex, just because we fear that judgment. So it stands to reason that in America, most atheists still aren't...really. They just hate being judged.

So, by the time we are adults we all have a kind of internal ranking of these interests, i.e., what trumps what, and much of our politics in America, as we were seeing Joe Lieberman for a few days, and now Ben Nelson, twist in the wind, has been a contest between these "other" interests with money and power, things which would never cross the mind of most Europeans or Asians.

This makes cold objective analysis, as a doctor might diagnose cancer, seem almost impossible. It's hard to size up a situation without some element of "want-to" in the analysis.

Still, we have to try, since as I read in a lot of blogs and comments in blogs, even published articles, I see an awful lot of want-to's leading what is purported to be critical analysis, as well as lot of anger over, quite frankly, dogs behaving as dogs. "If only Mitch McConnell, or Michael Steele, or (fill in the blank) had a pair as big as mine." Well, they don't. That's a cold fact. But instead of weepy lamentations about what they could be or should be, (but can't) we should be spending that precious time...and time now is precious...trying to determine just why they are that way. What are the mechanisms that led a man like Mitch McConnell to go from a kick-butt candidate running Dee Huddleston (I was a friend with Dee's brother Charles, at the time) out of Washington in 1984 to a cowering Caspar Milquetoast, in a long line of Casper Milquetoasts. Mitch was a true Reaganite.

So what is it about the institution that changes the man? Don't say it is because the body is so deliberative.

Why we go through this exercise is because we want to know if Mitch is indeed cowering. Maybe , maybe not. But if not, what buttons do they have that we don't know they have that turn them back into standard bearers? I am convinced that the entire Beltway culture has become so insulated that they genuinely are unaware of what's going on out here anymore. A lady from Nebraska went to meet Ben Nelson only this week, with a list of questions they wanted answers to back home. He gave her three minutes only but in that short time she found out he'd never heard of the 9/12 movement. Work that equation back in your mind to see the depth of the problem we confront. The beltway culture has become positively feudal, French feudal, in nature; a nobility who only goes into the hustings to gather up income from their holdings.

I won't dwell on this except to say Mitch McConnell, who probably hasn't given the Constitution a second thought since he was sworn in in 1985, probably still has a red button. Al Franken might well have found it for him, and the rest of the GOP, the other day when he "illegally" shut off the reading of Bernie Sanders amendment. Every theory about the GOP (top to bottom) from Mitch to Mike, will issue forth from that one event, for if they do not now know that the Democrats are playing for keeps, as in "Forever, man" (George Carlin), they will never know.

Then what?

To the heart of my analysis then, when we see certain events occur, have a fairly good idea what will follow...whether we want them to, or not. If the GOP does not now go nuclear, throw  "all in" and completely revise their strategy from delay, slash and burn, whatever, to total last man standing, calling down the thunder of the (still) vast majority of the American people on Congress' head...then, here, in Round One, we lose.

The only real question then is, will there even be a Round Two...at least one in which the fight will still be fair.

So, I want to sound a kind of cautionary tone here, for things, as we see them unfolding, are very close to getting ugly, whether we win or we lose in the coming months.

Our job is to predict the probable "natural" outcome of events, then, when possible, lay out various alternatives that might change the course of that outcome. E.g, The majority of pleas to the GOP on the front page of Red State have been of this nature...what the GOP should do, or can do, to reverse circumstances that seem to be heading in the wrong direction.

Clearly, we have no issue with that, especially on a site that is actually read among political leaders. My mission here is to forewarn you that the way things are breaking out, the forces on this side, and that, are how they are aligned, with each passing day, lead to the conclusion that ugly events lay ahead.

We want to defeat this health care "reform" bill in any shape, but can we say "why" as a doctor might say, "You have cancer"? Does the health care bill really kill the Constitution, or just wound it? We think the former, but we must be able to say and think this with the same grim, jutted jaw and furrowed brow of a man who must take his favorite dog out to the woods to shoot him. (Remember that look on the faces of the ranch hands in "Hud" who had to shoot all the cattle?"

The health care bill is primal, as it attacks those fundamental, most closely held beliefs of ours...namely the primacy of the Constitution, and all that follows, the pursuit of life, liberty, etc. These transcend anything having to do with the nuts and bolts of medical care (Higher fees, lesser care), or even other tenets of our personal beliefs, such as abortion. (At least this is why I hope you're against it, for most of the people against it right now don't see the death of Constitution as a primary cause for concern, and the Enemy takes solace in that fact.)

What is not so easy to understand is how other people (on both sides) are going to react to the subsequent fight, not the one going on now...1) if the bill is defeated, 2) if the bill is enacted and becomes permanent, after 3 years, 3) if the bill is enacted, then in a year and three months is repealed and rolled back, 4) if the bill is repealed and rolled back in three years and three months....or 5) if the GOP reclaims Congress and/or the White House, but does not repeal and roll back the bill.

Obviously, among our want-to's is that the GOP leadership do certain things. (Yes, I know things we wish they'd done a month ago, a year ago.) We even (alas) still yearn for the media to do certain things???? Yet, in the cold light of day, we know the GOP leadership can't do many of the things that we would do, for reasons that should be understandable, for it not much different that dogs who have lived a good part of their lives mooching snacks underneath the dinner table, who also have given up a part of their manhood in order to secure that sweeeet position.

They are acting for the most part, according to their nature, which explains why the wisest of you have already assessed that the Dem's are playing a game based on the calculation that everyone in Congress will indeed stay inside their box, and as long as they do they have a counter-punch already planned out. On the other hand, you (we) are asking that one man, or a few men and women, to step outside the box and make a statement or act that is so bodacious it has to get national attention and drive the danger we are in home. I have my ideas as to what will work best, you have yours, but our thinking is correct because it came from cold observation of the circumstances on the ground.

As for people like Landrieu and Ben Nelson, and the others who will likely cave before Christmas Eve, both have acted and will act according to their nature. Of course she is a w****, and the Left expects (plans on us) spending a good deal of valuable time in lamentations, gnashing of teeth and pulling our hair, when a quick, dismissive wave of the hand, "She's a w****. Be done with her. Now onto the w****-mongers." would be much better. With people like Landrieu, being dismissed as insignificance matters, even hurts. Moreover, say that a few times in print and the Enemy will pause and size you up more carefully, as they will know you get it, and they want to know who on our side does.  (They are more interested in us, as enemies, than we seem to be about them.)

The same for Ben Nelson, who is and never has been anything more than a steer who escaped from an unlocked barn...which at one time held only prize bulls. The time for lamentations has long since passed in Nebraska...not for leaving the barn door open, but for occupying it with a lesser quality of beef. He, too, will act in accordance with his nature, which is not to say he may not yet surprise us. Just don't spend too much time crossing your fingers that Nelson, or men like Jim Webb of Virginia might reach down and find that soul they once had. They may never have had it. In the cold light of day what they are most likely looking for is language and other considerations that will cover all their bases...with Nelson, literally. (Remember, it's the cloture vote that will put health care over. Ten of them can vote "No" on final passage, then go back home and try to wrap themselves in halos. Webb will be out in 2012 no matter, so he'll need a little extra grease, but he'll likely get it.) Don't look for miracles. Al Franken gave us probably the only one we will get.

As for the media, we just are losing valuable time, sleep and even blood pressure getting angry at dogs for being dogs. (We take a darker, more sinister view of the media than say, Rush Limbaugh. We think they are not tag-a-longs and groupies, but real players, a few even planners at the upper echelons of power)

So, how about the people? The People? What will the majority of people, by their natures, do when thrown into this situation? What they (we) will do, of course, is make decisions based on their own self-interests...their jobs, income, home, family. They first consider survival, and try to see if they can cope with the new cost of health care. The details of health care, cost, convenience, will matter most to them, while the loss of liberty will not register at all to the majority of them for many years. Few will ever even hear the death rattles of the Constitution.

They will not take to the streets. To be more specific, the people with jobs, income, home and family will not take to the streets. The Left is relying on this, in fact. It's part of their plan. Most people who feel powerless to control events hunker down. As a natural law, this is a fair generality.

But if they do take to the street, the others, clients of the state class who don't have real jobs, income, family, etc, can and will take to the streets also, at the urging of at least a half-dozen well-planned-in-advance promptings. Maxine Waters has as much as promised this. Those plans are already drawn up. (If you haven't noticed "the quickening" as we call it, including now changing the Clean Water Act, and other under-reported legislative agenda items, is coming at a pace that indicates a broad, and well executed plan by teams(s) of people who clearly are not the creation of three or four guys sitting around a table tossing back a beer with Barack Obama.)

Stifling our anger at every turn, what we should allow ourselves to see (at first) are actors, not people we hate, playing narrow roles that are only a portion of the overall play (plan). As the objects of our hate they do us no good. Harry Reid fills just one of many slots. So does Lady Nan, Barney Frank, Schumer. Not all of the people we "hate" are even part of the long term plan anyway, and will eventually be dispatched...even if they win. We've always seen Chris Dodd as a crook, like his old man, with no real future to this "new thing" being set up in Washington. But hating Chris Dodd does expend a lot of our energy. The same for John Murtha, and God, do we love to dislike John Murtha here. Semper FU. (OH, we can hate them, just let that drive your reasoning.)

Among that giant wall we call the Left, who is or is not a "soldier", a "player" and a "planner" will not surface until the trial(s), if we win, or the newest round of postage stamps and xenophobic posters for the school rooms, honoring heroes of the revolution...if they win. Say 20 years. There will be many names up there you never heard of, but who your children and grandchildren will be taught to revere.

What we do know is that between here and there, now and then, depending on the five possible scenarios I listed, there is going to be some ugly, ugly scenes, even if we kill health care dead in its tracks. My want-to's is to say this can be prevented, but with each passing day, I think it less and less likely. As I have written in other places, what seems important to me, in an eventual series of clashes, I would prefer the law, besides the right, to be on my side. If we find ourselves on the outside looking in, the road back will be very, very long, indeed. My caution to you who may be squeamish about this, is that wishing it not so won't change. When you neighbor wishes you dead, and there is no police to protect you, only one of you will emerge, and those are the stakes the Left has proclaimed.

We may take Congress back in 2010, but they will not allow it to be taken back without mayhem, destruction or worse. This I am fairly certain. They will put people in the streets. So, we, still without really knowing who "WE" are, leaderless and not yet of one mind in the tactical and strategic sense, have to begin planning now on what has to be done if we do get power back, for we cannot simply go back to four years off, four years on, of this sort of give and take, because they gain five new miles for every mile we try to take back. They have called the stakes of this contest, winner take all...most of them without ever really considering what that means, and will continue to do so until our side calls down the thunder and douses them with a cold case of reality. That too will be ugly.

Some analysts have known this would be the case since Clinton talked Newt out of his knickers, over a decade ago. Their grand plan, the Great Game, was known to some even then. Now we are dealing with out and out-in-the-open criminality, and dare I use it here, the t-word. It doesn't matter if we realize this yet or not. They know it. They know their intention is to take over this country, and hold it by force, and destroy the US Constitution, and all it stands for...and a little unused legal term like "treason" is not going to stand in their way. They will assume we will react just as they would, and want to now, with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Why that hasn't happened already is simply a matter of timing. Wait til health care passes. You can see this in the Coming Attractions at the cineplex come February.

But some of the People, Tea Partiers, 9/12'ers, do get it. Actually more get it, as a percent of the population, than did in 1776. They have taken this very personally. They have already taken to the streets, metaphorically, but with the sign of a clear willingness to put a little counterpunch behind it. And yes, we think the other side plans on this occurring, and maybe even is encouraging it. They certainly have several ways to respond and are prepared. Worse, without leadership on our side, I am not certain any of this can be prevented or deferred...a very resistible force rushing headlong into what so far has proven to be an immovable, and ugly-mean, object. It took George Washington some years to be able to raise and train an army, while constantly on the run, trying to evade a superior army. We seem to still be in that "rabble in arms" phase (Kenneth Roberts' term) used that assaulted Quebec in 1775. We are a few years away from being the kind of army that can stand up in front of Cornwallis.

Again, they know this, even if we don't, so I don't see any of this ending pretty.

Still, the coldest fact of all...

.... fight or surrender.
Vassar Bushmills

Richmond, December 15, 2009

     Some months ago I reluctantly wrote that G W Bush should have resigned as soon as he was sworn in to his second term, in 2004, letting Richard Cheney finish what needed to be done.
     I based that claim on the morality of the man, for he was unable to keep his oath (Protect and defend the Constitution) while holding true to a major tenet of his faith (turn the other cheek). It was only by a moral sleight of hand that he could have justified both to himself, and that was by making his Democrat detractors merely "misunderstood" in his own mind, and making the object of their slanders and barbs his own cheeks...rather than mine...and yours.
     I stand by my statement that George W Bush had no right, no authority, to turn the other cheek, when it was mine, and ours, being slapped.

     In the same vein I remind Senators McConnell and assemblage they have no right, in the name of collegiality and comity, and the dignity of Senate, to allow the other side of the aisle to steal my liberty and kick the slats out of me.
VB

   On the 10th we posted here advice to Tiger, and some observations about the media. http://www.redstate.com/vassar/2009/12/11/from-fdr-to-tiger-woods-the-constant-thread-of-manufacture/

   Tiger seems to be taking the advice (from someone else) that we offered up; i.e., laying low, taking a sabbatical from golf, ostensibly to save his marriage and family. On these matters we are never cynical, so will dispense with the Tiger jokes until/unless he steps on it again. We have to give every professed penitent the benefit of the doubt. Clinton never 'fessed up. Gore and Kerry, both fantastic liars, never have had to 'fess up either. And as I wrote, JFK never got the chance.

   Which brings us back to the role of the media. I've heard mentioned more than once since the Tiger story broke, that the media always knew about Tiger's promiscuity (just as they did Jack's), yet, in order to have access and to be allowed to be a kind of "groupie" to Tiger, they kept it quiet.

    Maybe this analysis is bass-ackwards. The media made Jack Kennedy. They made Al Gore.  They made Barack Obama. They didn't make Tiger, but they did make him something he wasn't, and that something extra put tens of millions of dollars in his pockets, as well as his fellow golfers' and the PGA. And like the sainthood of JFK, they were the first to cash in the "crash".

    Can anyone find an innocent motive in Tiger's biggest stalkers today his biggest protectors yesterday?

    This is just a notion, worthy of a book by some intrepid investigator, but if the media are indeed one of many potential master-handlers/puppeteers, rather than dreamy-eyed groupies, they need to be looked at once again in an even more sinister light...for with Barack Obame we may indeed be dealing with deep-set megalomania.

VB

Richmond, December 9, 2009

             It took me twenty years to un-love Jack Kennedy...then another five apologizing to Jackie for blaming her for Jack's cheating. Only when his infidelities turned to promiscuity, and a national security risk, did I finally go to my closet for a private talk, and acknowledge that a cold shrewish woman did not create this.
             My older sister still has not taken that trek to the closet.
 
             It only took three days this time around...to un-love Tiger Woods, even though Tiger manifested a hope in us not unlike what Jack Kennedy did in 1960; a man who had not just risen, but been raised to rise above mere celebrity and stardom. Only better, Tiger was us, from the humblest of origins, a black father and a Thai mother. No royalty, even John Kerry's self-declared kind, could be found anywhere in his pedigree. Tiger's dad, Earl, was as much a hero to my generation as Tiger was to my children; a military man who grabbed hold of all the blessings the military culture could offer, (and which the civilian culture could not) and turned his little half-breed son into the greatest golfer of all time.
             I can't say what will happen to Tiger Woods from here on out. That depends on just how deeply he was attached to the false personna that has been laid bare in recent days.
             Tiger is still a young kid, but also a man. I can't know if the vows he originally took meant anything on Day One, or if like Jack Kennedy, he was always on the prowl, and they were only so many empty mutterings.
             But I do know he may never win another tournament. I said "tournament", not major.  For Tiger has not just been unmasked in front of the world. Much worse, he may have been unmasked in front of his own mirror. Time will tell. He may dump the wife, and pass the kids over to a lifetime of high-priced nannies and boarding schools, or he can genuinely repent and try to save his marriage and his children. He is at that crossroads, and in my own opinion, he can only save his golfing career by choosing to save his family along with it.
            Only, we won't know for at least ten years what is genuine about Tiger Woods anymore.

            When someone finds himself at the foot of the Cross, all I can do is wish him well, and pass him over to God's mercy...if he asks for it.

            But what I can do is once again investigate the method of manufacture of the "dream" athlete, or politician, or public personality and inquire as to how it happens, what are its inevitable consequences, and what can be done to prevent it. (Once I see a trend, I'm heavy into prevention these days.)
            You see, I'm not a presidential historian, but I know someone at CBS or NBC, and not the White House, decided it was best for the American people to believe that Franklin Roosevelt was a whole man who could stand upright and walk (but who also smoked..no big deal in those days) rather than a very smart, courageous man who did not let a wheelchair disadvantage him in any way...(as long as there was a little ashtray always nearby).
            I also know that had the American people found a way to bring a law suit against Ben Bradlee personally and the Washington Post generally, American history would be entirely different now. For you see, for reasons that were personal to them, they manufactured John Kennedy in a perverse manner that has never been explained to me very well. Just why did Ben Bradlee think, in the middle of the Cold War, that Jack's unquenchable promiscuity would not interfere in his effectively carrying out the duties of President of the United States? Or was it, as we have seen time and again, that once the error was known (possibly even before the election in 1960) vanity, the personal vanity of the king-makers in the press, decided to press forward?
            Hold that thought, for the effective packaging and sale of JFK and Camelot-the-Lie to the American public, not Watergate, was the seminal moment of media power in America. To let it pass would have been a travesty. Indeed, the media gained more by JFK's death (are you listening Barry?) than any other wing of American politics. (Mark Lane, call your office.) JFK's sainthood sealed their place of power.
            But had we (the People) sued, and I argued we could have, things might have turned out differently. There may never have been a "lost generation" in the 1960s, a lost generation who hated America for reasons only a psychiatrist could detail now. And no Nixon, or Carter...or maybe even a Reagan. (Sky determines, and Carter did begat Ronnie.) Bill and Hil  might have tried to beat George Corley and Lurlene's record for consecutive gubernatorial reigns...instead of, you know. Or maybe it would be Senator Clinton (the guy) who would be making waitress sandwiches with Chris Dodd down at the La Brasserie, instead of Teddy.
            Who knows?
            What we do know is that Jack Kennedy was an unmitigated success for his manufacturers..from lech to saint in less than thirty seconds. And that success with Jack eventually begat Bill, who turned out to be a security threat almost as dangerous as Jack. I still see an orange jumpsuit in his future. (Sorry, I just do.) If only the Soviets had known to plant their sleepers in trailer parks, and dress them in peddle-pushers, high heels and high hair...but wait, there was no Soviet Union. Right, there had been a Republican before him.
            And now we have Barack H Obama. The sadness, of course, is that Jack Kennedy never got the chance Tiger Woods now has, and that is to re-evaluate his situation by being publicly unmasked. Just watch your back, Tiger. And Barry, you too. JFK's assassination actually improved his manufacturers' hand, for had he been exposed alive, their lie would have been exposed as well.
            In Barack H Obama the media has found their new JFK...urbane, sophisticated, intelligent, well spoken, the proper gate keeper for their new Camelot, including the most important ingredient...an empty suit.
            So, it's time to worry, Mr Obama, for you are the emptiest of suits. Hie to your closet!
            But for Tiger, it's not such a hard choice after all is it; being allowed to endure that gaze in the shaving mirror each morning. Thank your lucky star you can still flee to the bathroom. Thank your lucky stars you ain't president.
Vassar Bushmills

Portland, 9 Dec 2009

            About the EPA ruling: If it wasn't apparent in February, or May, it should now be crystal clear now what the purposes of this administration, and certain elements in the House and Senate are.
            For one, there is a unified plan...from health care, to cap and trade, to banking regulation, to card check. Neither the Congress nor the czars are acting randomly.
            If key GOP operatives don't know this already, they should be sacked. Key conservative analysts should be making sure...today...that they do know these things.
            Then what they must do...is make sure that key moderate Democrats, in both Houses are warned, and that warning must be made in writing or some other provable form of evidence...
           ...so when the purposes of the Administration are laid bare in public (early 2010), those Democrats will know, and their voters will know, that they had been warned, and theremore must be prepared to suffer the fate of the driving forces of the Left behind this government takeover.
           I am not just talking about Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson. There is Bayh of Indiana. There are both Virginia senators. And no, Senator Warner, four years will not provide enough time to heal and rehabilitate yourself.
          If any Democrat member of Congress has any hope of being a presidential contender (Bayh and Warner especially) in either 2012 or 2016, they have to decide now if they want to hitch their star to Obama's wagon, or come out against him. The one who comes out soonest, and more forcefully, besides keeping Hillary on the sideline in perpetuity, will probably not only be the next Democrat candidate (in 2012) but also the next president, as the GOP clearly does not seem to have the stomach for this "manhood and honor" stuff.
    
          Since I began this alert with advice to the GOP on how to defeat the purposes of the Obamailis, it really makes no sense to then end it by describing a scenario in which the GOP will have to reach way down to find the brass to carry it all the way through, brass they haven't been able to find in some years.
          Maybe this explains their timidity.
          And in truth, I am speaking on behalf of the people who stand to suffer once these plans are revealed and executed, and not the Party, who will, after all, be allowed to survive in some docile capacity.
Bernard Chumm

Richmond, December 7th, 2009

        For the full facts of the case, just Google them, they're pretty uncomplicated.
    
        But the facts of the "offense" almost don't matter. What does is the facts of the spin. Sadly, Glenn Beck is at the front of it.

        This is how the system works:
        After capturing Ahmed H Abed, it came to someone's attention that Abed had been injured (punched in the gut, also a bloody lip) and he had complained. What else is new? Three enlisted (this is important) SEALS were charged with either hitting him, holding him while he was being hit, or allowing him to be hit, and then lying about it in oral and/or written reports. Three more SEALS, including an officer, are being listed as witnesses.
        Here's the case as a military defense lawyer might see it:
        1. They were all offered Article 15's (Uniform Code of Military Justice), or as they call it in the Navy, a Captain's Mast. This is called "non-judicial punishment" in that usually a loss of pay or rank is all that is involved. These amount to misdemeanors graded from minor (say speeding) to more severe (say reckless driving). So, there are two levels of offenses. In the Army they are called company grade punishment, offered by a troop's immediate commanding officer, or b) field grade punishment, offered by the next higher in command, usually a battalion commander. The latter offers a series of more serious punishments...while still being a misdemeanor. In ships at sea there is only one level of Article 15, offered by the ship's commander.
            No report states what level of captain's mast was offered the SEALS.
            Still, no one outside the SEAL's immediate chain of command can bring these charges. Not NCIS, not some admiral or staffer in Tampa, nor the White House nor CIA.
            And still, involved are fines (a cut in pay for up to a 3 months) and possible a bust in rank. There is no brig/jail time, and no discharges from the service.
            If the servicemen disagree with the "offer", and it is an offer, of an Article 15, they may refuse it and demand a trial by a judge and a jury. Most importantly, in the military, an enlisted man is entitled to a jury of his peers, meaning at least 40% of the jury will be enlisted.
            These trials are called "summary courts martial" or "special courts martial". What you see in movies are "general courts martials" where serious offenses are tried. I have not read how it has been decided which of these two levels of courts have been selected, but if the original charges are severe enough to warrant a special court martial, that can bump the maximum penalties up to include a discharge if convicted. But that may also be a sign of command influence in the case, which the military justice system looks very, very hard at...always....that a senior commander, such as a general or admiral, is trying to influence the outcome of a case.
 
       2. The SEALS chose to refuse the captain's mast and ask for a courts martial. I think they were right in doing so, as the Navy must prove every element of the charge, and in doing do, must prove with corroborating evidence that Ahmed H Abed had been hit in the gut. His word alone won't prove squat, no matter how politically squeamish the commander is. And as for lying in their after-action action report, the prosecution must first prove the truth, which requires the presence of Mssr A H Abed.
           In my opinion, what the SEALS did do wrong was go out and get civilian attorneys, who, it has been my experience, know little of the military culture and tend to over-blow a case. They also tend to grandstand. That's what the ACLU does from the Left, but the Left does not have the market cornered on showboating. Many civilian attorneys simply do not have the client's best interest first and foremost in mind. They have another ax to grind.
      
       3. In all likelihood the Navy won't win and the SEALS will. In all likelihood, the NAVY can't win. They have to bring a dangerous battlefield POW to US jurisdiction  (wherever the trial is to be held) to testify, which, to my mind, in the end, isn't likely...or recommended. I can see no profit in this case going forward, for no prosecuting attorney wants to go to court knowing he's going to wipe the floor with his forehead.

       4. And, the case, even in trial, is still a misdemeanor.

       So, why did Glenn Beck call Marcus Luttrell, also a Navy SEAL and Navy Cross winner, to ask his opinion on law and command influence from higher up in the chain of command? I know of few enlisted men who didn't believe the top commander's fingerprints weren't on every traffic ticket handed out on post. It's no different in civilian life. Had Luttrell come to me, it would have been to ask the same questions Beck asked him. Why not ask his opinion on the Climate Conference, while you're at, Glenn? Luttrell can speak to battlefield heroism, killing bad guys, not courtroom rules and regulations. Glenn Beck could have more simply thumbed through the JAG yellow pages and asked any Navy lieutenant the answer to these questions. Any and all were more than qualified to win this case for these SEALS, and it seems that sheer cynicism led them in another direction.

       Because of a lot of grandstanding from support groups raising money for unnecessary civilian attorneys (for a misdemeanor trial!) to Glenn Beck, a simple and easy (no-brainer) of an acquittal has been turned into a circus.
       The sad thing is that all the angst and anger over these charges miss the mark...by 100%...for these men wanted justice and the court-martial was their only way of getting it. That's a good thing, isn't it?
       They weren't sent to trial. They weren't indicted. They asked for it...to clear their names.
       But to keep the anger up, and the fever pitch high, the people out here now have to be kept in the dark about just how simple (and minor) this case is...and how important this courts-martial is.
       That, Mr Beck, is demagoguery, and last week, it was a thing you hated most. This week you've wrapped yourself in it.
   
       And with us at least, you've lost a lot of your seriousness and credibility in the process.
Vassar Bushmills

Richmond, December 6, 2009

           "If God had not intended them to be sheared,
                He would not have made them sheep"
                                                                -Calvera the bandit
 
       People are asking about the kingpins of the global warming scam now that the hoax-cat is out of the bag.
       Where's Al Gore?
       Well, he still talking the talk, that's what.

        As we have often said, you should never blame on conspiracy what you can on stupidity. With Gorvera, the jury is still out...
        ...I'm still going with stupidity.
        If he could not add two plus two at the beginning of this equation, why would we think he would be able to add two plus two at the end of it?

VB

      As to what my friend Bernie Chumm wrote earlier today, just a ditto.
VB

Richmond, December 2, 2009

             About twenty years ago I penned an essay about Science and the Method with a view toward warning the medical community about the risks of getting into bed with politicians.
             That view was predicated on the fact that Science and Medicine didn't just drop into our laps as the most respected and revered of fixed stars in our heavens. They had to fight tooth and toenail to get us humans to dispense with our old wives tales and superstitions, and replace them with concrete facts and diagnostic procedures.
             And that fight took centuries, not mere years. Through plaque and Black Death, to the environmental diseases of the 19th Century, there were always men and women who knew the answers to these pandemics did not lie in God's wrath, the stars or evil straw men like the Jews. Still, it took a long time, and much proof, to make their claims heard and believed.
           
             This position of Scientist and Doctor as ones to be revered rather than seen as alchemists and magician is relatively recent, having only been around about a hundred years. Even in my day old country people kept the tomato (love apple) away from girls because of its powers as an aphrodisiac.
             In Germany, by 1900, doctors and professors were gods. To be called "Herr Doktor" was a sign of respect that not even royalty could hope to match. After all, the nobility were born to their station. Doctors earned every letter of the title.
             But in 1933, along came this little Austrian corporal, and behind him a cult following of voodoo artists, preaching eugenics, racial superiority, and even the occult. To move toward a final solution, as they saw it, they needed to enlist the services of the revered and respected in Germany. They need respectability's final stamp of approval. And by the simplest of measures, peer pressure, the good doctors came over, not as individuals, mind you, but as a club. They all took one for the team.
             That was then and this is now. Oh, doctors are still valuable assets to German society. But they are no longer gods. They are still respected, but there is no awe in saying "Herr Doktor" any longer. They are only scarcely higher ranked than lawyers.
             In twelve years it was all lost. The shine had dulled. For not just doctors, but the profession itself, you see, were seen as corruptible.
             In America, doctors never quite attained the royal heights of their counterparts in Germany. But engineers and scientists probably even exceeded them. Can-do societies always worship their doers. Besides, in America, doctors always had the jealous lawyer class pursuing them at every turn, hoping to bring down, then replace them with themselves as America's most feared-but-loved profession.
             But in their hey-day, until recently, doctors were always forgiven "being wrong" due to misdiagnosis or errors in surgery. The people can forgive being wrong. What the people can never forgive is Being Wrong, as the German doktors found out.

            But this warning is not really about medicine, or the health care "reform" bill.
            It is about Science and the recent revelations of a complete and total fraud existing inside the global warming/climatology discipline. (It is more widespread that that,as time will reveal.) For those who have followed the numbers, the math, the statistics, the Method, it has always been known that the entire premise was either a giant mistake...or a doubly-sized hoax.
           Our warning: This will all sort itself out...one way or the other. For a very short period of time the scientific community, the entire scientific community, has a small window to correct this failure of professional ethics and hold onto that reverence and respect they've spent two centuries earning.
           After that, it's just a matter of time. In Germany it took twelve years to lose it. In America it may take only eight, or possibly thirty. Who knows? What we do know is that once that process begins, in the hearts and minds of men, the scientific community will revert back to the days before the plague swept Europe. It will be long road back...and under circumstances far less conducive to success than the first trek.
 Vassar Bushmills
      
  
  

Portland, 2 Dec 2009

           In September I asked the question, When does cynicism become murder?
           It is now, and it is official.
           Now that the United States is no longer interested in defeating the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or preserving the national integrity of Afghanistan (such as it is or ever could be), we see no reason why any soldier should die in pursuit of a purely...and I might add, cynical...political objective.
           Even during the Vietnam war, this was the one argument hawks could not effectively defeat, that men were dying in a no-win strategy..cynically executed. Even Bill Ayers, as he today still cries "murder", that complaint of murder at least has some sticking power to the deaths of so many American soldiers, fighting in Vietnam, first to prop up a corrupt family, then a corrupt cadre of generals, then to allow a slow withdrawal "with face". None of those things happened, while forty thousand died...and yes, a region enslaved.
           So where is Bill Ayers today?
           No matter.
           We believe and have long known that many military objectives can be managed in Afghanistan without boots on the ground, i.e., drones and electronic surveillance. Abandoning the countryside to the Taliban, while pulling troops back to the cities, is, in our view, a sure sign of eventual collapse and defeat, for not in three years (Obama's timetable) nor in twenty years, will Afghani troops to be able (or willing) to venture out to the hinterland to drive them out.
           We regret this loss of hope and freedom for so many Afghan people, but at least our presence there has provided a reservoir of cultural memories from which some good might come at a later time. Bringing a sense of freedom to Afghanistan was always hard, but as Moses Sands once said, it was even more predictably a success than Iraq. He and Vassar Bushmills laid that out some years ago. Nation building always starts from the bottom up, and the first seed for that has yet to be cast.

           Our regrets about things we can do nothing about duly recorded; I now ask this question of the GOP: Why support this president in even one more day of military presence in Afghanistan? If you say "No" and say "no" for all the right reasons, clearly articulated, then the people will understand. The Left won't, but no matter, they will reluctantly join you in the call for an immediate draw down and denial of funding.
           Step outside the box of predictability...for your acquiescence is indeed part of Obama's long term plan...and things will turn quickly.
           Our defeat in Afghanistan is already Obama's baby. It was the minute he opened his mouth last night.

           This is an enemy and a circumstance we will have to confront again, in the not too distant future...but hopefully under better and stronger leadership.
Bernard Chumm
          

Portland, 25 Nov 2009

         As you know, David Obey has opened up the first volley, saying the only way Obama can increase troop levels in Afghanistan is by a direct tax to the people. (LBJ and the Dem's did pretty much the same thing with the tax surcharge during the Vietnam War.)
         Why he is saying this is that China has told the US we can't print any more money, devaluing the paper they are currently holding.
         In other words the Chinese have drawn a line in the sand which even Democrats won't step over.

         Isn't it sad that most of the Bush years the GOP ran Congress and could easily have told the Democrats no, on increasing the deficit or national debt. All they had to do was say "no" to spending.
         Because of their inability to just that, now the goal post has been way on down the field...printing money.
         Thanks, GW for all that backbone
BC

Portland, 21 November 2009

           Apparently not.
           What is amazing is just how disliked both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are among the other members of Congress. Fully a third of both caucuses would toss Reid and Pelosi out on their ears if allowed a secret vote with which to carry it out. (See what I mean about manhood?) I'm speaking about a first ballot, no debate dislike.  So, why are they being drug along on a bill most of them don't like, and could gut both Pelosi and Reid like a fish simply by voting no.
           We believe, with an initial showing like that, a clear majority would quickly follow suite.
           Again, it's a question of manhood....and dirty laundry.

            The way the Democrat leadership runs the congressional membership now is a reflection of how they would rule the whole country...and in short order...with a bullwhip and extortion. No carrot and stick. No sweet talk, no gentle cajolery. The whip!
            You can search history for the way certain dictatorial types have looked down upon their lackeys factotums and go-fers even as they depend on them for everything. If Mary Landrieu of Louisiana thinks that Harry Reid thinks better of her because he had to bribe her in order to get her vote, she's better think again. His disdain is now doubled. (Mine never was that high either.)
            In these times I always think of what the old revival preachers used to urge on their congregations...that first step, that first step. The road to the alter always begins with that first step out of the pew. Then there is no turning back. "I know you want to do it, brothers and sisters.  I know it." And when just one does it, many always follow.
            But alas, there are no men among the Democrats.
            
           Bernard Chumm