Portland, 20 Oct 2009

             Since Mao's on everyone's mind these days, I think it would be wise to draw some distinctions between the type of genocide as carried out by Hitler, and the genocide as carried out by Stalin and Mao. They were different, and by the way, no one's bothered to check in on Pol Pot or the Hutus or the measure of the men who stood by and did nothing.
             Hitler's genocide was fomented by a deep, deep hatred...not just for Jews, but also the weak of mind, Slavs (but I repeat myself, at least in the Teutonic vision of things) and the truly filthy (Gypsies). That it was carried out with such efficiency, calling on resources inside some of the most respected of German professions, e.g, law, medicine, civil service, raises other issues, but it still was built on really one man's hatred.
            On the other hand, Stalin's and Mao's murders were, well, ordinary. Any Commie up and down the line would have seen the political necessity for those deaths and made the same orders. There was no no hatred, no vanity, not even megalomania.
            There was only indifference.
            That Obama has surrounded himself with Maoists raises some interesting considerations. He both hates and "indiffers".
BC

Richmond, October 20, 2009
     
              This subject comes up a lot, for we often mention, and recommend strongly, that public officials, all the way from those who are elected to the pettiest of bureaucrats and factotums and other civil service hirelings, be kept in constant fear of their employers.
              Us.
              Actually, this a natural condition, having nothing to do with violence, even vocal violence. It is normal, even expected that a man who is hired by another is constantly looking over his shoulder, worried or fearful that the boss, or his agent (a supervisor) might catch him doing his job poorly, or dawdling, etc.
              Indeed, without this element of fear the hireling will usually let nature take its course and set off on a course of idle self-indulgence and daydreaming that may not only cost him his job, but his boss a lot of money in lost production, or damage to the goods or customer relations.
             In the private sector, the boss, whose own money is invested, is aware of this shortcoming in human nature, and tries to keep as many hawks hovering overhead as is economically possible to keep screwing up or screwing off to a minumum.
             But not so government, where this shortcoming is even celebrated (if you stop to think about it). There are several reasons for this, which I won't go into, but primarily, the principal managers haven't a cent of their own money invested, and this attitude is soon, after a  probationary period, passed onto the rank and file white collars. So you would think the Rule of Vigilance should go double, no, quadruple for the petty bureaucrat, especially since his job is mostly defined by sitting down, and his natural appetites were in finding just such a fat, cushy, sit-down position in the first place. Staring off into space, or a computer screen, playing Solitaire, or (it seems) peeking at porn, makes up a good part of a bureaucrat's day, umbrella'd by a job description that was defined by a higher ranking bureaucrat whose only purpose in creating it in the first place was to be able to add a feather (staff employee) in his/her cap. (Parkinson's Law) . Most bureaucrats work in regimes where no more than 70%-80% are actually needed to carry out the assigned mission of the regime. (You can look it up.) So none of them are entirely sure why they are there, what they are supposed to be doing...at least for eight solid hours, maybe more like two-three...but they do know this job, this sweeeet! gig is worth fighting (and killing, as Hitler proved) for.
            This is what you get without hawks.
            So what they also know is that the boss, the real bosses, are several miles, even several hundred miles, and at least one security check point away. This is also sweet. The snooping supervisor in the front office, or his boss, upstairs, they fear the hawks...but only just a little. After all, they have the best job protection plan this side of the NEA. The real bosses, Us, they fear not at all.

            It is this lack of fear that has brought us to this point in American history, for almost all politics involves their care and feeding. For you see, our elected officials, who are supposed to be our guardians, our bloodhounds, our eyes at the keyhole and our ears at the transom, have become their protectors rather than our defenders.
            So we need to notch this "fear" thing up a grade or three. And here, it gets personal. We have to put a face and a name to the faceless and nameless bureaucrat.
            When we can, we (SICCM) do this for a living, since, next to dancing with a Greek man, it is about the most fun a fellow can have with his clothes on. So, as to specifics I have to remain silent.
            But I can remind you of the "American template" for re-establishing this "fear factor" in public officials. You've heard terms such as "tarred and feathered" and "run out of town on a rail". Well, these 19th Century citizens' actions were reserved for crooked card sharks, pettifoggers (shyster lawyers) and crafty bureaucrats who either got caught with their hands in the till, or worse, refused or failed to carry out their sworn duties. These were things that could not wait until the next election to remedy.
           This is what I call the appropriate "fear threshold" public officials should feel about their employers (Us), only I am not suggesting that any citizen's group (even I would call them a "mob", right alongside MSNBC), should break into a person's house, and drag him/her into the street, dip him/her into (only mildly warm) oil and cover him/her with chicken feather.
           As nice as it sounds, this doesn't need to be done. One, it is harmful, and two it is illegal.
           But what is not harmful or illegal is to let a bureaucrat who is not doing his job correctly know that such a thing might happen. That is the Fear Factor. And it is easy.
           You see, most bureaucrats know when they are supposed to do something ...but didn't. Or wasn't supposed to do something. but did. This failure could be out of laziness, incompetence, or mercenary intent; no matter, all have a guilty state of mind. The dark truth is that the public employers (Us) can never know for sure (unless they brag about it on Facebook), so we have to dispense the "fear factor" across the spectrum equally...assuming the worst (crime), not the least (laziness). I repeat, we have to assume the worst in this political climate.
           This guilty state of mind is important, for between Phase One, the guilty act or omission and Phase Three, that moment when the door is kicked down and the malefactor drug into the street, is Phase Two, the knowledge that a public airing of just who they are has occurred.. You can't imagine what this means to a bureaucrat...exposure. Hell, he could live next door to you for ten years, you only knowing he was down at the county building, never knowing he was the guy who signed off on turning down your building permit for a new garage.
           Bureaucrats try as much as possible, even within their own offices, to remain anonymous. Their rice bowl, the sweeet! gig, is all that matters. Unless unusually ambitious, they don't even want the GS-14's upstairs to know their names. Never draw attention to yourself. (I've known factory managers who've paid thousands of dollars to the Police Relief Fund to keep their names out of the newspaper over a lousy $190 DUI...while the county judge built a home on the lake from the proceeds...so this impulse runs deep.) Having their name tied to any public act is instant chill for bureaucrats. They don't want their signature on anything controversial....for the public or their bosses two levels upstairs to see, much less the mayor, the board of supervisors or the media. Most of their professional lives is spent in avoiding accountability...or taking any risk. (It's in the water, so please don't read their mission statement then become judgmental. They can't help it.)
          Fighting back: Break down that wall and remove from the bureaucrat 1) his anonymity and 2) the protection provided by his unions, as when the public (Us) declares in public they are guilty of a wrongful act and they realize there is no union (bureaucratic) recourse. When you post their name on YouTube, or GreatAmerican Zeroes.com, or Facebook, something local, something for everyone to see,  you don't have to kick down their door. Every night they will go to bed thinking it's about to be kicked down anyway. They may even move to the next county. They may begin sneaking to work incognito. They may buy an old '79 Datsun from an illegal at the flea market to drive them there.
         That's how it works with the guilty state of mind. Publicly "out" them and nine times out of ten they'll start doing what they were supposed to do, or stop doing what they weren't. No one likes to see his/her name in the local press, or on Facebook or a website for great American/Kansas/Lawrence zeroes. (Once done, it's the other 10% you have to seine out through this net to identify as true enemies and crimnals. These are the Enemy's core constituencies. But once isolated, they are easier to target, and once thery can can feel the gaze of the hawks overhead, their effecrtiveness is reduced by three quarters.)
          See where I'm going?
      
          With this in mind, between now and October, 2010, we need to focus our attention on the vote-stealers at the county and state levels. Some are assisted by ACORN, others work alone, "in the dark" as we say. They can steal or deny voters in many ways, and in some safe precincts, just a few, they may do it just to keep in practice. (We noted this practice in the last election, where votes were stolen for no reason...other than possibly to see whether it could be done or not...and where those votes wouldn't affect the outcome, went un-investigated. This is also how Al Qaeda operates. Push, test, push, test.) State and county voting officials should be held to the same standard that a bank cashier has to be accountable for...down to the penny...when they open and close their drawer. Impose that sanction from now til late summer 2010, from an unyielding and unflinching hawk-like public, and they will toe the line. A few will also suddenly quit and move to Minnesota.
          This should be a nationwide effort, but carried out at the most local of levels.
          More later.
VB

Portland, 19 Oct 2009
             My friend Vassar Bushmills continues to trumpet the notion that constitutionalists have to take back the Republican Party rather than striking out on their own. There isn't time, for we are quite certain that once lost it will take either an armed insurrection or 40 years, minimum, to take it all back...and even then, in a world that will be ten times more hostile to a democratic America than they are now.
             Think about it.
            One of Moses Sands' best quotes, from a few years ago, is that America's greatest threat is "...women without and men without willies...and they both vote."
            So, if the Democrat Part is a party of women and the GOP the party of emasculated males, which one do we take back?
           (Please Ladies of the Right, I know that in much of the 9/12-Tea Party groups around the country, women are the leading spirits. I'm using "manhood" allegorically and indeed, in most places, you are our "best men" in keeping with the historical notion of manhood.)
            It's a crap shoot, but at least the GOP has all the right banners. Our job is simply to go to their closet and help them find them and unfurl them.
BC

Richmond October 17, 2009
             You don't really have to have been following the Rush Limbaugh-St Louis Rams-racism lies stories to know the final lesson learned here.
             For reasons that may eventually prove to be more about dirty business dealings than political ideology, and for which Mr Limbaugh has plenty of money not doing anything this month that can make the malefactors on the other side, whose money is otherwise engaged, think twice about that sort of tactic again.
             But as the various patent lies about racist comments attributed to Mr Limbaugh have been exposed, with some fanfare on Fox News (thanks), the tepidness of the half apologies by the so-called journalistic repeaters of those lies, reveals a lesson we all need to keep in mind.
           It is this: Most members of the Left, The Other Side, The Enemy, however you want to call them, live in a separate reality. What they said about Rush Limbaugh wasn't a lie. It wasn't even a falsehood, or untruth. The reason it wasn't is not because the world has told them so, but because they cannot look themselves in the mirror and tell themselves so.
          An honest liar, when caught, will swear under his breath, "Damn...got caught" and move on, taking whatever lesson (there are several, among which 'not doing it again' is but one) with him.
          The delusional liar will never admit he was caught, but rather the forces of evil (as he sees us) simply outnumbered him on this occasion. He will take far fewer lessons with him.

          The lesson learned is that this is not the sort of person, and there are millions of them now, just hatching in the 7th Grade alone, who will ever be talked out his "beliefs". At some point, we can all hope, that he/she will simply bury this part of his/her life in the deepest recesses of memory and attempt the fiction of carrying on the rest of his life as a normal person. We cannot save him. There will be no Come-to-America moment at the altar of humanity and humility. All we can do is detach him from the rest, and defeat him at every turn.
          The good news is that most are lazy and will quit altogether after two-three consecutive whompings. The bad news is that those who don't, like Bill Ayers has proved, will be a pain in our side forever. So be vigilant. Just make sure it is they, not us, who are the guerrilas.
VB

Richmond, 16 october, 2009
            Moses Sands, in his still-to-be-published book on the blueprints of the common man's House, said that one of the cornerstones of the House is gratitude.
            We've written a lot about gratitude here, "the shoulders we stand on", as Moses called it, especially as it pertains to the ingratitude of American youth since the 1960's.
             In a long essay earlier, The Mother of Liberalism, I traced the "modern liberal's" world view to a "hole in the soul" that began first with the ancient Greek philosophers, then through Marx, to modern academe, thence to just about every 90-pound weakling who has read a book, as being largely based on an anger and jealously that the majority of the world holds high attributes of human achievement that are lesser than their own. The contorted logic of that view is that if the majority (the masses) favor athletic heroes, self-made millionaires, or girls whose gams runs all the way up to their magnificent behinds, and can be seen by all...then the majority should be denied any say in the matter. Since free markets give the masses that sort of vote, be done with it. Since the Constitution and modern ideas of Liberty give the masses those kinds of choices, be done with them. Then we will be ruled, in the words of Mr Shunderson (People Will Talk, 1951) by men and women who may also be small of stature, but always of character. I give you Robert B Reich, as jealous a man ever walked.
             It's that simple. When you condense all that anger the Greeks felt about the Romans taking the beauty out of their observations by actually building things with them, you come up with a deeply felt anger, a hole in the soul, that transcends all politics. Indeed, as I pointed out, it is the mother of all politics Left.
            Bernie Chumm called me after I finally posted that essay, and asked me if I thought they (the Left) felt no shame in pissing on the shoulders they were standing on, since we all...we all...even John Kerry, arose out of some pretty ordinary loins. As the French might say, "How dare we take on such airs, the children of dustmen, garbage collectors, slaves, dirt farmers, and a few Irishmen to boot."
            I thought about that and decided they do not feel shame about peeing on their ancestors shoulders, but do feel shame, nonetheless. In fact, they are ashamed of their ancestors. Besides a general violation of the 5th Commandment (who heeds those anymore, anyway?), stop to ponder the enormity of this craven sin...to be ashamed, out of hand, of the persons who first laid the place for them the sleep out of the cold and wind, who first laid the place, and the plate, for them to eat, who first insured they would not have to go out of the door armed with a knife or gun...since, almost every American House, every set of shoulders, bears the scars and pangs from a wont of these simple treasures at some time.
           For years I have reminded plant and corporate managers that "gratitude" is not passed on genetically, as they complain about the growing indifference of each new generation of worker. It must be retaught, and that teaching, as with so many other things should be taught first, at the parent's knee. We've written of those things as well. But what we now see, sadly in hindsight, as this hole-in-the-soul hatred and shame has almost completely engulfed three generations, is that this sense of gratitude, this honor-the-shoulders-thou-standest- upon, is the only salve, the only preventative of such that bile rising in the bright child's stomach, as he grows to find out that he has neither the size, speed or temperament for athletics, or he hasn't the best house in the best neighborhood, the best labels on his clothes, best looks...or worse, likes books, or history or math, or gad!, engineering or poetry....and maybe not so much, girls.
          Today, the institutions of the state, the schools, advertising, film and television, music, all are arrayed against that gratitude seed ever taking root, for in each case, what they are selling today sells best to an incomplete, unfulfilled, ungrateful, audience. Their meat and potatoes is our failures as parents.

          But this isn't about philosophy, or ideology, it is about politics; specific political strategies. It is easy for me to say to you what must be done to a child when he or she is seven. It is impossible for me to say to you what must be done when that child is thirteen, or seventeen or twenty..if your intent is to restore the proper harmony to your House.
          But what I can say is that if the Constitution is to preserved, and free markets and Liberty saved, those people must be isolated. They must be cast out if they cannot be saved, and the public has neither the time, the money, nor, quite frankly the duty to try and save them. If there is a to be a guerrilla war in this country, let's try to make sure it is them, not us, who are the guerrillas, for we are less than a year (yes, less) to being on the outside looking in.
         I wrote earlier about three steps, political, institutional and cultural, that the concerned citizen must keep in mind as this long, long war to restore Liberty plays itself out. Restoring this sense of gratitude is a perfect example, in that it requires a changing of course in the House and in the public streets (cultural) as well as the institutions, such as schools. But it also involves politically isolating the Hole in the Soul Gang, and driving a wedge between them and the thugs, the brown shirts, the rent-a-goons, they use to carry out their policy...for if those goons only knew what their bosses really felt about them, as people, they may think twice about choosing that side just for a few bucks. Even thieves like the freedom to be able to choose their own marks.
Vassar Bushmills

         ....but I hear King George turned down John Adam's request to buy a piece of the Boston Ten-Pins franchise in 1770. Goes with the territory.
   
         Some say that's what lit the fuse.

         What you can do that John Adams couldn't is take your football and cleats and move to one of those Sovereign-Nation-of-One enclaves along Hawke Bay in New Zealand.
         My recommendation is you light the fuse. It's time liars are punished,
VB

Richmond, October 14, 2009

      A disturbing comment from a caller on a local radio talk show prompted this message. In response to continued tepidness by GOP leadership in the health care debate, plus just general spinelessness about anything liberal or democrat that goes bump in the night, this caller, a Tea Partier, stated the unthinkable: "I guess I'll just have to sit this one out, too."
      What are you thinking?!!!

       I know there are times when we all want to see Jesus, mounted on a white charger, emerge from the clouds and smite our enemies with one fell swoop of his mighty sword. There actually is an old hymn that draws that image, but there's an awful lot of contradictions in it, e.g., a "sword of peace"?, but no more than the contradictory messages we've sent to ourselves since the passing of conservatism's last messiah, Ronald Reagan.
       The idea that we can only be saved by a messiah is about as self-destructive notion as I've seen. We're seeing that now on the democrat side only, what's being "self-destructed" at their hand is the republic and its constitutional base. The party, as they know, will soon follow, to be replaced by "The Party."
       That process and those people leading it are supposed to be the Enemy here, not some weenies sitting at the throne of the GOP in Washington, or in Richmond, or in Atlanta. They will always make up 30% of some political party. The idea that you (we) will concede the whole of one political party to a bunch of Casper Milquetoast-elitists is sheer cowardice. I wrote not long ago that the Left does not have a corner on the abject teatty-baby market, and you're proving that now.
      You (and you know who you are) stayed home in 2006, handing over the Congress to the Left...not the Democrats. Then in 2008, feeling betrayed by party elitists and guess who?, populist, anti-Mormon (a form of bigotry in these days) voters, party voters chose by election, not back room council, a middle of the road jerk as its candidate, so you stayed home again, just to prove to yourself your moral outrage...and to prove to the rest of us your sheer cowardice in the face of a hard fight.
      But while I'm on a roll I'll go ahead and throw in "stupid" here, for the one player the Left has dancing on a string like a marionette right now is you, not Michael Steele or Mitch McConnell...because they know exactly what you will do, for you have bellowed to the top of your voice for four years now what you will do, and by God, you've kept your pledge.
      What the Left knows you won't do is fight back...
      ...unless Ronald Reagan comes out of a cloud on a white charger, to lead you.
      Yes, I said "stupid" for you are playing a class warfare game against GOP moderates and elitists that neither of you can win. It is a playing field of their design, so naturally it will be you who picks up your ball and glove and stomps home.
      And you are stupid for believing that the Party is the be-all and end-all to political involvement. That is how the moderates see it. You are supposed to be able to look beyond the Party to the foundation the Party stands on, and the banner under which it fights. You, not they, are supposed to have the deeper understanding of what the Party and this fight is all about.
     And you are stupid because you believe, when the right guy shows up, you can just march back and undo everything you've allowed to happen. Wrong-o, Buster!
      To those of who who can actually tell a horse from a mule, I suggest a trip back to your closet where you can work your way through a six pack, assessing what you can do to get back into the fight against the Enemy, the Enemy goddammit, not Olympia mealy-mouthing Snowe. You never, never, never get angry at curs for behaving like curs. If you have to, you will kiss your mother-in-law in order to get back into the fight, and will, if necessary to win the fight, rub her poor aching feet.
      If the Pope can wash the feet of a homosexual, then you can suck up a little humility for the Constitution.

      That said, there are things that need to be done right now by conservatives (true conservatives) in Congress and every state GOP structure.
      This idea is old, for many have been lobbying for the creation of a Conservative Caucus in Congress and the state houses for many years. But the idea that some selfish, thoughtless and stupid conservatives from the only energy source conservatism has right now, the Town Hall-Tea Party-9/12 Movement, will once again throw that big teat fit and walk away under the mistaken notion that they can get all this done by a Third Party, or that they can simply take it all back once the time is more ripe and the GOP finally gets it, say in 2012, or that Ol' Ronnie is out there in the corral right now, saddling up his white charger...is enough to scare the pants off true conservatives who see and know the real Enemy here.
     Moderates come in all gradations, for I consider Michael Steel to be a center-Right moderate, just like Mitch. They both get it. They both know there is far, far more at stake here than better tee-times at Colonial. I'm not sure what drives centrists like M'Cain, who behaves more like a Leftie in many cases, in that he's all about getting even. He defines himself by what he hates. Center-Left members, such as Snow and Collins, or Specter before he came out of the closet, are what we call Sky-determines Republicans. Other then being a bit brighter (who isn't) they are very similar to Barbara Boxer, who simply sees the position as a vanity, a sinecure, and entitlement of privilege. Their sense of nobility, which is not the same as the rest of us, is why France lost almost every battle against England during the Middle Ages.
     The Town Hall-Tea Party-9/12 Movement has been the one thing the Left had not counted on. It has been outside their box, and while they are not stupid, and have already begun to come up with counter-strategies, the one one think they don't have a textbook for, don't know and can't know is what we will do next. Unlike the GOP in Congress, we have always been one-step in front of them. Let's keep it that way.
     With all the power they have politically and economically, they are still weaker than Aunt Lucy's left ankle in the spiritual and guts departments. You (we) already have a knife in their heart, and all it takes is another twist or two...which is why they have distracted you by pointing out lesser enemies..."Hey, lookie over yonder. A chicken Republican...", hoping you'll loosen your grip or drop the knife entirely, and run off to kick that mangy cur you could kick any old day of the week.

      Keeping you focused is our key job now. It would be best if conservatives inside Congress started this, and I plan to pass this message this around myself, knowing such things are rarely read, even by staffers. Most state committees also have a conservative wing.
      My only recommendation is that there be some coordination, beginning with 1) a statement of principles, a rigid statement of principles, 2) a contract signed by each member, with simple rules of admission so Olympia and Susan won't even bother to come knocking, and John Boehner and Eric Cantor won't expect automatic ex officio membership, along with unbending rules of expulsion so that Olympia won't let the door bump her in the arse on her way back out, if she should sneak in, 3) a secret handshake, gestures (winks, nods, etc) and whispered code words, especially if in Latin or Greek, are fun and create a sense of exclusivity, but more, drive the Lefties batty that something may be going on outside their ability to know about it...this goes double for the Congressional Black Caucus, who are so paranoid a simple four note whistle through the teeth sends then into paroxysms of anxiety. A pin would be nice. And just imagine the fun you can have, especially once you get 40-50 members, trying to get special office space and other parity perqs already given to the CBC? Think her Ladyship will oblige?

     I'm not making light of this, for the conservatives at the top, in Congress, in the state and national GOP, need to QUICKLY create an outreach to the Tea Party factions, for many will walk away if they can't stay focused and optimistic. We (conservatives) need their vote. The GOP also needs their vote. But neither of us can afford their abstention again....for last time I checked, the voter fraud arm of ACORN is stiull active and well financed. Expect even runaways (such as the coming VA and NJ gubernatorial races) to be close...and when close, anything can happen. Ask Virgil Goode and Norm Coleman.
Vassar Bushmills
     
      

Richmond, October 11
      Let me make this as plain as I can about this term "Rules of Engagement". These are rules created by men lacking in physical courage as a way to signify how they would react if they were in a brave man's shoes. Bill Clinton proved this axiom when he bombed Serbia from 50,000 feet..."with victories he was swimmin', he killed children, dogs and women" (John Cash).
      Also, being able to design and issue these ROE's is also a way to demonstrate control, i.e., who's in charge, as a way to say it's always the pressed suit back behind the front lines that stands tallest in the pecking order
      In practice, throughout history, this ranking scheme has never worked well...actually, not at all...unless that fellow back at the front office had spent an adequate amount of time in the front lines, getting a taste of what it's really like (reading Red Badge of Courage won't do) having to perform while staring harm's way in the face. It was a rite of passage, as the military academies all required their grads to serve in a combat branch before moving on to their chosen career path. In the private sector, it was common for manufacturing companies to require entry level managers to spent at least a year on the factory floor before moving into that cubicle or office at the front of the building. This began to fade away in the 1980s.
     The Japanese were absolutely religious about this idea of having managers with grease under their finger nails, starting all their managers out in quality control. But again, that all changed in the 1980s when we (American business) elevated their lawyers (bengoshi)  to something above that of coffee-runners. Since our managers brought lawyers to every meeting, they had to bring theirs. Engineers were moved to the back benches.

     Now that we have, in every public and private sector, a management class that has never smelled the acrid bite of gunpowder, or tasted a blood trickle from the corner of the mouth, even figuratively, a new image of the rule-makers has emerged.
     When in total control, and a posse in tow, they become bullies. When government is bully is when government is hated most. But when confronting a force that may strike back, they blink...every time...and try to talk, dance and squirm. (Or they go nuclear.) Anything to keep from getting their pants, or reputations, wrinkled.
      As a military term, "rules of engagement" that go way back, but as a control mechanism of physical cowards, this practice only goes back 20 years or so, beginning with attorneys at City Hall telling cops how to behave in street confrontations. What lawyer is willing to 'rassle a perp to the ground? Really. It's better, we find, to sneak up on him with disguised politeness. "Sir, would you please lie down on the ground and put your hands behind your back?" Then, when the perp (or citizen) asks "Why?", we pounce, with a sudden and immediate whack across the shins. Now he hits the ground involuntarily, and gets shackled a little more roughly than originally planned...and he also gets a resisting arrest charge tacked onto the original complaint.
      Yes, I know in the old days, the cop would've talked him into the cruiser, often never even requiring a cuff. Or he might simply have grabbed the perp by the ear lobe and marched him home to Mom. But for the attorney back at city hall, major markers would have been by-passed. First and foremost, "Why?" is a sign of disrespect for his station. Second, with plenty of back-up, the least little bit of verbal resistance is an excuse to turn bully, which the lawyer secretly wants to do every chance he can get. The whack over the knees is the perfect sucker punch, an immediate sign of control, but borne as much out of fear as control, for it insures the citizen won't sneak in that first punch himself. The experienced, mature cop would've handled that situation much differently. Moreover, he would have been on speaking terms with the neighborhood the next day.
      But what if the perp pulled a gun? Well, we know the cops, all six of them, would retreat behind bullet-proof card doors, a SWAT team would be called in, maybe even a hostage negotiator, ten city blocks would be cordoned off, Channels 3, 8 and 12 news would show up, and for three to twenty three hours, the whole city would thrill at the spectacle of a stand-off.
      Just like the poor fellow still doing eternity for eating a bologna sandwich on Friday back in 1955, when they finally frog-march the poor guy out, now under a list of charges that run to twelve pages, he's muttering under his breath, "It was only a joint. A lousy joint."
      How the experienced cop would have handled it would have been to shoot him dead before he could even clear leather, or, simply crack him over the head with the butt of his service revolver. I don't think they can do that any more. I don't think they're even trained to that anymore.
  
      See where I'm going?
      In the military, this is how attorneys (called JAG's) back at HQ now get to crawl into the foxhole with the unit commander on the ground, without even getting their uniforms dirty. Bill Mauldin called them "garritroopers".
      And, in State, Justice and even CIA, it is how desk bound careerists, as often as not attorneys (do you sense a pattern here?), get to tell men in the field, in harm's way, how they would deal with a situation if in their shoes. If foreign policy were football, it would be a game of punting.

      We've written about this before, for most attorneys are physical cowards, i.e., beta males (at best) on the physical side of any confrontation. But when in control they are natural bullies. They do may have alpha minds, which puts them in a superior position over the Alpha males out there facing down the enemy, but sadly, especially in City Hall and Washington, the tie-breaker is that they almost always have beta-to-omega character traits, and reflexes that are defensive in nature, at best. (Why this equation is so dominant among attorneys...but not doctors...is a mystery to me, but if someone out ca figure it out, and can write a really juicy book explaining it, there's a permanent seat on one the Fox panels, for sure.)

      Just keep this in mind as you watch things develop in Afghanistan. The daintier desk bound hands in Washington (and ain't Joe Biden just the cat's meow at fightin' wars?) are running out of options that will let them keep those hands clean. I see 1) a bug-out and a lot of cynical deaths (murder) of innocent Afghan citizens, a la Southeast Asia in 1975, or 2) a lot of cynical deaths (murder) of our under-numbered soldiers just hanging around for no particular purpose other than conveying to the folks back home we haven't bugged out, or 3) a quick denuding of the Afghan hill country (what they call inside the Beltway "going nuclear"). Just as the US Senate has yet to stand in the well of history for the genocide in SE Asia they walked away from, if Obama and this Congress think they can walk away scot free, they will.
      When I think of lawyers in government and the corporate world, I can't help but stop and think about Bill Clinton, and what just one tour of duty on the front lines of anything could've done for his character. Just one broken nose when he was a kid and Bill Clinton could've been the best goddamned president in America history. Sometimes that's all it takes...one broken nose (in my case two) to separate honorable men from liars, and to separate all men from lawyers.
      The saddest thing, too, is that Moses believed Afghanistan was the easier of the two (alongside Iraq) to plant the basic ideals of democracy and liberty at the grass roots.  (More on that later this week.)
VB
     

Portland
             ....so decided that the Boys of Summer should not become the ice men of winter this year.

          Still, owing to the fact that we have more or less concluded we can muddle through anything without His help, I suspect He'll eventually turn His back and allow there to be a Rockies-White Sox World Series in some late October, as well.
          Baseball was no more intended to be played in a frozen palace of ice than Man was intended to be subservient to bureaucratic microbes.
          I guess God will let us relearn those basic laws the hard way...since we're so smart.
BC

Portland, 10 October, 2009
        Yes, I know the Peace Prize feeds a megalomania we all have dreaded seeing being pumped up, but still...
 ...the notion that the man could be had in the first place...and for so little...
 ...a stoke of the vanity, a chace to give $1.4 mil away (to anyone other than his family in Kenya, Boston, and other sordid parts of the globe) in exchange for a shift in US foreign policy toward one that coincides with a Euro self-destruction model that has already well metastisized, it's death rattle only a few years away. I can hear the mullahs' peal over Stockholm as I write.

    And we still complain about lobbyists who want to swap a weekend of booze and babes in exchange for a sweetheart contract.
Even John Murtha wouldn't accept a bribe this blatant.
BC

Portland
       Thanks to OB the Gaunt, I just won $2000, and his commission is 20%, standard Chicago finder's fee.
       I learned in my college days, never bet your sentiments. Find some other Tigers fan, and let him bet his. Just two weeks after OB the Pious was coronated , I bet a bunch of businessmen that OB the Lame would get the Nobel Peace Prize while still in office. They gave 5 to 1 odds, and I put up $400. I go by to pick up my winnings this weekend.
      Thanks OB the LopEared. I owe you.
BC

Richmond, Oct 9, 2009
       The time of the quickening is upon us.

       Within a week, both houses of Congress will have drafted clever language, not only to fool us, but their own Members, so as to assuage their fears that we are onto them.
       We need to make it clear to them, all of them, even the most unrepentant of leftists, that we have not been fooled and that a severe and permanent price will be paid for passage of any health care plan that takes away the individual's right to choose his/her own medical care and provider, which includes choosing none at all.
        These things we know:
        1) Any government interference in this basic right is unconstitutional and illegal, and that short of the assassination or untimely death of any one of four Supreme Court justices, that outcome is unlikely to change;
        2) The Congress knows this, so are acting with malice aforethought. They are sneaking this law past their members and the People, so are not innocently walking into a giant mistake they will wish they could undo in a few years;
        3) The federal government has never undertaken any plan for reform that has not failed miserably, made matters worse, and cost exponentially more than the Congress and Presidents have promised it would cost, so we can only assume that today the term "reform" is either used cynically or, in Marxist-speech, as a double-entendre, as when they speak of burning the Constitution also to be a "reform".

        Passage of this bill in any form cannot be allowed, or, in the alternative, every voting member of Congress must lay his/her name in the "Aye" column with clear understanding of the consequences.
        If this bill is passed the fuse will be lit. There will be no "oops" or "do-overs".
        Tell Congress, each one of them, individually, that if this bill is passed they will have called down the thunder on their heads, and Hell will follow.
        Tell them to "Get out...and Get a Lawyer".
VB


  

Richmond, Oct 6, 2009
     Kudos to my friend Bernie Chumm for coining a new slogan, "Black Gringo". It deserves a bumper sticker, maybe even some poster art.
     But what was Obama thinking?
     No one in the south, even Hugo Chavez, will ever believe Obama again, after all the anti-colonial, anti-big stick talk, he goes and pulls a TR and tries to ride rough shod over the one thing every single Latin American is in total agreement about...that it's high time for the Latinos to host an Olympics.
     Wow!
     It's interesting, too, Bernie, that no one, even in the right wing media has picked up on this singular blunder. Good show!
VB

      If you're new to this site, I invite you to read the three prior pieces, having to do with the necessity of 1) political victory in order to 2) recapture central institutions (education, advertising, over-sized bureaucracies) in order to neutralize their effect on us, and our children.
      As the founders saw it, vigilance by citizens of their government was as natural an act as double checking the change given back by a cashier at a drug store. It was always government's intent that citizens should take it and its practices on faith, without question, in blind obedience or subservience. It was always free men's duty to resist this urge, in order to stay free. America was the first time free men got to be on top.
     So the founders realized that citizens had to do some work in protecting their investment in this new found Liberty. (Moses Sands personalized it by calling it "their investment in their House"). First and foremost was in their choice of representatives sent to the state and national capitals. Even in 1790 the founders knew what a trip to the "big city" must be like for some of these backwoods congressmen....whooeeee!...so went to lengths protecting a press that would keep folks back home apprised of what Rep Slim Pickens was doing on his big spree to Washington City...even in 1810.
     But they also intended that every trip to Washington, or Nashville or Jeff City be seen as a chore to the congressmen, not a junket. They wanted it to be a type of a loss or pain, so that Congress would hurry to tidy up business and the members could get back home to tend the farm, the store, and the family. They wanted these to be citizen-legislators. I don't think the Founders were too keen on the idea of a permanent and professional legislature, and what do you know, I think the American people are finally beginning to agree with them again...after what, 125 years of abstentions? 'Bout time.
     The Founders intended that the real job of government be carried out right under the citizens' noses, at the local level, where thievery, chicanery and corruption, as well as the over-collection of taxes, could be dealt with swiftly, and with finality. Even today citizens are more interested in the potholes in front of their house than the other kinds of holes lounging around in Washington.
     The Founders were not children. Some would have winced when Jefferson "bought the West" in 1803, but they already knew that if there was a waterway big enough to carry a boat that commerce would be built upon it and at the most favorable landing on one side of the river or the other. Imagine the difference between Ohio and Kentucky, as DeToqueville saw it, between a bustling city of commerce and slavery, all because, at that spot (at Cincinnati) the Ohio River bent right rather then left, making the north shore the better place for landing boats. Slavery and free commerce didn't mix then, just as it doesn't now under the guise of socialism.
     The Founders didn't have to know the industrial age to know that it would someday occur, and the problems it would bring. They had already watched three or more generations of "refugees" from Europe disembark to start a new life here, and they had already seen what poor yeoman stock could do, so the idea of poor Slovaks, even Papists, probably wouldn't have frightened them very much. Every Founder stood on such yeoman shoulders. Every Founder had been taught to remember, and had been taught to pass it on.
     They knew it would be hectic, erratic, at times ugly, unplanned and disorderly but in the end they knew it would be good, because, in their own lives they had seen all this happen before. (I recommend any good social history of the American colonies in the 18th Century, before the Revolution, just to be able to tally all the changes the Founders had seen in their own lifetimes.)
     If the Founders made a mistake it was in failing to say (write) more about the unwritten essences, the essences they more or less took for granted, of their new Republic that would make up the seeds of Liberty, to be passed on, family-to-family, House to House, rather than through political writ. If you will recall, they assumed all the language found in the Bill of Rights, until the anti-Federalists forced them to be written down, writ large. Imagine the sport lawyers would've had with the Constitution had the Bill of Rights only been assumed.
    The same goes for the commonly understood beliefs in the Americas as to what a man and woman would do with their House once they actually could get hold of it. Political and philosophical writings of the era, all the way back to Shakespeare, are filled with such references to the common sense of the common man, but by inference mostly, as in "as every body knows", rather than black and white edict. You can read Smith's Wealth of Nations one way, and come away with some good rules you can quote to shut down a liberal at most any cocktail party. But you can read Smith another way, and write a book twice its length just about the common sense he references, a common sense that "even Homer Simpson could figure out" (Moses Sands). It was in that vein that the Founders sat down the Constitution and the Federalist Papers...they spoke of things every common man could easily grasp in their everyday lives.
    The common culture, now referred to as the "popular culture" contained all those essences, and those essences were the underlying support system for the Republic. The Republic can't make it without this support system, just as a free people can't make it without the Constitution.
    This is what we have to recover...and we can't do it at the end of a gun, or by legislative fiat. We can't destroy the Bills of Rights in order to save it, and trying to take back the culture with a sledge hammer will do just that. We have to win the hearts and minds of the people once again. We have to make virtue Cool! But make no mistake about it, no matter how much you may think you are in control of your House, the Left controls that culture that begins just outside your front door...and has been sneaking in at night, via the internet and television, and through the public places and schools you and your children visit, for many years. You no longer can wait until they have kicked down the door to your home to start fighting back. You must go to the defense of your neighbors now.

Recapturing the Culture: At Home
     It is from this point that we must now, win or lose politically in this current Rebellion, pick up the Founder's unwritten assumptions about us and recast them into the soul of our community and our House. For you see, it was always those unwritten assumptions about us that the Left most wants to change. Corrupt us, corrupt our souls, and they win. (When you put it that way it sounds suspiciously like the Devil, doesn't it?) Their revolution, which began ages ago, was always about reducing us to their template of what they think we should be...crass, ignorant barbarians. Just look at the territory they already own (the inner city, New Orleans, Detroit) to see how they think we should be.
     Moses Sands probably saw this better than anyone I'd ever known, and since 1998 (until he headed to the high passes in 2006) he wanted (me) to write a book (for him) about those unwritten essences.
     What follows here is a book outline more or less, for 250 pages would do the subject better justice. Moreover, if you have read us in the past, you know we already engage in Agitprop projects (as I call it) in trying to re-insinuate the icons of those assumptions into the Pop Culture, which the Left currently owns.

     "Taking Back the Culture" falls into two broad categories: 1) Taking Back and Defending the House: These are things the average citizen can do in his and her own House, and with their neighbors...besides the political activities they are already engaged...and 2) Re-establishing Good and Virtue as Popular Totems within the Culture: These are things that must now be done in the form of an organized way to some degree, the same way (and by some of the same means) the Left has used the past 40 years to wrest control of the culture away from us.
     As for your own House, no two are the same. Your House, and your children will progress based on what you teach them, not on what you deny them to learn in the popular culture. This rule is as old as Methuselah. Ever hear of PK's (Preacher's kids)? A stereotype, yes, but one based on the fact so many turned out rotten. The over-protected daughter is the one who is most likely going to run off with the first Fonzie in her life. I'm using 50 year old metaphors here. In my dad's day, it was running off and joining the circus. Kids rebel, and every child has a period where, as my mother said, must be prayed through the valley of death. Then, once through it, they come back to the core essence of what they were taught. If you don't teach them anything, there's nothing to come back to. Protecting them and teaching them are two different things. You must teach.
     And as we know in education, the best time to begin building certain loves, such as love of country, is around the 3rd or 4th grade. The Marxists also know this, by the way. If they can grab your kid before he/she gets into middle school, they will own him.
     What schools (intentionally, I submit) don't teach is how to think. Critical thinking is the key...the ability to tell a horse from a mule, as one fellow described it. They can only learn this at home. I suggest searching Amazon.com and finding old school books on logic and ethics, which were taught at one time in schools, around 1900. (We're considering a rewrite for the modern home. I'm discussing it with Bernie.) Every home should have an American history book written before 1930.
     And, if this "taking back your House" theme is relatively new to you, then there is the problem of how to begin teaching a 13 year old, or 15 year old to understand the new reality when they have never really heard the word "no" before.
     You have a problem here which requires an intervention of sorts. There is literature and various programs out there, but the key is that you must be the one to impart both reality and the logic of this change in your House to those children. It would help if there were two of you. And it would help more if you know how to pray...for the biggest hurdle you will have will not be those "I hate you's" from your child, but from your own anxiety in having to take time away from your precious day, your own precious free time, your favorite television...
     ...to save your child and the future of your House.
     In the end, many of you won't. I already know that. Just don't quit trying, for every little thing you even try to impart today will still be with your child after they pass through the valley.
     
     No two of you could agree as to how the culture should be shaped. The Founders understood this, and decided that the House (not the individual) should be the best building block. The difference between the poor failing House and the fair-to-middling House and the excellent House has nothing to do with money and education and certainly not the ability to know which butter knife to use to eat your peas with. It has to do with some fundamental rules of common sense, and by "common sense" I mean this as much as Farmer Tom meant it or as Tom Paine or Glenn Beck intended it.
     To save time, we have to jump forward from the rules (blueprints) of building your House. I have to assume that if you are reading this your House is in pretty good order, or, is in the process of being "refitted".
     Rescuing the culture involves first, setting your own House in order, by example, for it was the example of the successful House, the moral House, the honest House, the diligent House, that the Founders assumed would guide the community and the nation. The Founders believed that if every man were given the freedom to build and own his own House, and have the right to grow it, and pass it on, he would accept the gift. That is no longer the case, for nearly half of Americans, especially among the young, see no "gift" in anything that requires work and effort, and will swap almost any freedom in exchange for anything that is fun and free. This is a fact we must undo, but we cannot undo politically.
     Sadly, the Founders felt absolutely no need to set down a book or list of rules as to how to build that House, brick by brick. Instead, the 10th Amendment merely provided the states and local governments the power to polish up those rules according to community standards...meaning that every community was a petrie dish, providing evidence of what worked and what didn't work. We all built our houses based on evidence before our very eyes as to what worked and what didn't.
     All that was once upon a time. Once upon a time everyone wanted to live on this side of the tracks and strove to better their lives to make it so. Now, one of government's principal purposes is to make life on the other side of the tracks at least habitable enough, and so effortless, that non will want, or even try to come over. The only passport for crossing over is when one on this side goes over and selects (taps out) a lucky lottery winner to come on over and join us. Barack and Michelle are among these tapped candidates. So is Sotomajor. Certain strings are attached to this passport, as we see time and time again, but the benefits package is great. Clarence Thomas, on the other hand, was no more than a runaway, who skipped bail. Such impertinence is never treated well.
     Taking back the House and the culture has to be by example. Read the Boy Scout Law or the 7 virtues and you will know what personal characteristics you and your House need to exhibit. Your first rule of order is to pass that on to your children. It helps if you can stay married, as half a House is almost always doomed to fall...and I am sorry, there is almost nothing to pass onto a kid that can override that one glaring act of betrayal. Almost every thing you teach them is either down the drain or at least diluted because of divorce.
     Divorce is an utter act of selfishness. Yes, I know there are exceptions, just as there is with abortion...rape, incest... I won't debate that here. But the vast majority of divorces are between two kids who probably shouldn't have gotten married in the first place, or probably not so young, and probably for all the wrong reasons. Marriage is a contract to build a family corporation (the House) together, and to train the next generation of stockholders. It is not a promise to share bathtubs and Coronas in Nassau.
     The first duty of education is in your House. That is where the child learns of the shoulders he or she is standing upon. Teach them that, and nothing the public school system will every teach them can untie that bond. If a teacher, or the school tries to, take it personally. Attend to it. If there are lesser gods below God, Mother and Father, Mom and Dad, Mama and Papa, will be those gods. Not "Teacher". Everything of value that a child needs to know should come from the distance of your knee (and sometimes across it). Public schools will provide the footnotes, and the "Read More" list. You will provide the context.
      Why is this so? Because by then you will have taken back the schools, and run out of town on a rail the teachers, administrators, bureaucrats and legislators who want to indoctrinate your child with any political notion.
      But isn't American exceptionalism a political doctrine? Isn't love of country a political doctrine? Isn't the Constitution political? Actually, no. Only the enemies of the Constitution want to declare these things "political". Look down at the shoulders, and the shoulder's shoulders you are standing on. That is a fact, not politics, and that is the fact of American exceptionalism...that we all descended from the most common and lowborn of people, and we arose to build the mightiest nation, the freest nation, and the best damned air conditioner repair company in Broken Bow, Oklahoma. Every "liberal" alive is pissing on the shoulders he or she is standing on. Their whole life's theme is one of ingratitude....hateful, spiteful ingratitude.
      By taking back and running the schools, you, as an alliance of citizens will decide what is political and what is not in your local schools. And you and an alliance of citizens will decide what is and is not political in your schools statewide. No bureaucrat will decide that. No one other than you will decide what is to be in those textbooks. Not even the US Congress has jurisdiction over your schools...and you will fire or otherwise run out of Washington on a rail any member of Congress who say otherwise. Only the US Supreme Court can draw a boundary on this power, and only they according to the limits laid out in the U S Constitution...or they'll be looking for a lawyer, too. This is how you must approach this problem.
     Teach your children manners. To be polite. Simple things, such as "please", "Thank you", "Yes, ma'm, "No, sir". They learn this first around the dinner table. The toy aisle at Walmart is not the place to first decide to demonstrate these new pleasantries. Since there are some (now many) homes that don't teach this, it is your responsibility to lay out a list of things the schools should impart to these impoverished children, such as manners, honor, personal responsibility. Keep this list small, and keep it ecumenical, and on a short leash, for you do not want the schools to think you have turned your children over to them to raise, for they will accept the offer if allowed to persist in this belief.

      In the end, all you are doing here is establishing a virtual perimeter of morality around a House you once thought four walls, a gate, and a schnauzer could protect.
      How your House matters is that it sets out an example. Despite the best attempts of advertisres (another enemy of your House), the social pecking order is built around the way a child (and family) present themselves publically, as much as the kind of car, the dollar tag on the neighborhood they live in and other economic amentities. From the beginning of time kids have separated themselves off in cliques of like-minded individuals, from football players to science club members. Just as town with 22 Christian churches and a small synagogue, that toewn becomes ecumenical the day someone from one of those 22 churches reaches out to a member of the synagogue and invites him to Kiwanis. School children also break up into groups based on economic status, which of course, is most readily identified with the clothes they wear, and now I suppose, their phone service. This is not good for the culture, so should be discouraged. But rather than ban cell phones, or order school uniforms, all that is required is that a few students (it doesn't take many) to simply treach out, and cross over and comingle with other groups. I remember Moses Sands telling me that in his school, in the 1930s, it was the captain of the football team who protected all the geeks in the school from bullies. What a novel idea.
     If you have noticed lately, childrens' clothing styles favor the super-affluent look (where you shell out $50 for a $5 top simply because of the label) or the trashy look (where you shell out only $30 for an outfit that looks like it came off a Salvation Army rack...and was once used by a prostitute before she was saved.) The well stocked middle class wardrobe seems to need a healthy inventory of both, so that any social situation can be met with the proper attire.
     Trust me, except for the real gutter trash (whose army seems to be getting bigger all the time) and the really rich, the rest of the parents would give worlds to put a stop to this madness. This madness has to stop one household at a time. Be the first on your block. You will find others whose budget is being pushed to the max who will join you. Read a book about hand-me-downs, and then watch a frown come over the faces of Chinese manufacturers and Madison Avenue ad-men, who can no longer convince you that a thousand dollar new wardrobe is needed each fall.
     The simple rule, from iPods to computers to clothes, to music...if you pay for it, YOU OWN IT AND CONTROL ITS USE. If you kid want to own something, sit him or her down and to write out on a sheet of notebook paper...J...O...B.. then explain some of the economic realities surrounding this strange new term. It wouldn't hurt, during the lecture, if you mentioned that this "Job door" is one a kid must go eventually through in order to become a man. And try to make that sound like a good thing, not something to dread....you know, job equals freedom, equals not having to clean the room or make up the bed, equals staying up past eleven, equals pizza every night for supper, with ice cream dessert. And in truth, during their trek through the valley of the shadow this is exactly how they will live. By the time they graduate, and if they have been able to think critically, which means they will have avoided all the Leftie profs of campus (critical thinking to a college professor is like a cross to a vampire), once on the other side all the rules and regimens you imposed on them as a kid will begin to make sense, and they will miraculously learn to make a budget, and start eating vegetables. It's a mystery, I know. Again, the best time to start them on these little pep talks is around 3rd or 4th grade. But they must come from you.

     So, if you are going to fight back begin by re-asserting control over your House, and especially begin to augment (actually supersede) things your child is taught "out there" in the public square and schools. Trust me, everyone will notice. Both your neighbors and the Bad guys. You see, they've been paying attention to you and your House for years. Be prepared for a counter-attack or a siege. They have many tools in their inventory, and all you have, other than a stiffer spine, is the support of your neighbors and your God, however you conceive him to be. They know how you will react and have plans already drafted as to counter your attacks. They know you will stay within your box. You are predictable. You will come to a PTA meeting and squawk, you will write letters, emails, phone your Congressman, councilman or school administrator. You will vote. But you will stay within the rules and within your box.
     Because they won't, they believe, as we are seeing now, they will beat you every time. Today, I heard a very passionate, angry and frightened woman speak of the health care plan, and how it would destroy the life she wanted to build for her family...then, say, she would have to go along with it because it would guarantee her children health care.
    Had you listened to this you would have felt her anger and anxiety. But all a Leftie would hear, or wanted to hear, is that she would surrender anyway. That's all they want. Your anguish means nothing to them. As Stalin probably thought a million times, "This too will pass."
      In this I have laid out a daunting task for the individual mother and father, trying to win this current battle against socialism by rescuing the Constitution, then doing the hard work, and laying the groundwork for the next generration to follow, to scale back the institutions that aligned against your freedom, and to begin taking back the culture, one House at a time.
      But the size and manifest designs of the Enemy are such that there are things you cannot do, for 1) you are too few and 2) you are too poor.

Recapturing the Culture: In the Streets
      One of Moses Sands favorite anecdotes was of his mother, when she saw a villainous man approaching her in Main Street, she would suddenly dart off down a side alley, saying as she walked "Get thee behind me, Satan."
      There's something wrong with that picture, isn't it? Free men do not have to be free in secret. In fact, they cannot. As the target of the Left, you cannot simply barricade yourself in your House, and pretend you are free, when the Enemey owns the public highway.
      You have to take it back, and before I proceed any further, let me tell you, even under the most auspicious of circumstances, it will take at least forty years, two generations to take back the public street.
     This brings me to a subject we've written about for a long time, a hard subject, for we can't say out loud entirely what needs to be said.
Our anguish is at "conservatives in power", from radio to the internet, to the GOP, who refuse to step outside their rice bowls to begin bringing down the thunder on the Left. By refusing to do so, in a way, they have become just as predictable as that passionate, sad woman. As long as they stay inside their box, the Left believes they can control them. Indeed, they probably can.
    Most people believe that we (the People) will get even in 2010, and again in 2012. Let's pray they are right. But our view here is that many talking heads have to believe this 2010 Day of Reckoning scenario because to think otherwise would mean they would have to step outside their box to remain relevant. To date, only Glenn Beck has done this, and with him, only one foot. (He has way too many irrelevant fingers in the fire for the Left to take him all that seriously. An irritant, at best.)
     What we continue to say, What you need, and what we've been begging conservatives around the country to develop, is an equalizer.
     Here, I have to be very general and proprietary here, and quite frankly, just plain cautious, but for years, in every city and town of note in America, the Left has operated small cells of what essentially are watchers and fact gatherers, people who can, if it is decided they are needed, can summon all sorts of outside support. They are the invisible support system that stands behind that teacher who teaches her children to pray to Obama, or the frightened (or simpatico) school administrator who allows or at least does nothing to intercede or punish the conduct.
    In the modern sense, they are doing nothing illegal, and in the simplest sense, many don't even know they are working for a "higher" cause, or are being handled at all.
    It's not for you to know who are mere useful-idiot cannon fodder to the Left's plans, and who are active soldiers and capos. But it is for the conservative constitutional movement to know.
    We've written about Agitprop elsewhere on this blog, but in essence it's primary function is to find out things about the Left's activities in your town, and inside your institutions, then pass that news onto yourselves as parents, citizens, or, where political action is required, to a political action group. This can be done in several discreet ways, for maintaining the covert nature of the informants here is important, especially since the Left won't know either...and stuff like that really drives them batty.
    But there are also more pro-active projects an Agitprop unit can carry out, such as finding ways in the local popular culture to re-instill conservative and cultural virtues into the common society, especially the youth. These can be done with signage, free advertising, as with t-shirts, even music (I'll be posting a piece on a passive popular revolt in Korea I witnessed in the 1970s). There are so many ways. And they are all positive injections of virtue and real hope into a subculture that has turned dark and self-destructive.
    Then there is also the guardian function, which I consider important. It is when our side actually actually making the bad guys pay. For instance, there has been this spate of school videos of children chanting, singing and even praying to Obama. This is expressly illegal in every jurisdiction I know, and exposure seems to insure the practice is stopped. Or is it? When students were taping inflammatory lectures by college professors against George W Bush...especially when the class was supposed to be about geography...they simply stopped allowing tape recorders into the classrooms.
    There was no interdiction. There was no punishment. of the offending professors.
    The same thing is occurring in certain schools now, where teachers are doing what they are doing because they think they are immune from any counter-action. Many school administrators OK, and protect these illegal activities with the same though in mind, "Nothing can happen to me except being called on the carpet by the State Board of Education. I'm immune."
    There are dozens of ways (harmless and legal) to humiliate, embarrass and punish such wayward conduct. And yes, this has a chilling effect...only not of free speech, but illegal and dishonest behavior. If they can do it to AIG officers for getting a too big a paycheck, we can Andy-by-God-Jackson return the favor.
    And consider how quickly a truck load of cow dung would've found its way onto Rep Alan Grayson's car after he made those defamatory remarks about Republicans wishing old folks dead...especially in the middle of a campaign by the democrats to euthanize them. (More on that later, but it's pretty obvious, in order to pay for the medical care of the about-to-retire Baby Boomers, history's largest generation, a type of governmental triage will have to take place, in which old folks will be the odd man and woman out.) How to make them pay?
    We need the Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and the various conservative foundations who have no problem spending millions on education, which while noble, seems to be going nowhere, and turn that money into action.
    And now, not November, 2010, when we learn that ACORN hasn't been rendered impotent after all.
    I will go no further on this point except to say that locally created and fully-"missioned" operations for a city of 20,000 should run $150,000-$200,000 for starters.  I say "for starters", since, once set up, they should be able to get local money in order to do all sorts of things.   
    A Congressional district of 700,000 should have at least three such units, with multiple capabilities, and I've been asking the political parties why they haven't done this already. (Maybe they have.) This is to allow citizens with deeper pocketbooks to become involved while maintaining a discreet arms-length distance from the notoriety of a real on-the-ground operations team.
    Ordinary citizens can probably set a seedling started with about $50,000 in pledges, but in our view, $150,000 is a minimum requirement for a fully functioning ops unit.
    Simply stated, this is an aspect of the war you can't fight individually, in a small groups, or out in the open.
    We believe that the one thing the Left cannot parry are attacks coming from outside the box. We are just as artistic and twice as clever...after all, we built a nation...while they've only plucked our fruit off the trees...so where's our art, our music, our film?
    We believe the Left cannot sleep at night knowing we are out there in the dark, lurking, ready to pounce. If there isn't a meeting they can break up, or an office they can storm, they are helpless. As I said a long time ago, public officials, from congressmen to county registrars to elementary school teachers need to feel our warm breath on their necks every waking minute. They need to start looking for back street routes to work. They need to garage the Volvo or SUV and look into driving '96 Ford Probes so no one will notice them. They need to have to learn to sneak into and out of work, and on to their dachas in the country, just like the commissars in the USSR did in the late 80's when the people finally caught onto what they were doing.
    They need to feel what it's like to be besieged. And they need to feel fear, so that every time a door is slammed closed or metal pan is dropped, they soil themselves.
   
Vassar Bushmills.

Portland, 2 Oct 2009
        Chicago's failure to get the Olympics for Chicago in 2016 was a big rebuff of President Barack Obama on the world stage. The Obama media will try mightily to spin this defeat into a tie, and maybe even a win, but no matter. When Rush Limbaugh squeals with glee and MSNBC and CNN moan in dirge-like concert, it's a loss.
        I'll leave the chatter on that loss to others.
        But the other big loss was the bold and blatant manner Obama tried to Yankee Big Stick this victory for Chicago over an entire continent Obama has spent months telling the ways of Big Stick Yankee diplomacy with their Latin neighbors to the south is over. Hell, even LBJ had the good sense to try to sneak in the back door when doing a deal like this against Latin interests.
        Make no bones about it...the Rio Olympics in 2016, the first ever in South America, is the South American Olympics. Every swinging Ricardo from Juarez to Terra del Fuego will gleam with pride when that flame is lit. As well they should. Well done. 'Bout time.
        But since early in the week, when OB1 announced his decision to fly to Copenhagen, Latins began to ask themselves, "Who is this Black Gringo? Really?"
Bernard Chumm