The Health Care "Reform" Act isn't reform. It is something quite different, unless you buy the Left's bottom line that socialism is a "reform" of the free market and our republican form of government. So you can see how the word seems to tilt heavily toward one side of the political spectrum,
     We believe any news organization; print media, radio, television, has an independent duty to determine whether the "style" offered up by any legislative body or rule-making body, fits their content.
     This posture runs Left and Right and has more to do with journalistic honesty and integrity that anything else. Everyone wants to put their slant on their offerings. News organizations should only oblige them if they agree. By using "reform" the way they do, you implicitly say you agree that this bill s all about reform as well.
     Your style should comport with your editorial stance...if you agree with Obama's health care plan then call it what he calls it. But if you don't, let the public know where you stand, Roger.
     Fox News Radio and their television division are providing Obama free advertising with a "fact" we think isn't, and most local radio and television stations are following their lead. I'm getting a little sick of hearing the word reform used to describe this bill on my local right wing radio.
     Try to do better. We will try to do more to remind you.
VB

    Passage of the President's Healthcare "reform" (puhleeze) Bill, in any form will end the United States of America as we have known it the past 200 plus years.
    The same goes for Cap and Trade. Both bills represent a jumping off from which there is no going back, assuming the President and his party will move as quickly to seal in concrete the bureaucratic cornerstones as they have to ram the legislation through in the first place.
    They can already do this without GOP assistance in any manner, but feel they need GOP votes in order to provide cover for Democrats who are being threatened back home. (This may be a canard but this isn't the time to discuss it.)

    Don't give it. If ANY REPUBLICAN allows the health care package to pass, in any form containing the "shift of power" from the patients, their doctors, and their private insurers, to the federal government, then it will take forty years for us to be able to undo the damage, even if we begin in 2010-2012 by undoing it. We're convinced here that if these pieces of legislation pass the angry and disenfranchised people can't even know the disappointment they will feel when they find their votes won't matter in the 2010 mid-terms.       There will no longer be an need for charades by Democrats; they will have passed Phase I in flying colors. These two legislative votes will likely be the last real ones ever cast in Congress, as thereafter, they will move into a Phase II consolidation post haste, no longer having even to make nice with Republicans. Even the media won't matter as much.
   Notice: Obama's only been in office six months, but an honest word hasn't come out of his mouth since the campaign (when he said he'd remake us into a socialist state). You cannot hide behind the "He Lied!" defense. You go along with him, you're to blame.
   If that happens I see no need for ANY REPUBLICAN now sitting in Congress to remain once their term expires. NOT ONE. We may as well as start out with a clean slate, and maybe a even a new name for the party would be a good idea.

   The second option, should the GOP responsibly say "No" across the board (excepting the known leftists) and for reasons more than just the shock value, would be to walk out, en masse. That means canceling dinners, joint appearances, golf, charity functions, even appearances on talk shows with Democrats. Place the mark of anathema on them. Also, refuse any comradeship with any of the turncoat voters in the Senate and House. Put them under the ban. Dark times require stark measures.
   As I said, there are some very cogent reasons perhaps you haven't thought about as to why this would be a necessary idea, but I will discuss that at a later date, once the votes draw nigh.
   Just remember, GOP, you now have a bulls-eye on your back also.
Bernard Chumm
  

   News item:
      Bud Selig is considering lifting the lifetime ban against Pete Rose eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
   The story behind the story:
      Selig's about face was due to President Obama's choice of more than one tax cheat now sitting in his councils and currently writing tax law.
   Not yet reported:
      Due to Obama's appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, probably the only woman in America less qualified for the post that Harriet Myers, Selig is also considering reinstating Shoeless Joe Jackson for the Hall, and creating a special slot for Willie Sutton, who's never played a minute of baseball
    
   Once again, Obama leads, the world follows.
BC
     
   

    It's a remarkable sight, and no, you won't read about it in the paper or see it on television.
    For the longest time, Vassar Bushmills and I have been talking about how conservatism has been "stealing" the old songs of protest from the 1960s. Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" is a liberty song, all about constitutional rights.
    Now, the times they are a'changing and they are quickening.
    No one can recall the last time people had public meetings, marches, protests that far in front of an election. This weekend, four weekends after the 4th of July, as many as half a million Americans, 100 here, 75 there, 500 over there, will hit the streets and public parks, or take a bus ride, to protest the Health Care "reform" bill, Cap and Trade. For the first time ever..repeat, ever...in our nation''s history, the people know more and respond more to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution than do their elected representatives.
    Memo to Congress: This is the bandwagon. Get on it, or get out. And get a lawyer.
    This is a march that isn't going to end. It's only going to get bigger and bigger.
    One note of caution, both to you patriots and to the military: Several talk show hosts worry that maybe you will get a little too rambunctious, and give the government cause to send in the riot police, or worse, suspend posse comitatus (the prohibition of using federal troops to carry out civilian police functions, such as riot control).
    Backed against the wall, look for a staged event by the Obamailis, to make it look like you went over the edge.
    Worse, while having your version of the Boston Tea Party, keep one eye out for trigger fingered cops and hired thugs, keeping in mind there was also a Boston Massacre.
    Keep your cool, but watch yer topknot. It will be hot summer. 2010 will be hotter.
Bernard Chumm
   

     The last thing we want to do is bring the environmentalists over to our side...
     ...unless they are first willing to hang the Constitution as the first fixed star in their heaven, and acknowledge that it was written on behalf of the liberty and reciprocal mutuality of Man, and not for tree frogs or trees for them to hide in, or for the bark that wild horses to chew on.

     That said, it would still be nice to neutralize them, and in one of my "Duhh... as if" moments I can't help but wonder why the GOP doesn't see the natural enmity that exists between rank and file environmentalists and Bureaucratism.
     We've long known the partiality the state pays to its front office, almost always at the expense of the front lines. When there's a crunch, it's always Marx's vaunted worker the state kicks in the end, while the paper-hangers are protected under the guise of keeping the "system" intact, even while no longer operable, against that day, a need for them should arise again.
     Recently, Virginia looked into closing all of its interstate rest areas, which cost $21M to run each year. In the end they backed off and only closed half, thus putting out of work all the crews and workers who kept the grounds and bathrooms, etc, clean, but dispensing with none of the front office jobs, which accounts for up to 45% of the budget. See how it works?
     (For the most curious of reasons, I suppose, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Bob M'Donnell, an alleged conservative, came out for re-opening them immediately, quickly followed by the Democrat, Creigh Deeds. The correct conservative position would have been to demand they all be closed, and, if elected, keep them closed til the next Democrat could assume office. Only when we return to Depression-era travel habits, all the exits closed, will a stop for a free pee be needed. Oh well, an opportunity missed, a secret moderate supplication of the heart of the heart revealed. But I digress.)
     Similarly, we've read little reports here and there about small clauses in the proposed health care bill, such as the one that would require elderly folks (not exactly defined, which will no doubt require a commission once enacted) to have regular check-ups...creating a need for an entirely new army of bureaucrats to design forms, and create a paper chain running from the patient/citizen/victim through several levels of agencies and boards, and at which time some one of them will decide Ol' Mitch is only to be prescribed aspirin.
     Point: Consider how many trees will die needlessly.
     Also, consider the recent House legislation (not yet law) to spend $700m, (That's almost a billion, which used to be a lot of money) to expand the range and protection of wild horses in the West. Although homeless, in the human sense, none of the money goes to either housing and feeding the horses, or finding them employment, or even new job training. (A recent poll among the horses as to whether they had any real use of this money, and the vote was overwhelmingly "Naaay.")
     Our question: why should so many trees in the Pacific northwest, Canada, or Brazil, die just to keep some pettifogger with a clip board in Wyoming employed counting horses, astride his Honda four-wheeler? And will this field agent, and his staff, be native Wyomeens, or will they immigrate from Dartmouth, thus changing the entire political demography of this once solidly red state?
     Somewhere, some place, someone has calculated how many trees die in order to feed the needs of one bureaucrat. Go find that number, and blow the horn. It requires four falsified names from ACORN to replace one doubting environmentalist.
     Even they know it better to deal with the devil you know.
Vassar Bushmills

     MEMO TO CONGRESS: "GET OUT!....AND GET A LAWYER"

     It's time to make them afraid. Now, not next summer, for next summer will be too late.

    No really. 
    If you will recall, one of the first acts of GWB's presidency was to order buried the findings of the Justice Department case against Hillary Clinton.
    Yes, I know it was an act of Christian charity in GW's mind, but as he proved to us on more than one occasion, no good deed ever goes unpunished.
    GW has only been out of office for 6 months, but it seems like a decade, doesn't it? I expect there will be a whole slough of books coming soon, many in the "What if George W Bush had done this or that" vein.
    In the 1960s McKinley Cantor wrote an interesting book, "What if the South Had Won the Civil War?", and it was actually pretty good in speculative analysis, especially as it pertained to race relations in the United States. Cantor was right about one thing, there would have been a totally different dynamic about race in the US had slavery ended on its own accord twenty or thirty years later, and had there been no subsequent federal intervention, Jim Crow, and the rest.
     With that sort of speculation in mind, my suggested title, above, pertains less to Hillary Clinton, who, as a major player in government has become an empty suit (unless she quits her job and throws in her hat for the 2008 primaries) than to all the people she would have ratted out had she been indicted.
     Based on the DOJ case against Hillary, she could easily have been indicted and probably convicted (granted for rather minor felonies) but we believe she would never have gone quietly.
    How history would have changed is that many of the people Hillary would have ratted out are major movers and shakers now in the Obama administration.
    OK, Obama simply could've gone out and gotten still others cut from the same cloth...only with one proviso; the old Clinton crowd he pulled in was able to hit the ground running. They were well oiled, and able to move with what has proved to be an amazing pace.
    Had Hillary been indicted many of that crowd would now be in jail, or in some level of public humiliation...and it would have bought the Republic a full extra year...a year we so desperately need now.
    Thanks, George.
Bernard Chumm
    

    In my never-ending effort to lose friends among self-professing "conservatives", who can never seem to define their conservatism outside their own self-interests...
    ...last week I revisited a professional mens' dinner group where, just a year earlier we'd wagered on the coming election.
    In that earlier meeting one of the event's founders, a white haired patron of fine foods, waxed eloquently as to why M'Cain couldn't lose and Obama couldn't win. His logic was impeccable, for nothing that he said wasn't so.
    So a vote was taken, and eleven sided with him, while two of us, a banker and myself, no doubt considering the "other things" M'Cain's advocate had omitted, voted "nae".
    So I returned to the scene of my saddest triumph...to collect...only to find no one could remember ever having cast their vote the way they did. I wondered if maybe a date rape drug hadn't been involved.
    So much for gloating, then. Still, I found myself seated squarely next to the Great Advocator at dinner, and roundabout time for the brandy to be passed around, the subject of the New Reality came up. With the same self-assurance that he'd made his "M'Cain can't lose" speech a year earlier, my friend fired off a series of "It will be all over next November"'s against every worry spoken by our table about the things the government is doing now.
    "But what if we wake up the day after the election to find out the people's wrath was way over-publicized?", I asked.
    "Can't happen."
    "Shouldn't we have a Plan B?"
    "Don't need one. That whole bunch will be out on their ear."
    "Well, the Dems and ACORN sure proved they can win close elections when they need them. Some even say.."anytime they want them"...Wasn't that what the Perriello steal from Goode was all about?"
    "Nope, those were just regional anomalies. Can't happen nationwide."
    "Well, I'm not comforted. For one, you stood here a year ago and said M'Cain couldn't lose. So here we are another six months down the road wondering what to do next, and your answer, is 'Let the people speak in another fifteen months.' If you're as right then as you were last year, that will put us somewhere in the middle of 2011 wondering just how we can undo the greatest travesty ever dealt the the US Constitution and free enterprise... Shouldn't we at least have a Plan B."
    At which time one of us stood up, excused ourself and left the table.
    Well at least I could collect on one of the wagers. Besides, he's a "tiresonous" sunavabitch, so I can't really say there was a friend lost in the exchange...though my membership may come up at the next annual meeting. This is not a time to be trying to advance one's peerage, I suppose.

    But as always, there's a lesson hereabouts.
    Memo to Michael Steele, Chairman of the National GOP: Have some Plan B's laying around if things don't turn out like you've assumed. (I doubt there's much planning involved, only the gathering of statistics.) We especially recommend you contract with Heritage or others to come up with timeline(s) as to how long it would take to undo the really destructive legislation the Obamailis have on the docket now, i.e., Cap and Trade and Health Care. Once passed, there is a point in the not-too-distant future when their implementation will have passed the point of no return. Find out when that will be. It might be helpful...if you are to remain viable...as a party.
    And let the rest of us in on it.
    It also wouldn't hurt if you began to execute some forms of the Agitprop plan we sent many of your members earlier in the year, so as to begin fighting for a lot of street cred, and territory, that the Left had stolen away the past few years. We still believe Liberty, freedom, self-reliance, resourcefulness, morality, etc all can be made to seem cool once again. Just takes a hip sunabitch to understand what it all means. Is you him?
    Memo to the Virginia Republican Party: The 2009 election is more than  just about the gubernatorial race. If it stays close, expect it to be stolen, so try to have a plan to interrupt their plans, as well as a Plan B if they succeed.
    Moreover, even if you squeak one out, unless M'Donnell deals a real rodgering to Deeds, the House of Delegates races will be used as the true national indicator by the national media seeking to downplay M'Donell's win. The GOP still leads there, but has been losing the last two cycles. Reverse that and you can claim a "trend" that may provide impetus onto the national stage in 2010.
    We know a few of the Virginia Democrat delegates, and some are as Looney Tunes as Al Franken on a good day. But many of the GOP member are equally CINO (conservatives in name only). Wouldn't it be nice if you held some Constitutional, "Why we Fight" seminars? If the people are really going to get excited, give them a real fighting message. The times, they are a'changing.
VB
   

    Delivered to a business group in central Ohio....

     The best way I know to describe the phenomenon that is beginning to occur in your cities is to remind you of a Catholic school, where everyone had to attend regular religion courses. The old communist system under the Soviets was no different. K-through-12, every child got a regular dose of their religion, Karl Marx, Lenin and the omnipotent Communist Party. And they were taught pretty much the same way...with a teaspoon of thrill and wonder, and a tablespoon of reverence.
     Just for a moment, think back to when you were 17 and imagine yourself in a mandatory religion class, and consider what was important to you then. It was really no different than a classroom in Moscow in say 1985. Let's say the class size was 45.
     What you will find in that class will be four, five, maybe six students sitting up front, their arms at attention, ready to jump straight up, "Oh, oh, pick me, comrade teacher, pick me." Every class had that few who just ate that stuff up...or who may only have been pretending to, kissing up to the teacher for high grades. In fact, we never know, except the Soviet system fell down in part because the commies could never tell the difference either...between those who actually hung on every word of Karl Marx, the true believer...and those who were just looking for a decent, effortless white collar career inside the only real paying game in town.
     Make note of this type for we've seen the rise of the same type in both the corporate and government world here, and the American free markets have suffered greatly by their rise. They are everywhere in the new reality.
     In almost all the rest of the classroom you will see yourself, perhaps. It isn't that those 35 or so 17-year olds were indifferent to communism's "god", it's just that, at 17, that was hardly central to their lives. Romance, futball, music, blue jeans, if you could find them, all those things were more important...as were finding ways...mostly illegal in those days...to make a few extra rubles to buy those things in the black market shops off Arbot Street.
    Some of these 35 or so students would prove high aptitude in all sorts of things, science, engineering and would move onto a technical institute to further their studies. Others would display proven skills in leadership and problem solving having nothing to do with higher education and would soon find themselves being melded into the fabric of the dozens of factories around the city, as workers...for whom the Soviet state was created.
     What bound all those students together, beside their general disinterest in the "national religion" at that particular time of their life, was the fact that, once they entered the work force, they would all find themselves being tested, scrutinized, and bossed by those six people sitting up in the front row...or someone exactly like them.
 
     But I'm not finished. I've left out some students, for you see, on the back row of that class of 45, sat two or three fellows, and while not dressed like the Fonz, were as contrary to authority as any motorcyclist or gang-banger.
     Now they loved Karl Marx, too, only not for reasons preached by the teacher. You see, they listened rapturously while the teacher explained how capitalism exploited the poor and stole from the working class. And their hearts nearly burst with joy and excitement, "Yeah, that's for me!" They wanted to be that kind of capitalist.
      It's a simple math I've laid out here. Put 45 people together, and 36 of them will pursue their lives according to whatever the rules dictate, while five or six will do everything possible to be at the front of the gravy line...and two or three will always be criminals.
    
      I described this classroom as a way to introduce you to a type of thinking that I believe you will need in order to deal with the new realities in Washington, your state capital and in local government, for all those types I just described exist within your own business community and have already begun to show themselves.
     I notice from the register that we have small manufacturers in after-market, several service suppliers in commercial and residential real estate, as well as a few business lines, if my sense of proportion is correct, that probably have little or no competition.
     For sake of symmetry let's draw a model along the lines of the Soviet classroom. You can make whatever corrections fitting your own circumstances, or for a few dollars an hour, you can call me and we can work on it together.
     Let's say our model is a commercial property service business, in which, according to business reports, had grown from a $45 million a year business in this area in 1992, to over $80 million in 2008. Now in recession, it is beginning to slide backwards, perhaps 10%-15% this year.
     Just like that classroom, let's say there are 45 companies chasing after that $80 million, the majority of which never existed in 1992.
     You all advertise, you all have sales departments, inside or outside, or both, and you have reporting to tell you what kind of bang for your buck you're getting. You know where you stand vis a vis your competition.
     These are all necessary parts of a running a business in a highly competitive arena. You spend a lot of  time studying trends, listening to gossip about competitors and clients, and you go to what seems like an endless number of chicken dinners just to pick up that gossip. More than anything else, depending on how well local reports can tell you about market share, you are most concerned about that company just one peg ahead of you, at slot number 6, let's say...and that company that is one peg below you at #8, just nipping at your heels.
      There aren't enough hours in the day...I know.
      But here I come, offering up yet another calculation to consider. Well, not exactly, for you see, the calculation I'm sharing with you will be the answer to three, maybe four members' dreams in that group of 45 companies who share your business here. For the rest of you, there's not really much you can do...except to maybe understand the nature of the cancer that will kill your business, and begin planning on an exit strategy.
      For you see, the great prize, some say the greatest prize of all, for those 3-4 survivors, is that there will be no further need for hours and hours of pouring over reports, chicken dinners, extra strength Tums, or sleepless nights. They will be secure, for isn't that what every capitalist wants, no more competition?..just fixed markets, fixed shares, fixed clients, and fixed prices. or so the think.
      OK, then, surveying your group of 45, who will get those sacred slots? More to the point, what kind of businessman will get them?
      
       The process I am about to describe won't occur over night. We're almost a year into it now. It will take what I call a "bureaucratic generation", approximately fifteen years. I use this term not because of anything that will start at your end of the business, but rather at the top. It simply takes awhile for things to trickle down from Washington to Columbus, or Topeka, or Richmond, then onto city of county governments. These changes may come by way of new reporting requirements, new regulations for operating, required changes in hardware, software, taxes, employee management....or all of the above.
       These changes will force some of the 45 to drop off rather quickly and your thinking would be those quickest to fall will be same ones, the Johnny-come-latelies, who only showed up after the boom of 1992-2005.
       Don't bet on it. The flaw in your thinking is that you're using free market notions of business to determine who will survive the new sea changes in your business. In fact, probably most of the bottom dwellers will be among the first to go...unless they are among those six on the front row or three on the back. If so, they may just surprise you, for they are quicker to "get it", this new reality than you may be.
       Just don't forget the General Motors/Chrysler examples already reported. Some unnamed czar in the White House ordered them to close certain dealerships. The claim went out early that they were unfairly targeting those who were big GOP supporters. I'm certain that is true, but only to a point, for, in order to disguise this crime, several solid Democrat party supporters also had to get the axe, even over the protests of local Democrat congressmen. You'd agree then, then, that as sacrificial lambs, they were just as unfairly singled out.
       But if you understand this, then you understand the new rules of  "competition" in this new market reality. The lessons to be learned are several. First, all rules are arbitrary, and you have no power over them. Fairness no longer matters any more than the general rules of business success do; i.e., better price, better service, better product. The rules of competition are, or soon will, become history.
       This is the new reality, and of the 45 in your "classroom" who will be the quickest to figure it out and adapt to it?
       I can almost promise you that one of those guys on the back row, with that hole in his soul, will be one of the last men standing, as will a couple of the teacher's pets on the front. None of the 35 will survive.
       So, how do they pull the wool over your clients eyes? More even, how do the pull the wool over the 35-who-are-about-to-die eyes?
       As long as the majority of you believe the shaking out that is occurring is economic in nature...and not political...you will intensify your efforts to survive, but by conventional methods because you think the old rules apply. That way, when you fail, it will appear to be just bad luck in a bad economy.You can see why it is important then, for the government to keep you in the game as long as possible, to make you believe you are still struggling inside a free market and that it is nothing other than bad times that are keeping things down...and that good times are just around the corner.
      In this way you won't notice that the $80 million a year market is slowly being reduced to about $60M, then $40M, say in fifteen, twenty years...by which time there will be no more than three, maybe four companies vying for that market by the end of the cycle. Even then, they will all be made to look like they are competing, but really no more than when the various Sicilian families divided up Chicago, Jersey, the Bronx, etc. It will all be about territory.
      For the 3-4 survivors, this will be heaven. For no more will they have to worry about competition. Like Philip Morris, General Electric, General Motors, Goldman Sachs and a lot of companies you haven't heard of...yet..."there's no business like no competition"...and there's no business like being the government's pet.

      I am not about to tell you exactly how the new "state-driven market forces" will select the three survivors in your class of 45. Actually it doesn't even matter, for while in the first bureaucratic generation a new government enterprise such as this, the puppeteers at the top tend to be very doctrinaire and rigid in their selection process...and will favor those kiss-ups on the front row. But political zeal becomes diluted over time, especially if it has to trickle down through three tiers of government, so by the time it works its way to the business on the ground it will move by grease and graft, and the boys on the back row are just as apt to be winners as those on the front.
      In other words in fifteen years, the quality of product or service will probably still be a reasonable facsimile of what you all provide now, only cost won't really matter. But after that, all memory of quality as you know it today, both in  product design and customer service, will have fallen apart. And within 30 years all memory of how things used to be will also be lost, so no one will even complain.
      This is when the very infrastructure that propped up your business line in the first place will begin to crumble, for you see, the law under the new reality will not allow new competitive start-ups in some guy's garage to try to fill that void by taking business away from the appointed ones. That is the "capitalism" they always hated...going all the way back to Karl Marx.
     
      I cannot tell you how you should react to this new reality as it begins to take shape. Some of you will, from your own outlooks on life, freedom, simply come to a point where you have to make too many moral or ethical concessions to compete, and will just quit. Trust me, the state will allow you an equitable retreat, and they will always be able to find jobs for your employees. They have plenty of picks and shovels. That's sort of the point, in fact. That this is a recipe for destruction, no one will notice, or mind.
      All that you need to know is that wealth will be "appointed", it will be "allowed", and a different kind of person than you will line to get the "contract" as merit, hard work, or quality and cost consciousness will have nothing to do with it. Life's winners will come from that front row or the back row in your class. They really will be lottery winners.
      Some people ask whether this is socialism or communism. It is a kind of socialism, as our best guess is that wealth will not be done away with in America. Rather it will be parceled out. There will still be a private sector, even a large one, albeit 25%-35%-even 50%-smaller than the one we knew in 2008. And as such, it will not be strong, much less vibrant. But it will be totally subservient to the public sector. It will almost be like Dicken's London all over again, each class living in distinct neighborhoods, with absolutely no vertical mobility.
      We already know where this ends. As to its name, it has a special one with the socialist family; it is fascism.
Vassar Bushmills
     
  
     
     

     We had already note Judge Sotomayor's problem with temperament, but once on the Court, it will never be heard of again.
      Likewise her poor scholarship, the result of affirmative action at the highest levels. It will be interesting to compare her scholarship versus that of the other by-the-bootstraps scholarship of the Court's other person of color, Clarence Thomas. Often panned by leftists for his poor scholarship, most legal intellectuals give Thomas high marks, so it should be interesting.

      But suddenly, there is this integrity corner Ms Sotomayor has painted herself into. You see, out of the left side of her mouth, in her public speeches she has lauded her ability to step outside the law and use life experiences, rather exclusive  life experiences in making decisions. But today, and leading up to this hearing, out of the right side of her mouth, the fair Dulcinea said the Law, and an unbending impartiality toward it, are the only bases that should go into judicial decision making.
      It would only be natural that the Republican inquisitors should try to square the right and left sides of her mouth with the Ricci case, where the Supreme Court today excoriated Ms Sotomayor and her colleagues on the court for failing to even consider the legal and constitutional issues that case brought forward. (The Court overturned her anyway.)
      Do your best, Jeff, but understand, integrity is an item the Democrats long ago flush down the toilet.
      This is a pass Sotomayor gets without even asking.
Bernard Chumm
    

   Sorry, we couldn't find a good YouTube copy, but I recommend the New Christy Minstrels' version from the 60s:
   All you need to know is the refrain:

    "It's a lie, it's a lie, yes, we know it isn't true,
     but we've been down to Derby, sir, and we have seen it too."

St George

     When a man says a thing is a fact that is provably not a fact, one is left to wonder the source of this "mistake"; has he been misinformed, or, is he stupid or incompetent, or maybe he's just lying? He could also be self-delusional, which points to an even deeper and more troubling pathology.
     In short, why do politicians lie?
     Yes, I know others lie as well, but inasmuch as those same politicians write laws that will put us in jail for lying to them, one is left to wonder if maybe Lewis Carroll didn't just about say it all about modern politics.

     The theme of today's Group of 8 conference in Italy, sans China, who conveniently voted "absent" then went home to avoid having to lie a "type of lie" their sense of honor and face will not permit, is over global warming and the need for even greater emission reductions to stop the progress of this creeping global climate change.
     1) The main issue that there is now global warming has been laid to rest: It has been getting cooler for nearly ten years now.
     2) As to the issue whether global warming ever existed has also been laid to rest: It might have, with a full 65% or so of scientists in that area of expertise stating that it probably did exist at one time.
     3) As to the issue whether Man caused global warming (if it existed at all) by his activities has also been laid to rest: He probably contributed to it, but at no time was ever the majority contributor. Most scientists range our contributions at 15% or so. The rest is due to natural occurrences in nature, from sunspots to cow flatulence in Africa to termites in the rain forests.
     4) As to the issue whether the eight "industrialized nations" (which includes neither India nor China, who collectively account for almost as many emissions as the G8 themselves...and are steadily moving upward in that category) can reduce GLOBAL temperatures is also laid to rest: Not a chance. The world's biggest polluters are outside the orbit of internationally enforceable agreements (as if even one agreement ever was enforceable against any of the more powerful UN members anyway), so do the math. The G8 accounts for roughly 8% of all the pollution in the world, so if those eight nations returned to an aboriginal state tomorrow they could only reduce world pollution by 8%.
     Well, in truth it probably would get worse, because, considering the number of trees standing in the United States alone, not even Barack Obama could muster an army of cops that could go around giving tickets and generally making people stop cutting them down and burning them for firewood. It would be Pittsburgh 1900 all over again, although I'm told some people like even less the acrid smell of wood than coal. Wood lung, anyone?

     So why do politicians persist in this sort of lying?
     This is indeed a difficult and complex question to answer. Imagine if Angela Merkel stood before the German people today and stated that global warming was a lie, or better, finished, ended, so now we can all go back to sleeping on top of our beds instead of under it. We can stop being afraid...or feeling guilty. We have done all we can but must continue to try to work with poorer countries by convincing them it is better to stay poor, but in cleaner air, than in building (read competitive) industrial systems in their own nations that could bring the world once again, to the brink of global catastrophe, as it once was in 1969. (This sounds remarkably like what Michelle Obama told college graduates during the campaign..."give up trying to make money".)
     If Angela Merkel, or any other G8 head of state made that speech, they would be dealing with riots in the street that would make Tehran look like a Baptist picnic.
     Politicians lie either to keep a consituency or to get a new one to come on board. Global warming was a lie that just kept on giving, and after twenty years, has touched every sector of society. In the hands of the more-practiced Democrats, (Republicans, not being as good at it, usually stumble and get caught early on in a lie, thus ending it) lies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, well, sort got out of hand. The really good liar can clean out an entire factory before being caught, and often can get away scot free.
     Politicians only lie if they can blame someone else for having misinformed them. That's their default position. They will never plead guilty to Lying-Aforethought, and even more than that, never, never, never to being stupid.
     The global warming lie carries its own proetction, Al Gore and a few bought-off members of the science community. But that protection is coming unravelled.
      All the politicians have left is the anger of the Voting majority. I said the voting MAJORITY, and not that minority of screeming-mimis in the street, turning over cars, throwing bricks through windows and taking pot shots at the next available constable.
      We have said for the longest time that politicians must fear the people, up to and including, if need be, having to sneak to work each day through a side entrance so no one can throw rocks at their limousine.
      All that stands between the politicains and the people is that final big lie, and that is that the politicians fear the wrath of the people any longer.
Bernard Chumm
    

    The big to-do in Los Angeles' Staple Center today should remind the GOP, and all the anti-Sarah Palin conservative-poseurs out there about one of the real cultural wars within this broader war we call Left vs Right.
    It is class, and the Jackson memorial today should not only remind us who the real purveyors of class consciousness are, but all the opportunities we are letting pass by not hanging that issue over the clothesline and beating it like a dirty rug.

    Michael Jackson is way after my time. Even the new Elvis was after my time. I fact, I had nearly outgrown Elvis by the time he left the Army and started making movies, of which I only saw one.
    Most of us associate a part of our lives with the music that passed through it, and Michael Jackson was a major contributor to a lot of people's musical lives. The freaky, weird Jackson came later, as his career began to wind down, and he began to enjoy (some say, a little too much) the fruits of what his talent had earned.
    In short, Michael had a base of real dedicated fans, just like Elvis did. So, at his funeral/memorial service it would only seem natural that they'd want to pay their last respects.
   Unh-uh. That was to be reserved for 1000 luminaries, dignitaries, beautiful people, (maybe Elton John will pen a song, Maya Angelou a poem, Charlie Harper a jingle) and politicians. You know, a ticket to die for. Why, 1000 seats won't even hold the California legislature, if you include their families, and this event is an absolute must. A must, I repeat.
    Needless to say, somewhere the Jackson fans griped and groaned, so the powers that be upped the passes at Staples to 9000, but I'll bet as sure as Bill Clinton gave all those free air tickets out of Albania to prostitution kingpins in the '90s, few "real" fans will get many of those seats either.

    Not that it matters. I just want it on record, to all you poor and down-trodden...this is what you voted for; a royal class, made up of celebs, media moguls, and politicians, none of whom would dirty their hands to be in the same room with you. That's why God invented rope lines. Their idea of life you on one side and them on the other, and to them, most of politics is about keeping you (us) over there on that side of the rope line.
    Had a conservative been in the White House, running Congress, running Sacramento, maybe even the LA council, Michael Jackson would have been laid to rest in a quiet spot attended only by family and friends, while all over America, millions of Michael Jackson fans would have held their own spontaneous memorial services, 50 here, 250 there, in sandlots and parking lots... true send offs for a true talent.
    Now you know where you stand.
Vassar Bushmills
  

    From our listening post in Kharbarovsk, via Anchorage, (code name BUSHWINGS):

     In a secret protocol signed today by Presidents Obama and Medvyedev in Moscow, the United States agreed to allow Alaska to revert back to Russian control by November, 2012.
     Full details were not available, but it appeared to be in exchange for cash and other incentives, including transport rights through Russia for US supplies to Afghanistan, as well as the establishment of a Police-Crowd Control Training Center in Kazakhstan for US militia members.
     The new Alaska, called Zemliya Putin, will reportedly be governed by a subsidiary of Russian energy giants, Lukoil and GazProm, but  shareholders are reported to include Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Bertha Lewis and the entire mail room at Goldman Sachs.
     Also part of the secret protocols: The US will be the primary beneficiary of the new DukProm oil production, getting production at a guaranteed USD10 (or RMB 10, whichever is greater, a concession Obama fought long and hard for, our sources tell us) per barrel.
     Obama is reported to have said that this is a good deal, "We stole Alaska from the Russians in the first place. We were the imperialists. And now, they can drill where we could never drill. We get the oil without lifting one single dirty finger."

     In a related story, the early leaking of this story may be the basis for Sarah Palin's resignation from the governor's seat in Juneau. It's being reported by our Anchorage snoops that she's been Tweeting through surrogates in the Lower 48 to find foster homes for Alaska's estimated 375,000 Republicans and their families. (Apparently Alaska Democrats will be just as happy living under Russian oligarchs as they would Demogarchs, although we hear there is some worry that Barney Frank may be involved in the day-to-day management of the territory.)
     Palin's plans are reported to be to move to North Dakota to contest Byron Dorgan's senatorial seat in 2010, assuming Dorgan can stave off a primary challenge from new arrival to Fargo, Terry McAuliffe.

     We'll keep you posted.
    
St George Frederick

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