Charles Krauthammer brought up a point yesterday which I think may be half right on. He is usually all right on, but he is just as shielded from the turmoil out in the hustings as are most members of Congress.
    Charles suggested we (you) park loud derisive speech, boos, catcalls etc at the door. His reason is bad manners, and our behavior gives the Left ammunition to link "our kind" with Code Pink, the Daily Kos crowd and other radical groups.
    I can't abide bad manners either, but with Congress my idea of bad manners is deciding whether to pick up a pipe wrench or a rock if I run into a member in a dark alley. Sorry, Charles that fuse has been lit.
    Still, on the point of strategy and battlefield tactics, I think Mr Krauthammer may have a point. He was saying "we" are losing points with independents and moderate Democrats, I assume, since most rock hard constitutionalists approve of any tactic that will bring cameras and public notice to these events. (I think end of recess polls will have shown us to gain, not lose adherents.) The day has long since passed that we care about bringing any Lefties over to our side.  He also faulted the GOP for not reigning us in, but who, I can just about swear, has no fingerprints whatsoever on this grass roots movement. The GOP still wants our votes, even expects them, but cannot afford to come out to either support us, or decry us. (That does seem to be their most favored position, astraddle right and wrong....but that is also their problem, not ours.)
    But if you believe that our grass roots movement(s) is getting a public bloody nose by crossing a line many would-be supporters think just too much to swallow, then there is another way.
    What Charles misses is that these town hall's have been orchestrated events for some time. Almsot nothing is supposed to go on that is spontaneous. The Dem's have already cancelled the format in many places, and come up with alternates, one-on-one's, soap box deliveries in supermarkets, etc where it's hard to hear, voices don't carry so well, and especially on health care, where old folks can't find a place to sit down. They also have a 24/7 manned hotline for Q&A's on the bill, since none of them knows what it (they) says.
    Their mission in these public events is to be able to run them like Obama does a press conference, i.e., you ask one question, they answer with a generality, never a specific, then go on to the next question so you cannot get a follow up or clarification. Not "what if", or "but, but you said last year", or "it says on page 492".
    What you can do to change the dynamic, without raising a ruckus: Don't rely on cell phones, or local media to make your record. Make your own. Bring cameras, sound, ever redundancy you can think of. Draw up a list of questions to be asked (or that need to be answered) beforehand, with specifics, that can be passed around to members and well as interested parties...before and after the event. Record every answer (actually non-answer) as well as any threat from the hooligans standing over near the exits.
    After the event, publish these via the internet. Start using the internet as a weapon, the same way the Left does. There is the event, and tghe reported event. Be the master of the reported event, for the Dem's than can only play defense. They don't have to do that as long as the headline is your onduct instead of your substance.
    I like this because there is the element of stealth involved, they won;t see you coming in Nov 2010. We watch these things and saw the swell in 2006 and 2008, and was stunned, STUNNED at how little the GOP saw coming. See what I mean. They are shielded by their onw separate reality.
    We believe most members of Congress simply don't understand the rising tide out here, in part because it is not orchestrated by the GOP, insurance companies or conservative groups. (There may be some, by the way, and I approve.) To the Dem's this summer recess is all about positive press exposure, especially to provide cover for the 50-80-120 members who are on the edge of losing their jobs next Fall. We've already annouced that the healthcare bill is everything to the leadership in that once they get their vote on that, members voting "aye" will have handcuffed themselves to the brass rail of the Titanic, and will have no choice but to go along later on. Once it is passed, and three years before it is to go into effcet, the health care bill will "allow" Congress and the various departments to literaly take over American society by fiat. It is the launching pad for everything else we fear from government. We will be serfs once more.
    I believe, and continue to look for reasons to change my mind, that if these packages of legislation (heathcare and cap and trade) are passed this year, the left wing of the democrat party really don't care what might happen in the 2010 election. I believe that is their game plan, even if a faulty one. I'd just hate to have to wait til Nov 2010 to see what cards they have up their sleeve then that both Rush Limbaugh misjudged and Charles Krauthammer missed beacuse of his sense of fair play.
   The time is now. This fall, 2009.
VB

      "They will accuse us of their own conspiracy." This has been our mantra here at for years, going back to the days of Ronald Reagan. It's an observation that is right so often, it qualifies as an axiom. So try it. Make a list.
      What are seeing, and we should be grateful to Nancy Pelosi for highlighting, is a complete reversal of positions the Left held when they were on the outside looking in.
      Speaker Pelosi can be found on the internet saying that citizens disenchanted with their government should get in their government's face. Pres Obama as much as said the same thing before the election. Hilary Clinton yelled, during the campaign (and my ears are still ringing from that shrill banshee cry) that it is patriotic, yes, patriotic, to speak out, and speak out loudly, about things you find wrong with your government.
      Now Speaker Pelosi says it is "un-American".
      Yes, I know this bothers you...the duplicity, the hypocrisy, the unfairness.
      Get over it. Understand the "game" as they understand it.
      We'll be on this theme in one way or another for the rest of the summer, for it's going to get hot.
      For years, back to the Clinton era, Clinton officials and spokesmen defended their side against much of the anti-Clinton rhetoric from the right as "Nazi", while I'm still scratching my head as to what, if anything, was ever a "Nazi-tactic" coming from people out of power. Once GW Bush became president it was easier to slide the Nazi Rag with the Leftie trombone, for it had a power theme then, only, and here's the secret, they always accused Bush, et al of so-called Nazi tactics which weren't factually true...but which would have been true had they been in power. The source of their lie is that they always accuse us doing what they know they'd do if waering our shoes.
     As for the Nazi tag, it's a device, that's all. Take Senator Durbin's famous Nazi-link to GITMO detainees (did he really mean Abu Ghraib?). It was based on a factual lie, as no prisoners in the US, state of federal, are treated as well as they are at Guantanamo, and a damned sight better than the Japanese internees during WWII...that is, if you're actually looking for any concentration camp comparison ever managed by the US Government. Durbin later apologized (under duress) for the abuse of rhetoric, but never had to stand any scrutiny over the underling lie. Besides, and this is a common theme that underlies the use and mis-use of "Nazi", Durbin wouldn't know a Nazi tactic if it bit him on the arse. He only knows rhetoric that will work....which is a Nazi thing, by the way.
     He, (actually all of them) know that by using the Nazi tag to describe ordinary folks in Tennessee going to church on Sunday it can never be used back against them. The fact is, the modern Left approves of concentrations camps, as we very well may see within the next few years, only they will be called "re-education centers", or somesuch, as Stalin's Gulag was, or the infamous camps in East Germany (the beat surely did go on there), where, I'm told you could listen to really amazing music, as almost all the finest symphonists were housed there at one time or another. The DDR was like the Lexington Drug correctional facility in the 60's, where, on a good Sunday afternoon, you could fine some of America's finest jazz performers jam.
     "Nazi" is an important word to the Left, for it is meaningless to average Americans except to signify sending Jews off to ovens, and, when I was kid, burning books. That generation is about to die, so the terms has to have new meanings, especially since 1) the Jews are nack on the table as to hate-worthy and 2) so is sending people, retards, old folks, etc "to the needle" since the ovens are so messy...and obvious.
     We are in the process of seeing the Left and Right re-melded after 70 years of name calling simply because the communists/socialists in power in Moscow (the internationalist Left) didn't like how the NSDAP/Nazis (the xenophobic nationalist Left) were kicking the snot out their guys in Germany. In truth, if you've followed Soviet film from the Stalin era, you know he'd have given worlds to have a sense of national identity in the USSR Hitler had in Germany. He'd also liked to have had a seventy year track record in industry, trade guilds, and a white collar class, while trying to build a new Russia.
    What we see now is the new-unified Left in America trying what Hitler tried (and succeeded in one sense) and that was manipulate a sophisticated social structure to bend to his political will. No such sophistication existed in Russia under Stalin, just a few royals and bourgeosie (who needed to be shot or dispossessed, cherchez la Russe!) and 90% of illiterates who, according to Stalin, were little more than statistics. The Communists' only option was to strip away what little veneer of civilization they had and begin all over again, tabulae rosa. (More on this later in a different context, for it is a major difference between the Russian experience and the European experience, which America is trying to copy.)
    So Moscow declared Germany to be "Rightist" and told all their minions around the world, London, Paris, Rome, Hollywood, to let 'em have it with both barrels...except during that period of the non-aggression pact, when even Barbara Streisand thought Nazis were OK. Thus "the Right", which has been used to tar and feather George Washington, Ronald Reagan, Lou Gehrig, Rush Limbaugh and poor old Officer Crowley, really means little more than "the enemy" to the Left. Any enemy.
    The point is, the communists and nazis, they never were that different, except to academicians who had already chosen sides, and who had a vested interest in how the game played out. The Nazis and Communist were like two crime gangs, one working the suburbs, the other the rail yards. That's about all. It was always a turf war.

   Today there is no longer any sense is drawing a distinction. Just as 90% of all professing Leftists (or progressives) could tell you one interesting thing about Marxism that would indicate they'd read anything outside Googel and Wikipedia, that same 90% couldn't write a single declarative sentence about fascism or nazism, either history or ideology, without the same device.

Why this is important
    What we must know is that when Hilary says a thing six months ago that Nancy Pelosi contradicts today, and denies was ever spoken six months ago (if asked) is that the lie is of no consequence to either. Neither is getting caught in the lie. All that matters is kicking ther ball donew the field to a specific, desired end.
    So get over the unfairness of it all.
    This fight or game we are engaged in with them is not about a final gavel, or a game of publicity with the public, or a nanny-nanny-boo-boo moment. The have declared this fight to be for all the marbles.
    So set you jaw and make sure you walk home after the fight with your pockets full, and they are left in the dirt, their pockets empty.
    Then, pause and reflect, and never let the victory go to your head.
    That was their first mistake.
VB

    Since we know that even the male members of the federal and state workers unions, teachers etc, can't change a flat tire, hence the name, "skirt unions", they've had to troll across town to get renegade hooligans from the "guy" unions, or maybe just roaming ronin, to defend them from the butt-kicking my grand mother would give her congressman, if she could only get close enough.
    This is a good thing, people, so listen up.
    In our Agitprop outline we called this, that they will not allow you to hold any event that could prove harmful to their cause. This is fascist thuggery, yes, but predictable, and easily turned back against them.
    We suggested having your own photographer/historian there to record events. Don't rely on the iPhones of attendees. The thugs are not committed party or union members in all likelihood, and are there just to grab up an easy C-note for a couple of hours work. Their wives and neighbors probably don't even know what they've been doing tonight.
    Get those pics and those names, and then sicc 10-20-30 citizens in their front yard, with placards, just like they are prone to do when called out. That's the equivalent of letting the whole neighborhood in on what Big Bad John's been doing in his spare time. I remember seeing a complete marijuana farm growing operation shut down simply by having all the church members get up and move from his pew one Sunday morning. His wife took care of the rest.
    Keep at therm. Stay on the attack. If they ratchet it up, you ratchet back.
    If local law enforcement and justice system won't protect you, let them know that what's about to happen to Congressman X will happen to your local councilman as well. Make them all afraid.
    Bernard Chumm

  

      Last year, before He was sworn in, we made several reports about what needed to be done, and when.
      Remember, this is an off-off-election year, which makes what I have to report all the more pleasing.
      We've been involved in a few regional grass roots groups, one of our "children" serving as a clearinghouse/networker for a Midwest city action group. Agitprop, we call them.
      Most cities now have several of these groups, all founded by local citizens. After only a few months they are now coordinating with one another, and joining together in several demonstrations, speeches. Virtually every week there is something going on. These events are drawing several hundreds to over a thousand spectators. Enthusiasm is rising, not falling. (We wrote last year about the effect "events" have on local politics, often never seen or reported, even in local media, and totally under the radar screen of national politicians.
      The good news is the GOP has not tried to co-opt these groups. In Virginia we're having a gubernatorial election and the parties are wrapped up in that, but elsewhere, the GOP and these groups are clearly operating on different planes. I think the GOP thinks they will win these votes anyway, so it's a win-win by staying back, but wait til next year's primaries. True leaders will emerge from these groups to challenge establishment Republican and Democrat in next year's primaries,  I promise. (In some respects it may be easier for "our people" to run as Democrats, to join, then take over, then expand the Blue Dog wing than it will be to reform the GOP...just a thought.)
      I'm ecstatic that things are turning out as they are.
     The temper is rising at a time when none of the political watchers are paying attention, as they think, being an off-year, this will all peter out over the winter. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. But we think the people are close to a Wild Bunch moment.
     What's this Wild Bunch moment? You all know about Fonzi's Jump-the-Shark moment, when you knew the "Happy Days" series had finally seen it last days. (Google it if you don't know what it means.)
     The Wild Bunch moment is more serious, and also more dangerous, for it signals a time when a person reaches a point where there's no going back, no retreat, no truce, no surrender.
     It's from the Sam Peckinpah film, 1969, in which a group of aging outlaws help a corrupt Mexican general steal some US Army rifles. I recommend you watch it just for the closing scenes. In the process of the heist the general catches one of the outlaws, a Mexican named Angel, stealing some of the guns to help his village in the mountains, and takes the kid and tortures him. His friends try to buy him back, but El Jefe refuses. They go off and get a little drunk, then decide to go take their partner back by force. There are only four of them.
     You can see that final Wild Bunch "moment" at YouTube. (8 minutes). The scene says it all. The Wild Bunch "moment" was when they instinctively killed the general, then knew there was no retreat, no surrender.
     Of course, they all die, but so do most of the Mexicans, hundreds in fact, so many that the villagers come in out of the hills and take over the town.
     One of our favorite Songs of the New Revolution can be seen from that film at YouTube, as well as that final Wild Bunch "moment".

     Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have both crossed their Wild Bunch moment, and deserve our prayers because of it There are others. They really are at risk. Their jobs, their fortunes, maybe even their property and freedom. Or worse.
     Many citizens are on the verge of doing the same.
     If that is to be, a few rules. 1) No weapons. The government is just looking for an excuse to declare martial law, call in the troops, or shoot back. In fact, look for some "lone gunman" or rent-a-mobs doing a reverse Tea Party, blaming you. It's a common gambit. 2). Be very public, and be in numbers. We like placards that go beyond mere Yes or No politics. Tell them to get lost, get out...and get a lawyer. Let them know you are coming to get them and it won't be over once they are out of office. Make them afraid, really afraid. Keep that mean look in your eye. Jaw set. Imagine you are going out back to shoot your favorite dog, who has rabies. Don't get angry. Don't lose it. Politician fear most the steel cold of resolve. 3) Be prepared to be arrested, and to take casualties. 4) Expect no help from the media, no matter how badly you're beaten, dragged or pistol-whipped.  Word will get around the way you get it around now, by word of mouth. (If this sounds like Martin Luther King, Jr...yes, it does.)
     We should be cautious, even a little afraid ourselves. But inasmuch as the Obamailis want the 2010 mid-terms to be meaningless by having in place by that time the legal infrastructure to take us down the road to an authoritarian dictatorship of one sort or the other, no matter what, we have to have our Wild Bunch moment sooner, not later. We have to force the crossroads. They did not plan on this summer being so hot. Keep it up. Keep it growing. Make Fall and Winter even hotter. Never stop...until they are out of power, and some are in jail.
      But we have to believe, as we have preached here time and again, when confronted with the jutted jaws and gritted determination of Good, Evil has to blink. We will win. Expect to get hurt.
      The only choice the Left has to make will be: At what price?
Vassar Bushmills
    
 

     Holy John Birch, Batman!
    "If you're Mommie is for liberty then you gotta turn her in." 
     Now that President has asked fellow travelers to send the dot.com and email of address to a designated White House site of anyone sending out "misleading" information about the Health care Plan (I thought that's what he was doing), we thought we might as well get into the act.
     Don't fret. This has all happened before. Although there wasn't electronic mail then, Woodrow Wilson threatened to put dissenters in jail in the 'Teens. And Hitler did, even before he became Chancellor in 1933.
     Then it worked. But now the volume is too large, and quite frankly, the snoopers too stoopid to make much difference. China had better worry, though, for Obama's Keystone Cops may accidentally break the firewall that protects their hackers from breaking into out Defense Department.

     Since the Clinton Administration, we had always assumed here that large portions of the Democrat Party, and much of the administration were little more than a criminal organization. They should've been subject to RICCO, and hopefully, maybe some day they shall. We considered the Republican Party since 2004 to be little more than getaway drivers, sheepish Michael J Pollard's, who, as accessories-before-the-fact usually bear the full weight of a crime as the bank robbers.
     The people are speaking, and they are saying mouth's full. It was our dream that they all would be frog-walked and hauled up on the misdeeds surrounding Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the bail out (TARP) and the financial crisis of 2008, crimes whihc go on today.
     But the people are seeing stars over the Healthcare plan(s) as they see various unspeakable line-items pop up in their email, or mailers and word of mouth. I'm sure some of the claims are bogus, but the vast majority are not.
     Our only warning...not just to the GOP but to Democrats as well who think all you have to do is cherry pick these bills, pulling the hateful line items out, then coming up with a decent bill.
     The people are well past that now. They see the Healthcare bill as a crime, a theft...and most importantly, with malice aforethought and no amount of fixing can undo that now. The deflections and lies by Congressmen and administration officials (Katherine Sibelius is a doozie) assault their common sense and offend them to the quick....and they haven't even gone on recess yet! It's like me standing in a biker bar and yelling at some "Look, Dummie, it's  'i' before 'e' except after 'c'."
     Sometimes the only retreat is out the door and don't come back.
     And yes, there will be a spill-over into other legislation. Congress and the Administration has insulted the people in ways that transcend the line-by-line aspects of this bill.
     Republicans should be forewarned that any bill this year, even if crafted by Grassley and Boehner, and coming out of committeee with a 25-zip vote, will cost a lot of people their jobs.
     At the head of the Democrat snake, for a variety of reaons, from narcissism, to self-delusion, to power-madness to LOK (Love of Karl) are some who will push forward anyway. Obama must have a bill this year, and seems not to care what the people think, as if to say, "ACORN will take care of future elections, so voter wrath doesn't matter." (After Healtcare it won't, trust me. Healthcare is the lynchpin, for it will enable tens of thousands more pages of legislation, and the spread of federal power into every aspect of personal life.) Most Democrats hold the voter in such low regard that they are easy prey to go along with thisview if prodded by their leaders.
    If that is to be their destiny, so be it.
    But to the GOP, if you decide to be a getaway driver in this heist just remember how it all ended.
Bernard Chumm
    

    In a former life I was head of product development in a Fortune 500 company.
    It was a simple enough task. When Marketing said they wanted to create and sell a thing, it was my shop's job to sit down and determine how much it would cost to produce the item, and package it. Others would then tell us how much it cost to transport it out to distributors.
    If there were no safety or environmental concerns, which required some extra legal review, and field testing, this process could be done as quickly as 10 days, complete and reported.
    Then Marketing, after adding advertising costs, would decide what price/price point we needed to meet in order to be competitive with the product, and then the CEO would decide if that provided enough margin to justify the investment.
    Sound simple?

    In the current Cash for Clunkers project now offered by the government, with taxpayer dollars, through auto dealerships, it's obvious this sort of simple process wasn't done. Should've taken a week, tops.
    It is also obvious they didn't even know how.
    Karl Marx, meet the Keystone Cops.
    Get ready for the train wreck.
Vassar
   

     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