Seriously, is it just me or is everyone else appalled at the complete lack of quality of what gets foisted upon us for national office?  These people can’t debate.  They can’t offer reasonable plans.  They can’t take a stand and stick to it.  They can’t keep their pants on.  They can’t avoid putting their feet in their mouths up to the knee.  Granted, one or the other may be able to manage avoiding a couple of these pitfalls but they’ll walk face first into another.  I know people like this in real life.  I understand nobody is perfect.  But none of the successful people I know regularly makes these kinds of mistakes under pressure.  They aren’t carting a thousand pounds of baggage with them, either.  Part of the reason they are successful is because they did not personally self destruct at the first hint of accomplishment.

More, they know who the enemy is, why he’s their enemy and to at least be prepared for what such an enemy will do.  They have appropriate rebuttals.  And if money grubbers say nasty and unsupportable things they step on those gold-diggers with lawyers and evidence and a history of personal integrity.  They don’t fumble around with inconsistencies while playing CYA.  But then they’ve never put themselves in a position for such claims to gain traction in the first place.  In short I, and I am certain you, too, know a better grade of people than what we keep seeing put up by the Establishment as “leaders”.  If these people can’t lead their campaigns through the mine field of leftist extremists(by definition the Democrat Party) and the salivating Drive By Media how the hell are they supposed to lead a nation?  Let alone lead it back from the brink it’s been taken to by the incompetent US-Hater currently soiling the White House?

Most important, perhaps, would be why does the “Party Elite” keep offering these losers?

Because of this proclivity for finding the worst among us the Republican Party is once again in the process of snatching defeat from the jaws of certain victory.  The upcoming presidential election is already a wash for conservatives.  The best we can do is replace Obama with a warm body which is, admittedly, a step up.  But we could have had more.  We should have had more.  This nation is full of successful, honorable, intelligent, constitutionally well versed men and women who could hold the office with dignity.  Instead we get the usual cadre of politicians and lawyers and poseurs who make easy pickings for the enemy and its smear machine.  Why?  Is the Old Guard Republican Party that outright stupid?  Do they have a reason to want to lose?  Is it that important to them to barely hang on by appealing to a non-existent segment the media euphemistically calls “Moderates”?  I don’t know, but I do know we can’t keep this up, swapping between the high-speed-rail to hell(the Socialist Democrat Party) and the diesel freight train to hell.

Unfortunately it’s too late for this time around barring some kind of miracle.  We’re going to get a flip-flopper with baggage for a president.  Or we’ll get Obama II which this nation simply can’t endure for another 4 years.  So finally I find myself on the ABO bandwagon, even if that means Mittens Romney.  But in being reduced to this once again we have got to do damage control.  That means it’s time to let this presidential circus come to it’s eventual absurd conclusion while we pursue getting the most conservative House and Senate we can.  We can not allow the Dems to hold the Senate.  We can not allow them remain meaningful in the House.  And we can not settle for “electability” in our congressional candidates.  We’ve got to set a higher standard there and we’ve got to pack CONgress with decent conservatives who will steer a Romney or Newt and totally block Obama if he wins again.

Otherwise we are going to see the end of this Republic this time around.  What comes after may still be called the US but it won’t be anything the Founders, or even our grandparents, would recognize as a free nation of liberty and individualism.  This is the election that decides between Republic and banana republic and we’re already stuck with the rear guard option.  So get busy, it’s later than you think.

www.tyrannyslain.com

www.libertydwells.com

October 11, 2011 | Author Retro |

The Occupy protests are being equated by the always-biased liberal media as analogous to the Tea Party protests. This argument is being used to obfuscate their extreme negative features with the old tried and true “he did it too” routine. Every parent and schoolteacher in the world is familiar with this juvenile tactic and to pull it out now is just embarrassing. But what else is new with the hypocritical elites in both media and government?

Any logical comparison of the two movements will force any fair person to conclude they are vastly different. Of course, when has the media or any Democrat in government been burdened with ACTUAL concern for “fairness”?? First of all, the fact that both are fairly large movements with demands for change is about all the two phenomena actually share. And the media immediately betrays its lack of “fairness” because it denigrated the Tea Party movement from the get-go while supporting sympathetically the Occupy movement. Why might that have been? Let’s just compare and contrast the two groups and see if we might get a clue, as if we don’t already have one:

First, the Tea Party movement arose totally spontaneously as a vast outpouring of frustration among middle class working people, older traditionalists and many younger people who were disturbed as they saw the traditional values with which they were raised eroding for their children and also worried about their financial future. Most of the people who joined in with the Tea Party movement in some fashion had never been involved with politics other than voting or supporting a few local candidates and certainly not with “protesting”.

I am a typical example- I’m 68, a small business owner with my husband, raised 3 kids, traditional values kind of people but not any kind of religious “extreme” in any way, and conservative on fiscal issues. As I watched my country erode in all these areas with alarm, the first Tea Party event was going to happen on my small town square. I got a wooden stake out of the garage, a couple of pieces of poster board and a roll of duct tape and made me a sign. One side said “Cut Government Spending”. The other had a picture of the Come and Take It cannon from Texas history and said “ My Ancestor Was There and I’m Here”, which is true. I wanted my sign to symbolize that my ancestors also stood up against tyranny and helped give us the rights we were now exercising on this town square.

I’d never been to a protest in my life. I drove to the town square- my husband was working and couldn’t go- parked the car and walked over to join hundreds of people already there. A couple of young guys with Audit the Fed signs were standing around and I asked them “what am I supposed to do, smoke dope or something?” and they all laughed. So did the nearby cops. I attended a number of Tea Party events after that. Nobody was “racist”. Nobody was “violent”. The cops were, if anything, sympathetic to the cause., but always very professional, and you could tell it was an easy gig for them.

There were all kinds of people there- several young women with kids told me at every event I attended “ I never cared about politics before, but had to get involved for my kids’ sakes.” Many people brought kids. One young couple I saw, at least, were white parents with a black kid. There were all races at every one I attended. Some of the most effective speakers at each were black.

The media excoriated us- as did the liberal politicians- we were called “racists”, “terrorists”, etc.etc.etc. I forget all the pejoratives, oh, and the really funny part was the “Astroturf” label. Funny, I am still waiting for that check from the “Koch Brothers’, who I never heard of until this stuff started. It was a VERY DIFFERENT reaction from Nancy Pelosi’s lauding of the present protests, which have been replete with violence and arrests, to her tearful, quavering indictment of the Tea Party protests as they dared to wave their American flags aggressively with small children sitting on their shoulders, prayed, and meticulously cleaned up the trash before leaving their protest site half a million strong with no arrests.

The current protests are orchestrated and coordinated by numerous Soros-backed liberal groups and protesters unable to articulate why they are there, and in some cases, paid to be there. EVERY Tea Partier can articulate their simple demands of less government spending, smaller government and, novel idea, adhering to the country’s founding document, the US Constitution. Compare and contrast. The Tea Party wants the proven successful system of capitalism to be allowed to work, while the Occupy people want to throw it out and institute the proven failed policies of socialism/Marxism, if they can articulate any policy at all.

The current protests are violent, law breaking, replete with arrests, destructive of property, and even symbolized by the grossly crude picture of a protestor defecating on a police car. The Tea Party protests had NO violence except from leftists, no arrests although much larger and more widespread crowds, and rather than trashing the venues, carefully picked up their own trash. Occupy protesters are costing the cities money everywhere they go in excess security and cleaning services, while the Tea Party left their place cleaner than they found it and caused the local law enforcement authorities no danger to themselves or others. Yet, the media criticized the Tea Party while praising the violent, trash-creating, communist endorsing, Astroturfed, anti-Semitic, Occupy forces.

Go figger.

The media and government elites tried to ignore the Tea Party, and when they could no longer do so, they lied about us, called us names, accused us of things we never intended, never did, and never would do. By contrast they gave reams of undeserved positive publicity to the Occupy people, lied about THEM positively and covered up their astroturfed origins, and are ignoring the things they intend, are doing, and plan to do. The Tea Party wants to lift up the individual by reducing spending, taxing and government, and promotes individual opportunity and freedom.

The Occupy people cannot even speak as individuals, parroting in unison the “leaders” with their weird chants, they want to demonize successful individuals, spend “other people’s money” forcefully confiscated by government, tear down the very system that made our country the greatest in the world, and limit opportunity and freedom. They laud “democracy” and mob rule while ignoring the fact that our Constitution established a Republic for the very reason that “democratic” mob rule ends up repressing the individual, not freeing him or her. No thanks. Give me tea and freedom, not Soros’ bitter koolaid. And will somebody PLEASE teach these children some history before it is too late?

Reprinted with Permission by Retro at www.tyrannyslain.com

www.libertydwells.com

I don’t like Ron Paul, but I do like his message.  Dr Paul may or may not be a nice enough guy.  No question he’s been a consistent supporter of our Constitution for his entire political career.  I don’t dislike him on a personal level because I don’t know the man.  But as a presidential candidate he’s lacking.  He’s weak in debates and he’s weak in interviews.  He’s not a politician who inspires people and these days, if not always in the past, that is a requirement for a presidential candidate.  Sadly, despite our nation’s dire straits, this is once again a personality race first and issues trail somewhere far down the list.  Thus Paul can’t beat Mittens or Perry…though he has Huntsman and Bachman in the bag.

What we need to find as Conservatives and Constitutionalists is a genetic hybrid of Dr Paul, Governor Perry and Sarah Palin.  A Constitutional literalist with a grizzly bear mentality and a polished political persona.  And that person needs to be able to speak well and with only the bare minimum of gaffes.  I mean, seriously people, I could do better in front of the camera than anyone we have seen in politics since Reagan and, maybe Clinton.  In fact, we need Slick Willy but with a constitutional bent and a moral center.  We need Ronald Reagan resuscitated, rolled back to age 50 and given a crash course in constitutionalism by Ron Paul.  Not that President Reagan lacked a grasp of it but he was too willing to go along to get along.  That’s how he was snookered by the Dems; a mistake Paul wouldn’t make.

So what do we do?  What’s the answer for 2012, since Ron Paul is not going to get elected, or even nominated.  Since we can not afford 4 more years of Obama.  Since the best we can hope for is probably Perry…  I refuse to even consider Mittens because we might as well HAVE 4 more years of Obama if that’s who the ‘pub leadership gives us to “support”.  Since it’s conceivable we won’t have a financially viable nation by 2016 if we don’t do something soon we need to start focusing on more of the solution than just nominating a conservative.  We need to start pushing the likely nominee to do the right things to keep this nation viable for another 4 or 8 years.  And my solution is not to say let’s push for Dr Paul for VP.

Not what you were expecting, eh?

No, the best candidate we have right now in a two party environment is Rick Perry.  We need Herman Cain as his VP pick.  We need to put Dr Paul over the Treasury and we need to start lobbying both he and Perry for this arrangement now.  While we still have time and before things get so rushed that no organized push is even possible.  In doing it this way we get what we need, even if we have to spread it over three people.  Perry provides the dynamic politician.   A “leader” figure that US Citizens, sadly, demand.   A younger Reagan who can be presented as the conservative we need…whether he is or not.  Herman Cain is the smarts.  Not that Perry is dumb because he isn’t.  But Cain has business savvy and this nation needs that now.  Right now.  Even before the election, but there’s nothing we can do until then so oh well.  And then we have the Paulster.  Dr Paul over the Treasury.

Think about that.  Imagine the Fed running scared.  Imagine no more fiat paper “money” being printed for every random, pointless banker-loving bailout the porker good-ol-boy politicians of both parties can dream of.  Imagine someone actively pushing for an audit of the Fed.  Someone pushing for veto of every unconstitutional bill that comes through the Oval Office.  Backed by a business man with common sense experience in how things work.

It’s not perfection.  We need to find this trifecta in one person to run in 2020.  But for this coming election it’s the best idea I can see that has a chance of happening.  It’s the most effective way of staving off ruin, if not actually saving the nation, we have available to us in the few short months before November 2012.  And despite how far off that may seem it’s not.  It’s tomorrow.  You’ll wake up and it’ll be here.  So get past the argument over the nominee; it has to be Perry because that’s what we’ve got to work with.  Get past that and worry about making sure Mittens goes home and Perry picks the best, read effective, people to support him in the crucial areas.  Start pushing now, all of you who want to see Paul in a position to make a difference and Cain in a place to pull the race card out of the Dems greasy hands.  Because otherwise when you wake up tomorrow Mittens will be your man, just like McCain was, and you’ll be stuck with the choice, once more, of the lesser of two evils.

Personally I can’t abide that choice yet again.  Whether I like Ron Paul or not, we need is ideals and however we get them into power it beats the alternative.

www.tyrannyslain.com   www.libertydwells.com

Nominate a conservative, dammit!

The time has passed for appeasement.  The time has passed to “just get elected”.  The time has passed to worry more about putting an (R) in front of the name than putting Respect for the Constitution in front of all else.  This is not the time for “Anybody but Obama”.  This is the time to be ideologically rigid.  It is the time to take a stand.  Draw your line in the sand.  State your beliefs and vote them!  Let the chips fall where they may, because otherwise we simply continue the downward spiral of leftism that is consuming our nation financially and morally.  It may be a slower spiral with a Mittens or a Rudy or even a Christie, but a leftward spiral it is.  We’ve reached the maximum expense in that spiral that we can afford, no matter who is in office.

But, but, but, but…I hear the appeasers and part faithful say.   We have to start some where.  Turn the tide.  Stem the flow.  Reign in the left.  We have to stop those extremists…

NO!  We have to BE the extremists.  Never mind the half-baked illogic of the left.  No matter how much they cry that everything right of where ever they have staked a claim is “extreme” the fact is anything that defies the Constitution and Bill of Rights is the extreme position.  THEY are the extremists.  Obama.  Hillary. Chrissy Mathews and every cursed RINO out there.  The extremists are by definition the left.  Constitutional conservatives are the mainstream in a Constitutional Republic, which the US is.  It’s time to remember this and take back OUR ground.  It’s time to step up and remember we are the rational ones and to nominate a person who represents constitutional rationality.   It’s time to light a fire and let it burn and take whatever the results may be.  Even if those results are a nation which re-elects the Traitor-in-Chief; Obama.

Yes, I said it.  Scorched earth.  The White House, the Senate, even the House.  We have got to take a stand that says “No more”.  No more lefty agenda.  No more tax hikes hidden behind a “progressive rate”.  No more bailouts.  No more confiscation of investor’s property as with GM.  No more under-the-radar gun control.  No more murders like Fast & Furious.  Nominate and vote for those who support small constitutional government and let the chips fall where they may.  If that means the voters of this nation are so far gone in their desperate need for the handouts of your tax dollars via fedgov then so be it!  Let the entire corrupt mess collapse under its own fetid weight and then be the people who pick up the pieces.

Because guess what?  You’re going to be those people anyway.  The only difference is whether you slow it down a bit or let it run wild.  The major consideration there is the longer it gets to go on the worse it will get and the tougher to put it all back together afterwards.

Obama is going to kill this nation.  It’s what he wants to do.  it’s what he was selected to do.  Thing is, Mittens will do the same.  Maybe via mere incompetence.  Maybe out of a desire to make the left like him.  Either way the result will be the same.  And in the process the left will never like him, or you, because the left is comprised of two groups:  Those with a clear agenda and those too stupid to care about anything but their demands and their hate.  You can’t make people like that into your friends.  More important, you can’t make them into friends of your nation.  They don’t like you, your ideals, your traditions or your Rule of Law.  Some were taught not to, some are too petty and the rest are too stupid.  So STOP IT!.  Stop trying to find people who will “cross the aisle” and instead choose people who will take a stand.  Pick them.  Support them.  Back them.  Fund them.  VOTE for them.  And then be prepared to reap the consequences of your actions, succeed or fail.  Because either way it can’t be worse than where we are now or where we will be in 4 or 8 years with an Obama or a Mittens or a Huntsman.

This really is your last chance to take back YOUR US from them.  The lefties who have usurped it.  The Illegals who have invaded it.  The terrorists who want to kill it.  Pick the Right candidates and stand up for what you believe, not who might have the best shot at being elected according to the latest biased polls.  Make your choices and make your mark on history as you want it to be, because make a mark you will…one way or another.

www.libertydwells.com

Just ask your AVG antivirus if you try and register a site as I did with ours(just for yucks). It’ll let you know with a big red Threat! pop-up and in your vault you’ll find Trojan horse Generic24.BJOU

Your president is trying to backdoor everyone who turns in their neighbors! Is that not Big Brother at it’s best or WHAT!?

More to come…

UPDATE 6:00PM: The claim is that someone hacked into the site and attached a Trojan in an effort to “discredit” the site.  Now dispensing with the obvious, that the site completely discredits both itself and Obama, does this smell like diversion to anyone else?  Those Evil Right Wing Conspiracy Tea Partiers did it!   They are trying to make the poor president look bad(as if he needs help).

We’ll keep you posted and remember, you heard it here first! 

www.tyrannyslain.com www.libertydwells.com

Author Retro

Some “community organizing” seems to consist of paid organizers coming into a community, “never wasting a crisis” by trying to create pressure groups to gouge resources out of businesses, pushing for union demands, and demanding government create more and bigger and more generous largesse to redistribute wealth from the private sector to an ever-increasing entitlement class.

Class warfare slogans abound, angry rhetoric, and anyone who stands in the way of the demands of such “community organizers” is branded a terrorist, a racist, a barbarian at the gates, an evilrichcorporate interest or controlled by one, and various profanities- among other epithets. “Organizing” for these Saul Alinsky disciples consists of mobs of screaming, lockstep pressure groups bused in unison to invade private businesses, homes, and government public buildings yelling pre-programmed slogans, waving pre-produced signs in matching tee shirts, and demanding more, more, and more public money to “fix” private problems. There’s always a woman with a clipboard and a guy with a bullhorn. They are exhorted to “get in the face” of anyone with the temerity to disagree.

Then there is “community organizing”, Texas style. Right now there is a crisis in Texas in many of our communities. A terrible drought has created a tinderbox and terrible wildfires have killed people, destroyed the homes of thousands of families, and created desperate circumstances for many people in need, thrown into homelessness overnight with all their possessions gone.

Texans don’t wait for a group, a government, or a “community organizer” trained in the Alinsky method to tell them how to love their neighbor. They grew up learning this through their churches, their family, and their friends and neighbors who all grew up that way, too. So it is natural for Texans to ORGANIZE THEMSELVES into immediate, effective, generous thousands donating freely to help those devastated by the fires.

I was privileged to see a little of this effort in action yesterday. Down the road from me is a nice little BBQ restaurant a couple of young kids have started. They took over a former feed store and fixed it up, and are still fixing it up, and through hard work, good food and fair prices have become an admired part of the community. But despite being full-time small business owners and busy parents of young children, now they have also taken on the role of community organizers to help the fire victims.

They have set up a collection point in the back room of the restaurant where they are going to create a little additional bar and put up homemade signs to donate there for the fire folks in need and the firemen, gathered friends and neighbors to accept and sort stuff, and are in the process of loving their neighbor as themselves along with many other volunteers. I saw the signs and brought in some stuff, and stopped and helped a bit.

What I saw was community organizing the way we do it here. They had already collected so much stuff the nearby fire victims were covered, and they were organizing vans and trucks to drive supplies farther away. The local Kroger had donated pallets of water for the firefighters. People were donating not only good used clothing but buying packages of new underwear for people who all of sudden literally didn’t have a clean pair of drawers to their name.

Inside the local Kroger, the bin designated for food for the fire victims overflowed with donations. Back at the BBQ place, every few minutes, a car would drive up and someone would tote in another bag of “stuff people need”- baby food, diapers, a little package of hair bows for a little girl who might no longer even have one, food, clothing, shoes, basic medicine, on and on. The volunteers would go through it and organize and label boxes of supplies.

As I stood there and watched when things slowed down, a man came in. He shyly reached in his pocket, pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and handed it to one of the volunteers. She asked him if he wanted a receipt, he modestly ducked his head and murmured in the negative, and went on his way. I was struck by what a quiet, kind demeanor he had, not wanting to make a fuss, just give… not the kind of guy who would make a good Saul Alinskyite, for sure. But I’ll bet he is probably a very good businessman- and obviously a good person.

All over Texas, these scenes are taking place as we go about quietly helping our own, doing what we have always done in an emergency, and what many of us consider not anything special, just our “Christian duty”. And of course, at the forefront of these efforts are those evil Christian fundamentalist churches demonized as a danger to society on every mainstream media news outlet who lionize and so respect those other kind of “community organizers.”

One of my spare rooms has become a temporary repository for the excess clothing to be stored until it is needed again to distribute in a couple of weeks or a month as the need continues. And every time I look at that abundance so freely given to others who are hurting and in need, it reminds me how good, how loving, how positive, and how independent the proud, individual “community organizers” of Texas are. Oh- and there were tee shirts- but they were privately printed and being sold to help the victims. God bless Zach and Holly and the energetic team of friends who are there helping- and may Zach’s BBQ prosper for many years. And God bless Texas.

Reposted with permission from www.tyrannyslain.com

Dear Mr. Vice-President:

I am a 68-year old grandmother and small business owner who identifies strongly with the values of the tea party. I am in favor of smaller government, lower taxes and the federal government getting its debt under control and spending no more than it takes in.

I have spent my life working hard for the money you and the rest of the government spend. May I remind you- YOU work for me, and the money you spend was once mine, that I earned, sometimes standing on my feet many hours a day in some pain. To ask you and your fellow Democrats to respect me, your employer, and spend my money wisely is *not* “terrorism”.

I am not a terrorist. I am, however, a holy terror, and you have PISSED ME OFF. I am fed up with being disrespected and called sexually exlicit names like “teabagger”, a term I was unfamiliar with as a decent lady until you and your supporters began to use it in regular public written and spoken discourse.

I am fed up with being called a “racist” for demanding fiscal responsibility on the part of you and your fellow Democrats who decide how much of my money you will confiscate for your own use. I am fed up with the people who supposedly work for me working against me and my best interests as a small business owner.

I am fed up with the government interfering in my business, by faith, my grandkids’ education, my pocketbook, my health, and my very life. I am fed up with regulations infringing upon my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness you and your fellow Democrats constantly impose.

I am insulted and incensed, but I am NOT a terrorist. I am a patriotic sixth generation Texas patriot and I am fed up with the REAL terror you and your fellow Democrats have imposed on my life. I am in terror your profligate spending will ruin my life and that of my kids and grandkids, ruin my business, ruin my chance to someday retire before i die and ruin my country. I am in terror your weak foreign policy will put us in worse danger of attack by the real terrorists you refuse to name while accusing little grandmothers like me of being one.

I am in terror the proven biased news media and your propaganda arms bought and paid for by George Soros, your socialist supporter, will con enough people into electing you and your ilk again to further ruin my country.

I know a real terrorist when I see one, Mr. Vice-President, and I am not it- I’m just a holy terror, independent American and I call you out for what you have proven yourself to be- a fool, and tool of the real terror hurting my country. I just hope enough of my fellow tea party “terrors” will be able to save my country when we get a chance in the next election to prove how we as Americans respond to demagogues, and resoundingly tell you and your fellow Democrats and any Republicans aiding and abetting this terror- “you’re fired!!”

Reprinted from www.tyrannyslain.com and www.libertydwells.com

I love chocolate milkshakes. Like spending is to the national government, chocolate milkshakes are to me: my reason for being. The thicker the better, throw in some malt or fudge and I’m in heaven. I consumed them wherever and whenever possible. And since a good thing can only be made better by having more and more of it, my selfish pleasure demanded I consume more and more milkshakes. Problem was, it was hard to justify my milkshake consumption to my domestic constituents, my wife and children who are always whining about things like the cost of the shakes and the effect on my version of the national debt, my weight.

So to be fair to all and to pretend I gave a care about my family’s concerns, I adopted a policy I call the milkshake baseline. I got the idea from a place called Citizens Against Government Waste because I was worried a bit about my waist and just got the spelling wrong. I agreed to budget only one milkshake per week, but in exchange for giving up the fights about my additional milkshakes, we agreed I could increase my weekly milkshake consumption by a modest 7% per year. That was way back in 1974 and I must say since then my milkshake baseline has served me well. Sure it was awkward in the second year when I’d stroll into Steak-n-Shake (R) and order 7% of a milkshake, but we got through it. Six years later, in 1980 I was only up to 1½ milkshakes per week so everyone agreed my baseline plan was working well. By 1998, however, I was up to 5 milkshakes per week and some grumbling broke out about my spending and gluttony, since I’d gotten to one milkshake per weekday. I had quintupled my milkshake intake in 24 years and the effect on my weight was showing, as was the ever increasing cost. I heard grumbles about my health but I wasn’t complaining. I had milkshakes!

By 2009 my milkshake intake had doubled since my 1998 level and I was entitled to have 10 milkshakes a week! By now the shakes were so good I was exploring ways of stimulating my shake consumption. My wife and kids, the ingrates, were complaining I’d have to dress in a TARP if I got any more bloated from the shakes. I countered that times were bad and if I cut back on my milkshake consumption the restaurant would have to lay off employees. How cruel would that be?

Now it’s 2011 and things are totally out of hand with my family. They are demanding I give up my 12 milkshakes a week and drink tea instead. They even had an intervention, like on that show on TV, and all my friends jumped me about how bad my “milkshake habit” had become blah, blah, blah. The tricked me into coming by saying it was a tea party. Obviously my family are rubes and hicks and don’t know how I operate. My weight has skyrocketed, however, and I have developed type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. My doctor keeps preaching doom about the end being near. He keeps threatening to “downgrade my rating” whatever that means. But come on, we’re talkin’ milkshakes here. More has to be better.

Isn’t it?

I need to appease my family and doctor. Ten years from now, in 2021, I am already budgeted to be at 24 milkshakes a week, in increase of 12 milkshake from today’s level. I have promised the family and my doctor if they get off my back I will cut 3 of those out-year milkshakes out of my budget! That’s a whopping 25% reduction in my current level of 12 milkshakes. That means in 2021 I will only be consuming 21 milkshakes. How can they complain about a 25% cut in spending!?

Do you think they will fall for it?

_____
Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.

Reprinted with permission from Tyranny Slain and Liberty Dwells

The Weakling Standard

Having backed the President of the United States into a corner, resulting in his near-hysterical rant on national television and having changed the entire tone of the current national debate from tax increases to spending cuts, the leadership of the House of Representatives now seems bent upon snatching humiliating defeat from the jaws of victory. Sadly, this is business as usual for the Republican Leadership. They seem to think fighting to actually defeat one’s enemy or to really uphold the promises one gives to the peasants when running for office, is gauche, tawdry and unworthy of the Patrician ideals which bind the insiders in Washington, DC to one another. And so, rather than crossing the field and accepting the enemy’s sword in surrender, John Boehner and Eric Cantor and their minions in “leadership” instead are poised to sue for peace via Boehner’s flaccid plan to draw a couple of cups of water out of the growth of the tsunami of government spending which promises to wipe us out as the leading economic power of the world. Victory, after all, is the quaint notion of those naive freshmen who actually believe in things like principles and promises.

Despite that lofty rhetoric, my fight today is not with the sell-outs of the establishment wing of the GOP. The old school establishment politicians are a remnant of a dying era. Mr. Boehner apparently forgets the only reason he occupies the office of Speaker is due to the hard work of the freshmen. But that, and the Senate’s Democrat majority and the abomination in the White House will soon be remedied. It is the cheerleaders of mediocrity that I want to talk about today.

First, there’s The Weekly Standard. There are things called “magazines” which consist of stories printed on slick paper and some people, I guess, actually pay good money for these things and some others actually pay better money to advertise their businesses in these periodicals. Weird, I know, but I remember them from youth. My mom always had a pile of them called “Life” and “Look” piled next to our black rotary phone which connected to our party line. The Weekly Standard boasts a lofty circulation of a whopping 60,000 influential insiders each and every week, not counting hits on its web site linked above. By contrast, Rush Limbaugh reaches some 20,000,000 listeners a week, but that doesn’t diminish the status of The Weekly Standard, in its own eyes. This week, The Weekly Standard distinguished itself again as the barker at the carnival of mediocrity when its editor, William Kristol, penned a juvenile screed attacking the real conservatives, the “Tea Party” for their boring, pedestrian refusal to follow the flaccid Boehner plan. In this little rant he called “A Time for Choosing“, Kristol launches into an argument one must usually go to a grade school play ground to hear. “You can’t be my friend if you’re Jimmy’s friend,” Kristol whines in his opening paragraph, as he claims if you don’t support Boehner’s punt-to-win tactic you must be a Nancy Pelosi lover. Deep. He culminates his searing logic with a claim that if we don’t surrender to the enemy now the enemy will defeat us later. Wait, what? People pay to read this? Conservative pay to advertise in this? Time to reevaluate that marketing strategy.

Meanwhile, the Lord of the Flies-level analysis of the real conservatives continues at the mouth-piece of the blue-blooded establishment, the Wall Street Journal with its oh-so-witty Lord of the Rings analogy. Unlike the magazine, the WSJ’s marketing plan is to take 2 day old news, print it on smudgy paper and have a boy throw it on your wet lawn in the morning. After savaging Senator Jim DeMint, the Club for Growth and The Heritage Foundation, the anonymous author of this WSJ hit-piece intoned:

The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.

Seriously? Was it take you kid to work day at the WSJ? Say what you will about Kristol’s piece, at least he had the balls to sign his name to it. I’m looking at you Wall Street Journal. Was your “journalist” too busy hacking cell phones to sign his work? Or just too embarrassed?

And our final cheerleader who needs a little light shined on him is the right honorable Senator John McCain who, read the above WSJ article on the floor of the United States Senate. “Conservative” McCain, who actually knew Gandalf as a young man, later explained on Sean Hannity’s TV show how he was a conservative’s conservative and he was not attacking the tea party movement, which he loved (impish smile here with an almost childish giggle, as if reading dirty jokes to his fellow 5th graders) but was merely explaining the issue. This criticism of real conservatives from a man whose two claims to fame are losing an election to some nobody from Illinois named “Barack” and having been captured for a long time? Well you are still in captivity, Senator McCain. You’ve been captured by the wishy-washy, don’t-make-waves establishment that the tea party movement is here to replace. Somebody needs to take Grandpa back to the home.

Conservatives, John McCain is self-limiting but enemies who pretend to be friends are not so self-limiting. What you have to ask yourself is, why should you pay to buy or subscribe to periodicals which advocate this weakling standard for conservatism?

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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.

Reprinted with permission from www.tyrannyslain.com and www.libertydwells.com

I watched in utter amazement last Friday as the President of the United States of America had a hold-my-breath, stomp-my-feet, hissy fit on national tv because mean old John Boehner wouldn’t go along with the scheme to rip us off for even more taxes. All the cliches in this matter are true but the best one that sums up the issue is “It’s the spending stupid.” We don’t need any further “revenue enhancements” (don’t you just love D.C. euphemisms?) which are a drop in the bucket compared to the run-away spending our profligate national government has been indulging in for the last decade. Yes, it started with President Bush but his growth in spending was truly amateurish compared to that of the current one-term-wonder, Barack H. Obama. To get this country back in black we have to cut spending and cut it to the bone.

As I marveled at Obama’s macabre theatre of the absurd, it dawned on me that about a week ago Obama called on the nation to rally together and make a “shared sacrifice” to confront this crisis. According to an AFP story carried on Breitbart, the President said,

Simply put, it will take a balanced approach, shared sacrifice, and a willingness to make unpopular choices on all our parts.

In that regard I agree with President Obama completely. It is indeed time for shared sacrifice. Where I suspect we differ is on the issue of who should now be doing the sacrificing.

To quote an old Rush Limbaugh saw, “It’s time the poor started paying their fair share!” The problem is not that the so-called “rich” pay too little. It’s that the “poor” pay far too little and receive far too much. But let’s back away from the tired old Marxist tactic of pitting economic classes against one another. “Rich” or “poor”? What do these labels even mean in today’s American society? We have the richest poor in the world. I recall vivividly Dinesh D’Souza’s story about what an Indian friend told him when asked why he wanted so badly to come to America. He replied:

I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat.

See, What’s So Great About America, Townhall.

Meanwhile the rich aren’t even the rich. With each new day we find “rich” being defined down to where about any husband and wife team of school teachers are deemed “the rich” by the Obama regime. So let’s abandon those words in favor of more meaningful terms, such as “producers” and “users.” I defince producers as any who, through their wit, skill, enterprise and industry are employed or self-employed in the private sector and contributing to our gross domestic product. These people include the laborers and the thinkers, the professionals, the artisans and the industrialists; the ones who work for what they get and all too ofter are the ones taxed to pay for what those who don’t produce get through the largess of our very generous government. On the other end of the spectrum are the “users.” As the name implies these people do not produce, but use that which the producers produce. The users live off that taken from the producers. There are some necessary users, such as police, fire and military, and it is not the intent of this article to denegrate their necessary service. I focus instead on the true users: those on the public dole, the lazy, the unmotivated, the incompetent, the under-achievers. They actually enjoy a life-style that would be the envy of the average European middle class. The Heritage Foundation recently published some eye-opening statistics and charts on this very subject, noting:

. . . According to the government’s own survey data, in 2005, the average household defined as poor by the government lived in a house or apartment equipped with air conditioning and cable TV. The family had a car (a third of the poor have two or more cars). For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, a DVD player, and a VCR. . . .

If there were children in the home (especially boys), the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a microwave, refrigerator, and an oven and stove. Other household conveniences included a washer and dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker. . . .

Not bad.

For far too long the producers have been forced to give too much to the users in terms of taxes and in other ways, ($16 trillion) but let’s focus on taxes so we don’t stretch this note to unnecessary length. We are told by the merchants of poverty, the press and the left, that we are selfish and undertaxed and we should be thankful for that. My experience is that Americans in general are not a seflish people and happily give to those truly in need; a hand-up in hard times. And no one begrudges a penny spent on those few who, because of age, or disability, truly cannot work. But we are certainly not undertaxed.

The Tax Foundation recently published a work by Scott Hodge showing of all the industrialized countries the producers in the United States are the most taxed in the world. Hodge, citing figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), printed a table which he explained as follows:

The first column shows that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.

In sum, the top 10% of American producers are taxed at the highest level in the world, in order to pay for some user’s Playstation (R).

Yes, it is time, far past time, for some “shared sacrifice.” It’s time for the users to sacrifice some of their goodies that the rest of has been paying for since LBJ’s unfortunate rise to power. I can hear the left howl now. “You can’t take food out of the mouths of babies!” True, and I don’t want to. Instead, let’s just take away their cell phones.

In January 2010 The Heritage Foundation shined some light on how you producers are giving away free phones and hours to the users, to the tune of a couple of billion dollars.

. . . In 2008, the fund that foots the bill for this program contributed $819 million to subsidize low-income telephone services. The fund is projected to grow to over $1 billion this year. That’s $1 billion of over $800 billion the United States will spend on welfare in 2010. . . .

I realize a mere couple of billion is a drop in the bucket of champaign the users enjoy. But the journey of a trillion dollars begins with but a single greenback. Barack? Harry? Nancy? You sure there’s nothing we can cut??

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Randall Mead is a simple, country lawyer, scratching out a living in the belly of the beast, the capital of Madiganistan.

Reprinted with permission of Randall Mead from www.tyrannyslain.com www.libertydwells.com