After the housing bubble burst, leaving us in a heap of crap, it seems that both the Bush administration and the Obama administration took steps to make a bad situation worse. Funnelling hundreds of billions of  dollars into a ‘stimulus’ that wasn’t was only the first step down the path to ‘WTF?’. After that it was Cash for Clunkers, Stimulus II, Health Care Reform, Cap and Trade, the oil spill, and now Financial Industry reform….. all answered by still more and more government involvement, government intrusion, and government takeovers.

These guys in DC are obviously either mentally ill, or they are doing it on purpose. (The second does not preclude the first)

As of this second, we are $13,112,107,708,778 in debt. That’s $42,351 per citizen, or 118,706 per taxpayer. Our GDP, or what we MAKE in terms of goods or services, is $14,424,041,055,720. Our gross debt to GDP ratio is 90.90%

For you and me, that would be like having a $140,000 home, a $60,000 job, and having a debt of roughly $184,000. Could you dig yourself out of that? Ever?

But wait, there’s more. We have entitlements. God, do we have entitlements. Our social security liability is $14.4 trillion, the prescription drug liability is $19 trillion, and the medicare liability is $75.8 trillion – giving us a total of $109.29 trillion of entitlement liabilities, or $353,026 per citizen. Oh, and the dark lining behind this silver cloud: It’s gonna get worse.

In 2010, so far, we’ve had 1.419 million bankruptcies, and 869,929 foreclosures. We’ve imported 287 billion barrels of oil, 115 billion from OPEC. Bailouts from the government are currently at $5.055 trillion. And to make it even more interesting, we are paying $196 billion just in INTEREST on the debt.

I ask again, “WHOSE RESPONSBLE THIS????”

Who has taken a merely bad situation and flushed the rest of the economy down the tubes with it? Who has made boneheaded decisions and policies – time after time after time after time again? WHO? Someone needs to kick their asses!

It’s easy to sit back and say “I inherited this”. It’s the standard political cop out. “Eight years of Bush and see what happened????” Well, Mr President, that dog don’t hunt no more. This is squarely YOUR problem now.

Who kept pushing for Stimulus when WE THE PEOPLE were against the idea? You.

Who kept pushing health care reform when WE THE PEOPLE were against it? You.

Who kept out the foreign ships from the gulf when we needed their help? You.

Who kept people from building sand berms to stop the oil from reaching our coastlines? You.

Who is suing the state of Arizona for daring to have a law that mirrors existing federal statutes that aren’t currently enforced by the feds? You.

Who sent PetroBras 2 billion dollars to do deep water drilling in Brazil? You.

Who created massive unemployment by trying to shut down the offshore oil drilling industry? You.

Who is forcing oil platforms to MOVE AWAY from the US to places where they can actually drill and pump oil? You.

I’d stop blaming Bush if I were you. (Even Bonzo the wonder iguana is having trouble believing you with this line.)

Then again, I’m not mentally ill. And I’m not aiming to destroy the country either. Which are you, Mr. President?

AND ANOTHER THING: JOHN MCCAIN…

Senator McCain….. I’ve been hearing your political commercials here in Phoenix. You are filled with hubris if you dare to think, let alone say, that YOU, personally, are Arizona’s ‘last line of defense’. You are a representative of the state of Arizona, nothing more, nothing less.

And a sorry one you have been.

You voted for the 680 billion dollar bailout. You championed the McCain-Feingold assault on the first amendment. You backed the amnesty plan for illegal aliens. And you DARE to call yourself a ‘conservative’ in an election year? A conservative from where exactly? SAN FRANCISCO?

I don’t know what’s going to happen in this upcoming election cycle, but anyone with that much conceit and self-aggrandisement should NOT be a senator. If J.D. doesn’t defeat you in the primary, I hope the democrat wins in November – at least he won’t be a ‘senior’ senator and can’t do too much damage until we kick his ass out in 2016. Senator, YOU have become a danger to this country, a danger we simply can not afford.

If you had fought for the presidency with the rhethoric and comparison ads you are making with J.D., you’d be president today. But apparently, you keep your venom in reserve to only fight candidates that are more conservative than you are.

Senator… It’s time you were educated. WE THE PEOPLE are the last line of defense for Arizona. And I hope we ‘splain that to you in the next election cycle.

AND YET ANOTHER THING: J.D. HAYWORTH

Boy, you screwed up with that infomercial. But you did something good. You admitted the mistake and apologized. Good job, brother. Everyone screws the pooch on occasion. The wise man learns and moves forward.

Now, stop playing McCain’s game. You will lose. Play YOUR game: the game you played on the radio airwaves. Get out there with simple direct messages about your policies and plans and IGNORE the competition. No fancy violins and french horns, just you and a mike and your message.

I’m the Technomage, and I approve this message.
(Paid for by no one)

The climate change lobby (“Big Climate”) has, for years, told us that the sky is falling. Well, from the leaked information (mostly the program source code) we see that they should really be called ‘Chicken Little’. From the emails, we can see that they should also have the title of ‘high school bully’.

But who can blame them? They are saving the world, right? Yeah, right. What they are mostly doing is chasing the 100+ trillion dollars in the Big Climate slush fund. They are chasing fame and fortune, just like Ken Lay of Enron did. You remmember Enron, right? Maybe that’s too old for some of you. Let’s see… they are chasing fame and fortune just like the UAW was in the GM and Chrysler bailouts. Remember that one? Where they got enough corporate ownership that they now sit on the board of directors? (Ahead, of course, of the bond holders who actually invested in the companies)

And, to top it all off, the guys at the CRU threw away the original raw data. That’s right, in an age where you can buy a 1 Terabyte drive (1000 Gigabytes) for about $100, they threw away gigabytes of data as opposed to archiving it. This is the scientific equivalent of the atom bomb – without this data, there is NO WAY to replicate any of their science. Now, they KEPT the massaged (to the point of silly putty) data. But the original data – gone. This ALONE is a crime against science.

It means that the children will never really know this data. They never will have access to it for other studies. They can never ever use that data for the next 100 years in their own studies. This one singular act has done more damage to climate science than this passing fraud called Big Climate.

And even children can understand that if you start with bad information, you make bad decisions. Everyone in Big Climate is saying, “But but but this is PEER REVIEWED!” – let’s give them that (for fun). If you had honest peer reviewers that started with bogus and manipulated data, and they analyzed papers BASED ON THAT BOGUS DATA, they would say that the papers are fine. Yeah, right. If you start with garbage data, you get garbage conclusions. GIGO – Garbage in, Garbage out.

So, each and every study, research paper, and conclusion that depends on the tossed data is, in effect, useless. Since the CRU provided the data sets (the massaged data sets, or dare I say, the ‘fraudulent data sets’) that everyone based their years of research on – well…. GIGO. These people are like the Mafia – one set of books for ‘the family’ – the other set for the Feds. That’s a decent analogy – the Big Climate Mafia – out to steal your money and hurt your kids.

And the Big Climate Mafia has allies: Al Gore, The BBC, The mainstream media here in the states, Newspapers, The environmental lobby, The Democrat party, The Green party, James Hansen, and a host of others. These allies need to be investigated as well. We need to know how far in the Big Climate Mafia has its tentacles. After all, we are talking about the potential theft of over 100 Trillion dollars from the childrens. Dollars that could have been used to feed them, or house them, or clothe them, or get their education, or get them to the Moon or Mars, or solve REAL problems here in Earth. It’s time to follow the money.

It’s time to take down the Big Climate Mafia and their friends. Anything else would be a travesty.

It’s for the children.

Those pesky scientists. I was trained in the sciences, and even I could tell this whole global warming/climate change thing was just fundamentally screwed science. I expected that the method of science: that of hypothesizing, collecting data, theorizing, collecting more data, and reproducing the experiments would eventually show the abject stupidity of the premise. I made a mistake, I was thinking ‘real’ science.

For you see, global warming/climate change science is not, in any sense of the word, ‘real science’. It is (in simplest terms) agenda-driven science. Here’s how it works: you determine an outcome you want, then you manipulate the data to prove your desired outcome. In the meantime, you make sure to suppress any real science being done on the issue (because it may prove your outcome is not accurate, or worse, not supported by any real data) and to malign anyone who dares question your agenda-driven conclusions. Sound familiar?

If that last part doesn’t sound familiar, let me jog you memory a bit…

• NASA’s James Hansen has called for trials of climate skeptics in 2008 for “high crimes against humanity.”
• Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lashed out at skeptics of 2007 declaring “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors” In 2009, RFK, Jr. also called coal companies “criminal enterprises” and declared CEO’s ‘should be in jail… for all of eternity.”
• Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics (January 17, 2007) Excerpt: The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
• Barone: Warmists have ‘a desire to kill heretics’ — Calls for capital punishment for ‘global warming deniers’ – DC Examiner – June 9, 2009

Alas, Bernie – you had the touch, but these guys make you look like a piker. They are actually calling for executions if you don’t buy in (literally) to their agenda!.

And the buy-in? Trillions of dollars of your hard-earned tax dollars to combat a problem that doesn’t exist. Mostly American tax dollars if you look at the proposed breakdowns. Makes those billions Madoff took look like loose change.

Please take note – science is NOT to blame here. Science is the best method we have to date to evaluate and test hypotheses and theories. Science took us to the moon, to Mars, brought us amazing drugs and vaccines, and has probably saved more lives than any other field of human endeavor. Whatever happens, do not blame science itself.

Blame the true perpetrators: Scientists that compromised their scientific integrity for their own personal or political gain. Oh, and blame them HARD. If they participate in ANY science again, immediately demand that their results be verified by independent and critical scientists.

There’s a TON of scientists who have been saying that this is a hoax for years – and they got no press, were threatened with loss of their jobs, were called fools, were physically threatened, and generally we laughed off the stage. For a subset of these scientists (after all, scientists are people too and some, maybe most, will bow to the pressure and back off), visit http://www.petitionproject.org/ – 31,486 scientists (9,029 with PhDs) standing up against the unethical scientists and their junk science.

THESE scientists need our support now. They are the real ones – the ones who call ‘em like they see ‘em – even if they don’t particularly like the outcome. It’s called ‘being honest’ – they were honest and were called on the carpet for it. THESE are the people you want doing studies!

I am writing to you today not as a democrat, nor as a republican, nor as a member of any ideological group. I am writing to you as an American, just like the millions of Americans you were hired to represent in congress. It is time to stop your silly partisan bickering and actually do something useful for a change. It is also time to learn from history and not repeat the same mistakes that a similar congress made over twenty years ago.

Oil and gas

Right now, Americans are truly concerned at the current gasoline and energy prices – gasoline that they need to go to work, school and yes, the occasional vacation; and energy they need to heat and cool their homes, and power their appliances.

It’s time to stop pointing fingers of blame at the oil companies who are providing energy at a very reasonable profit margin – about 9% – which is the very engine that brings us more developments in higher efficiency and research into additional supplies of oil. I’ve heard both sides of the aisle rail about the 11 billion dollars that Exxon Mobil made, and not a ONE of them mentioned the 130 billion they put out to get that 11 billion. That’s deceptive on your part, demagogic in the extreme, and a disservice to the American people at the least.

We all know that the various governments make more per gallon than Exxon Mobil does with their fuel and energy taxes. And you guys don’t do a THING to help research efficiencies or new developments. Before bitching at Exxon Mobil, pass a federal law to eliminate ALL special taxes on energy (normal sales tax is fine). THEN you can complain.

Americans also know about supply and demand. We learned about that in the late 70′s when OPEC curtailed supply, causing prices to skyrocket. We also know what happens when you put those windfall profit taxes on oil companies – it causes pump prices to go up even higher and rationing to occur.

You need to stop screwing around and allow the oil companies to create more supply. Yes, the direct supply won’t increase for a few years, but once it does, we won’t be able to be held hostage any more. Stop thinking about the next election and start thinking what is best for America in the mid and long terms – do it right and the next election will simply take care of itself.

If we had drilled domestically at that first alarm in the late 70′s and early 80′s – we wouldn’t be in this situation today. In fact, it’s conceivable that we wouldn’t even have been attacked on Sept 11th. Actions have consequences, and the lack of action has consequences as well.

One thing that many people don’t know about is speculation and how it avoids being pegged to the supply and demand rules. The speculation price is based on what someone believes the price will become, or, in simpler words: psychology. If the congress were to act today to open our proven reserves, the speculators will see that the supply is increasing from a stable source (America is pretty darn stable), and the speculative price will start dropping well before the first drop of crude is pulled from our fields. Much of the speculation price is based on the instability of supply source (i.e. The middle east) and will drop dramatically once the supply is stabilized and increased.

Nuclear and coal

It is also time to face those irrational fears about nuclear energy. Note that I said irrational. Nuclear energy is a very safe alternative at the present time, and there are certainly dangers (just as there are dangers in any energy production – the oil industry is directly responsible for thousands of deaths over the years – mainly because the industry deals with exceptionally heavy equipment). Technologies exist right now that would make nuclear reactors exceptionally safe and physically impossible to overload or meltdown. The ‘China Syndrome’ monster has been killed, let it rest in peace.

If we would commission one nuclear installation in each of the 50 states with the originally designed generating capacity of Palo Verde in Arizona (10 reactors generating 12.2 gigawatts), then we would switch from a 500 billion energy deficit to a 200 billion energy surplus.

In addition, we should commission fuel reprocessing facilities so that the used nuclear fuel can be recycled. This would lower the fuel cost and eliminate the need to store high-level nuclear waste. Doing this will ensure reactor fuel for about 1,000 years by using a combination of ordinary reactors with high-breeding ratios and specific breeder reactors.

Using our coal resources (proven reserves are sufficient for 200 years), we can harness the heat from the nukes to produce 38,000 barrels of oil from coal per day per reactor. Remember, there are 10 reactors per complex, yielding a total of 380,000 barrels per nuke site per day, and if there are 50 nuke sites, that would be 19,000,000 barrels per day, or  6,939,750,000 barrels per year. Or, to put it simply: Twice the total Saudi oil production per year.

As an added benefit, the reactors could produce gaseous hydrocarbons as well, yielding even more production.

Finally, the remaining heat of the reactors could warm air or water for use.

But the big win comes with the fact that nuclear reactors can also create tremendous amounts of pure hydrogen in the future – which ensures future energy needs with the promise of a hydrogen-based energy infrastructure.

Future technologies

But, even our oil fields, coal deposits, and nuclear fuel will eventually give out – so now is the also the time to start heavily funding research into alternative energy. We need to foster research into hydrogen, He3, solar, wind, bio-fuels, and other technologies. And I am not talking the piddly little research grants we have seen from you and your previous congressional cohorts. I’m talking BIG, but that can wait until we have the 200 billion energy surplus, when we can easily wipe the national debt AND fund accelerated alternative research.

Science holds the key to true American independence. But science is not what political ideologues try to pressure it into being. Science is always challenged, never truly settled. Take something as basic as gravity – it’s not settled YET. Science keeps open eyes to all challenges and changes as the data and evidence changes. Anyone who says the science is settled is almost invariably 100% wrong. Keep that firmly in mind.

The role of government

It’s simple – get out of the way. Cut the confiscatory taxes against the very companies that can ensure not only our energy survival, but our energy future. Allow them to use our resources in an environmentally conscious way. No one, and I do mean NO ONE, wants to destroy our planet – not you, not me, and certainly not the oil companies. But there has to be a reasonable middle, and so far, congress is standing in the way of critically needed progress.

You have, now, within your grasp, the ability to ensure America’s energy future, and at the same time, take the largest step ever taken to erase the national debt completely, and guarantee a new, brighter, future for succeeding generations. In fact, if done correctly, you could virtually eliminate the income tax entirely in the future, AND provide national paid heath insurance – the gains are THAT big in scope.

Be a true hero. Start cooperating with each other across the aisles to make America into the true embodiment of the last best hope for the world. This is not the manta of ‘Drill here, drill now, save money’ – this is a plan to energy and economic security that will last into the next millennium. Start being a visionary, the votes will come.

Very sincerely,

An American Citizen

-

-

-

-

-

-

For reference:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Annual Energy Review, U.S. Energy Information Admin., Report No. DOE/EIA-0384 (2006).

American Nuclear Society, Nuclear News (2007) March, 46-48.

Penner, S. S. (1998) Energy

Posma, B. (2007) Liquid Coal, Fort Myers, Fl

Ausubel,. J. H. (2007) Int. J. Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology 1

Penner, S. S. (2006) Energy 31

Simon, J. L. (1996) The Ultimate Resource 2, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

“What makes you think that the two filmmakers were the first to get inside your corrupt organizations?”

Where do you think we awful conservatives get our intelligence from? Divine intervention? No. We get it from people who tell us who are currently IN YOUR ORGANIZATIONS.

Think about it. Our young intrepid budding journalists targeted four ACORN offices and scored FOUR HITS. ACORN says that these employees are not representative of ACORN’s policies, so…. obviously someone inside ACORN told our young journos where the bad apples were, right? It’s either that or, well, your organization is as corrupt as we believe.

And (from what I hear) there are other videos coming, not just from ACORN, but from ‘other’ organizations as well. I wonder when those will hit? Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Perhaps you may want to consider the problem of ‘the other shoe’. One shoe has dropped. When’s the other one going to drop? Who’s holding the shoe? Are they high in your organization or a line worker? Oh no, I’m not going to give you any identifiable hints, that would be cheating. (psssst – there’s a REASON I am anonymous here)

So, whatcha gonna do? Stop having meetings? Shut down the email servers? Close your web sites? Stage a massive internal witch hunt? Stop communicating your ideas? No – you can’t. Instead, our undercover operatives (who are TOTALLY trusted by you, by the way) will continue to leak your corruption to the world, and we, THE PEOPLE, will eventually find out, and you will be even more under the microscope. We call this a ‘lose-lose’ scenario.

Of course, properly run (a.k.a. non-corrupt) organizations wouldn’t have that much to worry about, would they?

Or, am I just blowing smoke? Can you really afford to take that chance?

Oh, and by the way, I’d love to see you sue those two young journalists. Can you spell ‘Discovery’? Sure you can.

Those changes came swiftly and most rumblingly to Van Jones, special advisor for green jobs at the white house, after people learned of his past in his own words. Truly, his resignation was self-inflicted by his passion for spouting his ideology hither and yon, across the media landscape.

His early associations, with Storm and the Ella Baker Center didn’t do him much good when dealing with Americans. His jail time in response to his actions following the Rodney King incident did not endear him to the people who use the system as it was intended to right wrongs. His calling republicans in general ‘Assholes’ was not the modicum of the enlightened non-stereotypical person. His embrace of communism is not the way to win friends and influence people. And, finally, his signature on the 9/11 truther petition wouldn’t set well to anyone with half a brain.

So, the rumbling started – first on his side with his advertiser boycott of Glenn Beck for calling Obama a racist. The advertisers, worried about their own image, caved in. Since then, Beck’s show has shot up in the ratings, and shows no real sign of falling, yielding Fox News even more ad revenue (more people = more dollars), and incidentally making himself an enemy of a powerful media figure – Glenn Beck.

Remember that metaphorical ‘rumbling sound’ earlier? Its name is Beck. Beck did what reporters should have done all along – he dug for facts. I’m sure that he and his staff were genuinely surprised at what they found. They even gave the White House the opportunity to comment (which was denied on repeated occasions). Finally he released the 9/11 petition and the rest was history.

The mighty rumbling sound engulfed Jones – and destroyed him. Of course he claims that’s it is all a ‘smear campaign’ – a smear using his own words, in context, on video? By that definition, Mr. Jones, you initiated a ‘smear campaign’ against Mr. Beck. Paybacks are truly hell, aren’t they?

And, as usual, where is Obama? The silent one. The one who will never speak up for others. The one who will not stand up for his hand-picked employees. The one typified by the phrase ‘throwing under the bus’: Jeremiah Wright, his grandmother, Bill Ayers, and others too. He’s no where. I wonder where he would be for “we, the people”, if push came to shove? Probably right where he is for Mr. Jones – tossing us under the bus on the altar of his own power.

The winds of change – so fickle in their direction – so mighty in their roar – and so utterly unstoppable when the people are truly behind them. So what happened, President Obama? Is that hope and change not working out for you and your politburo?

Changes aren’t permanent, but change is.

One of the very first things you learn in the cold cruel world is an axiom that has been proven true time and time again by people much smarter than you, the young engineer, are. It’s called many things (some of which would violate redstate’s terms of service), but my name for it is “The Iron Triangle” which usually is expressed: Good, Fast, or Cheap – pick any two.

It’s so utterly simple that most people know it almost by instinct. It’s the practical application of external constraints on any project. Think about it in your normal life. If you want something fast and good, it’s not going to be cheap. If you want something good and cheap, you probably aren’t going to get it fast. And if you want something fast and cheap, it’s not going to be good.

I’m sure that you can find examples in your own lives that reflect the iron triangle. Check your vacations, your family budget, your car purchases. Or, check your health care.

In America, we have the best heath care treatments in the world. (Best=Good) and you don’t have to wait in interminable lines, we do things quickly (Fast). Guess what? It ain’t cheap.

This sign says it all.

But we are promised good and cheap health care. Guess what invariably happens? You got it in one: SLOW. I’ll leave it to the reader to answer the question of where you can find this model today, eh?

When you try to make the system faster (because we CAN’T have people waiting a year for an operation, it’s INHUMAN!), you will lose either cheap or good. And unfortunately, since saving dollars (cheap) is the reason given for doing this in the first place… well…. you sacrifice quality (good) and people suffer more.

Then, the people, fed up with substandard and slow care, complain more. The morons running this train finally are slapped upside the head with the cold hard reality that the only way they can give good and fast is to raise costs (cheap) to unacceptable, and unsustainable, levels.

Folks, health care is one of the very few places where I, personally, want everything maxed out on the GOOD and the FAST fronts. Which means it’s not going to be cheap. Not at all.

Quality care delivered quickly is expensive. And if you think it through, it makes all the sense in the world.

Quality (good) is the result of expensive (not cheap) research, expensive (not cheap) training, expensive (not cheap) equipment, and to be honest, expensive (not cheap) failures. Failure in science is a mainstay. Some things that sound right, simply aren’t. And it costs to take those dead ends. But I would rather the science continue, dead ends or not, than to deal with the awful alternative.

Speed (fast) is a function of a practice that engineers call ‘scaling up’ (VERY not cheap) and a function of medical staff having the most productive aids (not cheap) possible.

Scaling up means having more health care professionals in the business – that means more doctors, more nurses, more administration, more receptionists, more janitors, more orderlies, more hospitals, more mobile treatment and diagnostic trucks. Scaling is a huge cost center (not cheap).

Medical staff having the latest in patient management systems, scheduling systems, massive databases of drug interactions and the very latest medical texts and research… Think of having all the texts of the Library of Congress available on the internet, cross referenced, updated on a second by second basis, with portability and accessability of information for medical pros – Kind of like Google for Medical Stuff. (not cheap) Consider patient records being put online (one of the only things I believe that is a good idea in the current proposed bill) but with no personally identifiable information – the patient has an account number and a PIN (wow, advanced technology eh? I think banks have this all sussed out already) that will authorize a doctor to both access and update their medical records online.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote a book called “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” – the title indicating that the airless moon is an unforgiving environment because the reality of things like needing to breathe strikes home pretty quickly when you are in vacuum. In this book was the concept of TANSTAAFL (sometimes pronounced ‘Tan-Staffle’), an acronym for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch“, and he’s right. Anytime you are offered a free lunch, you will end up paying, probably more than the cost of a lunch.

With all the cost, I’ll still take GOOD and FAST when it comes to my healh care – TANSTAAFL. Keep that in mind the next time you are offered something that is good, fast, AND cheap. Because whoever is offering it is lying.

You know, it is true that I am right most of the time, but there are times when I just blow it. And as an honest man, I will admit it, apologize (if it’s warranted), and strive to do better in the future. It’s called having integrity and admitting your faults. I’ve run successful companies like this, and I try to be like this in my life.

With that said, President Obama, I do owe you an apology. You promised hope and change, and I mistakenly painted you with the wide brush of a typical politician trying to pander to voters. I called you a typical leftist liar only intent on self-aggrandizement and your own power, both in public and private. And I said that change is all we’d have left if you ever got into office – meaning that you’d break the economy.

I was wrong. I’m sorry.

President Obama, you have brought both hope and change to America. In a way I would have never, in my wildest dreams, have believed.

You, and your administration, have brought hope – hope that was buried nascent within me and many conservatives across America, that the American people would get more involved in their political process; hope that more people would rise up and speak their minds and share in the duty of guiding the great ship of state; hope that America would be governed in the spirit of the constitution and by the will of its sovereign, the American people. You’ve also brought change – no longer are Americans accepting every statement at face value, they are doing research for themselves, they are understanding how our government works. They’ve gotten off the couch and into the town halls. They are participating!

Those of us on the rightish side of things have been trying to effect this change for many years – and honestly, we didn’t do too good. You however, succeeded in this goal beyond any of our wildest fantasies! It is a truly amazing thing, and you and your administration and yes, even your party deserve almost all of the credit.

Yeah, we blew it, and you fixed it for us. Thank you, President Obama. I don’t think that we can ever repay this debt of honor. But we shall try in the next few election cycles. Such great deeds surely can not go unrewarded.

Personal Responsibility – Two words: “Personal” meaning ‘of, pertaining to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private’. “Responsibility” meaning ‘a particular burden of obligation upon one who is responsible’.

Note that responsibility, the assumption of a particular burden of obligation, is a volitional act.  Combined with the personal aspect, an interesting fact arises: You must volitionally assume responsibility. It can not be imposed from outside. It is a function of duty, honor, and a debt that you owe unto yourself.

It means that you, yourself, voluntarily assume the awesome responsibility for taking care of yourself, and of not imposing a burden on others. Because once a burden is imposed, it is no longer personal – it is a collective. Someone else conned you into assuming responsibility for something you are really not responsible for, or someone forced you to abdicate responsibility.

I call this “IMpersonal Responsibility” – the imposition of responsibility from outside one’s self.

Let’s take a look at one of the biggest impositions of impersonal responsibility in the history of the United States: the current heath care bill.

Currently, I am responsible for seeing to the health care needs of myself and my family. I MAY assume responsibility for others as well, should I choose to. It may be grandma and grandpa, or a drunk uncle, or even a friend who needs help. It’s my choice where to extend my personal responsibility. It is not imposed from without, but a duty from within.

Under the proposed bill, this responsibility would be removed from me, forcibly. Further, my health care choices would be limited over time to basically one option. So basically, my personal responsibility to care for myself and my family (and whoever else I chose to help) has been ripped away from me.

But, there’s a fly in the ointment. (Actually, it’s more the size of a small planetary body, but what’s a problem of scale between friends?) Once my responsibility has been removed, it must be relocated somewhere else. Someone else has to decide what is best for the Technomage family. The point is, it’s not me. I know better than almost anyone all the complex and sometimes contradictory needs of my family. I’ve borne the responsibility before, I understand the equations, I know the dynamics, I know the risk tolerances, and I know the people involved. I wonder if the person who has taken the responsibility does?

Well, the obvious answer is “No, they don’t” – they will be dealing with the very up close and personal issues of my family through the lens of statistical populations, a one-size-fits-all plan, NOT designed to give my family the best health care possible, but the best health care that fits the current cost/benefit ratios of the statistical population and the current capacity of the health care system.

Yes, you read that right – the Technomage family will be simply case number 170,223,296. And where there’s large numbers that apply to cases of people, there will be bureaucrats to make things go from difficult to damn near impossible to decypher. (Think about the DMV) Yes, they assumed the responsibility, but now it’s IMpersonal – I am a number, not a person. They will model my life and determine if the fact that I smoke and may be a few pounds overweight should put me further down the line for treatment.

Wait a dang minute here. Something smells ‘fishy’ here. Smoking and Overweight…. haven’t we been told that these are Personal Responsibility issues? In the middle of the vastly IMpersonal system? And since we are in the IMpersonal system now, if we want better care, we have to assume personal responsibility?

I already had assumed personal responsibility for my family’s health care, you take it away without my consent, then you start denying me speedy care because I didn’t take personal responsibility? THEN WHY DO THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Let’s look at that.

As long as daddy Technomage is engaged in providing heath care to the Techno clan, on his own dime, with the insurance company that offered a plan closest to what he needed, it’s the free market at work. I am not under the control of anyone – kid TM can overindulge in peanut butter sandwiches a bit and my insurance doesn’t blink. Of course, I think I would suggest he run a few laps on the track every day or so, or perhaps take up curling — but that’s beside the point. The point is the control loop is very tight. It’s between the Techno family and the insurance company and the docs.

With the currently proposed heath care reform system. I wouldn’t have to pay for the insurance any more (also a lie, my taxes will pay for it), but now… bureaucrats and statistical deviations and derivations determine that kid TM is ‘obese’ and pushes him further back in the treatment queue. Wait just a damn minute here! (I’m really getting tired of writing that, I need a “WAIT A MINUTE” key)

Control over my family’s lives is taken from my responsible hands and given to the government – and then they will penalize if we don’t conform to their standards of BEHAVIOR?

Ladies and gentlemen… that is IMpersonal responsibility at work. It is a control mechanism that will allow – no, not allow: demand – that the government force conformity to an arbitrarily defined ‘norm’ or you risk losing some benefit that was taken from you (by force) to begin with.

IMpersonal responsbility – And you thought the empire in Star Wars was bad.

You, elected representatives and senators, are verging on the establishment of tyranny. And we, THE PEOPLE, are aware of it. We know your game. We know your playbook. We know your tactics of demonization, disengagement, misdirection, group action, intimidation, and flat out lies. We’ve studied you for years, quietly. Now: we are ready; we are motivated (by you); and we are pissed.

We ARE the mob. Perhaps you should meet us. Because, you see, we ARE your constituents. We are the people who put you where you are, and WE are the people who will remove you if you continue. We will remove you and put people in your job who will attempt to UNDO what you are trying to do TO US. Not “for us”. You see, dear representatives and senators, the ugly truth is: YOU made the mob by your actions. Now you have to deal with it – call it yet another ‘unintended consequence’ of government folly – for it seems the only thing you seem to be good at is spending our money and overlooking the consequences of your actions. It’s not going to work this time.

And, just as a treat, I’ll let you in on a secret: We KNOW that YOU KNOW we aren’t yet organized. So, we know you are lying to us. But just imagine what will happen when we DO organize…

We will protest you in the streets, we will clog your mailboxes with letters, we will shut down your email servers with pleas, we will swamp your phones with our message; we will march on your offices, your meetings (after all, your union thugs marched on the houses of AIG executives – do you think you are immune from any lesser treatment?), we will protest you at hotels, banquets, dinners, and reunions; we will find your secrets and expose them, THEN we will organize (yes we can!) to defeat you in any way we can – not violently, but it will be loud, very loud, and it will never waver, and it WILL NOT STOP – until you relent.

We WILL remember your actions. We will enshrine them as a warning to generations of future elected officials that some things have too high a price, not in dollars, but in liberty; and that we, THE PEOPLE, will act when it is necessary to preserve that which so many of our citizens have fought for and died to protect abroad. “All enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC” – you really don’t want to become our enemy. Seriously. After all, we are the mob.

In other words, we, THE PEOPLE, have learned from you. And our numbers are far far more than your union thugs and your fringe groups combined. You will also find that your ‘coalition (of the stupid and weak-willed)’ will crack under the pressure. It has already started. Your union counter-protestors from SEIU have drawn first blood against a man, a patriot, a black patriot, (or, as the SEIU thug racistly slandered him with ‘the N-word’) who had the unmitigated temerity to hand out “Don’t Tread On Me” items in St. Louis. And your ilk blames the victim? We will use this against you – supporting the racist over the victim eh? Wow. Just wow. I can alerady see the signs in my mind’s eye. Believe me, you don’t want to see that sign in your face.

Again remember, this COULD be liberty by numbers – deny us the first amendment, and we CAN move to the second – after all, that’s what it’s there for. We do not want to do that. We will avoid that if it is at all possible. YOU do not want us to do that. So maybe it’s time you backed off, stopped the breakneck legislative blitz in its tracks, called off your thug squads, and LISTENED TO US – your constituents.

You see, I’m going to let you in on another very small secret that you seem to have forgotten. WE, THE PEOPLE, are your boss. YOU are the employee. And you have crossed the line of insubordination, and that after not doing your job for years. Consider this your first, last, and ONLY warning. We WILL remove you from office. We WILL find someone who will do the job AND listen to us, even if they don’t like what we have to say and even if we don’t like what they say on occasion. This, we WILL do. Consider it a promise. And WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES don’t break our promises.

We have come home after a long vacation, and we see congressionally mandated burglars and thugs in our house, and you say WE are the mob? Where are you going to take us from here? Not too far, I’m sure – because WE, THE PEOPLE won’t allow it.

You think the mob is bad now? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait till the 2010/2012/2014 elections. We will bear our arms then, our weapons will be our voices, our hearts, and our intellect; our ammunition will be that which you CAN NOT ignore: our ballots. And THAT will be our killshot. You have now been warned. You can’t say “I didn’t know”. Continue this and YOU WILL GO HOME because you will have NO JOB IN THE CAPITOL. Or… you can change. After all, change is good, no? We changed from being silent, maybe you can change to being REAL representatives and senators.

Yes, you can. Or else we will.