Simple and to the point!

Here’s Sen. Jim DeMint talking with bloggers after opening CPAC. During his speech he said cautioned Republicans in Congress on compromising with Democrats.

“Compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals,” he said. “We don’t have shared goals with the Democrats.”

“Elementary my dear Watson!”

The following are some thoughts and comments I have had recently, inspired by Ronaldus Magnus, the Gipper himself, which fit the season when we commemorate the independence of our Republic. Agree or not…this is where I come from:

When the politics (“the art of the possible”) is distilled away, Reagan really did have a core of personal belief that was so deeply ingrained and taken for granted by him that it was and is unrecognizable to “players at the game of Washington”, whether they be pols, press (incl. other media), or bureaucrats. They have notebooks, in his own writing, full of stuff that R.R. wrote over a period of years, refining and developing his political philosophy, and how this interacted with various issues. Reagan’s expressions of American exceptionalism, etc. are expressions of this.

CALL IT MYSTICISM IF YOU WILL, I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED THERE WAS SOME DIVINE PROVIDENCE THAT PLACED THIS GREAT LAND HERE BETWEEN TWO GREAT OCEANS, TO BE FOUND BY A SPECIAL KIND OF PEOPLE FROM MANY CORNERS OF THE WORLD, WHO HAD A SPECIAL LOVE FOR FREEDOM AND A SPECIAL COURAGE THAT ENABLED THEM TO LEAVE THEIR OWN LAND, LEAVE THEIR FRIENDS AND COUNTRYMEN, AND COME TO THE NEW AND STRANGE LAND TO BUILD A NEW WORLD OF PEACE AND FREEDOM AND HOPE. Ronald Reagan, 4 July 1986

Hear, hear!

When more conventional denizens of the political scene were exposed to this, it was so far beyond their consciousness, they never could figure him out…and in many cases they still haven’t. I have had some small degree of association with political and media types from both (? maybe more!) parts of the spectrum, and all too often the level of calculation, (dare one say cynicism?)…is such that a genuine, heart-felt expression of belief is greeted with skepticism if not actual derision. It sort of hearkens back to the old progressive attitude that people can only be trusted with democracy if they FIRST are trained to have the “proper attitude”.

People who have a personal core belief that the whole American idea is a good and qualitatively different attitude, found that reflected in Reagan, who shared this faith in the American experiment. IMHO, that was, and is the source of Reagan’s appeal. I think I’m on safe ground to say that no post-Reagan president has had the sort of solid core beliefs that Reagan did. People are still looking for that (hoping for that?) in their leaders…so maybe in that sense at least there is still a Reagan era…although he was ultimately expressing what is ultimately an old theme in the American experience…hearkening all the way back to “the shining city on the hill” noted by old New England.

Great way to observe tax day – Atlas Shrugged movie debut!

The libs are out in force at various places on the net about this…talk about weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth! They REALLY don’t like this!

Who is John Galt? Read the book!

Left wing climate of hate and assassination

Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the latter.

They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.

The attempt was directed at the Governor of Missouri:

In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.

At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.

At least this chucklehead was clearly operating with dead sparkplugs in his mental engine…to the extent that he was too impaired to figure out how to operate a knife.

Hmmmm….he used a knife. that’s probably at least part reason why there was no coverage…no gun involved to use to flog the gun control dead horse yet again, but to make it even less interesting to the alleged journalists, the perp was a self-demonstrated anarcho-lefty radical, demonstrated by both his words and actions.

…Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.

In his “About Me” box on Facebook, Brezik listed as his favorite quotation one from progressive poster boy, Che Guevara. The quote begins “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism” and gets more belligerent from there.

On his wall postings, Brezik ranted, “How are we the radical(s) (left) to confront the NEW RIGHT, if we avoid confrontation all together?”

As good as his word, Brezik’s marched on Toronto in June 2010 to protest the G20 Summit, where he was arrested, charged, and deported. “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” he boasted.

Not exactly a tea-party conservative, and hence not worth journalistic notice: nothing to see here folks…move along and go back home…American Idol is about to come on again anyway.

Ms. Neergaard is lucky that bad science writing isn’t a crime; otherwise she would be in shackles by now. The word “enduring” in the first sentence is puerile puffery. The much worse sin against scientific literacy is that DNA doesn’t “power” living cells, nor does it “take over and drive” them. DNA is the fundamental repository of information for most of its operations and for the essential business of reproduction. DNA is a very powerful map, but the cell itself does the driving.

These distortions have clearly been encouraged by Venter, who is both a scientist and an entrepreneur. This is how he sells his science:

“This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer,” Venter told reporters.

Well, not yet. Venter’s team built the genome of one kind of bacteria from scratch, using fragments of DNA. In doing so, I gather they were plagiarizing the Lord’s work by precisely copying the DNA of the cattle germ. Then they transplanted the artificial genome into a different kind of cell (a goat germ). The new cell was able to function and I gather it has reproduced. But the parent of the new cell is clearly the recipient cell, not the computer.

Go read the rest of KB’s post…it’s well worth it.

By the way, the Chief heartily concurs with KB on this…and you can put 4 quarters with that and get a can of pop!

The release of “Iron Man 2” this weekend kicks off the summer blockbuster season. It’s an interesting cultural moment for conservatives. The movie version of Iron Man is one of the most unambiguously libertarian figures in popular culture, a billionaire industrialist playboy who spends much of the new movie telling the government to get bent when it tries to claim his amazing suit of high-tech armor. He’s patriotic, loves the military, and views the bad actors of the world from a Reaganite position of moral confidence. In the original movie, he did what Hollywood has been painfully reluctant to do, ever since September 11: he flew over to the Middle East and took out the trash. This Atlas doesn’t shrug… he busts out repulsor beams and micro-missiles.

H/T for the above from People’s Cube, where SuperKomissar Maxim presented the following graphic offering:

Raw milk battle reveals FDA abandonment of basic human right to choose your food

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), an organization whose mission includes “defending the rights and broadening the freedoms of family farms and protecting consumer access to raw milk and nutrient dense foods”, recently filed a lawsuit against the FDA for its ban on interstate sales of raw milk. The suit alleges that such a restriction is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. Nevertheless, the suit led to a surprisingly cold response from the FDA about its views on food freedom (and freedoms in general).

In a dismissal notice issued to the Iowa District Court where the suit was filed, the FDA officially made public its views on health and food freedom.

Some of the statements in the FDA’s filing are absolutely amazing. Can you say “food NAZI”?

The FDA essentially believes that nobody has the right to choose what to eat or drink. You are only “allowed” to eat or drink what the FDA gives you permission to. There is no inherent right or God-given right to consume any foods from nature without the FDA’s consent.

This is no exaggeration. It’s exactly what the FDA said in its own words.

Don’t take MY word for it, or even the words from the posting about this. Consider the following statements taken from the FDA’s court filing:

“There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.” [p. 26]“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p.26]

There’s a lot more in the document, which primarily addresses the raw milk issue, but these statements alone clearly reveal how the FDA views the concept of health freedom. Essentially, the FDA does not believe in health freedom at all. It believes that it is the only entity granted the authority to decide for you what you are able to eat and drink.

The State, in other words, may override your food decisions and deny you free access to the foods and beverages you wish to consume. And the State may do this for completely unscientific reasons — even just political reasons — all at their whim…

This has all emerged from the debate over whether raw milk sales should be legal. But the commonsense answer seems obvious: Of course raw milk should be legal! Since when did the government have any right to criminalize a farmer milking his cow and selling the raw, unpasteurized milk to his neighbor at a mutually-agreeable price?

NOTE:  The principles apply whether or not one chooses to partake of raw milk, any particular food product.

But why is the FDA hell-bent on stopping raw milk from being sold in the first place? Think about it: What is it about this particular whole food that has regulators working overtime to make sure you don’t drink it?

Follow the money…(surprise, surprise, surprise!)

The real reason why the FDA opposes raw milk is because Big Dairy opposes raw milk. Just like Big Pharma, Big Dairy has worked very hard behind the scenes to steer FDA policy in its favor. And according to some recent reports, Big Dairy is one of the primary forces trying to eliminate raw milk because it threatens the commercial milk business.

What’s next? Will all farmer’s markets be outlawed because the veggies haven’t all been irradiated or pasteurized?

As usual, it’s all about the money, and as you follow the money trail all the way up to the federal level, you find the same thing happening everywhere: At the FDA, USDA, FTC and so on. U.S. government regulators have become monopoly market enforcers for Big Business, and they won’t let anything get in their way… not even personal health freedoms or just basic access to food.

There is a lot more detailed argument in the posting; you get the picture…but wait! As a finale the FDA outdoes itself again:
On page 27 of the dismissal, the FDA also states that Americans do not have a fundamental right to enter into private contractual agreements with one another, either.
HUH?

Buying clubs, cooperatives and community supported agriculture programs (CSAs) all rely on private contractual agreements in order to operate. People contract with each other to obtain clean, healthy food from the sources of their choice without government intrusion. But now the FDA is saying that people don’t actually have this right. To enter into such a private contract to purchase food, milk or even water is a violation of federal law, the FDA now claims.

You are just a subject of the King, you see, and you have no rights. You must eat and drink what you are told. You must behave in a way that is allowed by your King. You have no rights, no protections and no freedoms….
The “substantive due process” clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, however, assures people of this right when it states that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” And being able to make personal food choices without having to obtain permission from Big Brother is definitely included under this clause.

But the FDA — aw, heck, all of Washington for that matter — doesn’t honor the U.S. Constitution in any way, shape or form. The document is little more than a tattered piece of American history according to the Nazi nut jobs running federal agencies today. They are no more likely to respect the Constitution as they are to leap from their desk job chairs and magically transform into flying elephants.

The hits just keeps on coming! (Or are the letters of the second word in the previous sentence in the wrong order? Whatever!)

Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.

In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an November 30, 2009, interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”

Tea Party activists loathe the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.

On Saturday, the president delivered a commencement address at the University of Michigan where he said one way “to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate … But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down.”

So much for any pretense of consistency…but what’s the backstory on this? Read on:

“President ‘Tea Bagger’ Owes Grandma an Apology

Just so we understand the ground rules here: 1) calling a Progressive Democrat a Socialist is bad; 2) Calling “Tea Party” protesters “Tea Baggers” is A-OKAY.

We seem to remember when the Left went apoplectic over imaginary suggestions that they were unpatriotic for being “against the war” during the Bush administration. We seem to recall President Obama very recently complaining about being called a Socialist (why do Democrats find Socialist to be such a dirty word? What is it about being a Socialist that they should universally shrink away from the title?).

You couldn’t ask for a more textbook definition of hypocrisy.

It is perversely amusing, though, watching Media Matters defend President “Tea-Bagger” for referring to average Americans, whose only crime is to reject Socialism, with a sexually offensive slur.

For a reminder, here are some shots of some U.S. citizens, who, in the Media Matters universe, should be referred to by the President of the United States as people who take testicles into their mouths.

So, how does this get to Lake Herman? Oh yes…via our own C.A.H. who has apparently figured that if it’s good enough for B.O. it’s good enough for him:

Teabaggers Rejoice: No Bailout for Flooded SD Homes

I won’t even address the content of this snarky and illogical post itself…that’s another whole discussion.

The descriptive terminology of the header strives for and achieves a new low, even from Madville.

Hey, Cory, do you have any daughters? Or a grandmother? Would you like them to be referred to by elected officials, or allegedly serious bloggers, as people who put testicles into their mouths? Do you really think it’s appropriate for ANY elected official or anyone who pretends to be a serious commentator on events to refer to anyone that way?

Maybe so. Too bad.

Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854, Redux

We are now beginning to enter the Kansas-Nebraska Act stage of the socialist crisis of the Republic.

To get the significance of this, some history is in order:

At our constitutional founding, the evil of slavery had been crudely evaded. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was enacted that prohibited the abomination north of 36/30 degrees latitude [southern boundary of Missouri, except for it’s SE “boot-heel”].

But with the western push of the frontier, a new compromise was needed. So the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 decreed that the “popular sovereignty” of each territory should decide whether they would be slave or free states. But then, adherents of both the abomination and freedom migrated to Kansas to struggle — with their bodily presence — for their respective causes. First there was politics. Then the political rhetoric turned violent. Then real violence ensued. Kansas became known as Bleeding Kansas. John Brown, most famously, applied unjustified, murderous violence for his righteous cause of ending slavery and was hanged, but the Civil War ensued…

NOT a pretty scene!

Now we enter our History’s second stage in the struggle against the abomination of socialism. Just as slavery had been contained in the South, so entitlement socialism has, until this week, been more or less contained in service to only the poor and the elderly — and even in those programs (for the elderly) on the principle of beneficiaries paying monthly premiums for the benefits they will later get (Medicare/ Social Security). Only the poor under Medicaid received benefit without premium payment.

But now, just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 broke through the slave state limitation to the South, the Democratic Party’s 2010 health care law has broken socialism’s boundary of being so limited. Now, the chains of socialism are to be clamped on to the able-bodied middle class — not merely the already presumed helpless poor and old who have paid their insurance premiums.

An exaggeration you say? Not so fast, according to that (understatement alert!) not exactly right wing New York Times.

Even the New York Times — after the vote — admits what the bigger goal has been all along. In Wednesday’s edition (“In Health Care Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality” by David Leonhardt), they point out: ” Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan. … Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would ‘mark a new season in America.’…. Above all, the central question that both the Reagan and Obama administrations have tried to answer — what is the proper balance between the market and the government? — remains unresolved. But the bill signed on Tuesday certainly shifts our place on that spectrum.”

I thank The New York Times for that honest statement of historic fact.

After citing some of the obnoxious aspects of what Congress and B.O. hath wrought, the piece goes on:
And just as the free states could not tolerate the spread of slavery into their midst, so, too, free middle-class America — if it still has its historic character — will not tolerate the yoke of socialism put upon our necks.

First, the unambiguous will of the majority has been defied by the vote of Congress last Sunday. Come November, we shall see whether the system can still turn the popular will into the constitutionally permissible legislative will of the majority. If it can, all will be well and the crisis will end. Rallying the vote between now and November is roughly equivalent to the early stage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act period — people started migrating to Kansas to support their convictions.

But come November, if the majority still opposes the socializing of health care delivery and the other central government intrusions, and yet the corrupt bargains and constitutional distortions of Washington deny that will its just expression — then, for the second time in our history, we enter that dangerous period where the House resolves its temporary division. Let us devoutly pray –and commit to ourselves — that this time freedom shall be reacquired … peaceably.

…and then there’s THIS one to go along with the above:

Will America break up?
Abortion threatens to split the nation like slavery

President Obama is splintering America. The passage of Obamacare was a historic victory for liberal governance. Yet, its true cost may be that it triggers the eventual breakup of the country.

Mr. Obama has achieved what his liberal predecessor…could only dream of: nationalized health care. Obamacare signifies the government take-over of one-sixth of the U.S. economy. It has dealt a mortal blow to traditional America. We are now a European-style socialist welfare state. The inevitable permanent tax hikes, massive public bureaucracy and liberal ruling elites will stifle competition and initiative.

Republicans vow to repeal Obamacare. Their past record, however, leaves many conservatives rightly skeptical….The Republican Party has been unable to roll back the tide of statism. In fact, under Richard Nixon and both George Bushes, Great Society Republicans have been complicit in erecting a nanny state.

Socialism is the road to economic ruin and fiscal bankruptcy. It subverts democracy, threatening the very future of our constitutional republic. Socialist states degenerate into some form of autocracy or technocratic neo-feudalism, whereby the productive class is taxed and exploited to sustain a growing dependent class. Factions are pitted against each other; groups vie for handouts at the expense of their fellow citizens. The bonds of economic union and national solidarity slowly dissolve.

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not,” warned Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was right: Redistributionist welfare policies are undermining our democracy. The resentments in America are growing. Tea Partiers believe that their government no longer represents their interests or values. The heartland is becoming dangerously alienated from the political class, whom it feels has betrayed them.

Obamacare may be the last straw. It strips away fundamental economic liberties, empowering the federal government to de facto nationalize everyone’s body by controlling our health. Americans are compelled – upon pain of penalty and eventual imprisonment – to purchase insurance.

Moreover, the law codifies the federal funding of abortion. Taxpayer dollars will be used to subsidize the murder of innocent life. Hence, Mr. Obama has violated the social compact: He has abrogated the conscience of pro-lifers, making them tacitly complicit in the slaughter of the unborn. Obamacare is a radical assault upon fundamental religious freedoms.

The Obama revolution threatens to tear America apart. This has happened before. Slavery eventually triggered the Civil War between the industrial North and the agrarian South. Abortion is the slavery of our time – the denying of basic human rights to an entire category of people.

You may well not like this. I don’t get a warm fuzzy from it myself…but I’m not at all sure it isn’t happening anyway.

…we are going the way our Founding Fathers warned us against: increasing balkanization and sectionalism. A constitutional republic – unlike an empire – is only as strong as its national cohesion. It is based not on imperial coercion but civic consent. Mr. Obama is recklessly pulling at the strings of unity, further polarizing us.

In confronting Obamacare, state sovereignty, states’ rights and state nullification of federal laws are being asserted. This is what happened in the 1830s and 1840s. They are the signs of growing political anarchy and social frustration – people can only be pushed so far. Mr. Obama’s drive for a socialist super-state threatens America’s very existence. As Jefferson warned about slavery, it is time we start ringing the “fire bell in the night.”

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” wrote William Butler Yeats. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Conservatives will not be passive in this onslaught on all our core values. Mr. Obama’s true legacy may be that he divides us deeper than ever before – unless he abandons his revolutionary project.

Once again, that most usable Warren Zevon lyric: “It ain’t that pretty at all!”

Leaders of major conservative groups on Wednesday signed a manifesto vowing to push the country to return to constitutional principles, saying they’ve grown tired of having to accept government expansion at the hands of liberals.

“It’s our turn. We’ve had about enough of you. We’re going to take you on, and it’s time to defeat you,” said Mark Levin, a talk-radio host and president of the Landmark Legal Foundation.

Hoo-rah!

…the manifesto – labeled “the Mount Vernon Statement” because it was signed near the first president’s home – is designed to update a 1960 declaration issued by conservatives that heralded the rise of 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and, eventually, President Reagan.

The new statement, signed by dozens of leaders of conservative lobby groups, is more a declaration of battle than a list of ideas. It says the ideas of the Founding Fathers are under attack and must be defended, and says calls for change are “an empty promise or even a dangerous deception.”

For the full text of the statement itself, go here.

DISCLOSURE: The Chief has already signed on via the web site.

It is the first major statement of conservatives’ goals since 1960, when conservative intellectuals gathered in Sharon, Conn., at the home of William F. Buckley Jr. to write down the principles that became the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom. That effort provided the seed that led to the conservative movements twin peaks of political success: the Barry Goldwater factions overthrow of the liberal Republican establishment in the early 1960s and Ronald Reagans political triumphs of the 1980s.

Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said he would sign the statement and said politicians who can’t agree to the basic precepts “are part of the problem and should be replaced.”

One would presume that fellow-Carolinian Lindsey Grahamnesty and the rest of the McCainiac wing of the GOP is not exactly enthused by this. Oh well.