It's a menace, say "environmental" groups, characterizing today's American toilet paper.  Soft, plush, multi-ply -- think tush-friendly -- rolls of the disposable staple, even for urban outdoorsmen, are killing mother earth. Apparently, we're literally wiping out our pristine forests. These always-mad-and-unhappy champions of anything anti-capitalist -- Bless their little hearts . . . a pantload -- are lobbying (aka "whining") for mandating that all toilet paper be made from recycled paper products.  Greenpeace, always somewhat cheeky,  has had a 4 1/2-year campaign against Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle.

According to the forest products industry, 5% of forest production goes to toilet paper and tissues, 26% to cardboard containers and packaging (with about half from recycled), and 3% to newspapers.  Large old-growth trees yield long fibers while small young trees and recycled paper yield short fibers.  Long fibers equal soft while young and recycled equal rough.  With reverence strictly reserved for things non-human, the "environmentalist" tree huggers opine that for mature, old-growth, majestic redwoods and other trees,  this is a cruel and  ignoble and unworthy end.  A stain on our culture, as it were.

Producers say that they want to cooperate with the environmentalists (aka "anti-capitalist quivering lip biters"), but consumers keep demanding "soft".  Seems to be a matter of taste?  And it's one thing to face off with Greenpeace or even Algore, but one doesn't want a pom-pommed cheerleader or debutante to get her thong all in a wad.   It's called "butt floss".  Take a crack at that!

When I queried frequent-commenter to gumballs, JT, he said that "recycled resulted in a smear campaign."  I countered that the gubmint was test-floating the idea of bailing out newspapers.  Since fewer and fewer people are reading those rags, maybe they could go straight from the press to slicers, there to be made into 4"-wide strips.  All of downtown D.C. could transition from rolls to stacks.  With what's been coming outa there recently, there are thousands of legislators, staffers, lobbyists, press corps and czars who've been spending lots and lots of potentially-productive time sitting above porcelain. 

Who knows, maybe the N.Y. Times and Washington Post will make more sense read "backward".  Heck, if we formatted bills in columns and sent them also to the slicer, maybe Congressman Conyers could take some quiet time to read them a couple of slices at a sitting.

Maybe, if we made it less comfortable, these "leaders" would tighten the sphincter and dump less.  Indeed, we don't need another march on Washington.  What we need is a million-septic-truck roll on the Capitol so we can spread -- redistribute? --the wealth.  I'm just flush with anticipation.

Of course, when the loaded trucks re-cross the beltway, we'll now have the ecological problem of having to change our poop-to-pulp balance.  What do you want as legacy, pristine forests or poopy deserts?  Maybe, we can get NASA to take the D.C discharge and launch it  -- using biofuel --to another planet.  I'd ask for planet nominations . . . but that would be way way way too easy.

I went to a Knoxville (Tennessee) Tea Party April 15, 2009.  It was well-organized (by local citizens), well-conducted, well-attended by thousands.  I spent the first half talking to a twenty-something guy, who said that he was a student at the University of Tennessee.  He asked if I knew who paid for it all.  I asked if he did.  He said that it was Roger Ailes of Fox News who put up big bucks to get people to come.  I knew that he had been duped.

I spent the third-quarter of that rally asking myself why I was there.  I don't protest.  I don't picket.  I don't chant slogans that rhyme as part of a gaggle.  I don't beg for stuff.  I don't want the government to do anything, certainly not for me.  For years I've watched choreographed rallies, populated by people who picket, whine, chant, and carry professionally-printed-and-distributed-by-organizers signs.  These are always in the afternoon and during the week, since the participants don't have to get up in the morning and don't have jobs and it fits the drive-by news cycle.  These are people who vote for a living.  Before the fourth quarter, I left.  And I want to now apologize to the organizers from my now-hometown and all who were there for abandoning them.

I've written in previous essays hereon that I think it's too late, that America is toast, that what's coming for America is a replay of 20th-century Argentina.  And I've laid out the analyses and case for my conclusion.  Nonetheless, for six months post that conclusion, I started GetAmericaRight and tried to make it work as an organization to turn the Republican Party into a true-conservative force in time for the 2010 elections.  I failed at that, I infer, for lack of talent.  We got almost no traction.

It's now ten months post that conclusion.  I was invited a few weeks back by the first woman chairman of the Blount County Republican Party, Susan Mills, to join with others here in the Knoxville area to go to Washington D.C. to the 912 Rally.  Though I've never been a member of any political party, I've known and respected Mrs. Mills for years.  I not only accepted, but invited some others, who also accepted.  Some 90-ish of us travelled on two busses, stayed in Chantilly, Virginia next to Dulles International Airport Friday and Saturday nights, and took the Metro into D.C. Saturday morning.

Fellow Knoxville FairTax activist and supporter, Randy Ceccucci, called me at 8 a.m. to ask if I were at Freedom Plaza, the gathering and starting point.  He said that the Plaza was already packed, that despite that the march to the Capitol wasn't scheduled until 11:30.  I explained that I was still in Chantilly and that it'd be awhile.  The Metro was not only operating a regular weekend schedule, but was performing track maintenance.  Either they didn't know what was coming or didn't care.  To understand the scene, picture the trains in Tokyo where there are police on the platform pushing and pushing people into the doorways like sardines so as to max occupancy.  From the Vienna station we passed some thirteen stops, platforms jammed with rallyers, but with no-nil-nada-zip-zilch nanometers of space aboard.  We finally arrived at Freedom Triangle station at about 10 a.m.

When we exited and passed the Reagan Building to Pennsylvania Avenue, the march had already begun.  We joined the procession.  Capitol Police had ordered the march to start because Federal Plaza, the surrounding streets, and west toward the White House were already jammed, and the Metro just kept spewing more by the tens of thousands every 14 minutes.  The Nation's Capitol clearly was not prepared for what happened to them -- on many levels -- Saturday September 12, 2009.

I saw signs -- large, small, huge, colorful, brilliant, funny, insightful, inciteful; but none profane, over-the-top -- held both by marchers and folks standing to the sides.  Then I focused on the people.  Old and young, individuals and families.  Costumed and practical-for-walking, though lots of red, white and blue.  A tapestry of race and ethnicity.  Polite, yet enthusiastic.  Considerate of their fellows.  These were, as I, not people who vote for a living.  They were people who work for a living, for a life, for a family, to make their communities and nation better.  Before reaching the Capitol I knew why I was there.


Addendum: September 15:  A rally of leftists and gimmes also has a "tapestry of race and ethnicity" and sex orientation and gender, etc.  There each group (aka "community") has different signs, different chants, different agendae.  Each wants government to grant them more rights . . . and goodies.  At the 912 Rally there were no groups, no communities, just patriots.  Last Saturday there were a couple million American patriots on the same page.

What was it all about?  The rally's purpose came in a couple million shades, one per participant.  The theme -- mine, the speakers, the signs, the shouts, the conversations -- however, was liberty versus tyranny, freedom and personal responsibility versus statism; about a huge and growing federal government versus a very-limited government with only enumerated powers.  The rally was all about the lost Constitution and our need to restore it.  It was about the currently-ubiquitous word "trillion".  Federal debt, this year's staggering deficits, future debt already committed of some $63,000,000,000,000 (That's trillion), along with a current agenda hell-bent on "remaking" America; they're all part of the mix as well.

Why now?  Slope.  America has been moving inexorably left for 220 years.  It was nickel and dime for the first 120, but then the speed picked up.  There was Teddy Roosevelt, followed by Woodrow Wilson, maybe our first liberal-fascist.  The speed leftward slowed after him, but then came FDR.  Wilson and FDR both knew that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and they created crises, then used them to move the country as fast as possible toward statism at the expense of liberty.  JFK ran out of time, but LBJ put the pedal to the metal and the march toward statism on steroids.  Nixon only tapped the brakes a tad while Ford couldn't find either the accelerator or the brakes.  Carter was a dingbat (Think Edith Bunker), but still moved us leftward.  Reagan faced Democrat majorities in congress, so the train kept rolling west.  Clinton was only successful around the edges.  The Bushes (41 and 43) together probably moved us farther left than Clinton could, but he (Clinton) spent a lotta time otherwise focused and occupied.

All of the above history was "frog in the pot of gradually-heating water".  Beginning November 2008 Americans felt the heat.  They experienced sorta-warm to simmering to boiling . . . quickly.  TARP, bailouts, government takeovers, a trillion here and a couple trillion there.  Liberal-fascist statists had been succeeding incrementally, yet inexorably, much to the delight of liberal-fascist statists, of gimmes (those who vote for a living), and of career bureaucrats.  Meanwhile, conservatives -- those who love liberty -- were busy working for a living and adjusting to the latest and greatest government intrusion and restriction and taxation.  For way-too-many, only this year did they receive their wake-up call.  I remind that I think it's too late.

What's next?  I believe that the USA is toast.    I think that way too many Americans are both ignorant of the Constitution and fail to understand American exceptionalism.  Those who are neither ignorant nor lack such understanding are busy working and supporting everyone else day in and day out.  Those who vote and whine for a living, along with those who govern and wallow in power for a living will prevail 'cause that's their game.  If in mid-October, when congress seeks to pass "healthcare reform", six million Americans rally at the nation's Capitol to intimidate their elected officials, I'll reconsider . . . gladly.

Thanks to Glenn Beck, Van Jones is no longer one of President Obama's czars.  Below are identified those remaining.  As you'd fully expect, I have absolutely no agenda in laying this before you.  We at gumballs provide; you decide.  I suppose if one did have an agenda, one might wonder who should go next.

Senior Advisor to the President:  Valerie Jarrett    from Wiki     NY Times     earlier NY Times     video     long video on economic agenda   Malkin


Maybe, the answer -- just maybe, I'm thinking -- might be "all of the above" and -- especially and --  the guy who hired them:  President Barack Hussein Obama, the perp-in-chief.  Before it's too late?  I think it already is.

For those who happen here, not having read any of my last half-dozen or so posts/essays/columns, what follows may lack sufficient context to digest.   That said, I remain unpresupposing enough, that I won't actually recommend your going to, and investing the time and energy, to read those prerequisite materials.  For those of you kind enough to have been following my regular demonstration that I'm at least an order of fries short of a Happy Meal, (a) thank you and (b) grip this and rip this.

I, drpete, have volunteered to serve as Benevolent Dictator of the United States of America for a very-limited time.  I'm 67 1/2 now and would like to no longer be BD by the time I hit 70.  Here's what I'd do.

Repeal the 16th and 17th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, then pass HR-25 and S-296 the FairTax.  It will then again be that the people are represented in the House of Representatives and the states in the Senate.  The FairTax will replace all federal taxes on businesses, income taxes, capital gains taxes, estate taxes, and payroll taxes; that with a 23% (inclusive) sales tax on all new goods and on services to retail consumers.

Seal and secure the borders, using fence, lazers, unmanned drones.  Anything within, say, 10 feet of the foreign side of the border will be zapped into oblivion.  High-tech-protect ports of entry.  Change U.S. law such that children born of illegals do not become citizens and make the law retroactive to January 1, 2000.

Pass the Randy Barnett-proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Sunset Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and Social Security.  Sunset all pensions and other benefits for federal elected officials, effective the day they leave office.

Release restrictions on (a) drilling for oil and natural gas in ANWAR and  Prudhoe Bay in Alaska; the Gulf of Mexico offshore from Florida, Alabama and Mississippi; the Atlantic off the Carolinas and Virginia; in the Pacific off California, Oregon and Washington; as well as (b) eliminating most regulations on the construction and operation of oil refineries in the United States; and (c) eliminating most regulations on the construction and operation of nuclear power facilities.

Use the bully-pulpit of the BD to create an understanding that the United States of America has an enemy -- at least one -- hell-bent on its destruction, Islamofascists.  The enemy is not a nation, not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, and not protected by the Geneva Convention.  The terrorist threat they pose is real, dangerous, cannot be eliminated, just reduced.  Our investment in that reduction shall be measured in ROI and trade-offs as should any and all investments.

Eliminate the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Health & Human Services, Homeland Security (including FEMA), Housing & Urban Development, and Labor, along with almost all agencies know by an acronym.  Remaining will only be that explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.

Eliminate the Federal Reserve Bank, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and do with their functions whatever Dr. Walter Williams recommends.

Repeal the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage, and Davis-Bacon Act.  The unalienable right to liberty trumps all three.  There may be no collective bargaining.  Busnesses mayn't and neither may labor.

Make "earmarks" illegal and nullify prior earmarks as can be.

Repeal the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

Put in place severe penalties against employing or housing illegals, then aggressively enforce.  As found, illegals are to be deported to the border from whence they entered.  Establish a "guest-worker" program with private-sector agencies working with prospective employers in the U.S. and sources abroad.  Guest workers will be time-limited, e-carded, placed, and paid only through those agencies.

Eliminate all forms of international welfare.  Resign from the United Nations and deport it.  Resign from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  The Agency for International Development (part of the State Department) will be eliminated.  Resign from NATO.  Treaties will henceforth be on ad hoc and quid pro quo bases.

Eliminate all forms of domestic welfare.  All medical, poverty, tariffs, price supports or controls, affirmative action, quotas, set-asides.  Eliminate PBS and NPR.  Eliminate federal grants to "faith-based" and "community-based" organizations.

Identify 50% of the land area now owned by the federal government and place it for sale.  Also eliminate 80+% of regulations on allowable use of private land imposed, e.g., by the EPA.  This is to be handled as recommended by Dr. Thomas Sowell.

Rescind Executive Order 13166 by President William Jefferson Clinton.  Make English the official language of the United States and its government.  Encourage the 20 states, not already having done so, to make English their official language as well.

When the above has been accomplished; and when the financial indebtedness of the United States has been reduced from some $63,000,000,000,000 (That's trillion) to less than $6, 300,000,000,000 (That's still trillion) or by 90% and the annual deficit is negative, i.e., surplus; and when the FairTax rate has been reduced from 23% (inclusive) to 5%; then, this BD will go cruising, golfing (still badly), and never again to be heard.