Enjoy this brief video of FDR signing social security into law right here

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a speech to congress January 1935 said, “The amount necessary at this time for the initiation of unemployment compensation, old-age security, children's aid, and the promotion of public health, as outlined in the report of the Committee on Economic Security, is approximately one hundred million dollars.” In 2005 the annual tab was $500 billion and more than 1/5 of the federal budget. In the early 1940s it was much less than 1/5 of 1%.

In 1965 LBJ promised Americans that Medicare would cost $500 million per year from the general funds. In 2009 Medicare has a $74 trillion debt. Has it been 148,000 years since 1965? The cost of Medicare in 2008 was some $200 billion and growth is geometric. There are a couple of possible life-lessons here. First, when liberal-fascist statists speak, they lie. Second, when liberal-fascist-statists speak, you should be afraid, very afraid.

President Barack Obama tells us that the $1.6 trillion+ (according to the CBO) “healthcare savings bill” will be paid for, not only by surtaxes on “the rich”, but by huge cost savings from prevention. What he refers to is the system’s saving because people quit smoking, reduce obesity, exercise more, and live “healthier”. Please remember the life-lesson. When companies develop “wellness” programs and incentives for their employees, those companies reduce their costs. Where do the costs go? They go to Social Security and Medicare . . . down the road.

Here’s another life-lesson. Humans aren’t immortal as humans. Everyone dies. Those who don’t smoke, aren’t overweight, exercise regularly, eat sensibly, drink alcohol in moderation, and etc. live healthier lives, certainly long enough to retire from their employers, and without overly taxing the medical-care “system” . . . yet. So, let’s say that they don’t get heart disease or lung cancer or whatever until they’re eighty. At that point, they’ve been on the Social Security and Medicare tab for a decade and a half already. Had they gone toes-up at sixty, assuming ambient temperature, they and their employer would have picked up the total tab.

Typically, we spend 2/3 of a lifetime’s medical-care tab in our final year that we personally blow CO2 into the atmosphere, contributing, I’m told, to either “global warming” or “climate change”. President Obama’s latest “emergency” proposes to save boatloads of money by picking up the tab for all that. A review of the life-lessons yields the following warning: If you’re into, say, your second decade or more of AARP eligibility, President Obama’s alleged savings are gonna both change and shorten your life.

When medical care becomes single-payer – as in Canada, and it will by design -- unlike a young doctor or a new clinic or a hospital, the government won’t be beating the bushes for new patients. The government’s sole motivation will be reducing costs, and most of that will come from rationing care. If there are 20 thirty-somethings and 20 certified members of the chronologically-gifted set wanting hip replacements, and the government’s budget includes, say, 15 of them, the odds of a CG getting one of them is lower than a liberal in congress giving an honest, frank (Sorry) and responsive answer to a Fox News interviewer. My fellow codgers should be afraid, very afraid.

The late Margaret Sanger, along with Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and their mutual admirer, Adolph Hitler were strong advocates of birth control. Not uniform, but targeted. They all recognized that the wrong kind of people had the highest birthrates. They advocated sterilization and abortion, and with Hitler mass-murder. Eugenics was their common theme, and it was later trumpeted by Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That abortion rates among blacks is much higher than among whites, for Justice Ginsburg, is validation of Roe v. Wade.

The current “healthcare reform” push is consistent and continuation. Down the road a Sarah Palin baby with down-syndrome will not be delivered by a doctor . . . by law. And no American in America will survive to be 100 de facto by de jure. Neither will be judged cost-efficient.

Two of a half-dozen universal truths about systems are that they all suffer bureaucracy and all suffer entropy. The human system, for example, has evolved over time to having opposing thumbs and fingers which play different and various roles. A typical university early on had a dean, but now has a dozen or more assistant provosts atop a dozen or more deans. We used to have medical doctors. Now there are a hundred or more specialties.

Entropy is the systemic evolution of systems toward having its parts deteriorating and functioning randomly and not in sync with one another. Witness human aging or what happens to your car over time. Accountants recognize this with the term “depreciation”. Witness how departments in a company become less and less coordinated both intra- and inter-department.

Great organizational leaders understand this and reorganize, flattening their organizations, reducing redundancy, getting back to basics, re-tooling. They also work to create negative entropy. There’s repairs and maintenance. There are vacations for people, and training and development. Jack Welch, legendary ceo of an earlier iteration of General Electric Corporation had a policy of firing the least productive ten percent of employees annually and hiring replacements. You jog, go to the gym, improve your diet and nutrition, read nonfiction.

Governments get more and more bureaucratic, but have political leaders, not system leaders. Government bureaucracies add, never reorganize, focus on survival as individuals, departments, divisions, and the whole . . . exclusively, with absolutely no consideration of mission, role, effectiveness or efficiency. Governments employ negative entropy in the political realm, but never in the bureaucratic realm. There are periodic elections and term limits, but they don’t apply to the “civil servants”.

News flash!! Liberal-fascist statists are in control of the federal government. News note: Ditto vis-à-vis most of America’s large cities, northeastern and west-coast states. All have an abiding interest and motivation to grow government. But, that’s not what’s being discussed herein.

The United States federal government has become so large, so bureaucratic and so entropic, that it is unmanageable, unleadable, and uncontrollable. No U.S. president will be capable of reorganizing and shrinking the huge government bureaucracy. Picture an untethered barge, slowly floating downriver. The new prexy jumps aboard and tries to stop it. The hundreds of tons of barge have momentum. The river, which always flows downhill, is with the barge. The couple-hundred-pound super-conservative prexy has no chance.

The Founders created a federal government which was to be small, focused on its extremely-limited enumerated powers, and be less than one single percent of the U.S. economy, most of that the nation’s defense. Erosion of the rule of law commenced in 1789. Since the Wilson administration in the 19-teens, the Constitution has had the shelf-life of a New Year’s resolution. Three-quarters of the federal government is now unconstitutional and that government is now twenty-five times what was intended and designed.

Today’s federal government is, maybe, five-to-ten times a size which might be reformed, reorganized, and shrunk from within. Nothing can stop government’s bureaucratization and entropy, but a total overthrow from the outside. A Ronald Reagan president and with the Gingrich-led congress of 1995-96 couldn’t turn this barge of state around. We could hand-pick the entire Executive Branch, replacements for 435 congressmen, replacements for 100 senators, impeach judges and justices wholesale, and the barge would still continue to roll down the river.

I think that most politicians, once elected and sworn in (albeit with fingers crossed and having a Pinocchio moment), come to see and understand this. Then, elected officials do what’s best . . . for government and for their continuation as part of it. Explain Senator Lieberman, the Independent. Explain Arlen Specter. Explain McCain-Feingold. Explain recent rulings on eminent domain. Explain why and how defeated incumbents pop back up as lobbyists, political appointments or government bureaucrats.

Nothing can stop government’s bureaucratization and entropy, but a total overthrow from the outside. The United States of America has never had a civil war. Yes, every single one of the government-school history textbooks is wrong. Back almost 150 years ago, the Confederacy didn’t fight to oust the bums in power and take over the federal government. They fought to secede from the bums and get out . . . and lost. In this the 21st century, civil wars and coups happen in banana republics, but do you really see that happening in the USA? Really?

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."  (Norman Thomas [1938], six-time Socialist Party of America candidate for President)

"For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time."  (Justice George Sutherland [1938])

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, there is liberty."  (Thomas Jefferson)

Americans have and continue to adopt the fragments.  Most stretch forth a hand, but with palm up.  Even the most-conservative patriots have come now to fear the government.  Enlightened self-interest has made government partners of General Electric, most of Wall Street, even WalMart.  They're employing negative entropy, re-inventing themselves, adapting to the new reality.  JFK once said at one of those legendary Saturday touch football games at Hyannisport, "You know why we'll play by my rules?  Because it's my ball."  Big business knows who has the ball.

It was 12 days ago that my computer (actually its screen) died, went toes-up, assumed room temperature, started a permanent dirt nap, went to be with the supreme microchip in the skies.  I shipped the carcass to Vision Computers in Atlanta.  On its arrival at the Vision Hospital, Tech Chris examined it, and pronounced it DOA June 26.

While driving northbound on I-75 in Kentucky, I had Chris transfer the call to the sales weenies.  It's like when you lose a pet dog as a kid or like when you fall from a horse, I think.  You get a new dog or climb back on right away.  So I immediately ordered a new one.  I'm on my second day of trying to decipher anything, anything at all.  With the capable, kind, patient an solicitous assistance of the TH Blogmaster, Chris Regal, and the blogging denmother of many of us hereon, Bobbie Kelley, your host of gumballs returns.

So there were 12 days.  For 10 of them, I had two of my five grandchildren with me, almost-12 Eric and now-13 Evelyn.  For the last two of those days I had their mother, my daughter Lara, join them, bringing a 19-year-old girl in tow.  For the last three I had my brother JT and his wife Bonnie in.  For the last 2 3/4 I had my almost-26 son Sean and his girlfriend of significant tenure Piper down from the Big Apple.  So for most of my 12 days away from Townhall, I was -- with my lovely (and still working-for-a-living) wife Terrie -- running a camp, B&B, marina and drinking emporium.  Tubing, waterskiing, wakeboarding, and just cruising here on the Tennessee River just off our deck were daily.  I did lots of food prep and cooking, and it went well.  The first day and last day of the 12, book-ending the grankids' visit, I played golf . . . badly . . . both times.  In some quiet moments, I finished reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism and read the whole of Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny.  Both great reads, and recommended.

During those twelve days, I neither received nor sent an email.  During those twelve days, I never watched a news program or listened to talk radio.  I never read a newspaper, other than the local sports section.  I participated in not a single political discussion.  I did watch some great tennis, the women's and men's finals at Wimbledon, and some of Tiger's golf tournament.  Great on my front-projection HD 108" screen, I must say.  An even bigger show was 4th of July fireworks displays in panorama from the boat.

Having, then, dropped out, made love not war, focused on friends and family, not Washington and the world; having pondered and mind-wandered over single-malt and over cognac and over a red with a prime-tenderloin roast; having tuned into the minds of our many of all ages and perspectives; I conclude that we get more energized getting somewhere than getting back.  I conclude that fledgling entrepreneurs are fighters and corporate execs are appeasers.  I conclude that building something engenders more commitment than preserving something.  I conclude that people yell "Gimme more!" louder, much louder, than people yelling "Gimme less!"  I think that statists are trying to get somewhere and Constitutionalist lovers of liberty are wanting to get back.  I think that statists are always entrepreneurs and conservatives are just holding on.  I believe that statists are building big government while conservatives and libertarians are but seeking to preserve.

A dozen days ago, I had come to believe that America is toast, and had posted such here.  If there were ever to be a tipping point, a last straw for productive and thinking Americans, the eight months of Obama and the statist liberal fascists, starting last November, should have been it.  The most we've seen, though, has been a bucketload of group hugs, aka "Tea Parties".  A dozen days later, I still believe that America is toast.  However, it's been a great dozen days.

The entrepreneur in the garage wants absolutely nothing to do with the government, except that his liberty and property be defended and protected, say, with patent protection or with the “takings clause”.  And Joe or Jane with the garage start-up is the engine that propels the American economy. It’s innovation and invention.  It’s high-risk, some succeed wildly, some modestly; many more either languish or crash and burn.  It’s free-market capitalism.  Capital cannot work effectively unless it’s put at risk.

 Bill Gates was a garage start-up guy, and so was Sam Walton.  Each was brilliant.  Each took huge risks time and again.  Each was fiercely independent.  Each was an innovator and a sea-changer.  Each faced stiff competition.  Each sent someone – a scout – to Washington D.C. to keep an eye out for trouble.  Neither was a political contributor.  Neither wanted anything from the government; neither wanted to invest in it.

 Garage start-ups don’t make lots of enemies lists.  Wal-Mart, however, grew and grew.  It became possibly the world’s all-time-most-effective welfare program, both with its cheaper prices and its employment and outsourcing. When it bought property and sought to come into Smalltown USA, it now made enemies lists.  Lots of local stores just couldn’t compete with the now-big boy.

 Microsoft as well became the two-ton gorilla in the room, and other software companies just couldn’t compete with the now-big boy.  Bill Gates and his company now made lots of enemies lists.

 Liberal fascists have always loved big business.  Presidents Wilson and FDR liked it when a corporation started to achieve monopoly status.  Ditto Hitler.  Then, it was time for cooperation.  The government would keep all the Davids away from the Goliaths while the Goliaths would do what the government instructed.  In reality, when those garage start-ups became corporate giants, their leaders no longer thrived on risk.  They wanted security.  Later, JFK, LBJ and Jimmy Carter worked on co-opting corporate America to the common cause.  Want the Cliff’s Notes version?  Read Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village.

 If I go to a doctor, pull out a pistol and demand free medical care, most Americans will call the cops, have me arrested, and thrown in the clink.  If I go to my neighbor, pull out a pistol and demand money to pay for my medical care, ditto.  If I lobby the government to force my doctor and neighbor to pony up for my care, most Americans will think that just fine.

 A bunch of software companies went to their congressmen to complain about Bill Gates.  A bunch of mom-and-pops went to their congressmen to complain about Sam Walton. Bill Gates was hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The scene was ala Detroit’s auto titans recently. In the aftermath, Gates hired hoards of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants in D.C. to both protect and influence, aka “cooperate”.  In 2000 Wal-Mart ranked 771^st in direct contributions to politicians.  In 2004, Wal-Mart was #1.  “Cooperation”.  Who's more powerful, the world's richest men or the gubmint (ignoring the Constitution)?  You wanna see “cooperation”?  Check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Archer Daniels Midland Company.

Does the Obama Administration liberal-fascist oligarchy want to own General Motors?  No.  Does it want to run Chrysler and the auto industry?  No.  Does it want to run Wall Street?  No.  What the liberal fascists have always wanted to do is to have big government and big business striving toward the same “common good”.  President Obama will continue to define what that is, the czars will continue to monitor and communicate to businesses and industries where they are on-track and where off-track, and “encourage” corrections.  GE (General Electric, including its NBC), and now ABC are poster children, models, if you will, of the “new partnership”.

 Most Americans think that big business is right wing, conservative, Republican.  That’s because most Americans have been indoctrinated in government schools, programmed by liberal mass media – whether tv, NPR, Hollywood, popular music books, both fiction and non-fiction – and “educated” by leftist college professors.  Most Americans are wrong.  American big business is overwhelmingly liberal-fascist, wanting protection from stiff competition, the comfort of stability, the absence of innovation, the safety of big-government “cooperation”.  Try to imagine how many “multiculturism” and “diversity” and “affirmative action” and “harassment” and “sensitivity” seminars these corporate execs have had to suffer through during the last few decades, post-college.

 Companies like GE will promote “green” technologies, as are most of today’s “oil companies”.  It’s for the “common good”, so they should be appreciated and praised, we’re told.  The government will then give them subsidies and outright grants to help them.  Many, maybe most, of today’s state universities receive more than half of their total budgets from such federal government grants.  I wonder why research results almost always point to bigger government, government intrusion, and government solution.  I wonder why college faculty are leftist.

 The entrepreneur in the garage wants absolutely nothing to do with the government.  Today, the symbiotic relationship between big business and big government, jointly focused on “the common good”, both throw individual liberty and small business under the bus.  Government’s protection of those “too big to fail” from free-market capitalism and targeted regulation of smaller entities not too big to fail mean that capital can not be used effectively because it’s not put at risk.  Today, a young Bill Gates or Sam Walton or Henry Ford would be stepped on by government agencies like bugs . . . with Microsoft, Wal-Mart and Ford lawyers, lobbyists, consultants and executives acting as cheerleaders.

 When the Tea Party movement grows and gains momentum, my point is that no one should look to Lipton as a corporate sponsor.  It’s a subsidiary of Unileaver Global, totally committed to global sustainability in its products and operations, including “living wages” wordwide for “the common good”.  Furthermore, something called “BiG TeA PaRty” has already co-opted the name to fight AIDS, encourage composting, and other causes for “the common good”.

 What I expect to see in a couple years is that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, now closer and in a shorter tunnel, indeed the train, speeding us inexorably toward becoming 20^th-century Argentina, stopping in Venezuela to take on fuel.  Rather than huge and enthusiastic gatherings at Tea Parties, what I expect to hear is the sound of one hand clapping.

Have an exit strategy?

Here at gumballs this pundit blogger has put out a rather steady stream of  castigation at American citizens -- Republicans particularly  -- for their seeming devotion to the likes of American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Entertainment Tonight, CSI Somewhere/Anywhere, Sudoku, People, steamy tabloids, and myriad other mindless diversions.  Okay, so it's their unalienable right to pursue happiness.  And it's certainly not my place to define what happiness is for them.

That said, I remind that freedom isn't free.  Liberty, if it is to be retained as an unalienable right, must be protected and defended.  There are always and evermore those who don't want you to have it.  Included right now in those who want you to not have liberty, not have a right to life, not have a right to pursue happiness (for you) are President Obama, his cabinet, his czars, his chief-of-staff, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader, Senators Kennedy, Durbin and Dodd, Congressmen Frank, Waters, Conyers, and a long list of other  liberal fascists.  No, that's not my opinion or view; it is explicit in their speeches and writings.  Find and listen to an Obama commencement address from just weeks ago.

If you want "freedom" -- as in freedom from want, freedom from stress, freedom from working long hours, freedom from worry, freedom from decision-making, freedom from responsibilities, a guaranteed job, a guaranteed "living wage", guaranteed health and medical care, guaranteed leisure, guaranteed home with air and cable and two cars in the garage, etc. -- it's coming your way, sorta.  When President Obama and his liberal-fascist oligarchy say "freedom", it's followed by "from".  When I think "freedom", it's followed by "to".

To those who I see daily fixated on mindless diversions and who have been that way their whole "adult" lives, I want to point out that it's summer, the time when all of your favorite shows are on hiatus and you've seen the reruns that are filling in.  Take a rainy afternoon, when you're not sunning and splashing, and click on the U.S. Constitution.  It's really not such a bad read; not sexy, not lurid, not titillating; but with some brie and chardonnay, passable.  When today's Sudoku is a Level 5, this read will exercise your brain without the self-esteem risks.

Viscount Willie Whitelaw -- for years deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- once accused Britain's Labour Party of traveling the countryside stirring up apathy.  I read -- and thus learned of -- this in a recent piece by the ever-insightful, -inciteful, and -entertaining Mark Steyn.  When President Obama's teleprompter-in-chief tells us that some matter is so difficult and so complex that only the federal government or one of his now-many czars can begin to comprehend it, much less deal with it; when a bill before congress is so important that it must be passed before breakfast, but is too lengthy to be read; that's "stirring up apathy."  When the country needs acknowledged tax cheat Tim Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury, because no one else is up to that job, a task way beyond mere mortals, that's "stirring up apathy."  I mean, what's the point of trying to understand and challenge, when every bill is longer than Atlas Shrugged and every presidential speech is longer than Gone with the Wind.  If my senator can't read it before voting or stay awake for the whole speech, what am I supposed to do?

To those who succumb to my invitation to take rainy afternoon to read our founding document, and to those who have been dropping out, having had your apathy intentionally and sysematically stirred, I offer simplicity that even a Tim Geithner could understand.  The key is individual liberty, the right to do anything you want if, and only if, you don't in the process infringe on anyone else's right to same.

The authors and signatories, and the ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution provided a document which was all about liberty.  The federal government's sole responsibility was, and should now remain, to protect and defend individual liberty.  It is why national defense (against enemies foreign and domestic) is an enumerated power, and why the government has absolutely no enumerated power other than to protect and defend liberty.  The founders feared -- yes, feared -- a powerful and overreaching federal government.  The Constitution is written so as to constrain, limit and proscribe that government.  It may do only that which is explicitly enumerated in the document, nothing else, by design.  Every authority or power not so enumerated is reserved to the people or the states.

It is not the job of the federal government to take care of the people or to provide for them, any of them and in any way.  The federal government has no money, no assets, unless it takes it or them from individuals.  To do so, the federal government must violate individuals' unalienable right to liberty and property.  That's unconstitutional, and is what's called "slavery".  Slavery is when one is forced to work for someone else, against one's will.

My assessment is that as of 2006, when the Bush 43 Administration lost their majorities in the house and senate, two-thirds of what the federal government did and spent was unconstitutional.  As of today, the Obama Administration, with help from Democrat majorities in both house and senate, has us at 75% and plans on passing 80% during 2009.

Mandatory union membership?  Collective bargaining?  Minimum wage?  Social Security?  Medicare?  Medicaid?  War on Drugs?  War on Poverty?  U.S. Military Academy at West Point?  Federal Reserve Bank?  Fannie Mae?  Freddie Mac?  U.S. Courts of Appeal?  Affirmative Action?  Peace Corps? U.S. Department of Education?  U.S. Department of Agriculture?  U.S. Agency for International Development (AID)?  TARP?  Bailouts of GM and Chrysler?  Car czar?  Banking czar?  AmeriCorps?  Which two from this listing are constitutional?  Either read through the Constitution and check them off when you see that the power and authority to do is enumerated, or just ask yourself whether each protects and defends liberty or infringes on liberty.

If you're a "freedom from" person, you're a gimme, one riding in the wagon, not pulling it.  You are but a tiny fraction of your potential human being, should be ignored by the rest of us, and left to wallow in your own mess.

If you are a "freedom to" person, you need to leave your Sudoku pencil in its holster, skip the next mindless tv season (except for 24 for a sense of reality and one other for the pleasure of unreality),

• write to your congressman and two senators at least weekly threatening and praising,
  
• talk others into doing the same including the writing and the talking to others. 
  
• Create a group with a roster.  Begin writing with each member signing. 
  
• Begin pressuring the President directly with multi-signature correspondence. 
  
• When appropriate, find and recruit your congressman's or senators' replacement for the next election.
• Go to rallies to recruit members to your cause.
• Talk with people in other parts of your state to involve them with pressuring your senators and to ancourage them with respect to their congressman.
• Write letters to the editor, even send copies of your letters to government officials.
  
• Or do none of the above.  What do I know?  Do something better. 
  
• If you have both the talent and the nads, make up as an Obama caricature, stand on a soapbox in downtown or at the mall and speachify.  Explain how the individual isn't important; it's the collective, the whole.  Explain that's why you support card check.  Explain why the masses have to be led by someone smart like you.  Explain why those who have need to sacrifice so that those who "have not" -- say, people who don't work or who aren't married, but have eight kids -- have just as much.  Explain why you have a czar to run industries because the industry leaders thought they were to serve customers, employees, shareholders, lenders and the like instead of the common good, as defined by you. (By your third iteration, you'll probably get on the local tv news.)

It's time.  No, it's past time, way past.  Let's roll!

Today, President Obama spoke to the American Medical Association (AMA) Convention in Chicago about his healthcare plan for the nation.  I didn't watch or listen.  No reason to receive his words, since he lies.  Knowing that he was speaking to that group, one to which most doctors don't belong, incidentally, prompted me to put fingers to keyboard.

The problems with America’s “healthcare system” are two: (1) it’s a system, and (2) it’s not healthcare; it’s medical care.  The real problems with America’s medical care system are two: (1) government involvement, and (2) its resulting (from government involvement) financing.

 Without government intrusion, individuals and businesses would have a level playing field vis-à-vis tax consequences when buying health and medical insurance; both would be treated equally badly.   Currently, business can expense those costs, thus avoiding some taxes while individuals cannot tax deduct.

 Without government intrusion, insurance policies would be made available such that people didn’t have to buy coverage they didn’t need or want, and from any insurer, regardless of where located or licensed.   Currently, there’s a boatload of regulations, both from the feds and state governments, dictating what must be covered in any and all policies.

 Without government intrusion, healthcare and medical practitioners, pharmaceutical makers, distributors and dispensers would not need to be licensed.  Licensure is how professional associations now legally act in restraint of trade, much like unions do.  Physicians, dentists, optometrists, etc., via their associations limit schools allowed to have degree programs, and the size of those programs.  This restricts competition in the field.

 Without government intrusion anyone would be able to offer any or all organs and tissues, or their entire body for that matter, for sale on, say, ebay.  A free market would yield many times more transplant-ready organs.  In today’s system, everyone is remunerated except the donor.

 Absent government intrusion, Ajax Healthmed Insurance Company could offer policies covering an ala carte menu of maladies from A to Z, each priced individually.  I, as a male member of the chronologically-gifted set would probably opt out of buying P for pregnancy.  Like life insurance companies, Ajax’s price per malady might increase the older I am, given that medical costs rise with aging.  Like auto insurers, Ajax might offer me a low price, based on my behavioral history and current modus operandi.  No tickets and no accidents gets one lower rates.

 Others might pay excess premiums to Ajax, based upon excess weight, more yet for obesity, or on elevated blood pressure, or on lack of cardiovascular exercise, or because of tobacco use, or because of high cholesterol.  My smoking 30+ years ago would cost me because I now have permanent lung restriction.

 Sensible people wouldn’t ask Ajax to cover annual doctor visits, teeth cleaning, optical exams, eye glasses, and the like, any more than they would look for grocery insurance or ask their auto insurer to cover oil changes or new tires.  Company-paid exams, cleanings, glasses are compensation, not insurance.

 Without government intrusion, motorcycle helmet laws would disappear.  Ajax might charge extra for bikers.  It might refuse to insure anyone in a bike accident not wearing a helmet, or impose a $100,000 deduction, or whatever it chose to offer.  A biker would be free to be open-minded if he wished, but not at your expense, my expense or Ajax’s expense.

 An egregious anecdote: Nine persons, middle-aged, English-speaking, five men and four women, over a four-year period went to hospital emergency rooms for treatment 2,678 times, paying not a dime.  The cost to the taxpayers of Texas was $2.7 million. Without government intrusion, this scenario would have been different.  No word, incidentally, whether the nine called 9-1-1 to get paramedics or EMTs for transport, also without paying.

 Physicians – citing the Hippocratic Oath – refuse to turn away anyone, including those unwilling or unable to pay.  That’s why Texans got stuck paying for those nine freeloaders.  Without government intrusion, those physicians would either have to solicit funding from charities or pick up the tab themselves.  The docs would have to put their money where their oath is.  There is no right to medical care, to healthcare, or to health.

 What’s wrong with American healthcare and medical care today is price.  It costs a lot.  Government intrusion adds costs every time.  Government can help us all not by doing, but by undoing.  The more undoing, the better.  Zero intrusion would be ideal.  When the person receiving treatment is the same as the person paying for treatment, caveat (will) emptor, the buyer will beware . . . and negotiate . . . and evaluate trade-offs.

 Today, people call 9-1-1 for paramedics and EMTs to take them to an emergency room because ambulances will only take them there, not to clinics or private doctors.  The alternative would be to call a cab, but they don’t give away rides.  Today people call 9-1-1 for paramedics and EMTs because they absolutely cannot make a decision, take responsibility for themselves or a child or spouse.  If they had to pay $500, most might find themselves able and willing to make a decision.

With even more government intrusion, we can have for all of us the likes of Medicare – due for bankruptcy within five years – and Medicaid – due to bankrupt many states shortly – and Veterans Administration Hospitals, killing and maiming vets daily.  Then, where will Canadians go.

My bet?  Americans won't get the drpete plan, but they won't get the Obama plan either.  I lose regularly.  This'll be his first.

 

Over the incredible ride of the last 70 years, Republicans have outnumbered Democrats only once, and it was short-lived, 1995 during the Clinton administration.    The GOP got close – about 3 points down – during FDR’s final year of life, then again in the last two years of Reagan.  The two parties were tied briefly during Bush 41 until he flipped on his “Read my lips” pledge.  For most of the 70 years Democrats have had a clear edge.  Independents, however, have climbed from less than 20% to leading both parties for the first time just in the past couple of months.

 The GOP in 2009 is 88% Caucasian, 2% black, 6% Hispanic, and 4% other.  Men are 51% and women 49% of the party.  Evangelical Protestants comprise 35%, other Protestants another 23%, and Catholics 18%.  The party is increasingly from the South, and decreasingly from the Northeast and the West.  The party is more conservative than a decade ago or even five years ago, less moderate and less liberal.  During the first decade of the new millennium the GOP’s average age has risen by three years.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Republicans over the last six years have been

30    in 2004, 29 in 2005, 28 in 2006, 25 in 2007, 25 in 2008, and 23 in 2009.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Democrats

33    in ’04, 33 in ’05, 33 again in ’06, 34 in ’07, 36 in ’08, 35 in ’09.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Independents over the last six years have been

30 in 2004, 30 in 2005, 30 again in 2006, 33 in 2007, 32 in 2008, and 36 in 2009.

 As the Democrat Party has grown by almost 10% during this period, gaining either from the Independents or from ACORN creations, the 20% growth in self-proclaimed Independents has come mostly from the ranks of Republicans.  The effect on the Independent cadre has been that they have become more fiscally-conservative, but no more socially-conservative.

 Since the beginning of the second Bush 43 term, the Republican Party has shrunk by about  23-24%, that while keeping its social-conservative, religious fundamentalists, but jettisoning many limited-government Constitutionalists and Libertarians.  The young – including new 2008 voters – are mostly Independents.  They are more fiscally-conservative than Democrats, but much more closely aligned with them in social values and religiosity.

 The two positive periods during the seven decades for Republicans were the Reagan years and the Clinton years, periods led by a true-conservative President, then a true-conservative congress and its Contract with America.  There are lessons to be learned from history.

 Depending on the issue, at least a third of today’s Republicans look first to the government to solve problems, irrespective to whether there exists Constitutional-enumerated authority.  Among Independents some two-thirds look first to government, and among Democrats it’s near 100%.  My conclusion, then, is that, whether in our courts or our court of public opinion, the rule of law and U.S. Constitution have been rendered irrelevant.

(Statistics herein, compliments of Pew Research and Gallup Organization.)

 The GOP has become aging Bubbas with brains, and that’s a dying breed.  It’s not attracting anyone new.  The ubiquitous government schools and their teachers’ unions serve to guarantee the GOP’s demise.  When a rational thinker slips through, the hippie-liberal-fascist college faculty, along with the leftist “news” media are there waiting to pound that outlier into submission.

 When the last Republican lies on his death bed, in a whisper I expect he’ll proclaim that we need a federal law banning gay marriage, notwithstanding that it’d be unconstitutional.  After receiving last rites, a member of ACORN will sign him up as a Democrat and register him to vote.  As background, Madonna will sing “Don’t cry for me, Argentina . . .”

 

At the end of 2008 the federal government had debt obligations of $63.8 trillion, up $6.8 trillion from the end of 2007.  That's $546,668 per U.S. household, up $55,000 from the end of 2007.

• $284,288 or 52% per household is for Medicare
• $160,126 or 29.3% per household is for Social Security
• $54,537 or 10% per household is for federal debt
• $29,694 or 5.4% per household is for military retirement
• $15,851 or 2.9% per household is for civil servant retirement
• $2,172 or 0.4% per household is for miscellaneous

"We the people" are ultimately responsible for all of this debt.  In addition, the average U.S. household has leveraged itself on its own to the tune of $121,953 in current debt.

• $89,514 or 73.4% for mortgages
• $22,231 or 18.2% for consumer debt
• $10,208 or 8.4% for other

(The above data is from USA Today May 29, 2009.)
 
For a bit of context for that $63.8 trillion U.S. debt, according to the International Monetary Fund, the world's GDP for 2008 was $63.7 trillion, the European Union was $18.4 trillion, and the USA's 2008 GDP was $14.26 trillion.  China's 2008 GDP was $4.4 trillion, and it's the largest foreign holder of America's debt.

The average U.S. household, then, has debt obligations as of the end of 2008 of $668,621.  And that average U.S. household has total assets of less than $210,000 and a net worth (assets minus personal liabilities) of less than $90,000. 

The average adult American has saved less than $25,000 total, including for retirement.  More than half of folks over the age of 55 have saved well less than $50,000.  The best news is that 42% of those over 55 have saved more than $100,000, and 19%  of them were over a quarter-mil.  The bad news is that many -- even the most frugal and wise -- after the first five months of 2009 have lost 35-40% of that.  Social Security?  Insolvent, I predict, by 2014.  Medicare?  Ditto.

The average American household as of the end of 2008, when their share of the federal government's liabilities is spread, was ($90,000 minus $546,668) upside down by $456,000.  (It would clearly be a cheap shot here to talk "spread the wealth", dontcha think?)  By the end of 2009, the average American family will be upside down to the ChiComs, et al, by about $600,000.

The average American household has annual gross income of just over $50,000.  Net, for sake of argument let's say, is $40,000 after federal income and payroll taxes and state taxes.  If government balanced the budget this New Year's Eve, incurring absolutely not a penny of new debt after the ball drops, (Don't be cynical now.  Quit laughing.  Just play along, okay?), and the people of America -- each and every one of them, no exceptions, singing in concert, a capella -- committed to eliminating that debt a.s.a.p., what would it take?  With interest on the debt at, say, 4% per year, it'd be like paying a mortgage.  To pay off the $600,000 over 30 years, the payments would total about $1.8 million.  That'd take $60,000 per household per year.  Bit of a problem there, mates.

The pendulum?  America has been in big trouble before and has survived and thrived?  We've had the liberal fascism of Wilson and FDR, then of JFK (albeit short) and LBJ, followed by the liberalism of Nixon, the dumbness of Ford, the utter liberal incompetence of Carter, the waffling softness of Bush 41, the grandstand of Clinton, the liberalism of Bush 43; and we've survived.  Right?  A few were inconsequential; some were devastating; the devastating were better at devastating than Obama; but, Obama has the debt picture.  The enormous debt is what's different, what's unprecedented.

President Obama has the possibility -- no, the liklihood -- of accomplishing the most devastation of all, the remaking of America wherein personal liberty is extinguished, the U.S. Constitution dumped in the trash as obsolete and counter-utopian, the oligarchy of the liberal-fascist elite in charge . . . of everything, and for generations, if not centuries.

President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, and the rest of the oligarchy know that unrest is growing, albeit slowly.  They know what the Tea Parties were really about.  That is why the President is trying to rally congress to pass his "universal healthcare" plan this year, gotta be in 2009. They think that healthcare is the straw that will break Americans' back and make the silent majority silent no more.  But, like Social Security and Medicare, like the minimum wage and the Wagner Act, like the New Deal and the Great Society; once done, it's done.  Permanent.

In an earlier post a couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that, "There is no example of a congress or executive branch ever attempting to actually reduce the size of government or reduce the budget.  Not once.  When “budget cuts” were talked about – touted by Republicans, impugned by Democrats – each was demagogueing.  They all snuck in an annual presumption of 8% growth in each line item, then if Republicans proposed, say, and increase of only 5%, the charges of starving children started."

Later in that same earlier post, I said with respect to the alleged conventional-wisdom pendulum, "What happens is that that liberals floor the accelerator, followed by conservatives coasting or braking a bit, etc, etc.  There’s no turn signal.  There’s no u-turn.  The gear shift has 2^nd and drive, but no reverse."

So, boys and girls,is there any hope?  The current liberal-fascist oligarchy will certainly consider, and almost-certainly decide on, having the Federal Reserve Bank print more currency and sell it the the Treasury.  The results of that move are: (1) provide more money for the federal government to spend or "invest"; (2) reduce the value of the U.S. dollar versus other currencies; (3) cause inflation or hyperinflation; (4) effectively reduce U.S. debt to China, et al; (5) effectively reduce the indebtedness of the American people; (6) make everything bought with $US much much more expensive; and (7) increase the attractiveness of owning anything else other than $US; and (8) make China, et al, really angry.  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was appointed to a four-year term in 2006 by President George W. Bush.  President Obama will get to appoint a Fed Chair in 2010, and Bernanke's behavior of late suggests that he's running for the job.

So, guys and dolls, is there any hope?  So, what if America elects Republicans in 2010 to majorities in both the House and Senate?  Won't that stop this, even turn it around?  If you believe that the likes of McCain, Snowe, Shelby, Murkowski, Crist (Replacing Martinez), Grassley, Bond, Voinavich, Bennett, Alexander, Corker, and the rest of that gang just in the senate -- inspired one and all by Colin Powell -- will git'r done and are gonna lead us back to the promised land, then you're at least an order of fries short of a Happy Meal.

In another earlier post I noted that in 2006 some 2/3 of what the federal government is and does is unconstitutional.  Assisted first by Democrat majorities in congress, that went to 75% by the 2009 presidential inauguration.  With the current administration and congress, I expect it to be 80% by January of 2010.

So, Townhall patriots all, is there any hope?  If true-conservative majorities were elected to congress in 2010, both House and Senate, their majorities increased in 2012, and President Obama was ousted by a true-conservative prexy, might that do it?  Who are your must-have handful of senators and handful of congressmen that must be there?

Okay you cynics ( and realists?), is revolution the only answer?  A conservative coup?  Will it take millions and millions of tea drinkers or dumpers invading Washington DC, shutting down the congress, shutting down the Supremes, and etc.?  Will it also take millions and millions of those with EINs (Employer Identification Numbers) refusing to withhold and forward taxes?  Will it take millions of military, including National Guard and retirees, and millions of police, fire and rescue personnel defending and protecting the Constitution at the expense of the government?

Everyone with a heartbeat and a couple gray cells in the brain knows that, when a conservative speaks on an American college campus, the reception will be characterized by protest marches, signs with obscenities, booing, shouting, pie throwing, boycotting, and the like from whacko-leftist faculty (I know that was redundant.) and administrators, along with the young minds full of mush, aka students.

A few years ago, my son graduated from Wake Forest University.  Great school!  But, though many in the student body use critical thinking and, therefore, are conservative, most of the faculty and administrators  -- except for those from the fine business schools -- are standard run-of-the-mill-garden-variety leftists.  Like almost all campi, the scheduled commencement speaker was a well-known liberal leftist.  The choice of liberal speakers 99.5+% of the time by college decision makers is understandable.  First, the decision makers are almost-always liberals as well.  Second, decision makers don't want to deal with a commencement celebration, notable for its protest marches, signs with obscenities, booing, shouting, pie throwing, boycotting, and the like.

Some of my son's classmates, knowing that I was a conservative (Apparently, it's noticable.) and that the scheduled speaker wasn't, queried me as to whether I planned to attend.  And, if so, would I boo and interrupt.  I was taken aback.  Why would I disrupt my son's commencement.  Why would I embarrass him (at least more than I already do just by being his father)?  Why would I embarrass myself?  I calmly informed them, that I would of course attend, and that I would behave properly.  That's what conservatives do.  Side note:  It was a pretty-good speech and suitable for the occasion.

Yesterday, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, President Barack Obama faced protests, offensive signs, booing, shouting, and boycotting in the face of a liberal commencement speaker.  The university was embarrassed along with much of its faculty and administrators, many of its graduating seniors, many of its alumni.  I cannot say that they embarrassed the speaker.  Were they conservatives?  I know not.

It does, however, occur to me that half of the reasoning or excuse making for 199-ish out of 200 times choosing a liberal commencement speaker versus a conservative is now moot.  Rudeness and crassness now go both ways.  There's still the pie throwing and obscenities that haven't achieved equal-opportunity status, but we can always hope for change.

I'd rather listen to a commencement speech from Dr. Condoleeza Rice than another from Hillary Clinton, from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas than another from David Souter, from Britt Hume than another from Katie Couric, from Michelle Malkin than another from Arianna Huffington, from Glenn Beck than another from Chris Matthews.  Now these conservatives with so much to offer new graduates may have just such an opportunity.

Oh darn, I forgot.  These new speaker candidates are gonna all be classified as "domestic terrorism risks".

The federal debt as of today is a bit over $11.2 trillion.  That’s $11,200,000,000,000.  The 2009 federal budget is $3.6 trillion and includes $1.8 trillion of new debt.  The 2008 budget was $3 trillion.  In 1976 the budget was $300 billion.

 Over the past three decades the federal budget has grown 10 times or 1,000%.  This year alone the budget is growing by 20%.  Compounding itself the federal budget is likely a decade from now to be about $22.3 trillion.

 The U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) for 2008 was projected, pre-recession, to be $14.26 trillion. In 2009 GDP will decline, and is almost surely to repeat the decline in 2010 and 2011.  Meanwhile the federal budget will be growing geometrically, aiming at exceeding total GDP.

 The pattern of federal governance over the last century has been that:

• First, progressives / liberal fascists / socialists / Democrats / (new-definition) liberals expand the government and its budget hugely.
• Then, conservatives / Republicans / (old-definition pre-FDR) liberals “roll back the excesses” by reducing the growth of the government and the growth in its budget.
• Next, progressives / liberal fascists / socialists / Democrats / (new-definition) liberals expand the government and its budget hugely.
• After that, conservatives / Republicans / (old-definition pre FDR) liberals “roll back the excesses” by reducing the growth of the government and the growth in its budget.

 And on and on.  There is no example of a congress or executive branch ever attempting to actually reduce the size of government or reduce the budget.  Not once.  When “budget cuts” were talked about – touted by Republicans, impugned by Democrats – each was demagogueing.  They all snuck in an annual presumption of 8% growth in each line item, then if Republicans proposed, say, and increase of only 5%, the charges of starving children started.

 "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."  (Norman Thomas (1938), six-time Socialist Party of America candidate for president)

 If right now, the federal government tried to pay off the nation’s debt, it would have to get all of the tax revenues, not incur the $1.8 trillion of new debt, then spend not one dime.  It would have to fire the millions of employees, cease social security and Medicare and Medicaid, disband the military, have congress and the executive branch work for free and with no perks and bennies; this for a  . . . decade.  No, not true.  Given the interest on the debt already there, paying off actual principal would take generations; and all with the government shut down.  Talk about no free lunch?

 For you business folks out there, you know about debt-to-equity ratios; when you want to raise them and when you want them low, really low.  In the U.S. of 2009 – in the midst of a recession – debt is 41% of the economy.  In 2010 – in the continuing midst of a recession – debt will be 62% of the economy.

 I’m told ad nauseum that there’s a pendulum.  We swing right, we swing left, etc.  So, it all balances out over time.  Sorry, that’s a lie.  What happens is that we swing way left, then swing just a little left from there, then swing way left again, then swing just a little left from there, etc.  What happens is that that liberals floor the accelerator, followed by conservatives coasting or braking a bit, etc, etc.  There’s no turn signal.  There’s no u-turn.  The gear shift has 2^nd and drive, but no reverse.

 If in 2008, the country had elected John McCain and Republican majorities in both house and senate, right now America would be on life support.  We’d have voted, I think, for coasting, no brake, even a touch of gas.  However, the country voted for “hope and change”, and America is not on life support.  America is on a train, and the congress and White House are driving that train full-speed, stoking the boiler, heading left -- Saul Alinsky-radical left -- faster and to beyond what FDR ever dreamed possible left, and he admired and was a fan of Joseph Stalin.

 Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for us conservatives, Constitutionalists, even libertarians?  Yes, and it is that train, and the train has an engineer (union) named Obama (reading a teleprompter), and boiler operators (Reid, Pelosi, Durbin, Dodd, Frank, Schumer, Waters and Waxman, et al) but the train has no brakeman (is collecting unemployment compensation . . . extended).

 Hold on there, drpete, you say, the private sector isn’t gonna just roll over and play dead.  Businesses aren’t gonna cozy up with these liberal fascists willingly. They’ll be screaming from the rooftops.  I say I disagree.

 "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.  When the government fears the people, there is Liberty!"  (Thomas Jefferson)

 Business “leaders” can see clearly right now who the alpha dog is.  And they can see clearly that the “rule of law” has been replaced by the rule of a tyranical oligarchy.  And they can see clearly that “card check” will change the playbook markedly.  And they can see that the oligarchy may well take the "healthcare" burden off their hands.  The oligarchy is choosing winners and losers, and ceo’s are street smart enough to side with the tyrants.

Wanna know where the train is headed?  Study the history of 20^th-century Argentina.  It’s your future.  Game, set, match.  Exit stage left.

Breaking news from Columbia, South Carolina, where the #1 ball cap in town says "Cocks".

An early morning run for breakfast at the Waffle House on Paxville Highway in Manning turned terribly wrong for Crystal Samuel.

"I thought I was gonna get me an All-Star," says Samuel. A popular meal on the menu. "Grits, sausage, toast, eggs and a waffle," says Samuel.

She didn't get what she came for. Instead, she says while she waited for her order, her friends started eating. That's when Samuel says she was told they couldn't eat from carryout trays inside the restaurant.

"I said what is your fuss about. I said we haven't paid for our food. She (Ward) said well you all got to leave. How you want us to leave and we ain't paid for the food yet," says Samuel.

That's when it got ugly. Samuel says she threw a waffle at the waitress. "I did actually throw some food but it didn't hit her," says Samuel. "That's when she (Ward) jumped across the counter and we got into it," says Samuel.

Clarendon County Sheriff Randy Garrett says the altercation continued outside where he says Ward got a gun from her car and a gun magazine from her trunk.

"It's poor judgment on her part trying to settle this matter with a weapon. either way she had time to think about what she was doing when she was walking to her car," says Garrett.

Investigators say Ward's gun discharged during the altercation. They say a bullet fragment struck Samuel in the arm.

"Deputies were close by when they rolled up in the parking lot the victim and the suspect were still engaged in a fight," says Garrett.

Before it ended, authorities say Ward struck the victim in the head with the gun.

"She got the last lick,"says Samuel. Meanwhile Ward has bonded out of jail. 

Additional information from independent research:

Waffle House signature hash browns come six ways:

1. Traditional: scattered and smothered (onions)
2. scattered;
3. smothered;
4. covered and chunked (onions, cheese and ham);
5. chunked and topped (onions, cheese, ham and chili);
6. topped and diced (onions, cheese, ham, chili and diced tomatoes).

 The floor is now open for your comments.

The Oklahoma legislature has been in the news for more than a year now with its sovereignty resolution. See story here.  It seeks to undo overreach by the federal government in violation of of the 10th amendment.

Now comes the legislature of Montana which just passed a bill in both its house and senate, and got the governor's signature as well.  The bill -- in brief -- says that guns both manufactured and sold in Montana are exempt from federal laws, based on the "commerce clause".  Knowing that you'll want the facts, and not merely my take, the text is below.  I'll comment below the text.

HOUSE BILL NO. 246
INTRODUCED BY J. BONIEK, BENNETT, BUTCHER, CURTISS, RANDALL, WARBURTON
AN ACT EXEMPTING FROM FEDERAL REGULATION UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES A FIREARM, A FIREARM ACCESSORY, OR AMMUNITION MANUFACTURED AND RETAINED IN MONTANA; AND PROVIDING AN APPLICABILITY DATE.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MONTANA:

Section 1. Short title. [Sections 1 through 6] may be cited as the “Montana Firearms Freedom Act”.

Section 2. Legislative declarations of authority. The legislature declares that the authority for [sections 1 through 6] is the following:
(1) The 10th amendment to the United States constitution guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889. The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889.
(2) The ninth amendment to the United States constitution guarantees to the people rights not granted in the constitution and reserves to the people of Montana certain rights, as they were understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889. The guaranty of those rights is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889.
(3) The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the 9th and 10th amendments to the United States constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. Congress has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition.
(4) The second amendment to the United States constitution reserves to the people the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Montana was admitted to statehood in 1889, and the guaranty of the right is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889.(5) Article II, section 12, of the Montana constitution clearly secures to Montana citizens, and prohibits government interference with, the right of individual Montana citizens to keep and bear arms. This constitutional protection is unchanged from the 1889 Montana constitution, which was approved by congress and the people of Montana, and the right exists, as it was understood at the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889.

Section 3. Definitions. As used in [sections 1 through 6], the following definitions apply:
(1) “Borders of Montana” means the boundaries of Montana described in Article I, section 1, of the 1889 Montana constitution.
(2) “Firearms accessories” means items that are used in conjunction with or mounted upon a firearm but are not essential to the basic function of a firearm, including but not limited to telescopic or laser sights, magazines, flash or sound suppressors, folding or aftermarket stocks and grips, speedloaders, ammunition carriers, and lights for target illumination.
(3) “Generic and insignificant parts” includes but is not limited to springs, screws, nuts, and pins.
(4) “Manufactured” means that a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition has been created from basic materials for functional usefulness, including but not limited to forging, casting, machining, or other processes for working materials.

Section 4. Prohibitions. A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Montana and that remains within the borders of Montana is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce. It is declared by the legislature that those items have not traveled in interstate commerce. This section applies to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured in Montana from basic materials and that can be manufactured without the inclusion of any significant parts imported from another state. Generic and insignificant parts that have other manufacturing or consumer product applications are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition, and their importation into Montana and incorporation into a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured in Montana does not subject the firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition to federal regulation. It is declared by the legislature that basic materials, such as unmachined steel and unshaped wood, are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition and are not subject to congressional authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition under interstate commerce as if they were actually firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition. The authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce in basic materials does not include authority to regulate firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition made in Montana from those materials. Firearms accessories that are imported into Montana from another state and that are subject to federal regulation as being in interstate commerce do not subject a firearm to federal regulation under interstate commerce because they are attached to or used in conjunction with a firearm in Montana.

Section 5. Exceptions. [Section 4] does not apply to:
(1) A firearm that cannot be carried and used by one person;
(2) A firearm that has a bore diameter greater than 1 1/2 inches and that uses smokeless powder, not black powder, as a propellant;
(3) ammunition with a projectile that explodes using an explosion of chemical energy after the projectile leaves the firearm; or
(4) a firearm that discharges two or more projectiles with one activation of the trigger or other firing device.

Section 6. Marketing of firearms. A firearm manufactured or sold in Montana under [sections 1 through 6] must have the words “Made in Montana” clearly stamped on a central metallic part, such as the receiver or frame.

Section 7. Codification instruction. [Sections 1 through 6] are intended to be codified as an integral part of Title 30, and the provisions of Title 30 apply to [sections 1 through 6].

Section 8. Applicability. [This act] applies to firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition that are manufactured, as defined in [section 3], and retained in Montana after October 1, 2009

---

With this bill, Montana has thrown down the gauntlet, and declared judicial war with the federal government.  It, I predict, will not take long before this show debuts at a U.S. Supreme Court with revolutionary implications.

The Constitution's "commerce clause" enumerates the federal government authority to "regulate commerce among the states."  First, it does not enumerate the power to prohibit, merely to regulate.  Second, it does not enumerate the power to regulate intrastate commerce, just interstate.  Third, "commerce" (original meaning) was defined as the trade or exchange of goods, including the means of transporting them (including payment, since that's an exchange of goods as well).  Clearly, the federal government has, de facto, stretched and expanded "commerce" beyond recognition.

Any proscription or restriction of behavior between or among consenting parties is, by definition, a violation and infringement of their unalienable right to liberty.  Any proposed proscription must be screened through the "necessary and proper" clause.  A law or regulation must first be really necessary, because the consequences of not having such an a priori prohibition or limitation would be dire.  It is why some highway speed limits are constitutional.  It is why most federal taxes are not.  Even if necessary, the remedy must be proper.  A federal speed limit on a state or county road would not be proper, because the jurisdiction isn't federal.  Also, to be proper, the remedy must be the least infringing proscription possible.  Banning possession of a firearm by convicted violent felons might be proper.  Banning guns per se would not.

Manufacturing guns in Montana is not a federal case.  Buying guns in Montana is not a federal case.  Possessing guns in Montana is not a federal case.  Shooting guns in Montana is not a federal case.  If the federal government intervenes in Montana, that state vows to secede.  The legislators and governor of Montana have rendered Tea Parties child's play.  They've supersized the resistance and put it on steroids. Ladies and gentlemen of Montana, what you see is me standing and what you hear is my applause.

What are grits? a guest column by JT.  JT Stevens is a retired paramedic (previously a professor of music) from Douglasville, Georgia, a few miles west of Atlanta

As what is known in these parts as a “Damn Yankee,” I have given some thought to what grits are. (Parenthetically, thus the brackets, the question might more accurately be “What is grits?” since “grits” is probably a collective noun.)

 Before going any further, those new to the area, no doubt from up north (above Cartersville), should know that there are two kinds of Yankees: Damn Yankees and Dumb Yankees. The Dumb Yankees go back north.

 To return to the subject, I had the pleasure recently of reading a piece in the Chapel Hill News & Views by Frank Parham. His answer to the title question: Nobody knows. Well, thanks to my friends at the Douglas County Fire Department, particularly Chief Ed Daniell, I believe I do.

 I have only been a Damn Yankee for a little over 30 years, so I don’t actually personally know a real-live moonshiner. But I know a few who do. From them I have learned a little of the honorable, if illegal, art of distilling corn likker. It takes skill and patience. And corn. And water. And time.

 First, take the corn and soak it in water. The cobs can go over to the outhouse. Eventually, you end up with a wet mush that you then must separate into the good stuff (fermenting golden water) and the “slag.” The slag is (are?) the grits.

 Done right, all of the value is in the liquid. What is left over is a completely tasteless, Chemically inert white powder. Unfortunately, chemists (as we shall refer to them to protect and honor these “spirited entrepreneurs”) found that if they left this useless slag lying in the open, when it rained, the water would re-hydrate this slag, it would grow and spread exponentially, and eventually mark them as afoul of the Treasury Agents. (I came to see this phenomenon one morning when a pot of grits was left boiling on the stove. The contents not only filled the kitchen but the engine bay at the Fire Department!)

 What to do with the slag. Moonshiners eventually started putting it in barrels. But what to do with the barrels? (They, too, were a dead giveaway, especially if a T-man asked what was in them.) We don’t know exactly who it was that decided to label the barrel, identifying the contents as GRITS. It eliminated that awkward question, but when asked what he was going to do with the Grits, he is reported to have answered, “Sell them, of course!”

 And so he did. Cheap. 49 cents a barrel.

 Don’t know who first taste-tested the new stuff. Probably hoped for some leftover taste from the fluid so carefully separated from the slag. But if you were hungry enough, you could put some fatback drippings on them and fill your gut until some food became available. Nowadays, we just add a lot of butter, salt and pepper, and then mash ‘em all up with the runny eggs on the plate, sopping them up with the biscuits. Don’t know why we don’t just eat the food!

 Better question: Why Are Grits? I propose a contest. Let us see who can come up with something more useless than grits. (Can’t be Kudzu; it keeps the soil in place.)  

The biggest difference between Barack Obama today and Napolean, Mussolini, Lenin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler and most-recently, Arafat of yesteryear is that none of the others had a teleprompter.  The named leaders of yesteryear all devastated the masses who worshipped them.  Much of the jury in the "Masses v. Obama" case has yet to begin deliberations.

All, it is generally conceded, advanced on the wings of great oratory skills.  All are/were pragmatic opportunists, advancing themselves and their agendae amid the manufactured chaos of crises.  All do or did manipulate the most-mass newsmedia of their day, whether, massive rallies, fire-side radio chats, newsreels at the movies, broadcast of the 1936 Olympics, Palestinian news feeds carried by the gullible and compliant outlets wordwide, televised speaches and "news conferences" along with intimidation of opposition talk radio.

All are/were either radical socialists, radical liberal fascists, or both.  All do/did eschew logic, facts, truth and rationality in favor of emotion and stirring passion in the masses.  All replaced religions with faiths that were this-wordly and political, and led by this-world people rather than exta-wordly [G]od(s).  The hisorical are well-known to most.  The latest iteration is "Black Liberation Theology".

All came to realize that having the people they lead/led, not only impassioned, but scared, made the followers more compliant.  All are/were transformational, creating new societies with new paradigms, while impugning everything past.  All do or did subordinate the individual to the collective -- the state or nation, the worker class, the race, the party -- and subordinate the rule of law to the rule of an oligarchy of "leaders".

All came to believe that truth is unimportant.  Whatever the people believe to be truth is what is important, because it is that which guides them.  Leaders, then, need to create a truth which moves the masses.  It is no wonder, then, that George Will recently opined, "For conservatives seeing is believing while for liberals believing is seeing."  It is why on this blogsite I earlier characterized what the President was doing as "misdirobfuscation".

If what we're witnessing is not new, but rather deja vu, -- and that's how I see it -- the ending is clear, and not pretty.  What remains of the story to be written is what and who will be devastated before the final chapter, and how badly.  If we use post-revolution France, a dying and shrinking Italy, post-war Germany, the Soviet Union, Palestine, and the New Deal legacy as clues and predictors, the prognosis is bleak.

The hue and cry that the truth just cannot get out, given the obvious liberal bias of the "mainstream media", is ubiquitous among Townhall bloggers and commenters.  Then, there is also the more-recent phenomenon of "leg tingling" and the like over President Obama.

Below, I offer hope, that because there is change.

The top 25 U.S. newspapers daily circulation from October 2008 through March 2009. The percentage changes are from the same year-ago period.

1. USA Today down 7.5 percent.

2. The Wall Street Journal up 0.6 percent.

3. The New York Times down 3.5 percent.

4. Los Angeles Times down 6.6 percent.

5. The Washington Post down 1.2 percent.

6. Daily News of New York down 14.3 percent.

7. New York Post down 20.5 percent.

8. Chicago Tribune down 7.5 percent.

9. Houston Chronicle down 14 percent.

10. The Arizona Republic of Phoenix down 5.7 percent.

11. The Denver Post newspaper took over subscriptions from Rocky Mountain News when that newspaper folded with the Feb. 27 edition.  Comparison not possible.

12. Newsday of Long Island, N.Y. down 3 percent.

13. The Dallas Morning News down 9.9 percent.

14. Star Tribune of Minneapolis down 0.7 percent.

15. Chicago Sun-Times down 0.04 percent.

16. San Francisco Chronicle down 15.7 percent.

17. The Boston Globe down 13.7 percent.

18. The Plain Dealer of Cleveland down 11.7 percent.

19. Detroit Free Press down 5.9 percent.

20. The Philadelphia Inquirer down 13.7 percent.

21. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J.down 16.8 percent.

22. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times down 10.4 percent.

23. The Oregonian of Portland down 11.8 percent.

24. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution down 19.9 percent.

25. The San Diego Union-Tribune down 9.5 percent.

Re: network evening news: CBS and ABC together lost nearly 2 million viewers, or a combined 10 percent, during the Iraq war period, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Whether daytime or primetime, Fox News Channel has more viewers than CNN, MSNBC and CNBC combined.

U.S. News & World Report has effectively abandoned the print news magazine format in favor of producing monthly guides, leaving news coverage to its website.  In 2009, according to Pew Research, when asked specifically about news magazines, 12% reported reading one “regularly,” down 2 percentage points from 2006 and down 6 percentage points from a similar survey in 1994. 

Circulation for all of the three biggest news magazines declined in the first half of 2008, the latest period for which comparable data are available.

Newsweek and U.S. News both had substantial losses in total sales (subscription or single copy sales). Newsweek fell to 2.7 million copies per week in the first six months of 2008, down 13% from the same period in 2007. U.S. News fell to 1.8 million, or 10% (bigger changes came later in the year). Time had a negligible decline, down three-tenths of 1 percent, to 3.4 million.