Trying to Trust Sarah Palin

I like Sarah Palin.

I loved her nomination speech at the Republican National Convention, but not quite enough to vote for the aging opportunist at the top of their ticket.

That’s right – even a magical, electric moment of optimism, wit and apparent willingness to speak the truth couldn’t make me vote for Mister Incumbent Protection Act; Mister McAmnesty; Mister We Shall Not Speak of the Flaming Socialist at the Top of the Democrat Ticket as a Flaming Socialist.

Why? Because I suspected it was an act. I had looked at McCain’s history, and I did not see any chance of this man undergoing the transformation that would have been required to turn him into a leader with more allegiance to the Constitution than to extending the trajectory of his career as a professional politician to the big chair in the Oval Office.

Sarah Palin, I feared, was his last-ditch effort to look like a conservative; to draw back the Republicans, Libertarians and Independents who had been betrayed by two Bushes and a Republican elite that decided Democrat Lite was the way to go. The Republican establishment types too-often found themselves in disagreement with progressives and Socialist Democrats in style, but not in substance. The party of Specter, Snowe, Collins, Lugar and McCain was not, and is not, my party.

If they belong, I don’t.

The headlong rush of Obama, Reid and Pelosi to socialist utopia may have been more leisurely under McCain, but it would have been just as steady and determined.

Like the decades-old fires that burn underground in abandoned coal mines and peat bogs, the socialization of America would have progressed mostly unobserved by those above ground, until the smoldering earth opened up and exposed the extent to which the country’s heart had been burned away by the federal government, and the fire could not be put out.

I watched with interest Saturday night, as Sarah Palin addressed the Tea Party Nation Convention in nearby Nashville. I was not won over, although I wanted to be.

She seemed a bit tired, as if she’d had some sleepless nights to make the appearance fit into her busy schedule. She seemed not like a tea party revolutionary, but more like a slightly exhausted Republican, trying to sound the notes that would make tea partiers respond.

Respond they did, standing to cheer several times, as she struck out at the Obama administration’s cluelessness on national defense, its apparent willingness to destroy the economy, and its utter disregard and contempt for the Tenth Amendment.

I hoped to hear her explicit pledge to support candidates and movements that were committed to all of the Bill of Rights, but that never came. Instead, I heard later that she went from the conference to appearances for Rick Perry and John McCain, neither of whom is a big friend of the Constitution in general, or of the Bill of Rights in particular.

Why, Governor? I would understand if, to honor promises made during the late, lame, lamented election campaign, you appeared briefly with such candidates — but not when you join them on the campaign trail and seem committed to their victory. Remember, a President McCain would have been that fire burning underground, but more slowly — advancing the restrictions on free speech, pushing amnesty for illegal aliens, and pushing for more taxpayer bailouts like the TARP boondoggle. And then the ground opens up…

On another, jangling sour note, the Governor told us that, if she were president, she would endorse expanded exploration and exploitation of American energy sources, and to begin immediately to build nuclear power plants, because they are, “carbon-neutral.” Oh, boy.

Governor Palin, if you’ve been too busy campaigning for McCain to keep track, “man-caused global warming” is a colossal scam.

The “science” that was supposed to prove it has been exposed as fraudulent. The underlying motivation of the Watermelons – green on the outside, but red on the inside – behind the Cap and Trade bills, and similar schemes is, and has always been, the accumulation of power in the hands of central government.

If Sarah Palin doesn’t know that, or knows but won’t say so, why?  Is she just another closet progressive, dressed up like a conservative?

Beats me. I like her. I just wish I could trust her.

A Wood Stove — Getting That Warm Feeling

We love wood heat. We’ve had wood stoves for most of the last twenty years, in two different houses. The mobile home we live in now is old and leaky, and takes two or three electric space heaters running most of the time on cold nights here in Middle Tennessee to keep it in the low 60s, if the outside temp drops much below 40. Fortunately, we are comfortable in the low 60s.

BREAK FOR IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE:

I am NOT a professional wood stove installer, a lawyer, a fire inspector, an insurance underwriter or any other kind of wood heat expert – just a smart-ass blogger. This is not, no way, no how, presented as a how-to or a recommendation on the following project; rather, it is simply an account of the way I did what I did, and is presented for entertainment purposes only. Got that? Entertainment. Okay, then.

This article will not cure cancer, shrink hemorrhoids with or without surgery, will not get you out of filing income taxes, and it will not make you more attractive to the opposite (or the same) sex, or make you smarter. Well, maybe you’ll get smarter, but no guarantees. As to the rest, forget it. Ain’t happenin’. Just read on, and enjoy it.

I’m glad we had this talk.

END OF DISCLOSURE

Trailers are apparently not supposed to have wood stoves in them, according to The Powers That Be. At least, they are not supposed to have stoves we can afford. We were able to afford a Vogelzang Frontiersman,

Vogelsang Frontiersman

especially after it went on sale last spring.

I thought we could install this stove in such a way as to avoid the hazards inherent in a trailer install, and I went about it with that in mind.

This is a little stove, and one of the few small enough that it would not continuously overheat our small living space (it is specified for “up to 1,000 square feet”).  The instructions that came with it explicitly state in several places that it is not to be installed in mobile homes. Of course, we installed it in a mobile home.

The rationale for the prohibition is apparently twofold: The stoves that are OK to put in a mobile provide for getting their combustion air from outdoors, via a discrete duct and connection between the outdoors and the firebox. Those stoves are all pretty pricey; certainly a lot more expensive than ours.

The Frontiersman has no such provision, but our mobile has plenty of infiltration leaks, including forced-air heat ductwork that is uninsulated, cracked and separated in several places. I have plugged many of the heating vents, but not all, and I still can feel cool air leaking up from most of them. This is definitely not one of those airtight, super-insulated mobiles from the last few years.

It’s a bit more “vintage,” than that. It also has inadequate windows, some of which are cracked or broken, and all of which need to be replaced. They are another source of fresh air, whether we want it or not. I’m not too worried about using up my oxygen, in other words.

The other concern is that this mobile would burn like a cardboard box if a heat source got close enough to a wall. Well, that’s certainly a reasonable concern, and one I share.

To reduce our odds of becoming flaming human sacrifices to the gods of global warming, we put the stove on a ceramic tile floor. In the spirit of over-engineering with which I approach most projects, I put a layer of ¼-inch cement board down over the existing ceramic tiles, and cemented and grouted in another layer of ceramic tiles over that. I covered an area much larger than the one specified in the instructions that came with the stove, as well. A sandwich of ceramic tiles around cement board seemed reasonable to keep heat from the bottom of the stove away from the sub-floor. Ceramic tile is obviously resistant to fire, and “cement board” is fiber-reinforced concrete, with high flame-resistance characteristics and good insulation.

Stove platform detail -- existing tile, below, cement board (not visible), new tile on top

Platform covers more floor area than required; also serves as entryway

To keep the walls of our live-in cardboard box from burning, I put over-engineered, home-built heat shields on the wall behind the stove, and between the stove and the living room where any furniture might go. The rear heat shield consists of a layer of Hardiboard cement board, same as the platform, up more than four feet from the floor, completely covering the existing wall, and a sheet of roofing metal mounted on galvanized steel, “Unistrut” channels, and four vertical runs of ¾” metal conduit.

The sheet metal screws into the conduit, and the conduit is clamped against the Unistrut. The cement-board-covered wall surface is separated from the sheet metal by about a 3 & ¾-inch air space. The upper and side edges of the shield are supported with galvanized steel angle with two-inch legs, about 1/8-inch thick. The steel hardware between the sheet metal and the cement-board-covered wall are intended to be massive enough to dissipate heat from the sheet metal that might otherwise be conducted to the wall.

The Unistrut and two-inch angle were surplus, salvaged from an old antenna tower. The roofing sheet metal was a gift from our nephew, who had it left over from a chicken house project.

Cement board (L), air space (C) and sheet metal (R)

Unistrut detail, rear heat shield

The heat shield between the stove and the living room space is another piece of roofing metal, bolted to cement board, and supported by more, 2-inch angle.

Side heat shield, inner view

Side heat shield, outer view

Both heat shields, early in installation

This morning I over-fired the stove, in the process of learning its preferences, and the stove top got to just above 500 degrees F, which is hotter than it needs to be, but (based on experience with previous woodburners), is not dangerously high. I closed the damper completely, and watched the stove for about two hours. The stove and stove pipe never got hot enough to glow, even in low light, but I kept the fire extinguisher and cell phone handy, being something of a pessimist. The curing stove paint and chimney sealant set off the smoke detector a few times, which is a normal part of stove burn-in. Otherwise, it was a non-event. The stove soon cooled back into the efficient operating range, according to the thermometer.

At the peak of the heat, the sheet metal on the side shield was just a little too hot to touch; on the opposite side, the cement board was just warm. The rear shield, which has the air gap behind it, stayed cool enough to touch throughout, and the cement board on the wall behind it was only slightly warm. The drywall above the heat shield was slightly cool. As I said, the stove temperature dropped back into the normal operating range in about 45 minutes, and stayed there for about two hours, warming the place up enough I had to open a window and a door.

The connection between the stove and the world is single-wall chimney pipe from the top of the stove to the wall, where it connects to a Simpson Dura Plus through-the-wall chimney kit.

The Simpson kit is a very conservative design, consisting of triple-wall pipe, and a thimble (the transition from the single-wall to triple wall, and also the means of penetrating a wall made from flammable materials safely) that offers a lot of thermal isolation between the stack and the wall materials. The inner wall of this pipe is stainless steel. It is wrapped in high-temperature insulation, and another layer of sheet metal, surrounded by an air space and another wall of pipe. The piece of this pipe that passes the exhaust through the wall thimble is 9 inches long. There is no, single-wall pipe inside the wall. It stops at the inside portion of the thimble, seen below. The single-wall pipe comes from the stove on the left, and seals and is screwed into the transition piece from the kit. From there, it connects to the triple-wall section, and then to the tee, seen in the exterior shot. By the way, the sealant around the outside of the thimble is high-temperature silicone caulk, made for this purpose by Rutland.

Inside portion of "thimble," showing sealing materials

The black material at the joints between the single-wall tubing sections, and between the tubing and thimble, are Rutland stove cement.

It is applied inside and out at each joint, and along the seams of the tubing.

Simpson tee connector, on outside wall. Note un-melted snow in braces and base

This connects outside to a “tee” section (above) that, like all the chimney parts from here up to the storm cap, is also triple-wall. This is an important part of a kit by Simpson made for putting a chimney through a structural wall safely. What would be the vertical leg of the tee, if it were oriented upright, connects to the through-the-wall segment. At the end of the downward-facing (as installed, now, not as a letter “T”) end of the tee is a stainless steel cap, which is secured with screws. This acts as a cleanout access, since there is a straight shot up the tee to the storm cap from there. A piece of galvanized sheet slides into the bottom of the tee support, and serves as a barrier between this cap and anything flammable enough to be a concern if it came into direct contact with the cap. The flange of this sheet is visible at the bottom of the tee assembly in the picture. A chimney brush on ten feet of Fiberglass rod sections will reach all the way to the storm cap from ground level, eliminating the need for a ladder act.

The triple-wall chimney keeps the exhaust hot all the way to the top, reducing the condensation that becomes creosote, and also provides maximum draft, which improves the efficiency of the stove.

The triple-wall actually penetrates the building wall, and it passes through the thimble, which provides more layers of sheet metal and air gap between the hot exhaust gases and the wall materials. A note on the picture of the tee installed: The snow seen at the bottom of the tee support – un-melted by running the stove for twelve hours or so — is a good indicator of how effective the insulation is in the triple-wall kit. If it won’t melt snow that close to the exhaust, it probably won’t set the wall on fire.

Triple-wall chimney, standing proudly

The triple-wall stack, seen above, consists of three, 36-inch sections atop the 12-inch leg of the Tee. These sections, by the way, use a “bayonet-style” connection that twist-locks in place, tightly mating all three walls, the insulation and the air space without needing sealant.

I did not trust the screw-in connections of the tee and lower mounting bracket to hold the stress imposed on it when the wind blows on the chimney. Not that the brackets didn’t look to be up to the job, but I wasn’t sure the wall would hold the lag bolts I used to fasten the lower supports. I used the second (also included in the kit) bracket as an anchor point for the guys seen above. Sloping toward the camera, into the lower, right-hand corner of the picture, is a section of ¾-inch electrical conduit, of the same type I used on the rear, interior heat shield.

The other end of the conduit is clamped to a piece of steel angle which is bolted to a porch rafter. This serves as a “dead-man” guy, since it is rigid, and would tend to prevent the chimney from tilting toward or away from the wall. The wire guys are galvanized guy wire that is plastic-coated, and threaded through the holes drilled in the bracket for screws. The wire guys are a little slack, because leaving pulling tight would only increase the stress downward on the chimney pipe, without a useful increase in support to either side.

Rigid, "dead-man" guy, clamped to porch roof at right

Storm cap/spark arrestor

Between the dead-man and the wires, the chimney is supported in four directions. Sure, a strong-enough wind would still blow the chimney over, but a strong-enough wind would blow the trailer over, too. That’s just a fact of life in tornado country, and I can live with it. My objective was to make the chimney reasonably secure in most conditions.

You will have noticed the top of this stack as a cap, called a storm cap. It keeps rain from falling directly into the chimney, and a wire screen around the opening is supposed to keep burning cinders large enough to start a fire from getting out, as well as birds and other creatures from getting in. This is not a frill or an optional accessory, and it is included in the kit. Like the Dura-Plus sections, it uses a twist-lock means of attachment.

Carbon Monoxide detector -- cheap protection against a silent killer

Besides the wood stove accessories I’ve already mentioned or shown in photos – fireplace tools, fire extinguishers, etc. — there is another one, and it is required: a Carbon Monoxide (CO) detector. A subtle defect in the stove or chimney could let CO leak into the living space, which could be deadly. This detector is inexpensive, and runs on batteries, which is important, since one of the times when such a stove would get the heaviest use is during a cold-weather power outage. Along with smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, no wood stove install is complete without at least one CO detector. CO is odorless, invisible, silent and an insidious threat. Don’t leave yourself, your family or your pets exposed to that risk.

The point of this article is to relate my adventure in wood stove installation. I hope you have been entertained, but have resisted the impulse to be informed, per the “IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE,” above. Should you undertake to install a wood stove in your death trap of a mobile home (and I’m not recommending that! God forbid!), I hope you will do it safely, and that you will experience the same “warm feeling” I have.

May you know that, even if Mom Nature and Uncle Sam get in the way of furnishing the outside sources of energy that keep you warm in good times, you will have the means to do it for yourself. Safely!

The Woodstove Channel -- My favorite!

2010 — Last Exit Before the Obamaland Socialist Utopia

My fellow Boomers will remember the family road trips we took as kids. Those of us who grew up in urban areas and the suburbs remember marveling at how spread-out things were, Out There.

Before the Griswolds were even an idea,  billboards on deserted stretches of pre-Interstate-era, US highways warned, “Last Gas Next 150 Miles,” or words to that effect. Dad glanced at the gas gauge, and Mom took an informal poll of passengers as to how far we could tolerate going before our next bathroom break.

These days, we wonder if we will survive the grand social experiment that is the Obama era. Is there an exit from this nightmare before our freedom is gone? Are we stuck in the fast lane to a haven for foreigners who hate us and our way of life? Will our country grovel before the oil-producing dictatorships around the world, while we freeze in our homes, and other countries develop our domestic energy and sell it to us?

What will those of us collecting or about to collect Social Security do, when the money runs out? If our medical problems rise above a certain level of expense, will we be invited to visit the local suicide clinic? Will the Department of the Interior decide our retirement homes are a danger to the habitat of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Tick, and put us in the street, or will the local government decide, as in Kelo v. New London, that our homes need to be bulldozed so a pharmaceutical plant can be built there?

It may be too late already, if the aging radicals who currently run things have their way. Every illegal alien, convict, corpse and cartoon character in the world will get the right to vote in the 2010 election, if these aging hippies and Mao-worshipers get their wish. All of those new voters will automatically vote absentee as Democrats, since the Democrats will promise to give them the income, homes and cars of all those people who earned them.

Out of completely unfounded optimism, I will assume for a moment that this last step in the takeover will run into problems. Fictional characters, and residents of Cuba, Venezuela, the Gaza Strip and Iran will not get to vote in this year’s American elections.  Real people who can read and write English, understand the Constitution and do not agree that it is obsolete and irrelevant, will get to vote.

I know, it’s crazy talk, but let’s brainstorm. This applies to the Eighth Congressional District of Tennessee, (where I happen to live), but there is a similar situation near you. Find it, and deal with it.

My district has been “represented” in the US House by a self-described Blue Dog Democrat (in fact, he is credited with helping to found the Blue Dogs), John Tanner. I wrote on Center of Mass  about a “Telephone Town Meeting” Tanner had last August, which I sort-of attended, if you could call sitting at home, listening to the meeting go by, attending.

I waited through the meeting to hear Tanner address my questions, which had been submitted at the beginning of the meeting, but, of course, they weren’t answered. As he invited us to, I wrote up my questions, and emailed them to his office. I got not even an acknowledgment of receipt, and certainly no answers.

Tanner claimed to be a conservative, but it’s hard to tell from here how often he voted for the Constitutional way, and how often he caved to Comrade Pelosi when the blinds were drawn and roll call votes were not required.

Did he, like a couple of nominal Republicans in the senate, vote for the procedural steps that allowed leftist bills to advance, and then vote against them when Pelosi had secured enough votes from other Dems to be sure of passage? That way, he could come home to our district and claim, honestly, that he had “opposed” this or that anti-Constitutional power grab, or this or that confiscatory tax or regulation.

Nice arrangement, if that’s what he did. However, and this may be “damning with faint praise,” Tanner is seen by the political establishment as one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. Regardless, it’s all irrelevant.

It’s irrelevant because Tanner announced on December 1st that he has decided not to run again.

The vacuum is being filled, of course. Two Republican candidates for the primary have surfaced, with an interesting move being made by one of them.  Stephen Fincher is a farmer and gospel singer from (no kidding) Frog Jump, which is a not-necessarily-officially-incorporated community in Crockett County.

Copied directly from his “On the Issues” page is this bullet-pointed, somewhat vague list of Fincher’s positions:

STEPHEN FINCHER ON THE ISSUES

Stephen stands strong with Tennesseans on the issues:

• Stop runaway spending in Washington that is bankrupting America’s children and grandchildren

• Never vote to raise taxes, and I will fight to end forever the death tax and marriage penalty

• Stop any health care plan that fails to protect America’s seniors, families and our right to make our own medical decisions

• Protect Medicare and Social Security, and all the promises we’ve made to our seniors

• Recruit jobs and businesses that will thrive in rural and small town Tennessee

• Develop a comprehensive energy policy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and grow markets for our farmers

• Honor our veterans and keep the promises we’ve made to those who serve our country

• Defend traditional marriage, the Right-to-Life and the Second Amendment

• Keep America strong, safe, free and secure

[end of excerpt]

I sent an email to Mr. Fincher’s contact address on January 8th, asking for some details to flesh out the bullet points, and to see if he identifies with any of my bullet points:

I was glad to see that a Tennessee businessman with real, private sector experience is thinking of running for the seat to be left vacant by John Tanner’s resignation.

However, after visiting the “Issues” page, I still don’t know where Mr. Fincher stands on some issues of importance to me.

Some examples:

Constitutionality tests for new legislation: Will Mr. Fincher commit to vote against legislation that violates the United States Constitution?

Regulation without Representation: Will Mr. Fincher commit to supporting and voting for legislation that removes funding for federal agencies, such as (but certainly not limited to) the EPA, the BATFE or the FCC, when their regulations violate the Constitution?

Term Limits: Will Mr. Fincher commit to serving no more than two terms in the House of Representatives in a row, and will he support and vote for legislation that sets term limits?

Taxes: Will Mr. Fincher commit to supporting and voting for legislation that abolishes the IRS and the progressive income tax, and to the adoption of the Fair Tax?

That is just a start, but it is a good one. Please let me know where I can find more information about Mr. Fincher’s position on these issues.

Thanks,

Thomas D. Cox

[etc.]

Will somebody from the Fincher campaign reply, with enough specificity to convince me that Fincher is not just another plug-in Republican, but also a committed follower of the Constitution? Not as of January 11, three days later

I’m standing by.

I’d also love to know what Mr. Fincher has to say about a speech given by the namesake of his home county, Colonel David Crockett, regarding the confiscation of one man’s wealth by government, to be given as “charity” to another?

Here is a small excerpt, but the entire speech is required reading for anyone who wants to see the most common-sense argument ever made against the “redistribution of wealth”:

I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

What does Mr. Fincher think about the simple but profound truth expressed in Colonel Crockett’s speech?

Stephen Fincher is not the only Tennessean to step up and state he wants this Congressional seat.

Donn Janes, another West Tennessean, navy veteran and networking engineer, has also stepped forward. Janes declared his intentions in June.

The big news about Donn Janes is that he just announced that he was separating himself from the national Republican apparatus and running as a Tea Party candidate. The text of his press release, which I received as an email, is reproduced below in its entirety:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                                                    January 11, 2009

Contact 901-482-6705

Donn Janes announces he will run as a Tea Party Candidate; pulls out of Republican Party primary.

BRIGHTON, TN –  This past Saturday, Donn Janes, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Tennessee’s 8th District spoke in Paris, TN, to an estimated 300 Tea Party activists from the West Tennessee area.  There he announced, “As of today, I am no longer going to run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican. …we need to change the way we elect our representatives. We continue to rely on the two-party system to provide us with different choices; but thanks to this corrupt system, there is little difference between the two of them. Both parties voted to increase the size of our government; both parties voted to trade your freedoms for security; and both parties are responsible for our monstrous debt, our failing economy and the exporting of our jobs overseas.  I will be running as an independent Tea Party Candidate, a candidate who doesn’t answer to or work for party leadership, but a candidate who will work for the people of West Tennessee.”

When asked about what led to this decision, Mr. Janes stated that the National Republican Party continues to aggressively support candidates who lack depth on issues and conservative values, but instead focus on candidates who are able to self fund or raise large sums of money.

During the extended question and answer portion following his speech, Mr. Janes was asked if he thought his running as an independent would split the vote. “I intend to.  I will be asking for votes from both Democrats and Republicans, many who are fed up with their party’s refusal to adhere to their respective party platforms. Over the course of my traveling within the 8th District, I believe there are enough conservative Democrats and right-minded Republicans who will enable me to win.”

Janes was asked about the Proposed “Contract From America”.  He replied, “We’ve had a ‘Contract From America’ for over 200 years.  It’s called the Constitution of the United States.  That’s the only contract we need.”

Donn first attended a TEA Party event in Memphis, TN, on April 15, 2009.  He later challenged the views of ACORN founder, Wade Rafke, at a University of Memphis Lecture.  Janes participated in a “Pink Slip” TEA Party event in Nashville on November 7, 2009, to protest the currently proposed health care legislation.  Last month he attended the FCC meeting in Memphis to challenge the expansion of its responsibilities.

Donn Janes is a candidate for the United States House of Representatives for Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District. A Navy veteran and businessman, Janes is an outspoken critic of how both Republicans and Democrats have continued to ignore any calls for fiscal responsibility, causing the United States to plunge deeper into debt.

[end of release]

I just revisited Donn Janes’s Issues page, and there is a lot more meat there than one finds so far on Fincher’s site. From browsing the whole site, I get the impression  that Janes is positioning himself as more of a Constitutionalist than the average Republican, and certainly much moreso than the average Democrat, Blue Dogs included.

I haven’t spoken or corresponded with either candidate, but as of now, having seen all I could find on the positions of both on Constitutional issues, I am inclined to vote for Janes in the primary and general elections.

The Republican establishment needs to understand that we will no longer settle for Republican candidates and officeholders who are indistinguishable from Democrats when it comes to their actions, as well as their public stances.

This may well be the last exit before the Obama Socialist Utopia. It’s where we need to get off.

Christmas Eve in the Boondocks

Sherry and I had to be sure that all of our fifteen adopted dogs were inside or out, according to their capacity for eating furniture and their widely varying degrees of housebroken-ness.

Once that was taken care of, we put on our light jackets and headed across the road, having already taken our carry-in contributions over in the car, to reduce spillage and preclude attacks by chickens, dogs and goats along the way. Our destination was our niece’s and nephew’s house, the Newlands, which is – literally — across the road. It was Christmas Eve, 2009, in rural, Middle Tennessee.

Our jointly-owned guardian of the immediate neighborhood, Fozzie Bear, a 120-pound Great Pyrenees, head-bumped and shoved us around, often galloping ahead and back to us. Laughing with his whole, white furry body, he steered us safely across our dead-end county road.

The pygmy goats and chickens scattered as we walked down the long driveway at Newlands’ Ark, gently encouraged by Fozzie to clear a path. Rabbit and coon hounds howled from their pens in the back yard. Nobody sneaks up on this place.

The Newlands’ inside dogs, a Chihuahua and a Boston Terrier, came bouncing out to meet us. The cellular tower next door winked its safety beacons festively, looking like a long, slim, galvanized steel Christmas tree. So nice of Sprint and AT&T to get in the holiday mood.

It was family Christmas in the hills — loud, delicious and fun. Extended family, friends, and friends of friends were there, with their children, and probably some of their friends. We exchanged some modest presents, and watched the kids open theirs, and grazed the impromptu buffet. Hugs were swapped, old grudges forgotten, and Sherry and I sat or stood around and let the warm, friendly atmosphere wash over us. As enjoyable as it was, we were a little celebration-weary after about two hours.

Even with all our dogs, home is quieter than this large gathering had become, and we’re not much used to crowds – even friendly ones. We glanced at each other a couple of times, and both of us knew we were looking forward to being back across the road, with our feet up, celebrating our own, quiet, Christmas Eve. We gathered up our jackets, and wished everybody Merry Christmas, above the din of kids and TV, getting a chorus of responses as we stepped outside.

We walked past the few parked cars left in the driveway, picked up a Great Pyrenees escort, peeled off a couple curious goats and sent them running back home, and crossed the road to relative peace and quiet. It was still just cool and a little damp. We had been spared the winter storms that were making news elsewhere in the country, which was fine with us. The Newlands’ dogs and chickens settled down a bit as we got farther away, and our dogs came to the fence to greet us.

Home for Christmas.

Make Room for the Real Hater, Grinch!

Grab your funny hat and hit the bricks, you sick, fake-fur, green,  mangy sack o’ bones. You’re fired.

I hate to be a hater this time of year, but I am really sick (and tired) of liars, frauds and phonies, and I’m starting to hate them. The Grinch is a piker in this arena, compared with me; a lightweight; an amateur.

About ninety per cent of the pompous buffoons in the US Congress are not even one full step above a hooker, in terms of trustworthiness and honor. In fact, the streetwalkers have them beat. At least they offer something for a fee, and they usually let their customers know up front what the fee is. This congressional crowd likes to promise the moon, deliver a lump of coal, and lie about the cost. The skankiest hookers in Washington would run these clowns off their corner for ruining their reputations.

For that matter, these elected toads are no better than a Ponzi schemer, or a deadbeat relative with his hand out all the time, or a field full of hungry ticks on the first warm day of Spring… I hate ‘em. I confess. And here it is, the festive, totally secular mid-winter holidays. Tsk!

The senators from Louisiana and Nebraska took bribes in the form of sweet allocations of taxpayers’ money to vote for the advance of government-controlled health “care,” which will be neither healthy, nor caring. These two, and the others who took money for their votes, are great examples of people whose values and character make Bernie Madoff look reputable and trustworthy.

Several senators have decided to help advance this poison dart through the process by voting for it at several intermediate steps, while leaving themselves the opening to vote against it if their leaders are sure they can get it done without them. Most Democrats, and several RINOs, went for that option, which makes them even less courageous than purse snatchers who prey on old ladies, all the while whoring themselves for buckets of taxpayers’ money.

The socialist in chief is an admirer of Old Left thugs who are, in turn, worshipers of communist mass-murderers like Mao and Stalin. He is beyond shame, and most of us know that.

Some of us thought our elected “representatives” in the House and Senate still had some shadowy memory of their oath of office, and what it means, but most people who have not been in a coma for the last year know better.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

Oh, boy, talk about “mental reservation or purpose of evasion.” If senators and congressmen suddenly had to honor that oath, they would be renting U-haul trucks and filling cardboard boxes with gifts from lobbyists and photos taken with the president, this Christmas break, instead of stuffing their campaign coffers with favors from their biggest contributors and planning big-ticket fundraisers.

They would be weaving through snow-covered streets in DC on their way out of town, hoping to dodge the angry crowds of voters carrying buckets of tar and bags of feathers.

There would be so few honest senators and reps left to mind the store that they would have to turn off the lights, announce the layoffs of several hundred thousand federal employees, and go home for Christmas.

Unfortunately, none of that will happen. We have to settle for prying loose the few of these barnacles we can in 2010, and replacing them with people who will promise to remain honest until the end of their terms, and go home to their real jobs.

One third of the US Senate, the most exclusive club of self-promoting clowns and thieves in the world, and all 435 representatives, some of whom have been in office so long they probably think their children will inherit their seats, are up in ’10.

The more of these people who have to give up their royal titles and get real jobs (even though they will probably wind up at cushy university faculty jobs, or with lobbyists), the better.

There, I said it. If that makes me a hater, I can live with that. Make a hole, Grinch.

Happy New Year!

Veterans’ Day — Thoughts While Sitting on the Shoulders of Giants

“We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.”

— Metalogicon, John of Salisbury, 1159

Veterans Day was last week. I had been waiting about six hours to find out whether a relative of mine would be admitted to the VA hospital, or sent home. I was her ride, so I felt like a hostage in the waiting room in government health care hell, moving from one row of vinyl-covered straight chairs to another, when not forking over dollars to the Starbucks kiosk or a vending machine for the caffeine that keeps me conscious.

I talked on my cell phone to my wife, for the umpteenth time, as she handled the unpleasant family situation we were immersed in to our necks.

A series of squeals came from down the long hallway, to my right, loud enough my wife could hear them.

The preponderant age in this VA hospital is probably in the 60s, so the voice of a child is not a common event. This was a toddler, running ahead of her slightly-embarrassed, twenty-something mother, who was trying to corral her without making more of a scene in the process.

I wondered what brought people from this young demographic to a VA hospital. Visiting the toddler’s granddad, or even great-grandfather? Then I saw the wheelchair.

Rolling along at a stately pace, about ten feet behind mother and child, in a humming electric wheelchair, was more likely the reason for the visit.

Dad — not the mother’s dad, but the toddler’s, I was sure — trailed this parade up the hall.

He was not more than twenty-five, although the scar tissue made a better estimate difficult. The stumps of his legs projected ahead of the chair, and were covered up to the cut cuffs of his sweat pants with scarring that looked like the remains of extremely severe burns.

He guided his chair with what remained of his right hand, and his left arm hung as if it did not have enough strength to be of much use. His scalp was bare, except for the scarring, which seemed to have taken away his eyebrows and most of his left ear. I thought, “There’s what an IED survivor looks like.”

His eyes were clear, though, and his head upright. His face didn’t show any particular indication of the pain — physical and mental — that is probably with him every hour of his life. In fact, when I saw that bearing, I thought, “Marine.”

I am not a Marine; in fact, I have never been in any branch of the service. However, I have noticed a posture, a certain stance, a quiet dignity that seems to accompany most Marines, in or out of uniform; in or out of active service. I have no idea whether this young man was a Marine or not, just a feeling. I don’t know that he was an IED survivor, but there are thousands, by now.

Members of the other branches of service are also seen with this self-contained demeanor that bespeaks  greater age and experience than the calendar would allow. They also carry their scars, visible and otherwise.

This demeanor says, “I have seen the worst the world has to offer; you hold no fear for me.”

I had the impulse to speak to the wheelchair driver, but he seemed to be intent on navigating along behind what I am sure was his family. I was unwilling to violate that, any more than I would presume to carry on a conversation with a member of an honor guard carrying the flag at a funeral.

He rolled on by, and I told my wife I would explain later the childish noises she was hearing over my phone. This short, late, but momentous Veterans Day parade came to the end of the hallway on my left, and turned the corner. The child’s excited speech, and the wheelchair’s electric whine faded away.

My the memory of that moment will not.

Belated Happy Veterans Day.  Belated Happy Marine Corps Birthday.

I remember that I sit on your shoulders. We all do.

Thank you, and thank God for you. I wish you well.

The Fort Hood Killer — Another Misunderstander of Islam?

Before we contemplate the “misunderstanding” that allegedly drove allegedly Muslim Major Nidal Malik Hasam to — allegedly — kill or injure more than 40 people, let us contemplate the real misunderstanding, in the media and government. It must be misunderstanding that keeps these people from figuring out what any sane person can see plainly, with no help from “experts” and apologists.

Islam is not just a religion. It’s a political ideology, like Communism or Nazism, and like those ideologies, it has a blueprint for conquering the world. If Major Hasam, as widely reported by witnesses, shouted, “Allahu Akbar!” (Allah is great!) as he fired at his fellow soldiers, he was only following the tenets of that ideology.

Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Atta, al Qaeda, Hamas, the PLO, Iran, Hizbullah, et cetera ad nauseum, are just following this blueprint, as well. To understand that the Major appears to have been following it does not require  religious prejudice or rabid xenophobia. All it takes is a look at the facts.

If you want a crash course in Islam, without the political correctness and multiculturalist smog that permeate the media and government propaganda, go to Robert Spencer’s site, Jihad Watch.

Get comfortable, and read the section under the “Islam 101” link.

If you’re not quite ready for this exercise, read on a bit, and head to Jihad Watch later.

The motivation of the alleged Fort Hood murderer can be found in the following words:

009.029
YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
PICKTHAL: Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
SHAKIR: Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

What’s this? Some Christian hate speech, fabricated to sully the “Religion of Peace,” as Dubyah used to call Islam?

Nope. Sorry! It’s from the Koran, the central authoritative text of Islam, allegedly dictated to an Arab allegedly named Mohammed by the Archangel Gabriel.

Is this quoted from some corrupted, altered, evilly-manipulated Koran text found on some Islamophobic Website produced by the vast, Judeo-Christian Conspiracy? Sorry, again! I pasted this directly from the Web pages of the University of Southern California’s (named with apparently accidental irony) “Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement.”

Discerning critics may note that this verse, the 29^th of the 9^th Surah, is presented in English. Well, I don’t speak or read Arabic, but then, neither do most believers of Islam. Most Muslims live not on the Arabian Peninsula, but in the Asian Pacific, Africa, South Asia and elsewhere.

Wasn’t it thoughtful, then, of three Islamic scholars, Yusufali, Pickthal and Shakir, to produce what they considered to be authoritative translations of the Koran from millennium-old Arabic to relatively modern English?

There are minor differences in the exact words chosen by each to render classical Arabic to English, but one certainly notices the common thread (“fight”) among the versions of 9:29 above, doesn’t one? Are these three guys Islamophobes? Certainly not. They are accepted by Islamic scholars as authoritative. Who are we to doubt them?

Of course, we could debate the “real” meaning of the word, “fight,” which is consistent among the translations.

Is it used in the sense in which John McCain was asking conservatives to “fight” for him in his emasculated 2008 presidential campaign?

Is it used in the way cheerleaders shout, at sporting events: “Fight, team, fight!”?

Well, only if the cheerleaders want their team to kill the other team. I know there are people who take their sports seriously, but I doubt the prevalent desire in any cheer squad, even in Alabama college football, is to exhort their team to kill, as in violently end the lives of, the other team.

If we want to assume that Islam means what it says, and says what it means, we should see what it says a bit earlier in the 9^th Surah, verse 5, as below:

009.005
YUSUFALI: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
PICKTHAL: Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
SHAKIR: So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

“[F]ight…” “slay…” “beleaguer…” “lie in wait…” “ambush…” Does anybody out there think the Koran is telling Muslims to smack our unbelieving knuckles with a ruler? To take away our Internet privileges? When modern-day terrorists quote the Koran in support of their actions, are they showing us their lack of understanding of Islam? Are they “hijacking” the Religion of Peace”? If we can’t believe the stated motives of the people who want to kill us because we are not Muslims, what are we to believe?

Well, we are told by the multicultural elite that the Koran is much more complex than it appears to be, and that we infidels are not qualified to interpret “fight,” “slay,” or “ambush” to mean what they seem to mean: “fight,” “slay,” or “ambush.” The Koran is just a part of Islam’s operating system, and you have to take into account other authorities, or you are just another misunderstander of Islam — like the terrorists.

You also have to understand the “Sunnah,” the “way of the prophet.” The Sunnah is the collection of writings apart from the Koran that describe the way Mohammed lived his life. He is the model man, if you are a Muslim. If Mohammed did it, it’s OK. If Mohammed didn’t like it, it’s forbidden.

There is this bunch of writings, the Hadiths, that are alleged to be contemporary accounts of Mohammed’s behavior, and transcriptions of his words of wisdom, which tell us how Mohammed acted, and what he thought, said and believed. An authoritative collection of these charming anecdotes is Sahih al-Bukari. This collection, like the Koran, has been translated to English by Islamic scholars who are regarded as the experts on those translations.

So, let’s have an infidel-eyeball at a Hadith or two, for an idea of what sort of model man Mohammed was. If Major Hasan wanted to emulate the model man, how would he act? Look at the way Mohammed treated some enemies of his, who had converted to Islam but changed their minds:

Volume 8, Book 82, Number 796:

Narrated Anas:

A group of people from ‘Ukl (tribe) came to the Prophet and they were living with the people of As-Suffa, but they became ill as the climate of Medina did not suit them, so they said, “O Allah’s Apostle! Provide us with milk.” The Prophet said, I see no other way for you than to use the camels of Allah’s Apostle.” So they went and drank the milk and urine of the camels, (as medicine) and became healthy and fat. Then they killed the shepherd and took the camels away. When a help-seeker came to Allah’s Apostle, he sent some men in their pursuit, and they were captured and brought before mid day. The Prophet ordered for some iron pieces to be made red hot, and their eyes were branded with them and their hands and feet were cut off and were not cauterized. Then they were put at a place called Al-Harra, and when they asked for water to drink they were not given till they died. (Abu Qilaba said, “Those people committed theft and murder and fought against Allah and His Apostle.”)

Hmmm. Well, it does seem that there is some propensity for hostility — even to the extent of violence — in the model man toward those unpleasant, thieving infidels. (Also, parenthetically, there is the unorthodox use of camel urine as medicine, which may be a hint as to the way “public option” health care is headed.)

In any case, for Muslims, the behavior of the model man is right, trumping any other standard of morality. Period. Did Major Nidal Malik Hasam do no less than follow this example? He couldn’t command hordes of troops, but he could kill some infidels, so he allegedly did.

Okay, maybe this “hadith” is just an isolated citation, taken out of context, mistranslated, seized upon by Christian terrorists to smear Islam – and fatally misunderstood by Major Hasam. Surely, there are no other such events in the history of Islam. Oh, wait:

Volume 1, Book 2, Number 24:

Narrated Ibn ‘Umar:

Allah’s Apostle said: “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a [sic] that, then they save their lives an[d - sic] property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.”

The model man seems a bit intolerant of infidels, if I’m not reading too much into this passage. And this applies not just to camel rustlers, but to all unbelievers in Islam.

Well, maybe this bit of “Islamic Manifest Destiny’ was intended by the model man to be limited to the ancient, Arab world, and not the world as we now know it. After the alleged prophet Muhammad died, Islam cut way back on its ambitions to rule the Earth, right?

Uh, no.

First the Arabs, and then the Turks, extended the grip of Islam by force and conquest, following the example of the model man. A series of “caliphs,” absolute rulers of the Muslim empire, extended the domination of the lands by Islam to the gates of Paris and Vienna, spilling untold oceans of blood, and destroying the treasures and cultures of the lands they conquered.

If Major Hasam did what he is said to have done, he was doing nothing but following in the millennium-old footsteps of the model man. Visit Robert Spencer’s site, Jihad Watch, daily, to read about the latest depredations of those who follow the model man.

If the media and government can’t get past their own blindness and stupidity to the truth about Islam, at least you can.

Smart Grid Paranoia

Erica Lovley, (POLITICO.COM), 3/4/09 — Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill includes $4.5 billion in funding for the so-called Smart Grid, an ambitious plan to modernize the country’s electric grid that many Obama contributors are helping to shape.

Steve Holland, (Reuters) – ARCADIA, Fla., Oct 27 — President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $3.4 billion in grants to help build a “smart” electric grid meant to trim utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power generated by solar and wind energy.

Oh, don’t we feel good? The Obama administration is paying back GE, Google, IBM and Microsoft, among other evil corporations, for their support of Dear Leader’s presidential campaign. How? Why, they’re handing them a bag full of Scamulus Gigabucks to implement “Smart Grid,” the technology that is supposed to “modernize the country’s electrical grid.” What could be wrong with that?

See, our electrical grid has been patched and bandaged to keep it from repeating the sort of “cascading failure” that caused the Northeast Blackout of 2003, but much of the physical plant that makes up the electric power distribution system of the United States is old, obsolete, and subject to just such failures at any moment.

(Never mind that it is also terribly vulnerable to terrorist attack, either via the Internet or by any sufficiently insane country or extra-national entity with a few bucks to spend to loft a Scud from a freighter off the Atlantic coast, topped with a low-end nuclear warhead, and detonate said warhead a hundred miles above Washington or Baltimore, wiping out the whole system for months, or years. Never mind that.)

Why would the electric companies neglect their own infrastructure? Let me speculate: The big electric power companies are reluctant to put hundreds of millions of dollars of stockholders’ money into infrastructure improvements that will require a microscopic rectal examination by every regulatory agency and environmental group in North America to be sure that they don’t harm snails, owls and fish, or cause offense to favored ethnic groups, or allow career legislators to use them as punching bags when appealing to the aforementioned groups for campaign money.

And, these days, those greedy power company execs are probably wondering, “Is Obama going to nationalize us, the way he did the financial industry and the auto industry, and the way he wants to nationalize the health care industry? Will someone explain to us why we would want to sink money into improvements, when some Obama appointee may well wind up carving up our salaries and profit margins, or inventing regulations that make electricity so expensive no one can afford it?”

Well, now, simmer down. All this “Smart Grid” stuff is about is allowing the power company to reach into your house and instruct your dishwasher to run overnight, when power usage in your area is lower — your dishwasher, and any other appliance that has the right kind of microprocessor controller, and a connection to the Internet.  Never mind that you might want to set your own dishwasher’s timer to run later all by yourself, or that you have good reasons for wanting it done before bedtime.

Big deal, right? Oh, it may also allow Big Power to turn back the thermostat on your central heat system to 60 or so, on the next cold night, from your preferred 68. So, Global Warming takes the night off, and the house is a little chilly when you roll out of bed in the morning. So, it takes a while to get it back into a comfortable range, while you shiver in your bathrobe and sweats, in front of the coffee machine, waiting for it to receive permission from the Smart Grid to start perking. So what? We all have to make sacrifices, in this new world.

You’d like to warm up in the shower, but the electric water heater is still recovering from being put into “sleep” mode by Smart Grid, and it will be a while before there’s enough hot water to keep you from feeling like one of those Titanic passengers floating in the icy North Atlantic, waiting for Leonardo DiCaprio to shut up and drown.

You’d pass the time watching Fox News, but oddly, the new, microprocessor-controlled TV in the kitchen skips past Fox News and stops on MSNBC, and has been doing that for a while. You think about disconnecting the network line that connects that TV to the Internet, but (surely not!) the creepy tingle in your scalp may be less about the prospect of a cold shower, and more because the thought has wormed its way into your mind that someone has decided you are too easily influenced to be allowed to watch Fox News, and is using your power company connection to block it from your TV.

If you disconnect the network line from the TV, will somebody know, and just not allow it to power on, tomorrow morning? Fox News will just put dangerous ideas in your head, anyway. Might as well leave it connected, and do without Fox. That way, when your security system’s motion detectors indicate to Smart Grid that the kitchen is empty, it can turn the TV off, and save a few watt-hours. It saves you money, and allows the poor and unfortunate to use the power you would otherwise waste — or your self-righteous, vegan neighbor can use it to top off the charge in his little electric car.

So, what is there to be paranoid about? Sure, you flew that “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on September 12^th, and you sent $20 via the Internet to that independent Congressional candidate that pledged to put the Constitution ahead of any desire for re-election, even though he wasn’t running in your district. A couple other people in your neighborhood did, and, in fact, your congressional district didn’t go for Obama in ’07.

Wait a minute… I wonder if it ever occurs to the Obama Administration to tweak the Smart Grid to favor “blue states” over “red states?” Once you have the power over power, the possibilities are endless. As I wrote a while back:

Once you have a stranglehold on the generation and use of energy, you have a stranglehold on people.  Let’s just suppose that, on this sub-zero night over a large swath of the United States, the feds decide to provide a little object lesson about how the Constitution is no longer a limit on government power.  It would be a little brazen for President for Life Obama to instruct everyone to hold his or her breath for a few minutes, just to get an idea of what it would be like to be prohibited from emitting the bad pollutant CO2.  Might be a little hard to enforce, too, at this early stage in the Administration.

No, let’s just “accidentally” turn off the power to some states that didn’t go “blue” in the last election, but they’re going “blue” now, from sub-zero temperatures.  Not for long; just for a few hours — say, overnight…the first time, anyway.  Maybe, they will be offered some half-hearted explanation about a squirrel getting into the transformer, and the dang computers shut everything down, dumb computers, or Christian fundamentalist  terrorists, or something.  But don’t try too hard to be convincing, because the point is to make a subtle threat.

See?  If you don’t play by the new rules, will the Constitution keep you warm?  (Maybe you could burn your copy of the Bill of Rights on the kitchen table.  That’ll last a minute or two.)  Yes, your wood stove may tide you over for a few days without power, but a passing car carrying a government official might just see smoke coming from the chimney.  A DEA helicopter might be scanning in the infrared for indoor hydroponic pot farms, and see the heat coming from your fire.  Whoa, we can’t have that, can we? Spewing CO2 out into the publicly-owned air, melting glaciers and drowning polar bears? Tsk.

No, that would never happen. Sure, Obama said before the election he was about to “transform” our country. Sure, he keeps hiring people to important posts who profess an affection for socialism and even communism, and for mass murderers like Mao tse-tung. But surely, they have no intention of making those quirky political views into policy, right?

I’m just being paranoid. Right? Hey! Who turned off the lights?

YOU’RE TOO STUPID!

For decades, the government has been telling you that you’re stupid. Are you too stupid to get tired of that?

You are too stupid to buy a car you can afford, and one that gives you and your family a chance of surviving a collision, rather than one that will crush like a paper bag because it had to lose weight to meet CAFE standards.

You are too stupid to manage your own health care. You need the government to choose your doctor, and to determine if, what, when and how you will receive medical care; and whether you and your loved ones will die because their care is too expensive, or rationed to those in a more favored political class.

You are too stupid to decide for yourself what the truth is, so government will decide who gets to use “public” airwaves to tell you what to think.

You are too stupid to buy a toilet that flushes the first time, a light bulb that doesn’t contain poisons you need a HAZMAT team to dispose of, or to set your thermostat to a comfortable temperature, just because you are the one paying the utility bills.

You are too stupid to distinguish honest expression of news and opinion appearing on the Internet from scams and lies, so government will move in, as in China, and allocate Internet access to the sources that get bureaucratic blessings.

You are too stupid to know how stupid racism is – especially of you are white, or non-white but conservative – so you need government to impose racist standards on hiring, college admissions and just about everything else.

You are too stupid to be responsible for your children’s education. You don’t have an education school degree, so you are not qualified to provide your children with moral education, let alone to home-school them. Government will provide them with all the knowledge and wisdom they need, thank you very much. And government will encourage your children to bring their wisdom home and lecture you  for not buying a hybrid deathtrap car and for running too much hot water, and for not standing whenever Barack Obama appears on TV.

You are too stupid to examine the actual positions of political candidates and decide for yourself, based on those positions, which are more qualified for office. Instead, you need government to restrict the right to run for office to members of one or the other establishment political party. “Independents” and “third parties” should get every possible obstacle thrown in their way, because you are too stupid to see their names on the ballot. The burden of choice would overload your stunted intellect, and you would be incapable of making the right decision.

You are FAR too stupid to own a firearm, because firearms, all by themselves, cause crime and suicide. You are incapable of learning which end of the gun the round comes out of, or how the unload a weapon and make it safe, or how to distinguish a home invader seconds away from crashing through your front door from your mother-in-law getting a midnight snack.

Some of us are at the end of our patience with genuinely stupid, selfish, socialist, statist do-gooders telling us we are the stupid ones.

Are you?

Joe Wilson (R., SC) WAS RIGHT!

For when the "SOCIALIST" poster's 15 minutes of fame ends, my submission...

A Republican in Congress accidentally discovered his spine  and spoke the self-evident truth, and will now, no doubt, pay the price for it.

Just after the Liar in Chief stated in an address to a rare joint session of Congress — with such confidence  that one would almost think he believed it — that government health insurance would not cover illegal aliens (as if he knew which one of the dozen, thousand-page bills before the House and Senate would be adopted), Rep. Joe Wilson, (R., SC) is supposed to have shouted, “You lie!” I think he could have said, “Liar!” Either way, I agree.

Some of you may remember J. C. Watts, US Representative from Oklahoma, who, in 1997, identified some prominent  race hustlers and poverty pimps as, “race hustlers and poverty pimps.” Although a more accurate description of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and  their ilk was never uttered, Watts suffered through scoldings from gutless Republicans everywhere, and wound up leaving Congress to get a real job.

He is only now reported as showing some interest in getting back into the ring. I wish he still had that grip on reality that caused him to utter the truth in 1997, but, he is a Republican, and this is politics we’re talking about.  I can only hope.

I assume that Joe Wilson (not to be confused with the clueless weasel Ambassador and darling of the New York Times) will suffer a similar fate. Too bad, but Republicans in Congress speaking the truth would probably be too much for the country to bear.

Meanwhile, in other news, the Obama administration is hurtling down the road toward transforming a constitutional republic into a fascist “democracy,” and the vast majority of spineless Republicans in Congress smile and go along.

What a bunch of useless eunuchs.