A Last Gasp

This is my last blog post before Election Day. I already voted via absentee ballot; a mixed ticket of Republicans, Libertarians, and Democrats of local merit. Yes, children, I read the ticket before I marked and signed it.

I think it’s clear from past commentary that I am not voting for Osama Bamalama. I would’ve voted for the Libertarian and my conscience, but Bob Barr is one of the most dishonest, self-aggrandizing people I have ever had the personal misfortune to interact with. How this man ever morphed from a Republican into a Libertarian is beyond my understanding. Libertarians have a long way to go, but if Barr is the voice of the future, I have to drastically rethink my political outlook on the philosophy that allegedly guides people who share my mindset.

I have never been entirely comfortable with Bush 41. George H.W. Bush was a career politician, and too easy when it came to making a deal with liberals.

Like John McCain, George H.W. Bush was a war hero. So were Eisenhower and Grant. John Kennedy rose to the heroic, after making one of the dumbest tactical maneuvers of War II.

Being a hero is not a requisite for leadership. Bucking your “superiors”, or being a “maverick”, is not grounds for being a leader. I was awarded medals for running away during an NVA position overrun; at the awards parade, I wanted to turn around, extend my hand backwards, and say “General, put ‘er there, so I can stick it in my back pocket and go hide somewhere.” (I was last guy out; slow man gets an award.) During my subsequent career, I continually badmouthed and disrespected my bosses; only federal tenure saved me from being fired. Insubordination and bureaucracy are generally incompatible.

I’d make a lousy leader of the free world; I’d be ordering smart bombs through the bad guy’s bedroom windows as fast as I could scramble the F-117s.

A friend and Constant Reader described this as a “hold-your-nose” election. I read that as we either vote for John McCain, or we select an alternative.

I describe myself as “a conservative Libertarian”. The key word here is “conservative”; I am a Libertarian in the sense that I believe people are going to do what they’re going to do: drug use, visiting prostitutes, same-sex liaisons, and other activities that are questionably moral. It isn’t my quest in life to legislate morality for these folks. I am against The State raiding into my church and saying we have to recognize uni-sex marriages under the eyes of our God; civil unions that guarantee rights are fine. I smoked my share of illegal substances, and if anyone wants to visit a red light zone to spend some time with some strange, who am I to argue?

Conservatives seek to preserve things; “Progressives” seek to move beyond the status quo. Unfortunately, the progressive goal is often undefined. I hear someone leading chants about “change”, I want to know specifically what they mean. When I hear socialist, “Robin Hood” ideology offered as an alternative to the traditional means of obtaining wealth and security in life, I get very jumpy. Errol Flynn’s “Robin Hood” was very romantic, and totally unrealistic. When the government shows up to take your hard-earned money from your pocket to redistribute it to the undeserving “because it’s fair”, or because “it’s patriotic to pay taxes”, I’ll bet the “change” tune changes PDQ.

Senator McCain has not run a successful campaign. His VP choice was brilliant. Governor Palin will be a future powerhouse in GOP politics.

Han Solo to Luke Skywalker in the original “Star Wars”: “I have a bad feeling about this.”

I think we are looking at the inevitable coronation of the absolute wrong first-black-president of the United States. I have not called this man “The Manchurian Candidate” for nothing. He has consistently failed to define himself behind the cloud of slick, rock ‘n roll rhetoric. Only now are his penchants for terrorist appeasement, wealth redistribution, and generally incoherent social policies coming to light.

One last time, ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of repeating myself: WE MUST TAKE BACK THE CONGRESS!

America will survive four years of Oback Barama. Thousands will die in what his running mate Biden the Plagiarist describes as “testing”, and many thousands more will end up homeless because of his tax-and-spend garbage.

In the meantime, the people of this great country will tolerate tyranny by the greatest bunch of do-nothing politicians in history. Half the Congress is on your ballot; forget the top box where McCain runs against Obama, and read down a way. Congress, the Senate and House, are where the laws are made. If you turn that power over to ideologues like Nancy Pelosi and gray-shaded caricatures like Harry Reid, then you will truly get the government you deserve.

I’ll see y’all after election day. Vote early and vote often, as ACORN says.

Keep the Change (Part III) (This ain't "Star Wars"!)

Okay, gang. The cutoff date in Georgia for voter registration was close-of-business yesterday. We have less than 30 days until the elections on 4 November.

I voted today. It wasn't any of this “one-stop” early-voting garbage that the Democrats are deploying to steal the election in Ohio and other locales; wheelies and other aged and infirm qualify for traditional absentee ballots. I voted a split ticket of Libertarians and Republicans, with a few Democritters thrown in for merit on local issues.

This country is so screwed if Osama Bamalama takes office! I am much less affected by the current economic meltdown than you who might be reading this. I live hand-to-mouth, my overhead is exceptionally low, and on the rare occasions I have spare money, I invest in gold or real estate. These skyscrapers that are crashing down around your heads belong to those greedheads who play with “opium”, i.e. Other People’s Money, for far too long. Do the acronym: OPM. [For you dull pencils like me in the drawer.]

I find it ironic that Ted Turner’s Classic Movies featured a showing of “The Fountainhead” on this date. Gary Cooper’s love for Patricia Neal is described by post-modern feminists as a brutal rape. His message of integrity is lost in the sauce of Hollyweird’s vision of a ‘50s version of a ménage a trois. Rand helped the screen writer, but it was the only time she acknowledged her brief career writing for the movies. I am equally impressed by both the original [Frank Sinatra/Laurence Harvey] and [Denzel Washington] remake of “The Manchurian Candidate.”

“The Fountainhead” featured a Hollyweird vision of someone who is too honest to be a real-life character. This is loosely referred to as “romanticism”. A “Manchurian Candidate” is any career politician—who has never held an honest job—as a suckling pig at the public teat who deigns to think for the widespread public persona of the American public. Rand’s early version of 20th-century passion is taught by 21st-century feminists as rape disguised as love. I am just old enough to state things t’warn’t always so. Love takes many forms, and men used to be dominant back in the day.

I have worked for Ted Turner, and it is a vindicating ultimate irony that the billiononaire employer of Rand’s novel, Gail Wynand, is a capitalist at heart. Terrible Ted knows what’s right in his heart; he just has trouble admitting it because it was such fun having Jane Fonda as a trophy wife. You will never see the light of day of Rand’s ultimate masterpiece: Atlas Shrugged. Rumor has it that Terrible Ted owns the book and movie rights, and there is truth to the rumor that Rand’s 1957 precogniscient version of a world in chaos is suppressed by Turner, et. al. because such a vision is so unsettling that it can never be brought to the small screen, or even the movies. I have said for years that if you’re satisfied with the way things are, don’t read this book. You’ll never be the same. Given today’s economic meltdown, I cannot reiterate this strongly enough.

Fonda and former husband Tom Hayden, former radical political protestor turned Californifornication turned politician, responded to an L.A. burglar call that firearms for home defense,the second amendment, and "gun control" is for “those people”, not defense of their home. Fonda and her husband had been challenged by the LAPD, for brandishing handguns on their L.A. estate. “That’s for other people”, they told responding burglary-call officers.

Yeah, other people. I have been charged with a federal felony, but I carry a sidearm in defiance of federal law; better to be tried by twelve than carried by six. A picture from last August is posted elsewhere on this blog; Look closely and tell me yet again it’s my imagination. An episode like that will not occur again. “Situational awareness” rules the Possum Den these days.

Ironically, despite their caterwauling in 2000 and 2004 about the evil incarnate Republicans “stealing” the presidential elections, the Democrats and their myrmidons have already stolen the “one-vote” early election in Ohio and elsewhere, hauling denizens from homeless shelters to the polls and beseeching them along the way to vote for Osama Bamalama. The practice is, legally and rightfully, defined as free speech, but it is still a despicable partisan tactic.

Okay…fine. I have an answer for these people, and it’s one that true conservatives should heed.

I said it a while back, and Election Day is breathing down our necks. Screw the presidency. If we want any voice in determining the future of America, it will come through a separate facet of exercising our voters’ franchise.

I have polling numbers on my side. Given their “’druthers” [“I’d ‘druther do this or that…”] an amazing majority of Americans say they’d like to dump both houses of Congress and start over from scratch.

That works for me. Nancy Pelosi floated into office as the Speaker of the House on a cloud of saffron and vague promises that under her leadership, our most closely-elected representatives would transcend the “culture of corruption.” That should have been our first clue; she had no idea whereof she spoke.

Clue #2 should have been that this current Congress is the most worthless, ineffective, teat-sucking bunch of career bureaucrats in American history.

We do not elect a king when we vote for the presidency. The president signs off on legislation formulated in Congress. They make the laws, and they can override a president, who is in effect a glorified CEO.

One more time, dear readers, to repeat my litany:

If we want to neutralize the inevitable coronation of Osama Bamalama, then we, as conservatives of whatever party, must support a third-party candidacy. I am a conservative Libertarian, but I know Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr personally from the 1980s. How he ever managed to infiltrate my Libertarians, much less become their candidate for anything, is beyond me. I know Barr as one of the most corrupt, dishonest people ever to seek public office. I suspect the Republican Party disowned him, so he suddenly “saw the light” and became a Libertarian-of-convenience.

That pretty much leaves me casting my vote with the Republicans. Osama Bamalama is not even fit for consideration; America may be overdue for a black president, but Obama, with his rock-star persona masking his cynical, politics-as-usual socialist tenets, ain’t the man. Were I a terrorist, I could not devise a quicker way to bring America to our collective knees other than electing Osama Bamalama president. “Manchurian candidate” indeed!

WHAT WE MUST DO, TO NEUTRALIZE THE THREAT, IS TAKE BACK THE CONGRESS!

Screw the presidency! The individual in the White House, man or woman, white, black, or purple, is just a CEO who signs off on the most powerful “corporate entity” in history. The president can be overridden by Congress; the legislative, not the executive branch, is where laws are made and true change is enacted. We need to bounce Nancy Pelsosi and her gang of do-nothing, wanna-be career politicians into the street, and elect short-term public servants who are dedicated to the ideal of “country first”. If all the shrieking banshees waving signs reading “CHANGE…” are serious about wanting it, they need to start with Congress, not the White House. Congress is where the laws are made. The president merely signs off on them.

I’ll close by paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin; you high school graduates might remember him as one who pledged his life and sacred honor to the painfully birthing ideal of America.

“Freedom, once taken away in increments, is not to be recovered.” That’s not a precise quote, but you get the drift of the idea. Osama Bamalama will take this nation on a huge step down the road to socialism, surrender to terrorism, and general ruin. What Ronald Reagan described as the “shining city on the hill” will see our lights dimmed, and our gates thrown open to the barbarians like those of ancient Rome. Congress can stymie this threat with decent legislation, but in order to do so, we must throw the do-nothing bastards out and elect moral, dedicated public servants who operate on principles, not party partisanship.

I am but one small voice crying in the wilderness, and my single vote is one among millions. Shouting my opinion into the darkness, I wonder who listens. Casting my meager power of public participation, I wonder who has already taken steps to neutralize it.

Vote early and vote often, as the saying goes. America depends upon your good judgement, and that notion has me quaking in my boots.