Wire Brush

Like an old piece of ironwork that is covered with layer upon layer of paint and corrosion, our federal government needs to be wire brushed down to constitutional bare metal

Grandpa Silverfiddle started life as a tenant farmer and ended up a gardener and handyman after retiring as a machinist.  He loved gardening and fixing things up.  He went to work for an elderly lady who owned what looked almost like a walled estate.  I walked by it every day on the way to school.  I'm sure the placed was a jewel when it was built back at the turn of the century, but time had taken its toll, and grandpa was fixing it up little by little.

He put me to work one day on an ugly section of thick wire fence that ran between two sections of stone wall.  It looked all fat and lumpy and I would pass by it on the way to school wondering what it's purpose was.  Well, after scraping away a bajillion layers of paint and rust, I found that it was a gate.  The hinges, once freed and oiled, worked great, and that big globby looking thing at the top was actually a fairly intricate piece of ironwork complete with scrolls, curlicues and delicate fluting.  It looked pretty good when I got done with it, a fancy piece of the past.

The US Constitution is smothered in bureaucracy 
Our beautiful constitution is so accreted with layers of legislation and judicial corrosion it is no longer recognizable.  Our problems stem from the federal government trying to be all things to all people. It has burst its constitutional bounds.

The statists of both parties sold us on 20th century one-size-fits-all bromides that have clearly failed.

We are a diverse nation, and that calls for robust local and state governments, with the federal government retreating to within the bounds of it's constitutional duties: Defense, borders, national infrastructure.

Leave health care, schools and public assistance to the states and local communities.

Below are a whole bunch of links to smart people who say it way better than I ever could.

Enjoy!
 
USA Today - Government's Role

Philip K. Howard - Drowning in Law

Peggy Noonan - Why we Resent the Elites

Walter Russell Mead - Tough Choices for Dems

William D. Cohan - Make Wall Street Risk it All

Philip K Howard - Clean Out Government

Big Government - 10 Suggestions

Common Sense as Rocket Science

I was enjoying a discussion with fellow Bloggers about irresponsible kids and their stupid parents when Ben Sutherland asked a simple question:

When did common sense become brain surgery?

Papa Silverfiddle has said as much to me on various occasions. I was talking to him enthusiastically about one of Dave Ramsey's financial advice books and my dad could not believe somebody was making money selling common sense. This was information he learned on on my Grand Pappy's knee. Nothing against Dave Ramsey, he is doing the Lord's work for those willing to heed his sound advice, but this is stuff we used to know and take for granted:

Don't spend more than you have

Don't buy more house than you can afford

Live below your means if you want to save money

If you don't understand it, don't put your money in it

Save money for a rainy day

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is

There's no such thing as a free lunch

You can't cheat an honest man

Horace Greeley was right: Common sense is very uncommon.

Colorado Californicated

Tuesday was a pretty good night for the nation, but a bad night for a blue Colorado still in love with Obama

I admit it, I'm heartbroken over Ken Buck's loss to hateful serial slanderer Michael Bennet.  Ken's mistake was to actually engage citizens in thoughtful conversation, leaving himself open to the inevitable gaffe, as well as soundbite snippets spun out of context by leftwing propagandists.


Democrat Michael Bennet ran a dirty campaign and won ugly, keeping us with two liberal senators.  His election was a victory for fear and smear.  Hiding out and using outside interests to broadcast lies about your opponent worked for him.  Politicians learn quickly, so we will sadly be seeing more of that in future Colorado campaigns.

It wasn't all bad though.  The GOP took back the State House and closed the gap to two in the Senate.  We also repudiated George Soros's effort to buy our Attorney General and Secretary of State for the Dems.  GOP candidates took both.   

Californication
Coloradans used to complain about the crazy Texas drivers, but for the past 15 years or so our complaints have been aimed at the Californication of our state.

Our new governor, John cHickenlooper, is an Obama fanboy.  He gushed all over enviro-socialist Van Jones, calling him a rock star, and the liberals fleeing the mess they made in California voted for him en mass.  We are slowly becoming California East.  How long before I need some special permit to buy shotgun shells?


A Colorado commenter at the site BigPeace.com summed it all up...

Prof_Turgeson
Colorado's drift from a society of relatively self-sufficient entrepreneurs, fiercely independent individualists, and productive citizens towards an increasingly liberal position began when its rugged beauty was opened up to all by those same original entrepreneurs.

The mountain resorts of Vail, Aspen, Beaver Creek, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Steamboat, Winter Park, Arapaho Basin, Keystone, Crested Butte, Telluride, Glenwood Springs, and so many others began with entrepreneurs. What followed were the pleasure-seekers, the rent-seekers, and eventually the looters.
[...]
The City and County of Boulder (rather the People's Republic of Boulder) slapped a building moratorium on new housing. The result was a massively distorted real estate market with housing prices skyrocketing, long-time, middle class residents becoming increasingly unable to pay their property taxes, and the only people able to afford housing became the highly-paid professors at the University of Colorado, the trust-funders who wanted to live like Mork and Mindy, and the high tech execs whose companies in the area were booming. The vast majority of the rest were SOL.

The once-self-sufficient majority had been replaced by those who drift into such locales seeking to feel good about the political correctness of their surroundings, and they bred and multiplied to the point that much of the state is now under the control of sort of a junior varsity version of those who Californicated the Golden State.

You can read the original piece that spurred these excellent comments at BigPeace.com.

On a positive note, the GOP made historic gains in state houses all across the nation...

The National Conference of State Legislatures estimates that Democrats had the worst night in state legislative seats since 1928. With races outstanding in New York, Washington and Oregon, Republicans have flipped at least 14 chambers, and have unified control of 25 state legislatures. They have picked up over five hundred state legislative seats, including over 100 in New Hampshire alone.

This hurts Democrats in two ways. First, it wipes out the prospective farm team for future runs for Congress and statewide office.

But more importantly, it allows a party to control the decennial redistricting. 

 Not only have we kicked over the Democrat Old Guard, we have seized the future.  Want to see conservatism in action?  Look to the states.

Spying on Terrorists Works, Spying on Citizens Doesn't

The latest foiled bomber plot was an intelligence success, just barely...

It was also a sobering reminder to officials around the world that quick response to timely intelligence rules the day. Despite the billions of dollars governments have spent on elaborate airport technology to guard against terrorism threats, the packages would probably have been loaded onto planes bound for the United States, but for the Saudi tip.  (NY Times - Bomb Plot)

Time to drop the politically-correct eyewash of screening grannies and military veterans

Terrorists meet a certain profile, and that is where the intrusive scrutiny needs to be focused.  TSA agents offend the dignity of honest citizens by making a big show of wanding crotches, pawing our personal possessions, and digging through personal bags for excessive amounts of water.  And the naked porn scanners do not improve security and they don't even make us feel safer.  They just piss us off.

Put the focus where it needs to be
Security agents should scrutinize those who fit the profile, and they should turn the technology on the cargo coming into the country.  Time to strip the funds away from the TSA and the stampeding bureaucratic herds that trample our 4th Amendment rights.  Give the money to the shadowy intelligence operatives that direct their skills not to domestic spying, but to external threats.  These good Americans and the foreigners they cultivate have contacts with nasty people and that is how plots like this are busted.

Time for good citizens to tell Uncle Sam to take the X-Ray vans and other tools of domestic spying and shove 'em where the sun don't shine.  Stop violating our constitutional rights and go focus on the bad guys.

We Want to Govern Ourselves

Barack Obama and the Democrats:  Too Extreme for America


Thank you President Obama and Speaker Pelosi for showing us what unwashed socialism looks like.  We experienced the Cass Sunstein buggering nudgery, The Van Jones enviro-ripoff and the Plouffian palaver, and we don't like it.  We have spit you out like a wasted wad of gum.  It tasted sweet at first, but now it's just bitter, rubbery goo... 

Had this pointy-headed band of collectivists not shamelessly ripped off the moderate mask that hid their true colors, we would still be arguing over just how much more government money and intervention we need.

Instead they are a spent force, ideologically, intellectually, morally, electorially.  Obama's "enemies" have punished him.  Harry Reid survives, but Obama and the Pelosicrats are discredited, dyspeptic, dishonored, just plain dissed....  

¡Viva La Reconquista!
We are now the insurrectionists, my fellow libertarians and conservatives, clamoring to tear it all down, man!  Give us back our incandescent lighbulbs!

To the socialists of all parties
-- F.A Hayek, The Road To Serfdom

Don't get too smug, Republican politicians.  We remember what happened last time, and we've got our eye on you.  We don't love Republicans, we love liberty.  We don't hate Democrats, we hate statism!


A Free People Aspire to Self-Governance
This vote was not just a crushing defeat for liberal democrats. It was anti-statist fusillade aimed at the blundering bureaucratic dreadnought that both parties have used to attack the frontiers of freedom.

• 61% of voters believed cutting spending would create more jobs than the president's plan
• 53% want to repeal the health care bill

Here’s the money quote:

Elected politicians also should leave their ideological baggage behind because voters don't want to be governed from the left, the right, or even the center. They want someone in Washington who understands that the American people want to govern themselves  (WSJ Online - Scott Rasmussen)

Do we still know how to govern ourselves?  Will the Republicans give us a chance to find out?

Don't let the crown sit too easily upon your heads, GOP!  The tea parties have just begun to fight.

Day of The Dead

Dia del los muertos, in Spanish.  We call it All Souls Day in English.

In Latin America, this is the day to visit cemeteries where loved ones are buried.  They bring flowers, food, cigarettes, booze, anything the loved one may have cherished while here on this earth.

My first experience with this tradition was being dragooned into hauling my girlfriend, her aunt, mother and bratty little nephew all over Panama City.  I barely spoke English and they were all shouting directions at me as I gripped the wheel and swerved down narrow passageways past the rusted gates and wrought iron of Panama's Baroque boneyards.

Every time I made a wrong turn or passed by an entrance, they would shout louder in the vain hope that volume would overcome the language barrier.  All the while little Ray, the pampered brat, was crawling over my seat back, hanging from the rear view mirror like a little spider monkey, it was hot, no air conditioning, I was nervous and sweaty because most of the cemeteries were in really bad neighborhoods.  My love for Mari was all that kept me from  abandoning them car and all.

I was a rat, scurrying through a cobblestone maze to a chorus of incomprehensible babble.  They steered me down an extremely narrow dead end street.  Oops!  Panamanians are terrible at directions.  "Turn around!" they cried.  I was in despair of ever getting out. I really would have escaped at that point, but I couldn't get my door open without bumping the house my car was now nuzzled up next to.  I hit a cinderblock house turning around, the whole damned neighborhood was out now, goggling at the crazy, sweaty gringo with a carload of clamorous women, "go forward!  Go backwards!  Turn the wheel!"  

Luckily, Panamanians are good-humored people.  No blood no foul on the house I bumped.  It looked like it had seen better days anyway.  A shirtless man looked at me knowingly and handed me a beer through the drivers side window as I crept back up the street.  I thanked him for his sympathy and chugged it down as I made a left turn out of the neighborhood, with Mari, her mama and aunt assailing me with a chorus of "Turn right!" 

I don't have any pictures of that fateful day, but I do have a few pictures of Dia de los Muertos from Otavalo, Ecuador.

Tom Friedman, Un-American

Cosmopolitan Liberals are Un-American 

It's not just the statist policies that have discredited the Democrats.  It is their mindset, and Thomas Friedman is exhibit A for why we should pry their grimy mitts from the levers of power.

Citizen of the world Thomas Friedman writes breezily about sipping tea with third world potentates at his country manor, while advocating that we the unwashed be divested of our suburban homes to be herded into crowded city centers, all in the name of enviro-statism.

Regularly extoling the virtues of totalitarian regimes like China, this New York Times sophist represents the very worst America has to offer.  Last week, he posed a typical stupid question:

Can China balance Freedom and Prosperity?
(Friedman - NY Times)

It's a nonsensical question. You can't balance one against the other.  History shows they are inseparable.  Freedom and prosperity sit at the same end of the teeter totter. What China is really trying to do is to balance these noble aspirations against state-sponsored tyranny.

Progressives long for the Strong Man
Like too many progressives, Friedman displays an unabashed admiration of dictatorial power and statist governments.  Since the early 20th Century, progressives in this country have a long and enduring love affair with strong men and strong governments, personal liberties be damned.

Tom Friedman and his ilk are anti-American, and the mellifluous BS that flows from his pen is a threat to our nation and our way of life.

Strong Government = Weak People
Thanks to the Long March of Progressivism in this nation, many of us have forgotten that with freedom comes responsibility, and personal prosperity is not a birthright. It is something one earns through virtue and hard work.
 
Joel Kotkin, one of my favorite on-line professors, explodes Friedman's statist stupidity by pointing out that ...

...it’s  fashionable today  in some circles to toast autocracy – particularly among our  growing ranks of  Sinophiles on both right and left. But the Legatum study suggests that democracy, not top-down dictatorship,  remains the surest way to build a prosperous society.

The Legatum Prosperity Index found that all the more prosperous places – not only by income, but by quality of life, environment, education and health care – almost exclusively are democratic states. “Prosperity,” the report concludes, “is found in entrepreneurial democracies that have strong social fabrics.”  (Forbes - Joel Kotkin)

Reason magazine does humanity a great service by regularly publishing cogent rebuttals to this one-world, statist's bumper sticker philosophy.  You can inoculate yourself here:  Reason - Thomas Freidman