"Leadership?"

"Here we are, I'm out at my third Pro Bowl, I'm about to go in and throw a touchdown to Jerry Rice, we're honoring the Hall of Fame, and we're talking about our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off." - Peyton Manning

News Item: WASHINGTON -
President Bush embraced Sen. John McCain 's proposal to ban cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of terrorism suspects on Thursday, reversing months of opposition that included White House veto threats. --AP

Which one (Manning or Bush) is a more effective leader? On a day when the Iraqi transformation was ratified by 68% of the electorate, and that his vision of Iraq's independence is now careening toward certainty, the "architect" of the war in Iraq is spouting off like an idiot. In recent days he's given the impression that the military intelligence leading into the war was "faulty", and now he wants to handcuff the intelligence function even more with this brain-dead scheme. Now, no matter what the terrorists do, they know they will get the country club treatment in Gitmo for all their troubles.

When McCain came up with this, George should have just said, "On a day when Iraqi independence is assured, and we are honoring the people who fought for their independence, we're talking about our idiot senators who get get liquored up and run their mouths off".

Peyton is 13-0 this season. GWB will miss the playoffs. Who's the better leader?

Wizer One-Liner #6

What's going on with the Republicans may not be that funny, but It's hard to beat the Dems for pure entertainment value.

The survey says....

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. – Thomas Sowell

In almost all matters, the real question should be: why are we letting government handle this? – Harry Browne

I normally don't do surveys. My thinking is if the person writing the survey is smart enough to write a meaningful survey, he already knows the answers. Today, I get in the mail, a solicitation masquerading as a survey. It was from The National Republican Senatorial Committee, and it was called the Senate Majority Leader's Survey.

Don't ask me how I got on their mailing list. I have never been a member of their party, or even much of a sympathizer. But I did fill out this survey.

Here's an example question: "Should the United States increase spending to protect its borders and coastlines?" There was no checkbox for the real answer, which is "The United States gets enough money to protect our borders. It is the only constitutional duty the federal government is responsible for, and there ought to already be enough money in the budget to manage this one thing." Hard to cover that in a yes or no scenario. Put me down as undecided.

Here's another: "Should the United States accelerate the training of Iraqi security forces no matter what the cost? No matter what the cost? I wonder what kind of answer they were going for there. Surely a "No" answer tells them very little. The whole reason for the "survey", of course is in the last section, the one where you get to fill out your Visa, MasterCard, ar AmEx number.

Gonna send it in, anyway (no postage necessary, and no contribution made). They've got my response. I doubt they'll care about the answers. They did not even get the questions right.

Small mindedness

"Intelligent people talk about ideas, average minded people talk about events, small minded people talk about people." - eleanor roosevelt

Jonah Goldberg, as usual, pretty much nails it in this article. Intelligent people talk about Freedom. Average people talk about The War. Small minded people talk about how "evil" George W. Bush is. Lets have our debates over ideas.

Meanwhile, back at home....

The Government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. – Ronald Reagan

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. – Milton Friedman

While our "leaders" debate the equivalent of pulling all police officers out of the South Central neighborhood of LA, or Eight Mile Road in Detroit, (we're making more enemies every day in Michigan) the bigger issue continues to fester. We are growing the government at an unprecedented and truly alarming rate.

The president points to the growing economy, as if your finding a job were a good excuse to run your credit cards over the top. You could easily just follow the money here, and see the problem, but I worry more about the size of the resulting government. Fiscal responsibility gets only lip service from this administration. GWB has never met a spending bill he didn't like. Tom DeLay couldn't find any fat in the budget either. Well, Tom, the rest of us see fat when we see it.

George's tax cuts have been on the right side of the Laffer curve, but that will change, one way or another.

Could it be that Mike Pence is the unwavering voice of fiscal reason? The real Republican Revolution has perhaps not yet begun?

All I know is we have more government than we want today, and much less than we paid for.

High Treason on the National Stage.

Article 3, Section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. -- U.S. Constitution

Giving Aid and Comfort to the Enemy is apparently protected under the first amendment rights to free speech, because much speechmaking these days is truly treasonous. To say to the world that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction is not only false, it's recklessly false.

Are we all naive enough to believe that they never existed? There are those who say that Bush made statements about WMD that were intentionally false, yet these facts turned out to be inarguably true. This is more than simple misunderstanding. It is disinformation; a tactic often used in wartime to mislead an opponent to help reach a military objective. In short, those who say these things are working against the effectiveness of our soldiers, and our government. They are traitors.

Then Murtha, Pelosi, and the whole gang of useful idiots is doing nothing but providing hope and encouragement to our enemies. And they call it patriotism, and somehow Kennedy and Kerry and McCain salute it.

It's disheartening to see the purveyors of this crap spout off on our national stage. The terrorists are hoping and believing that maybe we'll knock our own buildings down for them. If this isn't aid and comfort, what more can we give them?

Bottom line is we are at war, and we had better start acting like it. It seems sometimes that the only one who knows this is "W", and it's pathetic that he has to stop and explain it to all those who are "stuck on stupid". Move on, people. There's no "there" there.

You don't have to like the fact that we are forced to confront our godless enemies in a foreign land, but you do have to recognize that it's where we are today. Our so called "leaders" should refrain from the overt treason that disingenuous partisan politics represents.

What would Jesus Drive?

Environmentalism, in short, is the last refuge of socialism. - Philip Brennan

What would Jesus Drive?, Why, a big SUV, so he can carry more apostles with him. -- Rush Limbaugh

In a 2003 speech by author Michael Crichton, among other places, he raised the spectre of environmentalism as the next big religion.

With so many past failures, you might think that environmental predictions would become more cautious. But not if it's a religion. Remember, the nut on the sidewalk carrying the placard that predicts the end of the world doesn't quit when the world doesn't end on the day he expects. He just changes his placard, sets a new doomsday date, and goes back to walking the streets. One of the defining features of religion is that your beliefs are not troubled by facts, because they have nothing to do with facts.

And so it is with environmentalism.

This speech, and the landmark Philip Brennan article paint a pretty strong picture on why you should simply ignore all calls for dealing with global warming. In fact, if I were you, I'd think a bit about prepping for the next ice age.

In the meantime, there will be more hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and forest fires. It's gonna happen. And the simple truth is that anybody who wants you to park your SUV in order to save the planet is trying to convert you into his environmentalist religion. Think of him as more of a Jehovah's Witness. Tell him no thanks.

Conservative vs. Republican

One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation. – Thomas B. Reed (1886)

The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates. – Tacitus

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. – Ayn Rand

I profess, at the outset, to being a card carrying member of the Libertarian party. I don't feel any strong affinity or loyalty to the party; just a kind of "common identification" with the basic philosophy. The delicious irony is it is an organization made up of confirmed individualists. In that context, there probably isn't even a party platform, because that would require consensus, and individualists are parsimonious with their saluting of anything.

If there were a party platform it would be pretty simple, like repealing 90% of all laws, eliminating 90% of all bureacracies, and installing (for a change) a constitutional form of government.

Politicos today don't talk much about that. No, they talk about higher or lower funding of this bunch or that group, without even stopping to consider the absolute need. It's useful to see how we got this way. The government was founded on Federalist principles. That is, an expressly limited government. It was confusing enough in the 1780's when the so-called Federalist Party wound up supporting big government, and it took the Democratic-Republicans to finally win that battle (see this historical treatment).

Unfortunately, the war has gone poorly since then. It does appear that the modern day version of big government, the Democrat party is getting hammered the way the Federalist party did in the 1810's; only for us to to find now that the Republican Party is embracing all the big brother-inspired evil that folks didn't like about the Dems.

Let's examine the term "conservative". If by conservative you mean resistant to change; that can be said about both major parties. If however it means what it meant when the term applied to Barry Goldwater, Bill Buckley, and Ronald Reagan, it means something completely different.

Anyway, adopting the idea that limited government is still the domain of the so-called conservatives, then they have a common objective with libertarians and Libertarians, at least on the economic and political sides.

There is a very sharp divide at the moment between conservatives and Republicans. The opportunity does not exist for the Democrats, however. That is, unless the Dems somehow start a total retool and become the party of smaller government. Then we'll see a Federalist Party-like meltdown of the Republicans. Now THAT would be fun to watch.

Supreme Court as Playground

"Ms. Miers has not been a judge, but I regard that as a strength, not a weakness." --Harry Reid, D-Nevada

"I know her well enough to say that she's not going to change; 20 years from now, she will be the same person with the same philosophy as today." -- George W. Bush

"the worst damn-fool mistake I made as president." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower on his appointment of Earl Warren as CJOTSCOTUS

It floored me when I learned of Miers nomination. Not so much because it was her, but because of who was extolling her virtues. Harry Reid. I was hoping to hear about a nominee that Harry hated. Then I could be pretty sure that the nominee at least wasn't a communist. Likewise, I would want someone that Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer and their friends hate. Instead, I'm hearing that Bill Kristol, George Will, David Frum, and Rusty Limbaugh have a problem with this.

I didn't say much here about the Roberts nomination, but I am now marvelling at how the same president nominated both John Roberts and Harriet Miers. Bush-41 was one for two in his appointments, perhaps Bush-43 wanted to share that legacy too. Roberts could become the only real accomplishment of Bush's tenure (and that is all in the hands of Roberts now) but that possibility is amplified by the contrast between the two.

For a president who is wrong more often than he is right (recall: Social Security Privatization, Patriot Act, Immigration Amnesty), I suppose that we should feel lucky with one out of two. It just seems too much like the schoolyard playground situation where you need someone for right field, and so you pick your buddy because you don't know the other players.

Pork Barrel, Cajun Style

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."-- James Madison, in response to the 1792 congressional appropriation of $15,000 to assist some French refugees.

"I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity," adding that to approve such spending, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."-- Franklin Pierce, after he vetoed a bill in 1854 to help the mentally ill

"I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds . . . I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution." -- Grover Cleveland, after he vetoed an appropriation in 1887 to help drought-stricken counties in Texas

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government. And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility." -- George W. Bush

Well, well, well, George to the rescue. I can't help but feel pangs of sorrow and disappointment that George did not take the opportunity to instruct the media of the true calling of a federal government. How is it we've come this far that when we have a hurricane in Louisiana, people fold their arms and look to Washington for the solution. So now we have George going on the biggest ego trip since FDR, armed with nary a hint of the fundamental flaws of FEMA. After 5 years of piling bureacracy on top of bureacracy, we can't even find FEMA on the org chart, much less give it a job description.

The sad thing is that the dialog is centering on what went wrong, when what really went wrong was the persistent expectation that the federal government should even be involved. FEMA is as unconstitutional as any organization in government today. The stupid part is that people will continue to live below sea level, on fault lines, in forest fires, and in every conceivable harm's way when they know someone else is perfectly willing to build them a new home when the worst comes. It's like federally subsidized insurance for the chronically stupid.

Compassionate Conservatism, I have finally ascertained, truly sucks. The biggest handout since LBJ is at our door, and "W" is dealing out the debit cards.

I believe we are now seeing what will eventually turn Washington back to the Democrats, and this time it won't take a Perot to do it.