Interesting Items by Alex Gimarc, May 19, 2008

1. Elections – Part I
2. Elections – Part II
3. Appeasement
4. Polar Bear
5. California
6. Oil

1. Elections – P art I. This one is a bit of a thought piece, and perhaps a call to arms. I will try not to give in to my normal wishful thinking for the Good Guys to prevail in November. Rather, I am going to try to tie together some things that have been bothering me for a while in this election season. First off, a preamble: I am nominally a Republican because they are the most conservative group of folks around that have an organization that can regularly win elections. When they cease being conservative, I will go elsewhere. I have a little bit of a libertarian streak, though I do enjoy referring to them as loosertarians. I also am understanding and supportive of the social side of conservatism including the evangelicals. I probably could be best described as a Reaganite and p art of Norquist’s Leave Me Alone coalition. So how does all that stuff fit in today? The Republican P arty within the Beltway went native around 2000, and gave up their majority in both houses of congress six year later by trying to be democrat light rather than conservatives, by being more interested in getting reelected than getting something done. They misunderstood the reason they were installed in office with strong governing majorities in congress in 1994 was because they promised to stay out of our lives and leave us alone more than the other side would. I figured it would take a couple of decades to become sufficiently corrupt that they got tossed. We missed it by eight years. Where are we today? Well, we have a presidential candidate that panders to greens, supports immigration, was selected by independents and democrats in early primary states, appears to be a fiscal conservative, claims to support strict constructionist judges and has nominally libertarian views on most social issues. He also glories in sticking a sharp stick in the eyes of conservatives on a daily basis. We have a democrat majority in both houses of congress, elected because they ran people who were less corrupt, as or more socially conservative than their Republican opponents in 2006. Yet the leadership that they have sworn oaths of fealty to is far, far more leftist, socialist, destructive of our property rights and liberty than any Republican defeated in 2006. Conventional wisdom is that they will greatly increase their governing majorities in both houses of congress in November, with Republicans losing three special elections for normally safe Republican seats so far this year. Yet polling indicates that the general public is not buying something, for congressional approval numbers are sitting at or below the numbers that turned out congressional majorities in 1994 and 2006.

2. Elections – P art II. So what are the various national Republican campaign committees doing this year? As usual, they are defending all incumbents – regardless of how conservative they may or may not have been. They are running some of the most inept campaigns in recent memory, losing to democrats running as social conservatives, protectionists and populists. They are also losing elections, having lost Denny Hastert’s seat in Illinois, Woody Jenkins seat in Louisiana, and a long-time safe seat in Mississippi in a district that went for President Bush with over 60% of the total vote in 2004. In Hastert’s instance, they ran a squish conservative; in the second, they ran a guy with a 10-year history of personal and political connections to David Duke. The Mississippi race had a democrat social conservative running as a populist / protectionist against a guy who didn’t focus is message, said all the right squish things, and tried to save his carcass at the end by tying his democrat opponent to Barack Obama and Reverend Wright. Calling people liberals isn’t working any more. Real policy differences weren’t ever used by any of the three Republicans in any of the seats. The Mississippi democrat campaign supporters (as usual) passed out a bunch of fliers in black churches the Sunday before the election accusing the Republican being a KKK sympathizer – which is standard democrat fare for which the incumbent had no answer. You’d figure that after these sorts of democrat dirty tricks for the last four decades, we’d at least come up with someone who would answer the charge and return the fire in kind. But we don’t seem to be able to do so. We even have the specter of New Gingrich (who was far more green than anyone wants to admit to as Speaker of the House) sitting on a couch with current House Squeaker Nancy Pelosi doing a global warming commercial. His excuse is that conservatives need to be p art of the global warming discussion; to p articipate in tying the rope that will hang us, destroy our property rights and our liberty. It appears that the national guys have completely lost touch with the grass roots. Still, depending on how we play it, this may be one of the greatest opportunities since 1980 or the greatest loss since 1974. In 1980, there was a growing grass roots movement toward conservatism, and it had several strong spokesmen – Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman among others. Today, we know everything we knew in 1980, but have been worn down by nearly 30 years of p artisan warfare, corruption on our side of the political fence, and do not have a leader at the national level. We do have a far more effective way of getting the conservative message out to the general public as the drive-by media has committed suicide in support of their favorite leftist. So where is the play this year for conservatives? Clearly, it is at the state and local level. The left and their lackeys in the drive-by media want us to be demoralized, to stay home, and not p articipate. Yet they are running vermin for local, state and national office and expect us to sit this one out? No way. I think conservatives and libertarians ought to retake the P arty, support the most conservative candidate during the primary seasons this summer and fall, and then remove every single elected democrat possible from office in November. If we have to toss out our guys every two years, let’s do so. But the priority today is to destroy the other side. Our message to our candidates ought to be: Do what you said you were going to do. Keep your nose clean. Or get out. If you don’t get out, we will gladly toss you out of office, and do so repeatedly. The actions of the North Carolina Republican P arty ought to be an example to us all, for they shrugged off the leftist accusations of racism for using Jeremiah Wright in an ad against the Obama-endorsed democrat candidate for governor; told the McCain campaign and McCain himself to pound sand; and took the fight for governor right at the pandering democrat himself. They did it with style, grace and good humor. We can do the same. The other side only wins this if we withdraw from the battlefield. I do not plan on withdrawing until they are defeated and destroyed. Now is a real good a time to join the fight. Do it now or get buried. We do not need national leadership, for we as citizens have the political power (despite what our black-robed Masters may think) and are the leaders.

3. Appeasement. President Bush stirred up the leftists nicely midweek with a speech to the Israeli Knesset on the anniversary of the founding of Israel as sovereign modern nation. He noted that appeasement never works, and that some people that think that using a p articularly ingenious argument against a tyrant will keep them from being a danger to us all. He used a quotation from a US Senator when German tanks were rolling across Poland that if only he could have talked to Hitler, this would have never happened. Instantly, the Barack Obama campaign decided that he was the target of the presidential commentary, and trotted out all the usual suspects taking President Bush to task for blasting him personally while overseas. Interestingly enough, President Bush never once mentioned Barack Obama in the speech. It appears that Obama and his supporters have a very, very thin skin, as they snivel and whine at the drop of a hat. They cannot stand criticism of any nature. They try to deflect it by making sure that nobody says anything negative about their guy. Should you do so, you are immediately branded as a racist, or accused of improperly making political attacks on their guy while overseas. The second p art of this is the history of democrats – former democrat presidents like C arter and Clinton, a wide array of democrat members of congress, traveling overseas over the course of the last eight years blasting away at President Bush for everything under the sun. Apparently the notion that politics stops at the waters’ edge only applies to Republicans and never to democrats. Finally, the democrats are on the cusp of nominating a naïf, an idiot, a self-satisfied fool for their presidential nominee. And in order to keep from blowing their p arty’s coalitions to smithereens, they have to make believe he knows what he is talking about. For the record, Bush’s comments could have been directed to sitting Israeli Prime Minister Olmert that has been accused over the years of being far more interested in talking than fighting.

4. Polar Bear. The Dep artment of the Interior announced midweek that they would be listing the Polar Bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The decision is an attempt by the Secretary and his people to walk a fine line between a listing as endangered and telling the greens to sod off. The decision is a mistake, as numbers of polar bears worldwide have doubled over the last 50 years. Given that we have developed the Arctic substantially over the last century, that doubling of overall population numbers ought to be celebrated as a breathtaking success rather than as a failure. The decision is based on the notion that Arctic sea ice coverage has decreased significantly over the last 30 years. Well, that is correct, as the cherry-picked sea ice coverage number was carefully selected in 1978, at or near one of the coldest years last century. If you select your baseline at a temperature minimum, you bloody well will get a decrease in total iced coverage as the climate moves away from that minimum. Note also that the decision is based on the prediction that sea ice coverage will decrease over the next 50 years to the point where polar bears will no longer be able to hunt, den, or thrive. Note that we have only have had good observations of Arctic sea ice coverage for the last 30 years, and only spotty observations for the hundred or so years before. The decision is not based on any science, though these days, climate and environmental science has become as politicized as Lysenko’s agricultural science did under Stalin. We will hope that is will not end up being as deadly to the general public as Lysenko’s. Polar bear listing is nothing more than an attempt by the greens to use the Endangered Species Act to shut down all new energy exploration and generation in this nation under the guise of protecting the polar bear from extinction. It is an attack on wealth of us all at the expense of the wealth of the lawyers that will be litigating this travesty for the next century. It is junk science at its worst.

5. California. The California Supreme Court by a single vote threw out a state ballot initiative that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The decision was a 172-page exercise in tortured logic, self congratulation, and justification of this new judicial usurpation of the will of the people. Barack Obama immediately issued a press release that took sides of the issue. To his credit, McCain said that these decisions ought to be decided by the people of California rather than judges. Governor Schwarzenegger said he sup-ported the decision and would implement it. Note that this decision tossed out a ballot initiative that passed with over 60% of the vote. There is another initiative underway that ought to qualify for the ballot that will pass a constitutional amendment that will define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. It is expected to get the million or so signatures needed that will get it on the ballot. Callers to Laura Ingraham late in the week were quite worried that they would not be able to win the vote come November. Some other pundits believe that this single act of judicial activism will put California into play for John McCain come November. Who knows? What I do know is that there will probably be a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November in California and that State Supreme Court judges in California are elected. Chief Justice Rose Bird was tossed out of office nearly 30 years ago over an outrageous anti-death penalty ruling. I expect there to be a few more follow her into infamy should Californians choose liberty over submission to an imperial judiciary. California gave us the Vigilance Committees in the mid 19 th Century. Perhaps it is time to dust them off, as the ruling elite, the political class no longer follows the law as written or passed by the people of California. Note also that both the Massachusetts and California homosexual marriage decisions were each decreed by a single vote of a single activist judge. And note that neither would have a leg to stand upon had the SCOTUS not embraced the entire mess via their outrageous Lawrence v Texas decision a few years ago.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

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