HOW ABOUT A WALL OF SEPARATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND EVERYTHING

Liberals are genetically wired to perpetually misunderstand this, but I will remind them again. The "Wall of Separation" between church and state is not meant to protect government, but to protect religion. The Founding Fathers knew from history the devastating effects of mixing church and government. The various wars of religion throughout Europe were caused by governments using religion to justify their power grabs. On a less violent matter, the English Monarchy had co-opted the Church of England and the Roman Empire had done the same to Catholicism. I am confident that 75% of liberals know that the Wall of Separation is not in the Constitution, so I won't get into that argument here.

Now, isn't it about time we develop a Wall of Separation between government and many of our other institutions to protect them from this corrupting influence? Government, after all, has been responsible for the most heinous of crimes in the history of mankind. Governments start wars, commit genocide, and legalize and promote slavery. Why do the liberals turn to government when the government has been the worst offender of human rights? If those examples are too extreme, let's look at some that are for the most part, less deadly.

There is of course a need for government, despite what the poor anarchist and wealthy libertarian will tell you. But it has to be controlled by the people. That is why we adopted a Bill of Rights.

Government and Healthcare- Take a look at Medicaid and Medicare, government health programs for the poor and elderly. They are corrupt and broke. The government now wants to take control of everybody's healthcare; resulting in more corruption, more debt, and healthcare rationing. If a Muslim bomber on a watch list can still get past a federal bureaucracy and onto an airplane almost ten years after 9/11, how effective do you think a federal healthcare bureaucracy is going to be?
There is a need to fix our current healthcare system that operates with 5 major players; the government, medical professionals and administrators, private insurers, lawyers, and of course, sick people. Allowing insurers to compete across state lines will increase competition and lower costs; this is axiomatic. If you remove government regulations on insurers and get control of the malpractice vultures like John Edwards, the costs will go down. Controlling malpractice will make it unnecessary for doctors to over-diagnose with and use expensive and superfluous diagnostic techniques. Competition will reduce costs. If you allow less government control of the health insurance market and allow competition across state lines, costs will go down; it is axiomatic.

Government and Education- The sad state of our primary schools is the result of government interference. Bloated local and state governments combined with corrupt unions are hurting our children. Local schools are expensive and full of waste, fraud and abuse. If we modeled our primary schools after our university systems with a combination of competing public, private and parochial schools, this competition would improve the education of our children.
Government and Business- One of our two major political parties is supported by inefficient and corrupt unions that have also managed to kill our steel and car industries. Both political parties have regulated businesses to the point where only the largest ones can survive. These businesses in turn send campaign contributions to both parties in the form of protection money which guards them against smaller competitors. Capitalism, which among others things, has successful cured poverty and disease in much of the world, has been replaced with corporatism.

Government and public services-The Post Office is a case study in ineptitude. Government run, quasi-governmental, or heavily regulated utilities are inefficient. Ask California about their brown outs.
Government and race- Slavery was a government institution that up until the 19th century was practiced in countries that had the most progressive type of government possible, representative democracies. The US government has since given blacks Jim Crow, segregation, ghettos and welfare. I really don't understand why a majority of the black community prefers big government programs. Government is fixated on dividing us among artificial racial divides. There is only one race, human.

Government and energy- The government refuses to drill domestically do to the pressure of environmental groups. Environmentalists need to understand that tradeoffs are required. Drilling for oil, clean coal, natural gas, and building safe nuclear power plants will take care of most of our needs until we further develop alternative energies. We will never be energy independent; that is a campaign slogan. The government has chosen the worst possible energy "solution." Forcing us to buy oil from countries that support terrorists and investing in alternative energies that with today's technology, fall far short of what is needed.

Government and science- For some reason, scientific research that is funded by the government is considered to be of unquestionable authority, yet science funded by private business is considered to be dubious. Though both sides have some practitioners who will fudge the results to get their desired results, I believe someone who is funded by the government is more likely to do so. If the government is paying your university a million dollars a year to see if acid rain exists, you are going to find acid rain and exaggerate it impact in order to continue to funding stream. If the government insists that climate change is real in order to validate their global income redistribution initiative, they will pay scientists to find these results for them. In many cases, science is no longer about seeking the truth, it is about political movements. Environmental laws based on bad science are killing people (the banning of DDT has resulted in literally millions of needless malaria deaths) and keeping the poorest in the world poor.

Government and the media-Government run media (NPR, CPB, etc) is an oxymoron. Major media outfits that are complicit with the government are shameful. Once upon a time in this country, the media was a watchdog, now it is a lapdog.

Government and charity- Domestic charities are nothing more than pork for individual legislators. International charity is keeping much of the developing world dependent on foreign aid and in poverty. Billions that are given to corrupt governments end up in private Swiss bank accounts.

Every form of government suffers from some level of corruption; even our representative democracy which is supposed to be the purest. We have outright lawbreakers such as Representatives Jefferson and Cunningham, to those who walk the thin line of ethics, to those exhibiting bad personal behavior. Anything of value in this country will be seized upon by politicians and used to forward their own agendas. It is a fitting analogy that the government got involved last year with the used car business last year, they are about as trustworthy.

The wall of separation exists in the design of our government but is has long been broken. It is up to us, the people, to repair it. Low voting turnout, complacent media overlooking their favorite candidates' behavior, a citizenry who is willing to surrender freedom for security, career politicians who have changed the laws to almost guarantee their re-election, and corporatism are just a few of our many problems. It is time for us to start electing courageous public officials who will resurrect the 9th and 10th Amendments to our Constitution that were killed off during the War Between the States.

Lovers of government often claim that religion is too dangerous because of its ends justifies the means style of thinking. But this is more prominent with the statists; just look at Stalin, Hitler, Mao and the global warmers.

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SARAH PALIN IS A ROGUE

Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue,” comes out on 17 NOV. It has
intimidated the liberals so much that someone is simultaneously
releasing a demeaning coloring book entitled “Going Rouge.” The
liberal media and Democrats are attempting to ridicule her because
they fear her. The conservative movement in this country has figured
this out; it is too bad that the Republican establishment hasn’t.
They have been told about this, but the elitists just refuse to
believe it. She is nothing more than a trophy vice-presidential
candidate to them and they just can’t see her in a larger role for the
Republican Party. Sarah is no friend of the moderate Republican
establishment. They generally show her respect due to her fund
raising ability, but other than that they will not give her the time
of day. I would really like to see them congeal behind her and
elevate her to a run for the presidency in 2012. But like everything
else she will have to do this by herself. She is a rogue, which can
be defined as a solid conservative, unlike a maverick who is a squishy
moderate.

Don’t try to tell me she is not qualified. She meets the
qualifications set forth in the Constitution and has been a governor.
There are several reasons why she should run for the presidency in
2012:

First, President Obama is heading down the liberal Jimmy Carter path
of the one-term presidency. He is extremely vulnerable.

Second, Sarah is the closest thing to a solid conservative that we
have on the national stage. She can swing the Republicans away from
the left wing and back to their conservative roots--That would be the
Goldwater/Reagan roots, not the Lincoln/Whig big government roots.
For too long we have been rallying around moderates like George Bush
and John McCain who have helped mire us in the trappings of big
government spending, which leads to corruption, socialist bailouts,
government healthcare and the wavering on the illegal immigration
issue. Right now the Republicans are rudderless and their strategy
appears to be to just hang around until the voters become angered by
the smug Democrats.

Sarah’s conservative popularism has a Jacksonian appeal. Just as the
Tennessee frontiersman Jackson was the first president from outside
the eastern established elites from Massachusetts and Virginia, Sarah
is an Alaskan frontierswoman from outside the eastern elite Ivy
Leaguers who have been running the country for far too long. It is
time to empty Washington of all of the entrenched specially privileged
incumbents and Sarah could lead this groundswell.

Third, Sarah can raise a lot of money. As much as the Republican
establishment, Democrats, and state run liberal media like to think it
is solely due to her good looks, it is because she has a message. A
message that has been percolating to the top starting with the
over-spending George W Bush compassionate conservative administration (aka big government) and more recently with the Tea Party demonstrations.

Fourth, she is a real self made, not the phony Hillary Clinton type.
Sarah rose from modest means to the PTA, to mayor of a small town, to the governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate without the
help of her husband. Hillary hitched her wagon to Bill ever since she
failed the Washington DC bar exam. She got her first job at the
University of Arkansas because of Bill, she was accepted into the Rose
Law Firm after Bill became Arkansas Attorney General, she became a
full partner at Rose after Bill became governor, she became a senator
following Bill’s presidency, and she became Secretary of State because
President Obama wanted to condemn his closest rival and her powerful husband to Siberia (Haveyou noticed that all the tougher foreign assignments have beenbypassing the Secretary of State and going to men like Vice-President Joe Biden, Senator John Kerry and Bill Clinton?).

Sarah is truly a strong, self-made woman. Not the liberal type which
is nothing more than a victim of something who has persevered. She
will never be accepted by the liberal feminists because of her
conservative beliefs and the fact that she is anti-abortion. She
carried a handicapped child to term and allowed her teenage daughter
to have a baby without sacrificing either one to the liberal Canaanite
child sacrificing religion. Her daughter was victimized by a man-jerk
but has refused to play the role of victim.

Fifth, she is an authentic Middle American. Haven’t you noticed that
most people running for the presidency try to run as common folk?
Sarah doesn’t have to fake it. She is not the son of a millworker who
happens to be a multimillionaire trial lawyer (Edwards), a Tennessee
farmer who happened to have a Senator dad (Gore), a simple Texan whohappened to belong to two of Connecticut's most prominent families (Bush), nor the son of a woman from Kansas who was raised by a wealthy bank executive grandmother and sent to private schools in Honolulu (Obama).

Sixth, you do have to factor in her attractiveness and the fact that
many people will vote for her due to her beauty and charm. That is
the way it usually is, the most charming candidate gets elected.
Liberal feminists hate this because their collective Beauty Quotient
(BQ) averages slightly lower than Rosie O'Donnell. Sarah was Miss
Wasilla and a runner-up to Miss Alaska. I recently saw a list of the
supposed ten most attractive liberal female bloggers and they looked
like the ten finalist from the Miss Cleveland beauty contest.

Regardless of how anybody attacks Sarah; over her intelligence,
inexperience, common education, inferior background, religion, etc,
Rush Limbaugh has noticed something. He said, “An attack against
Sarah Palin is an attack against Middle America.” I believe that is
true whether it is front the political left, Republican establishment,
or the state run mainstream media. Sarah Palin is Americana.

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GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS FOR PRESIDENT

Along with Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin, I would like to see Army
General David Petraeus run for president. It’s about time we get
another real military leader in the White House. Let’s take a look at
our Presidents who were military veterans.

Note- Some of our Presidents in the 19th century are given credit for
serving in their state militias (Jefferson, Lincoln, etc), and Ronald
Reagan served briefly in the Army Reserve.

Presidential veterans

George Washington- Army
Thomas Jefferson- Army
James Madison- Army
James Monroe- Army
Andrew Jackson- Army
William Henry Harrison- Army
John Tyler- Army
James Polk- Army
Zachary Taylor- Army
Millard Fillmore- Army
Franklin Pierce- Army
James Buchanan- Army
Abraham Lincoln- Army
Andrew Johnson- Army
Ulysses Grant- Army
Rutherford Hayes- Army
James Garfield- Army
Chester Arthur- Army
Benjamin Harrison- Army
William McKinley- Army
Theodore Roosevelt- Army
Harry Truman- Army
Dwight Eisenhower- Army
John Kennedy- Navy
Lyndon Johnson- Navy
Richard Nixon- Navy
Gerald Ford- Navy
Jimmy Carter- Navy
Ronald Reagan- Army
George H Bush- Navy
George W Bush- Air Force

Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan
are all at the top of my list of our greatest Presidents. I am not a
Lincoln fan, and Jackson makes the list because he was our first
President who was a common man, and probably the last president to
favor a small government before the Whig-Republicans and later
Democrats starting our country down the road to centralized power and
socialism.

Lesson Learned- Vote for Army leaders and this isn’t just because of
their numbers which are skewed in their favor.--Obviously there was no
Air Force established in the first part of our nation’s history, and
the Navy was not fully developed until late in the 19th century. But
just look at the presidents over the last 50 years and you can spot a
lot of underperforming presidents who were non-Army veterans.

The case for Petraeus

General Petraeus has obviously shown us his leadership and management
skills throughout his Army career that has culminated with his success
as a commander in the Middle East. He is a West Point graduate and
holds a PhD from Princeton. As I have stated on numerous occasions, I
am not a fan of elite Ivy League Presidents, but at least this time
the predictable liberals cannot attempt to label him as a dumb
Republican as they mislabeled Eisenhower, Reagan and Bush the Younger.

General Petraeus is a former 101st Airborne Commander. Ain’t nobody
going to mess with the USA while he is in office. And finally,
remember the “General Betray Us” ads from Moveon.org? Moveon.org
hates him. That is one of the best reasons to run for office. We
know we have the right guy.

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SARAH PALIN’S LACK OF POPULARITY IN THE POLITICAL CIRCLES

The number one reason Sarah lacks political popularity is because she
is a good conservative and both political parties resent this. The
Democrats fear her in the next presidential election because they know
President Obama has gone too far left and the country will be due for
a swing back to the right. The Republican establishment fears her
because the current McCain-Gingrich-Powell centrist wing of the party
is in control and they don’t want her to win a national election.
They enjoy the limited power that the Democrats and left wing
mainstream media have given them and have eagerly traded their
principals for face time in front of the camera and favorable press
coverage (McCain with amnesty, Gingrich with global warming, and
Powell with his Obama endorsement). Though both parties claim to represent the middle class, the ruling elites really don’t. They like us for our votes, but look what happens when a Middle American tries to rise to the top. Both parties commence a beat down.

Sarah Palin is Middle America. She is the self-made Governor of
Alaska who was both the youngest and first female ever elected to that
position. She was the first female to be selected as a vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party. But since she does not have the eastern establishment Ivy League background, did not take office through family connections or a family fortune, and did not sell her sold to special interests on the way to the top, she mustn’t be allowed to succeed.

Sarah should be the toast of both parties, but neither party rests on
their stated principals. They rest on the single principal of maintaining political power and she must not be allowed to take any of that away. The Democrats should adore her because she is the textbook
feminist; a self-made successful working mother. The Republicans
should adore her because she is a true conservative in every political
and social issue. But neither party does and here’s why.
To both parties she is a good-looking and charismatic independent
politician who shops at Wal-Mart and disagrees with them. She
understands that for the near future our energy problem is best
handled by fossil fuels. She also believes that the free market
should fix the economy despite the pain the adjustment will cause.
All of this makes her a true outsider. Not the phony “outsider” many
of our elected leaders claim to be.

The Democrats have their own idea of a feminist. A Democrat feminist
is a victim of something who supports abortion. Democrats believe in
groupism and thus every woman must act in a certain way or they are
not allowed to belong. Sarah has not been the victim of a philandering husband (Clinton, Spitzer, Edwards…) and did not terminate the birth of her handicapped child or her grandchild. She has a down-home, unlearned manner of speaking and this rubs the Democrats who are all for appearances. This is one of the reasons why Bush derangement syndrome was so widespread in the left; they felt that he embarrassed our country.

The Republican rulers do not support commoners either. They prefer an Ivy League inside the beltway type over an Alaskan mother of five kids from a modest background. She is principled and this embarrasses them as it reminds them of how they surrendered their principals during the years they were rising to the top. Republicans like to call themselves mavericks, but she is a real maverick. She is an outsider and very unpredictable (recent resignation). She also energizes the base and those are the people the Republicans avoid outside of election season. Votes are needed for their initial election to
office, but they are soon forgotten because the incumbents have
changed the rules over the years and virtually guaranteed their
reelections. Once they are in the voters are no longer important.
They get their political power, recognition, acceptance and lifetime
wealth by becoming members of the inside the beltway club, rubbing
elbows with lobbyists and crafting laws that increase their personal
fortune.

The Republican Party is split right now between those who thought
McCain did the right thing in selecting her and those who do not. The
Joe Six Pack Republicans support her; the elite ruling class does not.
I am convinced that the only reason Senator McCain selected her was
to shore up his conservative base. Once he lost, the Republican
establishment blamed her instead of blaming themselves for selecting
an aging milquetoast Senator who happened to be a war hero.

The mainstream media also have their role to play in Sarah’s political
career. Though she has a true rags-to-(political) riches story, she
cannot be allowed to reach the top. Her life would make an
interesting movie about an underdog, but solely for the entertainment
value. During the presidential campaign she was categorized as an
undereducated country girl who was out of her league while Joe Biden
was praised for his knowledge and experience, despite the fact that he
is a high functioning moron. They undoubtedly also had a roll in all
of the ethics charges that were brought against her, but she has been
cleared and this will end up helping her. She has already been vetted
for the next election. Just remember, until she is finished off, the
media will continue to try to make you feel stupid for supporting her.
Her supporters must also be marginalized.

Sarah shouldn’t have to climb over the GOP establishment in order to
get to the White House but that is what she must do to overcome the
McCain-Gingrich-Powell establishment. She also shouldn’t have to try
to establish her outsider status with the media whose definition of a
political outsider is a Chicago politician who never held a real job.
But that is the way it is going to be.

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I don't often post other people's material, but this letter made an impression on me

An Open Letter to Our Nation’s Leadership

From Glenn Beck's radio program

I am Janet Contreras, a concerned, home-grown American citizen. I am 53, and I have been a registered Democrat all of my adult life. Before the last Presidential election, I registered Republican because I no longer feel the Democratic Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. I now no longer feel the Republican Party represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me. The fact is I no longer feel any political party or representative in Washington represents my views or works to pursue issues important to me.

There must be someone, please tell me who you are. Please stand up and tell me you are there and are willing to fight for our Constitution as it was written. Please do it now.

You might ask yourselves what my views and issues are that I would feel so horribly disenfranchised by both major political parties. What kind of nut job am I? Will you please tell me? These are briefly my views and issues for which I seek representation:

* Illegal Immigration—I want you to stop coddling illegal immigrants and secure our borders. Close the underground tunnels. Stop the violence and trafficking in drugs and people. No amnesty, not again. Been there, done that, no resolution. P.S. I am not a racist. This not to be confused with legal immigration.

* TARP Bill—I want it repealed and no further funding supplied to it. We told you “NO!” but you did it anyway. I want the remaining unfunded 95% repealed. Freeze! Repeal!

* Czars—I want the circumvention of our checks and balances stopped immediately. Fire the Czars. No more Czars. Government officials answer to the process not the President. Stop trampling on our Constitution and honor it.

* Cap & Trade—the debate on global warming is NOT over, there IS more to say.

* Universal Health Care—I will not be rushed into another expensive decision. Don’t you dare pass this in the middle of the night and then go on break. Slow down!

* Growing Government Control—I want states rights and sovereignty fully restored. I want less government in my life, not more. Shrink it down. Please mind your own business; you have enough to do with your REAL obligations. Let’s start there.

* ACORN—I do not want ACORN or its affiliates in charge of our 2010 census. I want them investigated. I also do not want mandatory escrow fees contributed to them on every real estate deal that closes. Stop all funding to ACORN and its affiliates pending impartial audit and investigation. I do not trust them with the taking of the census or with taxpayer money. Face up to the allegations against them and get it resolved before the taxpayers get any further involved with them. It walks like a duck and talks like a duck—hello… stop protecting political buddies. You work for the people. Investigate.

* Redistribution of Wealth—No. If I work for it, it is mine. I have always worked for people with more money than I have because they gave me jobs. That is the only redistribution of wealth I support. I never got a job from a poor person. Why do want me to hate my employers? What do your have against shareholders making a profit?

* Charitable Contributions—although I never got a job from a poor person, I have helped many in need. Charity belongs in our local communities where we know our needs best and can use local talent and resources. Butt out, please. We want to do this ourselves.

* Corporate Bail Outs—knock it off! Sink or swim like the rest of us. If there are hard times ahead, we will be better off just getting to it and letting the strong survive. Quick and painful, like ripping off a band aid. We will pull together. Great things happen in America under great hardship. Give us a chance to innovate. We cannot disappoint you more than you have disappointed us.

* Transparency and Accountability—how about it? No really, let’s have it. Let’s say we give the “buzz” words a rest and have some straight, honest talk. Please stop trying to manipulate and appease me with cleaver wording. I am not the idiot you obviously take me for. Stop sneaking around meeting in back rooms making deals with your friends. It will only be a prelude to your criminal investigation. Stop hiding things from me.

* Unprecedented Quick Spending—stop it, now. Take a breath. Listen to “The People.”

Let’s just slow down and get some more input from some “non-politicians” on the subject. Stop making everything an emergency. Stop speed reading our bills into law.

I am not an activist. I am not a community organizer. Nor am I a terrorist, a militant nor a violent person. I am a mother and grandmother. I am a working woman. I am busy, busy, busy and tired, tired, tired. I thought we elected competent people to take care of the business of government so that we could work, raise our families, pay our bills, have a little recreation, complain about taxes, endure our hardships, pursue our personal goals, cut our lawns and wash our cars on weekends, and be responsible, contributing members of society and teach our children to be the same, all the while living in the home of the free and land of the brave.

I entrusted you with upholding our Constitution and believed in the checks and balances to keep you from getting too far off course. What happened? You are very far off course. Do you really think that I find humor in hiring a speed reader to unintelligibly ramble through a bill you signed into law without knowing what it contained? I do not! It is a mockery of the responsibility I have entrusted to you. It is a slap in the face! I am not laughing—the arrogance!

Why is it that I feel as if you would not trust me to make a single decision about my own life and how I would live it, but you expect that I should trust you with the debt that you have laid on all of us and our children? We did not want that TARP bill. We said “NO!” We would repeal it if we could. I am not sure that we still cannot. There is such urgency and recklessness in all the recent spending. From my perspective, it seems that you have all gone insane.

I also know that I am far from alone in these feelings. Do you honestly feel that your current pursuits have merit to patriotic Americans? We want it to stop. We want to put the brakes on everything that is being rushed by us and forced upon us. We want our voice back!

You have forced us to put our lives on hold to straighten out the mess you are making. We will have to give up our vacations, our time spent with our children, any relaxation time we may have had and money we cannot afford to spend on you to bring our concerns to Washington.

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THANK YOU SARAH PALIN FOR CULLING THE HERD

There is a division in the conservative movement at this time. I think it can be traced back to one event; the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice-Presidential candidate. The self-entitled sophisticated elite of the conservative movement opposed that selection and thought it cost John McCain votes. The common folk of the conservative movement believe this is the only reason we voted for McCain. Now that Sarah has formed a fundraising Political Action Committee (SarahPAC), ostensibly to raise money for legal bills, but possibly for 2012 campaign money, the phony members of the conservative movement are panicking and doing dumb stuff like lashing out at Rush Limbaugh, and selecting Michael Steele as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The sophisticated phony members of the conservative movement are those who worship the power of the Democratic Party. We will call them Democons. They want to expand the Republican Party in order to win elections and solidify their centralized powerbase in Washington DC. Contrary to the constitutional principle of federalism (power split between Washington, DC, the states, and the people). They are working to expand the party’s appeal to the voters, but not be conveying a clear Reaganesque-conservative message, but by watering down core conservative principles. Have you ever noticed that conservatives are expected to enlarge their tent because they are the narrow minded ones? The liberals are never asked to enlarge their tent to include, let's say, pro-lifers, christians, etc).

They tell us that they have been fighting against abortion, public education, high taxes, the loss of family values, etc for that last 30 years but they only thing they ever actually get accomplished is an occasional carrot on a string tax cut. Which, by the way, helps most of them, the wealthy ruling class. I believe in low taxes and I am not trying to engage in the politics of envy. I bring this up merely to illustrate that our Republican politicians will get done what is most important to them first. Their personal wealth trumps their moral convictions.

The common folk our now revolting with the Tea Party movement. The Democrats and mainstream media ignored the movement and the Republican leadership is just hoping that it will go away. The Republicans refuse to realize that this movement is as much a condemnation of them as it is against President Ovbama and the Democrat Congress.

I hope the movement expands into a new non-violent Sons of Liberty group. We are tired of our career class politicians who have irresponsibly handled our federal budget in order to ensure their reelections, engage in social engineering, are in the midst of destroying our economy, crap all over federalism, and are pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility. This entitled class do not think they were elected by the people to serve them for a short time. They think it is their God-given right to rule over us. We are tired of Republicans who claim that bipartisanship means moving to the left on all of our social issues.

Keep going Sarah. Separate the wheat from the chaff. And if you are seriously seeking the presidency, I have just the running mate for you; Miss California, Carrie Prejean. She has more moral courage then any of our entrenched Republicans. She chose her personal beliefs over her ambition. How many of our political leaders can say the same.

Wow! What a ticket! SARAH AND CARRIE 2012

Carrie has the same qualifications as President Obama. She is good looking and articulate, and her time as Miss California probably gives her more presidential experience than a community organizer. And I bet she would eat Joe Biden for lunch during a vice-presidential debate.

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GEORGE W. BUSH'S PRESIDENCY PT1

(I really don't know why I placed this one under the Right Wing page- W is hardly the right wing politician)

It probably takes 20-30 years to accurately assess a president's effectiveness. But I will share some thoughts about George Bush.

When Bush ran for president in 2000, I initially thought his "compassionate conservatism" was a campaign tactic used to try to garner the support of moderate Democrat voters and Blue Dog Democrat politicians, while at the same time attempting to re-brand Republicanism as a party for all people. But he and it soon failed us as a domestic policy. Big, ineffective government grew out of control under a president who was supposed to be conservative. Compassionate conservatism has greased the skids for our downward slide to socialism and has set back the Republican Party, a trend which his father had started.

So for what its worth here is a two-part look at Bush's presidency. Part 1-His Domestic Policy, and part 2-His Foreign Policy.

(Part 1) DOMESTIC POLICY

GOOD RATING

The White House- President Bush restored respect to the office. But that wasn't hard to do considering his predecessor.

Mid term Election 2002- President Bush was one of the few presidents to gain seats in Congress during the mid-term election. This was helped by 9/11 and the War on Terrorism.

Tax cut- President Bush managed to get a temporary tax cut passed, but failed to modernize and simplify our complex, outdated tax system.

Supreme Court- President Bush gets an A- for his Supreme Court picks of Justices Roberts and Alito. It would have been an A+, had he not first selected Harriett Myers instead of Alito.

Environment- President Bush used his executive authority to loosen up economically stifling environmental clean air and water regulations.

NEUTRAL RATING

The Patriot Act- The country needed an overhaul of its intelligence collecting laws due to the recent technological advances in communication. But this one rubs against my libertarian instincts. I haven't donned my tinfoil hat yet, but laws like this could evolve into privacy pirates.

Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. This program helps sustain the religious groups who are supporting social services. It is a good thing to support religious organizations that help with social services, but did we have to create another bureaucracy? What kind of silly restrictions do you think these organizations have to operate under? And remember, whenever the federal government starts a new bureaucracy, the states follow with their own versions so they can get some of the federal tax money, and raise state taxes to start their own bureaucracies, adding more levels of incompetence and inefficiency.

FAILED RATING

Political reform

Vetoes-President Bush's first veto was six years into his presidency. Do you think he may have used it a little more often, especially to control the budget and pork spending?

Social Security reform- It was nice that President Bush had the political courage to openly discuss this political "third rail," but the reform effort died quickly. We need to wean America off of this legalized Ponzi scheme. It was designed back in the 1930s when Americans were not investors, but a huge chunk of Americans are now part of the investor class. There is no need for the Social Security pension.

Energy- President Bush proclaimed that we had to end our "our addiction to oil." That is utter nonsense. The reason we rely so much on oil is that it is the best energy source on the market right now. If he is such a supporter of the free market, like he claims, why doesn't he pay attention to the rules in is market? We have the nuclear technology to fix our energy problems but few politicians have the courage to push the issue. We need to build more reactors and drill our own oil.

Education-No Child Left Behind. Although this was a misguided effort to increase school performance, he did manage to bring the issue of school reform to the forefront. But all this program ended up doing was throwing more money at the problem and creating a larger federal education bureaucracy. I am against national involvement in our schools. Schools are a state issue and school reform should be in the form of school choice. If you want to improve our public schools then introduce competition. No Child Left Behind merely lower the standards of testing, creatively redefined drop outs to lower their percentage, and ration resources so gifted students were punished. It did however help military recruitment by forcing schools to share information with recruiters.

McCain Feingold- I lost a lot of respect for the man when he signed this bill while stating at the same time that he doubted its constitutionality (veto?). This bill was a disgrace that failed to meet its primary purpose of "getting money out of politics." All it managed to do was limit our free speech, and give our incumbents more protection to hold onto their seats. You cannot get money out of politics. What we need is full disclosure so we know who owns our politicians. Politics is just another market and it should be a free market. Let the people donate to whoever they want. If you limit the donations, then only the wealthy, who can finance their own campaigns, will run for office.

Prescription Drug/ Medicare modernization Act- We are slowly heading down the road to socialized medicine. Socialized medicine does not work. Socializing healthcare would be like socializing supermarkets. If we all paid a fee to the federal government for our food and then were allowed to go shopping for anything we wanted, what would happen? People would take more than they needed because was "free." Our supermarkets would empty of food and the government would have to step in and ration it. This is what is happening in European nations that have socialized healthcare. People wait for months for routine procedures. Decisions have to be made on whether or not to use limited medical resources on certain patients.

Immigration reform- President Bush supports amnesty, which rewards lawbreakers, and the wall on our southern border has not been built. I believe that it was supposed to be completed by 1/1/09. That open border is a welcome mat to terrorists, drug smugglers and other criminals. Along with the fence we need sensible, enforceable immigration reform. I am not anti-immigration, I am married to a naturalized citizen and my grandparents were immigrants. But we have to stop this security hole and the drain on our social resources.

War on Drugs- I've wrote extensively on this. The War on Drugs has made the problem worse by giving an economic incentive for more violence. But we keep trying and trying and trying. This failure cannot be solely attributed to President Bush, but he has not helped any.

Hurricane Katrina- Response and relief failed at all levels; local, state and federal (especially local and state). But President Bush's support for inept FEMA Director Michael Brown was embarrassing and permanently marred his presidency.

Economy

Budget- The budget is an absolute disaster. The budget deficit increased 75% under Bush. Congress builds the budget, but the president can veto it. I'm not paranoid about the deficit, but I would like to see it go away. I think it reflects poorly on our legislators and they should not get re-elected if they bust the budget during "non-war" years. But then again, if we held them to that standard, this would just encourage them to raise taxes (even though that "solution" historically has not worked). President Bush's recent support of the bailouts of the financial market and automakers (replete with pork) is a shame. So much for his free market principles.

Mortgage Crisis- President Bush inherited a sinking ship but did nothing about the problem. There was no convincing argument for the bailout and he failed to lay the blame and discipline those who were responsible for the crisis. Current and former leaders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are no different than Bernard Madoff. And the two legislators who received the most donations from Fannie and Freddie and provided political protection, Rep. Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd, were allowed to spin the issue and dodge punishment.

Economic Stimulus Act of 2008- What a stupid idea. It didn't accomplish anything and only added to the deficit. People used the IRS rebate checks to pay off debt. They did not buy more goods and stimulate the economy.

Farm Bill- This is a historic problem. Our five (or so) year plans for farmers would make Soviet planners envious. It is a ridiculous waste of money and redistribution of wealth. We send literally millions of dollars a year to support our farmers to corporations and individuals who are not even farmers. Our agriculture bureaucracy can not even get their records straight. We send payments to dead people, and foreigners who are absentee landlords. Another part of these bills props up slow crop markets and interfere with the free market. Yet no one has the political courage to change this because Iowa, a farm state, opens up the political season every four years. And states with large farm populations, such as CA and FL, also have a lot of electoral votes. Let the free market fix the farms.

Family

Abortion- President Bush made some positive moves (stopping partial birth abortion and some federal funding), but we still need a vote on this issue. The reason abortion continues to be such a divisive topic in this country is because it was never settled with a democratic vote by either legislatures or the people. It was a decision that was mishandled by five Supreme Court Justices. Our politicians like to categorize themselves into the categories of pro-choice and pro-life. But since it has been over 30 years since the Roe v Wade and little has been done, the pro-Iifers in our government should change their name to pro-indifferent. I wish we could find someone who had the political courage to bring it to a vote and end the controversy. I would even accept a pro-abortion vote by the people at the state level. It would suck but we live in a democracy.

Gay Marriage- President Bush should have used the bully pulpit to convince all states to vote on this issue. Inaction by many states forces their state judges to get involved. Gay marriage failed in two important states this past election (FL, CA). Again, it would probably pass in some states, but we must yield to democracy.

Terri Schiavo- My heart broke for Terry's family. But the federal government should not have tried to get involved with this state issue in 2005. I thought Bush was a federalist.

NEXT WEEK I WILL FINISH WITH HIS FOREIGN POLICY-IT WILL BE A MUCH SHORTER POST

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GEORGE W. BUSH'S PRESIDENCY

FOREIGN POLICY (Part II)


GOOD RATING

PROTECTING THE COUNTRY-The President’s primary role is to protect the US . And President Bush was a success at this. The 9/11 attack cannot be pinned solely on him. This unique, sneak attack was the accumulation of our historic failure to understand that we had entered into a new era of warfare with Islamic terrorists (modern-day barbarians) , and had been at a state of war since the 1970s.

President Bush’ response to the attack was outstanding. We sent troops immediately into Afghanistan and freed that country from our common enemies, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Though that fight is not over (due to the nature of a war on terrorism), we have had incredible success. We have also found and eliminated much of Al Qaeda from Africa to the Philippines.

The second part of President Bush’s efforts in this war was the occupation of Iraq . The mad, militarist Saddam Hussein has been eliminated and we now have a troop presence in the center of the region of the world occupied by violent, Islamist extremists. We have troops stationed on both sides of Iran (Iraq and Afghanistan), and have troops in Iraq on the borders of both Syria and Saudi Arabia. This troop presence has caused Syria to withdraw the occupation of its conventional forces from Lebanon . Saudi Arabia is relevant because 17 of the 19 9/11 terrorists came from there.

Related to this war on terror is the jailing and interrogation of terror suspects at Gitmo, Cuba. Jailing them in Cuba keeps them out of reach of the coddling ACLU and other liberals. Interrogation is a necessary part of war.

Two other foreign policy successes were the expansion of NATO into some of the former eastern European Soviet states, and the continued support for the Strategic Defense Initiative. The folks running Russia now are still dangerous people.

Trade- President Bush is a supporter of free trade, he is not a protectionist. Protectionism may protect some American jobs, but it stifles our economy and leaves the American consumer with inferior products.

The recess appointment of John Bolton as Ambassador to the UN- This was a good move. We need someone like Bolton at the UN (actually we need to pull out of the UN). But if we have an ambassador it has to be a no nonsense type like Bolton . Read his book, “Surrender is not an Option.” It will open your eyes about the UN.

Response to the tsunami- Federal aid, mobilizing our military for support, and the encouragement of private aid showed the best of the American spirit.

Kyoto- President Bush stopped this silly treaty in its tracks in 2001. This accord was simply a worldwide wealth redistribution program, limiting the producers on top and leveling them down to the underachievers.

Foreign policy problems- Problems in North Korea , Mexico , Israel/Palestine, and Pakistan continue to hurt and/or potentially harm our country. The solution to the North Korea problem is to withdraw our troops from South Korea . North Korea would then become a regional problem that we can be dealt with by South Korea , Japan and China . We need a border wall with Mexico in order to help Mexico . Mexico has been corrupt and violent for many years and many of its citizens have accepted it because they have the option of simply leaving the country and not dealing with it. Our open border is enabling Mexican government corruption. Our current street drug policy also adds to their problems by enabling Mexican drug lords. Drug legalization would remove the tremendous economic reward for criminal behavior. Israel/Palestine and Pakistan are seemingly unsolvable problems. The two-state solution in Israel/Palestine will not work as long as the Palestinians continue to hope to finish off what Hitler started. The Palestinians need to leave and settle in Arab countries, according to the terms of the original UN mandate that created Israel . I really don’t know what to do about Pakistan .

Condoleezza Rice has been a disaster. She has continued our disastrous meet-and-greet style of diplomacy which is the residue of the catastrophic historic policy of détente. Détente enabled the Soviet Union for many decades. Meet-and-greet is enabling Muslim barbarians and other thug countries.

FAILED RATING

ENERGY- Energy issues also falls under foreign policy. Our lack of a domestic policy forces us to send billions of dollars a year to Islamic terrorists and thugocracies such as Russia and Venezuela . Though energy independence is a myth, it would help us if we produced more of our own oil, coal and nuclear power. Wind is not reliable and after 50 years of research into solar power, solar just seems to be able to reliably power traffic signs and calculators.

Global fight against AIDS- Sending billions of dollars worth of medicine overseas is not going to help fight a morality problem.

Wrap up. Like I said, there is no way of accurately predicting George Bush’s legacy. Only history will show us this. Right now he is at a B+ for foreign police and a D- for domestic policy. If peace and democracy break out in the Middle East , he will be held in high esteem. If not, he will be remembered in history for his domestic failures on the economy, energy, and Hurricane Katrina. He might also be known as the President who ruined conservative Talk Radio. He invited many of the nationally syndicated conservative talkers to the White House on at least three occasions, I believe. These conservatives who are supposed to be government watchdogs, where charmed into becoming government lapdogs.

After living through five two-term presidents; Johnson (he was essentially a two-termer), Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush, I don’t understand why a president would seek a second term. It is a sure way to ask for a merciless hammering by the opposition and much of the population.

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On Comparing Republicans to Nazis

There are certain liberals who like to compare Republicans to Nazis and Hitler. Bush the younger, Bush the Elder, Reagan, Nixon, and especially Goldwater feel the wrath of crazy liberals who have no sense of historical perspective. No one, in all seriousness, should compare one of the major political parties in America to Nazis.

When liberals make these comparisons not only are they showing their historical ignorance and moral idiocy, but they are also engaging in Freudian Projection. Let's set the record straight over which leaders from which political party uses the same political tactics as the Nazis and suffered from the same personal problems as Hitler.

(My intent here is not to label certain liberals as Nazis. I just find the projection and hypocrisy interesting.)

Who built concentration camps? Roosevelt jailed the Japanese.

Who are the committed Socialists? Roosevelt, Johnson, and Obama.

Who had a sexual affair with a subordinate? Clinton.

Who was a product of a severely dysfunctional family? Clinton.

Who has hypnotic oratory skills? Obama.

Who wrote an autobiography before becoming a political leader? Obama

Who micromanaged their military into a defeat during wartime? Johnson.

Who had a complicit mainstream media working for them? Any Democrat.

Who staged an international event in order to start a war? Johnson (Gulf of Tonkin).

Who was a prescription drug addict? Kennedy.

Who kept health problems a secret while serving? Kennedy.

Who used their government intelligence agencies to spy on domestic political opponents? Clinton (and Nixon).

Who believes in gun control for the masses? Any democrat.

Who ordered an unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia? Clinton.

Who held a large open-air campaign speech in Berlin that was nothing but hot air? Obama.

Who are the secularists who believe that government is religion? Any Democrat except Kennedy.

Who believes that a minority race in inferior? Any Democrat who supports affirmative action.

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My slight problem with Laura Ingraham

Up until a few weeks ago I was a daily (whenever possible) listener to Laura Ingraham's radio program since I moved to Colorado Springs two years ago. That was until she changed syndicator's and my local market lost her program. They replaced her time slot with the less talented Mike Gallagher. They also replay his program at night. I know there is more talent out there. I wrote them a nasty letter.

Anyway, I have always had a love/hate relationship with her program. When she is on, she provides the most prescient social and political commentary in the business. But on a few occasions she seemed to take herself too seriously or stray off the conservative course. A few incidents come to mind

In September of 2006, she, along with fellow conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity, Mike Gallagher, Michael Medved, and Neal Boortz, sat down with President Bush for a private chat session. This wasn't the first time she had met the president. She often brags about a previous mountain biking rendezvous with him. Now I admit it would be tough to turn down and invitation from the president, but that would be the last setting I would expect to find conservative talk show hosts in. I expect them to be watchdogs to the federal government, not bedfellows.

During one particular interview in early 2008, she brought a porn entrepreneur on her show and berated him on his new medium that made pornography more accessible to the general public. What good did this do? All it did was give this pervert free advertising to Laura's big audience. All this so Laura could showcase her moral outrage at pornography.

She also released a book this year entitled "Power to the People." Doesn't she, a conservative commentator, realize the irony in that title? That was the rallying cry of the radicals of the 60s and 70s. She had become Yoko Ono. Those who use that battle cry tend to only want to give a voice of power to those who agree with their politics. Alternate points of view are to remain silent.

In another incident Laura promoted single motherhood on her talk show. She interviewed Hollywood star and single mother Janine Turner. Ms Turner was simultaneously promoting the virtues of single motherhood while at the same time claiming to be a born again Christian. Sure, she did the right thing by not getting an abortion, but I have trouble connecting the promoting of a baby born out of wedlock with Christianity (except of course the birth of Jesus Christ). The discussion of Ms Turner's blessed event came after Laura had complained that our culture was bombarding our teenagers with pressure to have sex.

There are a few other things I don't like about Laura's show. Like when she gives opinion about relationships in family living (she has limited experience-other than being a new single mother via an adoption), or when she complains about having to fly on an airplane trapped in a seat next to the unwashed. And those two knuckleheads on air with her (A.J. and Matt?) don't add anything to the show's value. All in all though, if Laura's show would return to my area, I would certainly tune in. I just wish she would make consistent choices.

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Time to Legalize Street Drugs Part III

The recent death of conservative icon William F. Buckley has inspired me to write another of my annual "Time to Legalize Street Drugs" blog entries. Buckley was for legalization. He realized that the "War on Drugs" was lost because this particular solution had only made the problem worse.

Here is a summary of the points I made in Parts I & II.

I don't use or advocate the use of these drugs. I am just against expensive taxpayer solutions that don't work and make the problem tragically worse.

Prohibition doesn't work. We found that out in the 1920s and are seeing history repeat itself.

We have spent trillions of dollars on the war through military ventures into South America, a proliferation of larger and larger militarized police forces, the propagation our courts and jails, and worthless anti-drug programs.

The War on Drugs has made the street drug business extremely profitable. Profitable enough for a street thug to kill over it. Profitable enough for those street gangs to organize and become powerful much as organized crime did in the days of alcohol prohibition. Not only are we making these thugs extremely wealthy, but international terrorists as well.

We are inconsistent. We tolerate prescription drug abuse, alcohol, behavioral drugs for insolent children, tobacco, and ever increasingly powerful caffeine and energy drinks.

Drug policy has been racist. Marijuana laws were originally anti-Hispanic. While cocaine was originally ignored in the wealthy white community, crack was not tolerated in the poor black community.

Drug policy is part of class warfare. The wealthy drug addicts can check themselves into rehab clinics. The poor get sent to prison. We give our Hollywood stars a second chance over and over again, and even expect a certain amount of drugs in that "artsy" community, but have zero tolerance for the trailer park meth addict.

Street drug epidemics are overstated. From the days of "Reefer Madness," to warnings about massive crack and methamphetamine epidemics that never really materialized.

Conservative claim to want small, unobtrusive government but they support this expensive and useless war. Our police forces have become militarized, and we have surrendered private property rights through asset seizure laws, and our government's tracking of large cash transactions under the guise of fighting drug money operations.

Milton Friedman, another conservative icon, was for legalization. He understood that the War on Drugs was doomed to failure because it was really an economic war against the immovable laws of supply and demand.

Legalization would result in a regulated, safer street product and provide tax revenue.

PART III

Let's start with alcohol. Alcohol use kills more Americans each year (through health problems and DUI traffic fatalities) than illegal drugs. The health effects of marijuana use pale in comparison to alcohol. A "high" automobile driver can maintain control of his car. Unlike alcohol, there is no lethal dose of marijuana.

What do you think would happen if we banned alcohol again? We would create ruthless alcohol lords and gangs built around the protection of their alcohol markets. Jails would be overflowing with more nonviolent offenders. More powerful forms of alcohol would reach the streets as the suppliers move to reduce the risk and cost of moving their products by creating more potent forms. Varying quality of bathtub alcohol would arise and cause health problems including blindness and death. More public officials would be bribed and corrupted. And there would be a tremendous loss of tax revenue. If you thought Prohibition was wrong for alcohol, it's the same principle for street drugs.

Friends may be more reluctant to call 911 if a friend is overdosing on street drugs, leading to more unnecessary deaths.

The War on Drugs has helped spread the AIDS epidemic. Addicts are sharing infected syringes over and over instead of being able to buy clean ones over the counter

The War on Drugs have made the drug trade so profitable that that criminals find it cost effective to move them from South America to the US in submarines! How much does a submarine cost? How expensive is it to train and pay a crew, and maintain and fuel the sub?

The government releases annual figures about how many drugs were seized, street drug prices, and polling data on drug popularity and usage. Can we trust these government figures or the interpretation of the data? Police departments certainly have an incentive to overstate the amount and value of street drugs they seize (reputation and promotions). Price fluctuations are short term until the drug makers and dealers can figure out a new way to distribute their drugs or even develop new drugs. Just look at the proliferation of the never before heard of drugs. We went from marijuana, heroin and LSD in the 60s, to cocaine in the 70s, crack in the 80s, the abuse of subscription drugs in the 90s, to meth at the start of this century. And just how accurate is the polling of our stoned drug users? How many people are going to be honest about their illegal drug use? Those who are ashamed about it will lie, and those who are not embarrassed over it will overstate it.

The Constitution does not allow the government to ban these substances. That is why it took an amendment to ban alcohol. But some where along the way the ever growing government has taken advantage of our apathy and just decided to ban street drugs despite the Constitution.

It is time to stop America's duplicity. We are the world's greater user of drugs and the most aggressive prosecutor of that use. We claim to be a society of the rule of law but have the largest prison population. We claim to want an unobtrusive government but allow the growth of aggressive and militarized police forces, and government monitoring of what we do to our own bodies. Our government was based on the idea of federalism but we now allow our federal government to force our states to comply with national drug laws.

Legalization would create more addicts as the cost of drugs go down, but more addicts would do our society better than more prisoners who start out as nonviolent offenders and leave prison trained as violent criminals.

We claim to be a government based on equality but selectively pursue street drug users and blue-collar recreational users while the rich and famous abuse prescription medicine. If you want drug screening in our factories, why not drug screening in Hollywood?

Other changes would also have to follow the cessation of our drug war. If you want to reduce the supply of drugs you have to make it profitable for the third world farmer to grow food crops. One of the reasons we have farmers growing coca in South America and poppies in Asia is because their other agricultural crops cannot be grown and exported for profit in America and Europe. American and European farmers are protected with import tariffs and subsidies. The elimination of domestic farm aid would allow third world corn, rice, sugar, and wheat growers to become competitive in the world's largest markets.

All prohibition does is move the drug use out of the public eye. It is merely a way for moralizing citizens to showcase their outrage while at the same time giving our politicians a re-election issue as they play up our fears. While both of these groups go to bed at night feeling good about their moral superiority, kids are dying on the streets. But don't worry it is only black kids.

Let's redirect our law enforcement efforts to really save lives by aggressively prevention of other violent crime as well as DUI and traffic law enforcement.

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HELP! THERE ARE RIGHT WING ELITISTS ON MY TALK RADIO!!

I believe that one of the reasons for the demise of the Republican Party is the rise of enabling elitists in our right wing news media; particularly talk radio. When right wing talk radio began (Rush Limbaugh), the liberals owned Congress and had been entrenched for 40 years. Rush provided the foundation for the growth of the right wing media and this helped to educate the voters who put more republicans into Congress. The influence and power of the right wing media grew alongside the political power of the republicans. This attracted the attention of the elitists who were drawn to the wealth that was spreading throughout this new industry. Ivy leaguers and former Washington insiders started joining the new media looking for a stage to broadcast their opinion and make money.

After about ten years of this cozy relationship the ruling republicans became complacent and the right wing media became their enablers. I don't know if you can pinpoint exactly when it started; but it probably began shortly after George W. Bush became President. He started his presidency off on the right foot with military attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a tax cut, but the rest of his domestic policies where straight out of the democratic playbook, and the Republican Party and right wing media went right along with him. His education and drug spending would have made LBJ proud, and his support of the blatantly unconstitutional campaign finance reform (i.e. Incumbency Protection Act) was shameful. Thinking back about his original campaign I really thought "Compassionate Conservativism" was just an election slogan. I didn't know it would become another name for liberalism.

The original right wing media kings were mostly middle class Americans who finally gave a voice to the rest of us average Joes. Rush Limbaugh is without a doubt the grandfather of them all. Another founding father was G. Gordon Liddy. I know Gordon was a Washington insider at one point (FBI, Nixon administration), but he was a pariah after his Watergate prison sentence and he managed to maintain an outsider's view of the beltway crowd. In the early to mid-90s more common folk joined the right wing news sources. Michael Reagan began a radio show, Sean Hannity began broadcasting, and Tony Snow and Michelle Malkin started publishing.

In the late 90s and early 00s the Ivy Leaguers and Washington insiders started moving in. Bill O'Reilly (Harvard), Michael Medved (Yale), Hugh Hewitt (Harvard), Bill Bennett (Harvard, Washington insider), and Laura Ingraham (Dartmouth, Washington insider) joined the right wing media. About this time our presidential margins of victory became microscopic and we started losing congressional elections.

In 2006, just 12 years after the Gingrich revolution, the republican Congress was gone. How did this happen if we had control of the congress and strong media allies? A lot of it was republican self-destruction. Early on they suffered a political miscalculation over the budget shutdown with President Clinton and then they proceeded to self-destruct over the fight for the leadership role in the House of Representatives. Newt Gingrich was in there, but for all of Newt's political genius, he was never really a leader. After he left there was a disastrous transition with Bob Livingston stepping aside and a subsequent battle involving Dick Army, Tom Delay and Steve Largent. When the smoke cleared the spineless republicans who were worried about public opinion selected a spineless leader in Denny Hastert.

These two political disasters were followed by incumbent behavior big spending, (education, healthcare), a failure to reform social security and immigration, a failure to tackle abortion, and the rise of corruption (Tom Delay, Tom Foley, and Duke Cunningham). This dilution of republican ideals even spread down to the state level. In the all-important California governor election in 2003, the right wing establishment abandoned conservative Tom McClintock and helped elect moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger because of his star power. He has been nothing short of a disgrace to the Republican Party.

So at the very time the Republicans had some momentum and actually had a media to support them they started to sink. This was interesting because the Democrats had managed to control the government for years with the help of their bedmates, the old mainstream left-leaning media. But for some reason the conservatives and their media allies could not do the same. I think the reason for this is that the right wing voters are smarter then their left wing counterparts and are not as easily fooled by their toadying media. It only took them 12 years to figure out how bad their politicians were, not 40. The Republicans were passing bad laws and running for re-election while the right wing media elitists were telling us to hold our nose and vote to keep them in office. This merely emboldened the big spending and corruption of the incumbents. We had people in Washington with an "R" after their name that were spending faster than democrats and corrupting faster than kings.

The right wing media had stopped being watchdogs of government and turned into lapdogs. They started hanging around with the politicians and thinking like politicians. They were only interested in the political short term and their own wealth. They stopped taking the lead and started reading polls. They told us to swallow the bitter tasting medicine and voter for RINOs just to keep republicans in office. Their only defense was that they could claim that the government was moving to the left at a slower pace then it would if the democrats were in charge.

What happened to the new media? Two of the original giants gave in. Rush had personal problems (divorce, drug addiction) and had become complacent. Tony Snow surrendered any pride he had and became the mouthpiece of the administration. The new wave of Ivy Leaguers and Washington insiders cozied up to the elitist Washington establishment. In October of 2006, just a month before the last congressional election, Sean Hannity (who had surrendered his values and become part of the new insider movement) joined the elitists Ingraham, Medved, and others who were meeting in the White House with the President. I don't know what they discussed but it obviously had something to do with strategy for the upcoming election. Our former watchdogs were taking orders straight from the top. The right wing media were no longer outsiders. They were shills for the beltway crowd. I give them credit for giving us a voice and helping to balance the media, but they became victims of their own success. Their arrogance allowed them to compromise their standards.
Fortunately the American voter is smarter than these Ivy Leaguers. They figured out that the new media had sold out to the new republicans. These new republicans were no different than the old democrats. We could have re-named the whole of Congress the Democratic-Republican Party. We had gone full circle and gone back to the same political party we had started with 210 years ago (except with Federalist, big government tendencies).

There is now very little difference between the two parties. You can see this by looking at the front-runners in the presidential campaigns. We have social liberals like Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, and entrenched insiders like John McCain calling themselves republicans. The only difference between the two parties today is the support of the war effort.

If there is any hope with these elitists it seems to be with Laura Ingraham, who is the toughest on bad republican policy and the alpha-male of the group, and Bill O'Reilly who seems to walk to the beat of his own drum. We also have newcomer average Joes like Glenn Beck. I just wish that they would all grow some courage and get behind a true conservative like Congressman Duncan Hunter. But they lack the nerve to do so. They are looking for star power and are also waiting for the candidates to weed themselves out. They don't want to support a candidate this early who might crumble under pressure like Howard Dean or become caught in a scandal like Gary Hart.

I hope the 2006 election was a good lesson for our party. I am glad the American right wing voter responded by voting for someone else or not voting at all, and letting Democrats control Congress. In the long run this was the best lesson for our right wing politicians and elitist media to learn.

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LEGALIZE STREET DRUGS PART II

The recent deaths of James Brown and economist Milton Friedman have prompted me to write another blog entry on our fruitless War on Drugs. These two deaths reveal two of the worst aspects of the Right Wing. First, their inconsistency over their drug policy. They let wealthy drug addicts check into rehab centers while they send poor addicts to prison. Second, their inconsistency over small government capitalism. They claim to want small, unobtrusive government, except when it comes to law enforcement. Let's talk first about Friedman.

The late Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize winning economist who saved the world from Keynesian economics, was against the War on Drugs. He wanted street drugs legalized. If you are not familiar with Friedman, he is the economic demigod of the Right Wing who could have written the 5th Gospel for them. They worshipped every word that came out of his mouth except for his libertarian views on street drugs. I guess they think this was the one peccadillo that they would allow him. But he was not being kooky on his drug policy. He was merely being consistent with his view of economics. The War on Drugs, as we are currently fighting it, is not a war against drugs. It is a war against the economic laws of supply and demand. No one has ever defeated the law of supply and demand over the long run. Just ask the Soviets. If you reduce the supply of anything (In this case by making it illegal), the price will go up. In the case of street drugs, the price has risen so high that the obscene profits have turned street criminals into ruthless, violent criminals who are willing to kill anybody, risk jail time, and risk their own death in a gang war slaying to make easy money. Why should a poor kid on the streets stay in high school, graduate, and start at the bottom rung of an honest job if he can join a drug empire and move up quickly just by being ruthless?

Right Wingers also seem to lack and understanding of cause and effect. Our neighborhoods have always had street drugs, but were not always so violent. We have always had gang wars and crime, but just when did it become epidemic? Hmmm? Maybe in the early 70s? What spurred the rise of the Crips and Bloods? Perhaps it was the first incarnation of the War on Drugs started by President Nixon. When did our streets become full-fledged battlegrounds where police often fear to tread? Maybe it was in the mid-80s when President Reagan started the second incarnation of the War on Drugs? The law has led to more violence, not vice-versa. The criminals become more violent and more powerful when the government restricts the supply of drugs and raises the prices. Laws aimed at protecting us are making us targets. My life and your life are probably worth less than a handful of rock cocaine.

I AM NOT FOR PERSONAL DRUG USE. I am just against solutions that don't work and make the problem worse.

Do you need further examples of how useless the current War on Drugs is? This war has given us the highest incarceration rate in the world (many of which are nonviolent drug offenders). That means higher tax rates to support the police, courts, and prisons. Our slim law resources are being wasted on nonviolent crime. Our police departments have become over-militarized with aggressive military SWAT tactics that terrorize neighborhoods as they come to kick open your door, based on the word of a junkie who is trying to get a plea bargain. Our private property is seized through blatantly unconstitutional drug forfeiture laws. We are more subject to random acts of street violence. This is the collateral damage factor of this war. Our border officials have been corrupted. And we are financing international terrorism in South America and Central Asia (Taliban and Al-Qaeda).

I used to believe in the War on Drugs because I am a die hard conservative. I used to think of it in political terms as a war battle between liberals and conservatives. But it isn't. It is a battle between those who understand economics and those who don't. You cannot defeat the laws of supply and demand. Using drugs is bad and putting people in prison for it is worse. And the former does not stop the latter. Conservatives claim they prefer a small, non-interfering government but they love the huge government mechanism that is the War on Drugs. They get amnesia over basic economic theory and a non-obtrusive government when it comes to this emotional battle against street drugs. It is truly hard to understand. They fight against wasteful programs such as welfare because it does not work, but they turn a blind eye to the billions wasted on the War on Drugs. Like it or not, street drugs are a part of our culture and the recreational drug users are the main supporters of street gangs and international terrorists. Not the hardcore street junkie that the laws go after.

It may seem like I am recommending that we surrender in the war against gangs and terrorists, but that is not our enemy. We are fighting the laws of economics. We have a choice of staying the course on the War on Drugs and giving obscene profits to gang members and the Taliban, or legalizing the drugs and sending tax money to our own government. It is time to stop fighting this problem and try solving it. The war cannot be won the way it is currently being fought. Spray down coca fields in Columbia, and they pop up in Peru. Put defoliants on poppies in Afghanistan and they pop up in Iran. Burn marijuana fields in California and they pop up in Kentucky. Go after cocaine in this country and they invent crack. Limit the selling of antihistamines in drug stores so rednecks will stop building meth labs and Mexicans find a cheaper way to make it. It is fruitless. None of these measures have ever had much of an affect on drug use.

So let's talk about James Brown, and while we are at it we can throw Elvis into the pile too. President Reagan named the drug addict James Brown to his Council Against Drugs. Huh? A drug addict is appointed by the president to join an anti-drug council? Elvis Presley was appointed by President Nixon to be a federal-agent-at-large in the War on Drugs. Two presidents appoint two known drug addicted celebrities to help in the War on Drugs. That is pure insanity. Do you think there is a double standard here? I am a conservative and I do not use the words "class warfare" loosely. That is the cry of the leftist. But this is certainly classism. If Rush Limbaugh breaks the law and abuses legal drugs he checks himself into a toney drug clinic and comes out 30 days later as a reformed hero that we should offer hugs to. If Billy Bob breaks the law and uses illegal drugs he goes to a hellish prison and comes out 5 years later as a hardened ex-con whom we give only suspicion. The rich and powerful abuse drugs in this country and give each other a wink and a nod. Then they scream for more police to arrest the poor who are abusing the same types of drugs. And our politicians, many who are currently users and abusers of legal drugs, and former users of illegal drugs (at least I hope), go right along with them and create more bad laws. Just to say they are doing something for their next re-election.

End the war on drugs and make our schools and streets safer. We did it with alcohol and the brewers and distillers aren't pushing their product in the schools. Regulate the sale of these drugs to ensure the quality, and tax the sale to bring more revenue to the government and less profit to the gangsters. Reduce our prison population and let the courts prosecute violent offenders instead of rushing them through a strained system with a plea bargain.

Legalizing street drugs will probably lead to more use. But we can set public policies that help discourage the addiction, much like we do with alcohol. The users will have a safe product, we will be safer on our streets, the size of our government and tax burden will shrink (well, at least the potential is there), and drug profits would go to businessmen instead of the Taliban.

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TIME TO LEGALIZE PROSTITUTION

While on my short sabbatical I re-read some of my old posts. One that caught my attention was about legalizing street drugs. I know the dangers of those drugs and I am personally against their use, however I believe the solution, the so-called "War on Drugs," has made the problem worse, not better. And one thing that really irks me is that the conservative ideologues know that their solution is not working and continue to support the war just so they can take the moral high road on the issue. That is the definition of liberalism to me: Your solution to the problem does not work, in fact it is making the problem worse, but it shows you care, so you keep using it.

This same approach is taking with prostitution in most states. We are morally against it so we prosecute it as a crime in order to show our moral outrage. The war on prostitution makes the problem worse but we feel we have to fight it to show that we are a decent and good people. This is silly and it is killing people. But moralists go to bed every night with the feeling that they are on the right side of the issue.

I am a conservative Christian and I am against prostitution, but that doesn't stop me from seeing the futility of having government-imposed morality on a victimless crime (If the prostitute is underage, or forced into the profession, that is a different crime and it should be punished severely.). In its simplest form prostitution is a voluntary exchange of goods, money for sex. Once the government starts criminalizing this exchange, the market is forced underground and this creates crime and victims. The women are terrorized by pimps and abused by johns who know that the women have few legal avenues for protection. They are lawbreakers themselves and cannot always report the crime. Even worse, since they are usually on the fringes of society, law enforcement will not use up a lot of their limited resources to protect them.

Prostitution has always been a part of society and always will be. If we legalize it, it can be regulated and taxed. Part of the tax money can be used for counseling for the prostitutes if they have a drug addiction or they need some help getting out of the business. Government oversight will lead to a heavily regulated industry. This means less risk of killer diseases and more protection for the women from johns and pimps. Government regulation will tend to raise the market price for prostitutes and this will send some of the business underground, but on a whole it will be a much safer industry. It will also free up the over-burdened resources of our courts, jails, police departments, and emergency rooms.

If you doubt my salvation as a Christian based on my opinion of this issue, and you are morally outraged over prostitution just remember that you were probably a fornicator at some point in your life and you shouldn't make such a harsh judgment on this issue. And if you were ever divorced for reasons other than the narrow rationale defined in the Bible and you remarried, than you are also an adulterer. You might be both. You could keep good company with prostitutes.

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Bullets on Conservatives

Since 1994, the "conservative republicans" have had everything go their way. The internet has broken the liberal mainstream media's chokehold on news. They have a voice on cable television. They own talk radio. Unions are disappearing and school choice is making headway. We elected them into the house, senate and presidency. So what do they do? They start acting like free spending big government liberal democrats. They are all a bunch of phonies. They have no principals and have been seduced by power.

In late April, Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist introduced us to a Republican bill that included a $100 rebate check for all Americans to offset the high price of gasoline. REPUBLICANS DREAMT THIS ONE UP! This is straight out of the liberal playbook. "Let us show you how much we care. It won't make a real difference, but it shows we care." Do you think the Republicans have been in power for too long? I bet these idiots actually believe that this is a good idea. This stinks on so many levels.

Tom Delay, former House Republican Leader, is another example of blind political power. Though much to his credit, he did resign for the sake of the party. He was a political genius in the 90s when no one heard of him. He helped the welfare bill and he helped impeach President Clinton. But look what happened when the Republicans gained all that power. We got the Education Bill in 2001, the Farm Bill in 2002, the Medicare Bill in 2003, McCain-Feingold, a failure to address Social Security reform, more pork and earmarks, and ultimately the political corruption scandal involving Jack Abramoff. His own staff was involved in this and he thinks it is just part of a witch hunt to get him.

Here is a list of Republican representatives who ran on self-imposed term limits and then broke their promise because they learned how self-important they really were

Barbara Cubin (WY)
Jeff Flake (AZ)
Gil Gutknecht (MN)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
Mark Souder (IN)
Zach Wamp (TN)
George Nethercutt (WA) no longer serving

There are others who ran on term limits and technically kept their promise by becoming senators. Ooh, aren't they principled.

Jim DeMint (SC)
John Thume (SD)
Tom Coburn (OK) This guy actually wrote a book between terms entitled "Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders." I spoke once about liberals being so outrageous that they were parodies of themselves. Now look at Senator Coburn.

At least the left is consistent when they say they like big government. The right says they are for small government but once they get into power they are all for big government. This is called Potomac Fever.

I'm not a huge Pat Buchanan fan but he is right on more times than not.-"Every great cause, said longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer, begins as a movement, degenerates into a business and ends up as a racket. So it went with the labor and civil-rights movements. And so it goes with the conservative movement and the Republican "revolution," for which Jack Abramoff is mirror and metaphor. To influence the 535 members who decide where the trillions are spent and how the power is used, 35,000 lobbyists prowl the halls of the Senate and House office buildings and Capitol. Former Cabinet and sub-Cabinet officers, congressional representatives, senators, White House aides and congressional staffers endlessly work ex-colleagues to influence decisions on behalf of clients. No company is too corrupt, and no regime has so unsavory a reputation on human rights, that it cannot find, for a fat-enough fee, a famous friend at court." Patrick Buchanan

About a year ago Laura Bush gave a speech at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. I thought she made some sophomoric jokes that were beneath the dignity of the First Lady. But I moved on with life and forget about it the next day. Do you remember the "moral outrage" of some of the conservative opinion writers? I just have to wonder where their hearts are and why they are so anxious to show us their high principles.

FOX news sells itself as being fair and balanced. We need FOX news as a counter balance to the major networks in CNN, but it is neither fair nor balanced.

I listen to a lot of talk radio. I get tired of listening to a lot of right-wingers telling me that they are doting parents. How could they be? The world of celebrity makes them absentee parents. They have their regular job, guest appearances on other shows, they write books, they go on book tours, they tape commercials, they have side jobs writing editorials, they support charities, they have their mandatory "meet and greets," speaking engagements, etc. They are everywhere. They are not home with their kids. Kids need your time.

I don't believe pornography is a good idea. But I often wonder about those who take a militant stance about it. What personal issues are they dealing with? Their own temptation? If we are going to reduce it (It will never go away) we have to take a healthy approach. I'm not sure what that would be, but showing your moral outrage about it won't help. And trying to put government in charge of it won't help. It is a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? Most people would agree snuff films, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. should be strictly off limits. But what about your run of the mill porn movie, soft porn movies, nudity in Hollywood, mainstream magazines such as Playboy, lad magazines, fitness magazines, sports magazines, cable TV, network TV, ads in your newspaper, billboards, calendars, bathing suits at the beach? Everything is getting racier and racier.

Remember when President Bush signed McCain-Feingold? He stated that he would sign it though he had doubts about its constitutionality. WHAT!!!???

Tom Delay and Rush Limbaugh both smiled for their mug shots so that their political enemies could not capitalize on the propaganda. That political move is straight out of the John Gotti playbook.

One of the few things that President Reagan did that disappointed me was presiding over the decision to make Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday. Do you realize that he is the only American with a holiday named specifically for him? MLK Jr. was a great American, but not the greatest.

We all recognize that we have a problem with our judicial branch. They are legislating from the bench. So what does each side (democrat, republican) do to fix it? Nothing. Their solution is to try to name as many of their own judges as possible.

If we truly are a government of the people by the people and for the people, then our legislatures need to be under the same set of rules. The same healthcare rules, the same retirement rules, etc. There should be no legislative perks. I don't mind if you pay them well because they have great responsibility and they work hard. But they need to be under the same set of rules as the rest of us. Once you start with your own set of rules you lose contact with the people you represent. The more isolated they are from the common man, the more dumb laws they pass.

I read The DaVinci Code. I am a Christian and I don't agree with its premise, but it was a good book. I don't think I will see the movie, but I'm certainly not going to picket the movie theatre because I think the movie is heretical to my Christian beliefs. There are groups of Christians out there who are ready to boycott, raise up lawsuits, and even start hunger strikes over the movie. Despite the evidence that such boycotts only increase the popularity of such movies. They do this to showcase their moral outrage. Isn't that twisted? Their boycott actions will create controversy and cause more people to see the movie but they are going to do it anyway to prove to us that they have been morally offended.

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TIME TO LEGALIZE STREET DRUGS

The bottom line up front. Street drugs are dangerous and there is no place for them in our society. But, the solution (the War on Drugs) has made the problem worse, not better. We have too many Americans who think just fighting the problem will solve it, and this allows them to take the moral high road and sleep comfortably at night.

I am not a street drug user. I used tobacco over a 12-year period. Today my drug use is confined to seasonal allergy medicine, a daily caffeine habit, and the rare alcoholic drink. Yes, tobacco, caffeine and alcohol are drugs. Alcohol is just as intoxicating as street drugs. Nicotine is more addictive than some street drugs. Caffeine is becoming stronger and stronger.

I am not trying to promote street drug use. They create medical problems in your body, destroy your moral sense and ruin those around you. I have no pity for users and I don't buy the argument that addiction is a disease. The government should discourage the use of these drugs, but not prohibit. Prohibition did not work with alcohol and does not work with street drugs. Prohibition is responsible for the violence on the streets. It has restricted the supply making the price high enough for the suppliers to engage in violent criminal behavior and risk jail time.

Over its history, prohibition has cost us trillions of dollars. Trillions for the cost of bloated government bureaucracies, direct foreign aid, military operations in South America, border surveillance, domestic surveillance, prison construction and operation, court costs, medical expenses, the creation of local para-military police forces, property crime costs, etc. These costs ripple through many parts of our society.

If you are a conservative and you like to remind the liberals that the trillions of dollars they have spent on public assistance has not made a difference, please take an honest look at your sacred moral war on drugs. Like welfare, prohibition exacerbates the problem that it is trying to solve. We criticize liberals for showcasing their compassion by supporting a failing program like welfare while we showcase our tough on crime stance by supporting a failing war on drugs.

Prohibition is a violation of your privacy. I realize the Constitution does not give us the expressed right to privacy, but there is an implied one in our culture (Abortionists can't use this argument. You are dealing with another life.). The government should not get involved in your personal behavior unless you put others at risk (e.g. driving while under the influence). The government has used the war on drugs to confiscate private property (asset forfeiture). The government has used the war on drugs to monitor your personal finances (money laundering laws) and confiscate more taxes. The government hates hard-to-track cash transactions and passes laws disguised as anti-drug laws to try to regulate cash transactions. I should be able to enter and leave this country with a suitcase full of money without being investigated. It's my money.

SOME HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES-Street drugs bring health problems, but how widespread are they? Drug abuse destroys the lives of some users but how big of a societal problem is it? Think about the latest hysteria you have heard over methamphetamines. It sounds like every teenager in the country will be hooked on crystal meth by 2010. Sure, meth addiction and meth labs are a public hazard, but haven't we heard this story before? The last scourge in our society was Oxycontin (hillbilly heroin) in the 90s. Before that it was crack cocaine in the 80s. I remember growing up in the late 60s and early 70s fearing my older brothers would become addicted to LSD, heroin or angel dust. Remember, "Reefer Madness?" That was a movie made in the 30s about the dangers of marijuana use. They exaggerated the effects of marijuana that wasn't even close to the potency of the stuff that is out there now. Kids were turned into insane murderers who listened to- Are you ready for this? -Jazz music! Do you think there was a racist overtone there?

Race and immigration have historically been at the root of drug wars. Marijuana was originally a border issue with Mexico. Narcotics regulations came in the early 20th century after we started getting involved in Asian affairs. Cocaine, the drug of choice of our 19th century white intellectuals, was included in the narcotics regulating Harrison Act of 1914 because of stories coming out of the south about "cocaine crazed Negroes" attacking white women. Look at cocaine enforcement in the 70s and 80s. When it was the drug of choice of rich white rock stars, celebrities and politicians, nobody really cared. But when the affordable and more powerful crack cocaine hit the black community in the 80s, law enforcement and politicians started a new war on the drug.

Along with racism we have to discuss classism (No, I am not a liberal, I just hate inconsistencies.). If a rich person becomes addicted to Oxycontin and uses his wealth to buy it illegally, we use the euphemism, "prescription drug abuse." Once they are caught, its group hugs for everybody at a tony $100,000-a-month rehab clinic. If a poor person becomes addicted to it and illegally attains the drug, we call it, "hillbilly heroin addiction" and slam him into a taxpayer supported $1,000-a-month prison. The rich victim leaves the clinic after 30 days, writes a book, appears on Oprah, and is publicly admired for overcoming his demons. The redneck gets 5-10 years of hard time and a felony record. I am not into class envy. I'm just trying to be consistent. Though I am a Rush Limbaugh fan, I don't like seeing addicts like him and Brett Favre being treated differently than addicts like Billy Bob and Cletus.

Drug enforcement has also led to the creation of over-zealous, over-armed, militarized local police forces. These SWAT teams are necessary for drug busts, armed robberies, hostage situations, first response for terrorists, etc. But as their presence becomes more standard, their costs must be justified and they will be used for less dangerous routine arrests. These officers are the more aggressive members of your local police force. They are better trained and better equipped. Don't you think this might make them more anxious for a confrontation? I have no problem with them aggressively confronting armed felons. These are street animals that need to be dealt with harshly. But SWAT teams that are being used for less potentially lethal activities are more likely to escalate the violence.

INCONSISTENCIES-We already discussed how alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine are drugs. But how many of our war on drug warriors "experimented" with drugs in their youth? "Experimented" is the coward's euphemism for "used." At some point they realized that their habit was counterproductive and quit. This left them with a self-righteous attitude about the hardcore addicts.

How many of these travelers of the moral high road are abusing or relying on prescription medication? Three out of four of my closest neighbors' wives are on some type of prescription medication for mental disorders. This is anecdotal information, but if you looked at my neighborhood it would appear that the middle class is enjoying a Huxleysian Soma society while the poor are shooting up street drugs.

How many of our children are doped up on Ritalin and other psychotropic drugs? We educate our children in schools about illegal drug use and explain (rightly) how it won't make their lives easier, and then we shove prescription meds down their throats to calm them down and try to make our lives easier.

PROHIBITION JUST DOESN'T WORK-We have tried to attack the demand side of the drug problem. Drug arrests are growing each year, courts are backlogged, and our prison population is growing larger. There are treatment centers, education programs for school children, public service announcements, etc. But the demand is still there.

We have tried to attack the supply side. We have directly assisted in military operations to try to eradicate coca production in one part of South America only to see it spring up in others. We have tried to wipe out the opium crops in Afghanistan only to see more farms gathering in Iran and Pakistan. We have tried eradicating marijuana in California only to see production move to Oregon and Washington. We have cracked down on the supply of the chemicals needed to produce amphetamines in the US only to see the production shift to Mexico. We have cracked down on supply routes along the Mexican border only to see an increase through the Caribbean or Canada. It is one huge international shell game.

People have used mind-altering drugs since the beginning of time for pain, sexual gratification, relaxation, religion, escapism, etc. Prohibition has never stopped this and merely drives up the price making the criminal suppliers richer and more likely to engage in violent and illegal behavior. If we legalize we will need fewer prisons, fewer police, and we can reduce some foreign aid. The taxpayers should save billions in tax dollars as the size of the government shrinks. But maybe our politicians don't want this to happen. Maybe they want us to perpetually believe that we are on the verge on winning the war on drugs. And maybe they don't want to give up one of their proven vote getters, a tough on drugs campaign stance.

Legalization will be followed by regulation and this will protect the consumer by standardizing the quantity and quality. We currently do this with other medication. This means fewer overdoses, fewer exploding garage labs, and a decrease in medical costs. The same thing happened when prohibition was repealed and poisonous bathtub gin, radiator alcohol, and exploding whiskey stills went away. The trick is not to over-regulate (make production to expensive) and force the industry underground. Taxation will be the next step and that will bring in revenue. Again we should resist the urge to over-tax and create black markets. Taxes should be used as a way to discourage use and raise revenue. The revenue can be used for treatment facilities for abuse. We should ban advertising, and aggressively pursue drugged drivers, anybody providing drugs to children, and anybody who commits a crime while under the influence.

Illegal immigration should subside a little bit. There will be fewer mules moving back and forth over the border. National and local resources that went to counter drug activities can be moved to border security. Lower prices will also mean less money for terrorists in South America and Afghanistan.

There will be a whole host of other benefits from legalization. This includes direct benefits like less property crime committed by addicts and more research on the medical benefits of some of these street drugs. We might even see new types of industry created.

Don't expect this to happen anytime soon. Social change is always slow, especially when the politician is committing political suicide. We could start out small with limited legalization in limited areas. Drug use and drug price will initially go up in those areas as the stoners hear about it and move there creating more demand, but the market will eventually stabilize. Certain employer like the military, public safety jobs, factories with dangerous machines, school workers, etc. can still prohibit use. If you want to use these drugs, you will have to find work elsewhere. Some employers may encourage responsible drug use. I prefer a truck driver who is hyped up on a little speed versus one who is a little drowsy.

Alcohol prohibition did not work and gave us organized crime and the Kennedy dynasty. Drug prohibition has not worked and given us the Crips, the Bloods and MS-13. Why don't we learn? We have to stop fighting this problem and learn to manage it.

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THE RIGHT WING IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT- So those of us on the right have to be on guard and not become sophists. If you are passionate about something, you tend to be very credulous, and offer blind faith to the side that you support. This also leaves you with a blind hatred for the other side as well as blindness to your own inconsistencies.

Here is a partial list of things the right does that irks me. I will be developing most of these ideas in future posts.

MORALITY- The right claims all of the virtue associated with Christianity and patriotism, but they often publicly fail. One tires of hearing about our leaders with drug and alcohol problems, adultery, divorce, acting as absentee parents, political corruption, etc. We are not perfect, but if you are going to be a leader or spokesperson for the party of values, you'd better act it and hold yourself to a higher standard.

BROKEN POLITICAL PROMISES AND PRINCIPLES-What have conservatives accomplished since the right wing revolution of 1994? Sure, I understand that government change is glacial, but what is the leadership doing? Historically the right has stood for smaller government, lower taxes, Social Security reform, Welfare reform, being tough on crime, a strong defense, anti abortion, school reform, and school prayer. What have we accomplished? Limited tax cuts, limited welfare reform, a pre-emptive strike on Islamic Jihad, and stronger jail sentencing. That's a start, but we have moved backward in so many other areas. The military has shrunk, the size of the government has increased (Department of homeland security, Medicaid Bill, Education Reform), our schools and the immigration situation are getting worse, and abortion has fallen off the political radar screen. Where is the leadership on all these issues? It seems like part of the right wing plan was to build a consensus with the liberals. You don't need to build a consensus when you are in charge. Margaret Thatcher defined consensus as lack of leadership. They should listen to the Iron Lady. It appears that once the conservatives assumed power they forgot all of their principles and just dangled a few carrots in front of us and then decided to focus on maintaining their own political power by passing the blatantly unconstitutional Campaign Finance Reform.

FEDERALISM- I listed federalism separately from the other political issues. I'm not sure why, maybe because I want to talk about it a little bit more in depth. Federalism is a way to keep government smaller and more efficient. The point is to have each level of government (local, state, federal) stay out of each other's business. The lower down the scale that a problem gets handled the more responsive the government. Politicians at the federal level like to get into state and local business. When it comes time for reelection you will hear them pushing all sorts of crime and education issues that really should be reserved for the states. Did you know that carjacking is a federal offense? Don't you think there are already enough state laws dealing with car theft, kidnapping and gun crime? What about drug laws? Shouldn't each state decide which drugs to make illegal and what the punishment should be? Do you really think that a Washington bureaucrat knows how best to educate a child in Montana?

The conservatives have traditionally been behind federalism as a way to limit the size of government. Two relatively recent issues dealing with conservatives and federalism really got my goat; gay marriage and Terry Schiavo. State government should have handled both of these issues. But the conservatives wanted the federal government to get involved just so they can show that they are the party that stands for preserving life and traditional marriage. So damn the IXth and Xth Amendments.

WAR ON DRUGS-This is pointless and stupid and not working and a tremendous waste of resources. It has created more problems than it has solved. You can't complain about billions of dollars being thrown into the money pit of public assistance and simultaneously cling to this sacred cow. Mend it or end it.

SAUDI ARABIA-In the mid-70s we reacted to the oil embargoes by cozying up to the world's biggest oil producer. We made an agreement to send them F-16s and western technology and they promised to keep the price of oil down. Twenty years later we started learning the true cost of this pact with the devil. The hard- core religionists in Saudi Arabia decided they didn't like the Royal Saud's relationship with the western infidel who is also a friend of Israel. So they turned to their 18th century Wahabbism (catapulting the Saudis 8 centuries ahead of most Muslims) and started looking for answers. Their solution was to start recruiting terrorists from a pool of bored, rich sons of Saudi millionaires. This is one of the chief sources of worldwide terrorism. It is not the Ba'athist of Iraq and Syria.

While the war on terrorism toils on American politicians turn a blind eye to the Saudis who have learned to use their oil money to polish their image. They fund the Council on American Islamic Relations which is merely a spin machine that uses political correctness to silence anybody who criticizes Arabs. They are also some of the biggest donors to our former presidents' libraries. Feed the egos of former presidents and you will have lifelong friends. This has been very effective. You can tell that their propaganda is successful when you hear President Bush make a hopelessly idiotic statement such as, "Islam is a religion of Peace."

Hopefully one of the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq was to station US forces on the Saudi border. Have you noticed that we haven't had any additional 9/11 styled attacks? And with our forces in Afghanistan this also means that we have US forces surrounding the Saudi's retarded Persian cousins in Iran, another chief source of world terrorism.

DODGING THE DRAFT-A lot of our conservative leaders and spokesmen today, where draft dodgers in Vietnam. I don't buy the chickenhawk argument, it's not logical, but dodging the draft does tell you something about a man's character.

GOVERNMENT SPONSORED GAMBLING-This is a pet peeve of mine. I am not a gambler, though I have bought an occasional lottery ticket (2x a year?), and have gone to one or two casinos. I believe that gambling should be legal. If you are stupid enough to throw your money away, go ahead. But the government should not be involved. They should not have casinos or riverboats. They shouldn't even have a lottery. Even if the lottery is used to fund education.

There's more, but this post is getting too long.