A Solution -- Healthcare Reform

I have a solution for the "healthcare crisis." It struck me, earlier today, as a relatively simple solution to a complex problem. I know that this crisis is on everyone's mind right now, what with 48 gazillion uninsured serfs dying daily in the streets of America for lack of good coverage. Never fear, dear proletariat, your dear friend and comrade Tom has the solution.

Ready?

Let's put a revolver--check that--a good, solid semi-auto (perhaps a Glock .40 caliber S&W) to the head of every evil rich guy we can find. Let's tell him (them) that if he makes over one million a year that he has to give at least an additional 5.4% of his income to us so we can give it to the underprivileged so that they can have government insurance. In fact, let's tell him that if he doesn't give up this additional income we are going to throw his sorry, rich ass in the slammer with Big Bubba for a cellmate.


Hear that, rich guys? You're gonna give us your money or we're going to throw your butts in jail.

Then, when we have their money, let's create a whole new government bureaucracy (something like the post office, for example) and put it in charge of everyone's health care and then let's put those evil private insurance companies out of business. Then, we'll tell those greedy doctors what they can and cannot charge and if they try to go around our system we'll throw their butts in jail too.

Then, after all the evil corporations and sinister small businesses drop health insurance coverage for their employees in favor of putting them on the government plan, we'll make it illegal for any of them to seek out their own private plan.

What an idea!

This way everyone has the same great coverage and everything is fair. It works so well with the VA and on the Indian Reservations . . .

Wait a minute, I just noticed something.

Dang it! My plan is the same as Obama's!

No Longer a Republican

Dennis Miller is one cool cat, to use an expression he might use. Miller has an exceptional vocabulary, an encyclopedic memory, a razor wit, and a unequalled command of the art of the metaphor. I love Dennis, absolutely love him.

Today he had Mike Murphy of NBC news and Time magazine as a guest on his radio show. Murphy is one of those northeastern Republican political pundits . . . let's not go there . . . and the topic of discussion was Sarah Palin, her resignation, her impact on the McCain ticket, and her possible political future. Murphy is no Palin fan. Too bad for him.


There were several things I disagreed with Murphy on, but I think the thing that grated on me the most was the apparent lack of understanding he displayed of what is going on with the Republican "base." Rank and file conservatives are fed up with how they have been treated lately by the Republican party and Murphy doesn't get that.

According to Murphy, Palin was a drag on the McCain ticket because she didn't add anything. Admitting that she was a charismatic and engaging figure, Murphy could not see how that was anything McCain really needed. I won't quote him from memory, but the gist of his point was that McCain needed someone who would bring in swing voters and Palin could not do that. All she could do was energize a base that was going to show up for McCain anyway.

Wrong.

Murphy said to Miller something akin to Come on, Dennis, those guys were going to the polls for McCain anyway. Do you think they would vote for Obama?

Wrong again. I wanted to talk to this guy so badly, and they did take some callers but I was not in an area for a good signal, so I didn't try.

Mike Murphy could not be more wrong. I was not going to vote for John McCain. I did not like him. I viewed him as a compromiser. I viewed him as a man who epitomized the problem with the Republican party and I absolutely, positively was not going to vote for John McCain.

And, no, Mike Murphy, I was not going to vote for Generalissimo Obama either.

I had made up my mind to go to the polls, vote in every other race, then for President vote for Ronald Reagan as a write-in candidate. My first Presidential election was 1988 and I never had a chance to pull the lever for the Gipper and I thought that this way I could at least tell my grandchildren that I had.

But John McCain was not getting my vote. Period.

Then McCain picked Sarah Palin as his veep and I decided I would vote for them . . . her. So I did.


So, yes, Mike Murphy, Sarah Palin did add something to McCain's ticket. She added me and along with me a whole lot of other frustrated, disgusted conservatives who had also planned on sitting out. If not for Palin it would have been far uglier than it was.

As for me, after seeing how the McCain campaign treated Palin, and after noting that not one Republican political figure would stand up for her, I dropped out of the ranks of the Republicans. I now consider myself a constitutionalist--a libertarian independent. And I will never vote for a moderate Republican again--for anything.

Truth, Lies, and Democrats

It was my Christian upbringing that gave me my love for truth. Ironically, it was that love for truth that caused me to cast off many of the traditional Christian beliefs I was taught as a child. I am still a Christian, just not the same kind. And I still have a great love for the truth, whatever that truth happens to be.

If you are of Jewish or Christian faith, you may be familiar with a Proverb that often pops into my head and which I have adopted as a maxim for life. Here it is:

Proverbs 23:23 (ESV)
Buy truth, and do not sell it;

I've always pictured an object labeled "truth" sitting on a shelf and I'm looking at it and wondering if it is worth buying or not. Is it? Apparently so. But what if it costs a lot? Doesn't matter, I still should buy it. What if it costs me everything? Doesn't matter, I still should buy it. "Buy truth."

Okay, but now that I have it what if someone offers me money for it? Should I take the money?

No.

What if they offer me a lot of money, more money than I've ever seen? What if by selling it I can achieve everything I've ever dreamed of?

"Buy truth, and do not sell it;"

Pretty simple, isn't it? And plenty wise, too.

But people don't love truth anymore, if they ever did. People don't want the truth. People don't believe the truth. People go out of their way to avoid the truth.

And politicians seemingly can gain anything they want by lying to a populace who loves to be lied to.

Which brings us, of course, to the Democrat party. Democrats lie all the time and their constituents not only expect, but they seem to love, to be lied to. Remember how the press used to admire Bubba Bill Clinton so much for his great gift of lying? He would look at them, smile, lie through his teeth, and they would fawn over him for it, admiring his abilities. Meanwhile, inner-city-public-school-indoctrinated-idiot democrat voters would swallow those lies whole and then spew them out ad nauseum as if they were gospel and end-all arguments.

This isn't an anomaly. This is how Democrats roll in their hood.

Most people tell lies every once in a while. It's a part of our fallenness. It jumps out at us as a cheap avenue of escape. We know it's bad, but we hope it will save us something--maybe embarrassment, or culpability of some kind.

But Democrats lie with impunity. They lie because they know they can. They lie because their constituents are stupid. They lie because they simply cannot tell us the truth. If they did, nobody would vote for them. Their agenda is that un-American.

All of this brings us to Barack Hussein Obama, liar-in-chief. Remember how he was going to have more open and honest government?


Yes, 69 million fools believed that load of horse manure. In these past six months have we seen enough to know better yet? Sadly, I doubt it. You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Obama has presided over a Congress recklessly ramrodding voluminous tomes of horrid, corpulent legislation in the dark of night, without anyone even reading it first. Half the members of Congress voting on any given piece of legislation in the last six months haven't even known what the hell they were voting on.

Obama is a lying . . . (you fill in the blank).

But you already, knew that. He's a Democrat. It's how they roll.

Need more? How about his no-new-taxes pledge. Remember that? Remember how no one earning less than $250,000 a year was going to see a tax increase? Then along came that huge hike in tobacco taxes, as if no one earning less than $250,000 a year ever buys tobacco.

For any idiot Democrat who happens to blindly blunder by here, yes (I'm typing s-l-o-w-l-y so you'll be able to keep up) that's a tax increase for people making less than $250,000 a year.

Anybody making less than $250,000 a year buy gasoline, or diesel, or heating oil, or electricity? You just got punked by Obama, too. Unless the U.S. Senate rises up and saves us, somehow, you're about to get bodyslammed by the biggest tax hike in U.S. history. It's called cap and trade. More on that later.

Obama. Liar.

Liar. Obama.

It's the truth. Buy it.

Cap and Trade 2009

Well, it happened. I heard it on the radio about 5:40pm CDT. Another large piece of our liberty was sold down the river and probably for less than thirty pieces of silver.

While most of America was obsessing over the death of a psychologically disturbed pop star, the U.S. House of Representatives rushed through, and got passed by a narrow margin, an energy tax bill that will cost thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of dollars.


But don't feel too bad. Government just got bigger . . . and more intrusive . . . and richer . . . and . . . isn't that the goal of this Congress and administration anyway?

Government wins, the individual gets screwed. Welcome to 21st century America.

These people have no shame.

What's worse--the bill passed by seven votes, eight of which were Republicans. When I find out their names I will post them here. It is bad enough when Democrats sponsor and pass tripe like this--they were born stupid. But when Republicans are involved it makes my stomach wretch. You can't belong to the party of Reagan and do this. It's like a Jew selling gold swastikas on a chain . . . the ultimate betrayal. I hope this traitorous octuplet suffer a very painful, agonizing, miserable, horrible (political) death.

Only my better nature caused me to return to that previous sentence and add the word "political." But, honestly, in my heart I left it out.

Another victory for tyranny.

Missing Governors

Much was made of the absence of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford over Father's Day weekend. While the Democrats and media tried to make political hay of it and the governor's mansion, including Sanford's wife, sought in turn to make nothing out of it, Sanford himself, ultimately, is the one who made it what it was--a wreck.

Just what we needed, another political sex scandal. Sadly, this time it was what looked to be a good guy involved in it instead of the usual miscreants. Looks can be deceiving, it appears. (chuckle)


One of the more interesting aspects of all this, in my view, was one of the whines that kept squeaking out while the Palmetto-in-chief was out on his alleged Appalachian jaunt. It was repeated several times in my hearing even after the governor had returned from what turned out to be a romp on the beach with a mistress. This whine was uttered by one particularly miffed caller to the Dennis Miller radio show in the following fashion: "How can a governor just leave his state like that without even leaving anyone in charge? What if a natural disaster or something had happened while he was gone?" To the caller's discredit, I don't even think he was a citizen of Sanford's state. At any rate, that particular sentiment had already been expressed enough to irritate me, then this guy came along and provoked me into the following rant . . .

(Here's what I wish I could have said to that guy)

Are you serious? How old are you, twelve? You can't get along in your life without a governor for a couple of days? Where did we get this dependency upon government to the point that we are actually afraid that something bad might happen and we won't have the governor around to save us? Is the governor your daddy? Protector and provider? Arch-nemesis of the boogie-man?

Here's what you do, junior, if a natural disaster happens while the governor isn't around . . . be responsible for yourself. Take care of yourself. Provide for yourself.

Handle it yourself.

Have we really reached the point where we get nervous if the governor of our state steps away for a few days? I bet there are a lot of people out there who ardently wish their governor would go awol. I can remember a time when Ann Richards was messing with Texas that I would have felt great relief to get up in the morning and read a news story saying that she had been missing for several days. An awol governor can't screw things up.

Say, I have an idea. How about someone convincing the unholy trinity of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama to go awol? God knows I would love to tell them to take a hike.

A Nod to Neil Peart and Rush

The idea for this blog came to me while listening to the classic Rush song Tom Sawyer. The lyrics were, at least in part, penned by Neil Peart, while Geddy Lee's voice wailing "The river!" is simply unforgettable. It is a powerful song with powerful lyrics--too heady for me to really get when I first heard it as an impressionable but slightly dull twelve-year-old. But at forty I think I pretty much get them and it wouldn't be right to have this blog with this theme without acknowledging Lee, Peart, and Lifeson, and their inspiration for it. Tonight I tip a cold one back for you boys and hope all is well for you.

Here is a link to their site.

By the way, all their old albums have been re-mastered and are available on CD. I've been purchasing them one at a time and re-enjoying them. Besides their great music, I appreciate the depth of their lyrics some of which are quite poignant in today's political climate. No Leftists these guys, unless you mean in the classic Jeffersonian sense. At least in their early stuff they come across as quite the Libertarians.

I recommend you buy some of their music if that style is your cup of tea. And if you've never heard them before give them a shot. They are, in my opinion, the pinnacle of rock-n-roll.

The Republic for which it stands (Who is Tom Sawyer?)

"I pledge allegiance to the flag
And to the Republic for which it stands . . ."

That Republic no longer exists.

It has been replaced by a monolithic government which robs men of wealth, property and liberty. That monolithic federal government so little resembles the Great Republic of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams that these men would not even recognize it. Their Republic has died the death of a thousand cuts--none of them budget cuts to be sure.

Individual liberty is on the run. No longer in fashion, she has fled in search of a defender, a protector, a refuge. She finds it nowhere, not in either major political party, not in any major city, not in any newspaper or major media outlet. Those who still love her are few and those among them brave enough to stand up for her are impugned barbarously. Tyranny is now in vogue and woe be to those who oppose that ravenous beast.

I am one of those.

Am I a right-wing nut job--a conspiracy theorist who believes the world is run by Jewish bankers or the Illuminati or Bilderbergers? No. People who believe in vast conspiracies are idiots, even if they happen to be First Lady or Senator from New York or Secretary of State. No conspiracy theorist here.

Am I a militia member? Nope. Those guys need to get a brain too.

What am I then?

I'm fed up, that's what I am. I'm fed up with career politicians who exist to serve themselves and their own greed and power at the expense of taxpayers. I am fed up with a federal bureaucracy which gets more bloated by the minute, sucking the private sector dry. I am fed up with Washington/New York/East Coast/Hollywood elitists who think they exist to run (read: ruin) our lives. I am fed up with the lies these elitists feed me every day and expect me to believe thinking I must be as stupid as they are.

For what do I stand?

I stand for the individual--his life, his liberty, his property, his pursuit of happiness. I stand for states' rights, once regarded as sacred, now no longer in existence. I stand for de-centralized government. I believe in free speech, free press, freedom of religion, freedom to assemble and redress the government for its abuses, gun rights, freedom from excessive, unjust, and abusive taxation, and freedom from the tyranny being perpetrated on this once great land by a mob of elitist so-called progressives who meet regularly in a swamp area known as Washinton D.C. in order to conspire to take away those liberties which we as a nation once valued above our own lives.

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today he would be leading another rebellion.

I am not here to start or lead or even join a rebellion. What I am here to do is to stir up enough trouble for those Washington D.C. parasites that they will have to deal with an educated populace--armed with truth and angry for liberty. I am not for armed resistance. I am for civil disobedience. The difference between those two is the difference between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Enough is enough.