Term Limits, Under My Government

Last week was a road trip for me. I covered almost 3000 miles in 4 days and didn’t get arrested even once. When you’re driving like that many odd thoughts come to mind and you also notice strange coincidences, such as driving through Muhlenberg County, KY while John Prine’s Paradise is playing from the memory stick.

Why term limits came to mind, I have no idea, but my solution seemed sensible at the time.  It has two parts that are in the form of the “stick and the stick”, as opposed to the normal “carrot and the stick.”  When it comes to politicians, carrots are useless compared to the money trough that is the Federal government.

Uncle Kenny’s Term Limit Law

Part 1 – Any incumbent candidate for Federal office, either Executive or Legislative, who fails in an attempt to be re-elected will have 30 days to get his or her affairs in order before being summarily executed on the 31st day, preferably in public and by firing squad.

Part 2 – Any serving office holder (or appointee) at the Federal level, upon leaving office, will forever be prohibited from working for any organization that does business with the Federal government, or receives any money from the Federal government, or lobbies any office holder or agency of the Federal government. The penalty for failure to comply with said restriction being death in the same manner as in Part 1.

Discussion

These two parts interlock in a way to reinforce each other.  The first part encourages early retirement from office, at least for those who may be unsure of their seats. The second part precludes the running for office in anticipation of the post-retirement gravy train.  Since that gravy train gets longer with additional service, Part 1 provides a significant risk for seeking longevity in office, in the event that Part 2 is flouted.  You can run for re-election and risk the penalty of Part 1 or you can retire gracefully and accept the restrictions of Part 2. Do you feel lucky?

Political careers under this system would be non-existent, I predict.  A civic minded individual might run for office, much as others take a sabbatical, an extended leave, or an enlistment in the military. When one’s term is up, one would return to productive life, rejoining the makers of the world and working for a living.

USS Shakespeare – CVN 80 – “Unto the breach”

OK, that may seem a little silly, but hear me out.

We are not just in a fight for liberty and the founding principles. We are in an existential fight for all of Western Civilization. Sure, it would be nice to rollback 100 years of progressive nonsense and return to our (possibly imagined) Constitutional roots, but there’s more than that.

Between the collectivists and the muslims, millenia of civilization (back to Homer, kids) are in jeopardy. This is something the PATCON and those folks don’t talk much about.  Others, such as our founder here, do focus on a loss of cultural coherence and a necessary moral rewakening, but also tend to not focus on the glory of our heritage.

Here’s my small proposal to keep the focus on what we are defending and who is defending it.  I have to admit that this suggestion is driven partly by the egregious errors in Navy ship naming that have occurred under the current SecNav.  (Murta, Chavez … really?)  Yes, we should honor military heroes, but certainly not politicians or collectivist traitors.

Let’s go in a completely different direction and honor the heroes of  Western Civilization.  I want to see headlines like these …

“The Aristotle Airborne Division landed in Riyadh today and eliminated the House of Saud in a 37 minute battle, suffering no casualties.”

“Seal Team Mozart was inserted into Karachi last night and captured the entire leadership of Al Qaeda”

“The elimination of the Marxist cadre in the Environmental Protection Agency was credited to Special Forces Group Borlaug assisted by translators from Harvard ROTC.”

In a daring daylight raid the Einstein Squadron of B-1 bombers from Ellsworth AFB eliminated 36 nuclear weapons development sites in Iran.

You get the drift.  The Socrates Chemical Warfare Group. The Darwin Regiment (“Beagles”).  USS Homer – LPD 26 landed 600 Marines on the Thames today, seizing control of London from Islamic troops.

I can’t stop.

This is not to overthrow the history of naming of military groups or undermine those traditions in any way. Military guys know who and what we are fighting for. The point of this suggestion is to remind civilians and the society in general.

Wheels within wheels

A brilliant comment cited by Mike Hendrix this morning.  The link he provides goes to Daily Pundit and the quote is in the comments.  For those of you who might still fantasize that Romney is the last chance to turn things around, Billy Hollis disabuses us of that notion.  Romney is a patsy, meant to take the blame when all of Obama’s policies implode about halfway into Romney’s first term.

Much of the Gentry GOP is made up of gutless pussies who are afraid that if they behave like Democrats…”

Politically, they do behave a lot like Democrats, supporting most of the same assumptions about government. But psychologically, it’s much worse than that. They act exactly the way Democrats want them to act.

Psychologically, they don’t act like Democrats at all. They act like beat down sheep. They are too cowardly to symetrically use the brutal tactics that the Democrats use against them or even to condemn or punish those tactics in any meaningful way. That cheerfully cast themselves in the role of Democrats’ b!tches.

They’re also too craven to intimidate the press the way the Democrats do. Or to be uncivil whenever the circumstances require it to point out reality. They are so cowed they actually believe their “we’re better than that” rationalization.

I lost all respect for the Gentry GOP years ago, and realized they would never ever get us where we must go to avoid the coming meltdown. As such, I give them no support at all. I am completely apathetic to their losses.

To those who would tell how I must get in line because of the disaster of four more years of Obama, I counter that, if the meltdown is surely coming, I want the responsibility for it to be grasped by even “moderate”, ignorant fools. My greatest fear of a Romney presidency is that a major financial meltdown comes on his watch (as a result of Obama’s contribution to the debt mountain), and clueless moderates then assess the resulting blame mostly or entirely on Republicans, putting the Democrats back in place to convert the wreckage into the permanent, irrevocable socialist state they so desire.

The Democrats might as well have called up central casting and said “Send us a scapegoat. He needs to be a rich guy from a Republican family. It would help if he has an odd religion that people associate with conservatism. He should have a stay-at-home wife, and a bunch of kids to make fun of. But make sure that even though he has the markers of conservatism that he won’t actually do anything of consequence to roll back those wonderful policies we’ve spent decades putting in place. That way, he won’t really do anything, but if anything goes wrong, we’ll be able to blame it all on those whackjob Republicans and conservatives.”

Man, did they get what they needed in Romney.

Are the collectivists that smart?  I doubt it, but then they don’t have to be. Romney won’t reverse course or tell the truth.  Things could certainly work out precisely as described.

Is it time for despair yet?

“Woke last night to the sound of thunder.
How far off, I sat and wondered.
Hummin’ a song from 1962.
Ain’t it funny how the night moves.”

Truth told, it wasn’t thunder that woke me last night, but something worse.  Free floating dread might be what it was or, more likely, simple despair.

It could be that the three fingers of Russell’s Rye that took me from work-mode to home-mode disturbed my sleep.  In any event, the phrase that crossed my mind was  “Romney? … Seriously?”

This is our white knight?  Our champion?  Our Churchill come to save the constitutional republic, land of the free and the home of the brave, from fascist world government, totalitarianism, and a new dark age?  Seriously?

Either way it goes, by this time a year from now it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that we are completely screwed as a people and a country.

(And as an aside, we’re probably also going to find out this summer, courtesy of Obama and Holder, how much easier it is to start a race war than to stop one.)

Fun times, as they say.  And la-de-da, la-de-dah, la-la.

Solidarność

Derbyshire speaks the truth that most others dare not.

Kevin is willing to say so and I am too.

That link to Takimag is going to be slow. I am guessing that the increased traffic is only one reason. They are probably under DOS attack by all the usual suspects.  I stopped reading Takimag many months ago because their anti-semitism got to be too much and, yeah, racists hang out there. Derbyshire is not one.

Let me repeat the comment I left over at Kevin’s site …

The Derbyshire article is a rather dramatic moment of separating the sheep and the goats.  Those whose allegiance is to the ongoing politically correct “civilized” discourse (and especially those who get paid for that and expect to keep doing so) versus those who recognize and are willing to tell the truth of what are country has become.

Kevin, you are exactly right … both in your post and in your reply to your commenter who would rather not believe his lyin’ eyes.

Telling the truth about our country and our daily experience should not require personal or professional courage and the fact that it does may be a graver problem than the truth that’s revealed. It means that we have no will to even discuss it, let alone fix it.

I applaud you for posting on this.  I also contributed money at Derbyshire’s site earlier today … that boy is gonna need it.

What a long strange trip

When I was born, within a few days of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the world seemed a much simpler place.  Our enemies, even despite the unpleasantness of the previous twenty years, were foreigners to us and our  personal experience.  We were ignorant in a charming way that is completely impossible now.  Men went to fight, came back, and said nothing.  We didn’t know what we didn’t know.

I was minding my own business a few minutes ago when a chat came in on the Facebook.  It was from my brother’s only boy.  He opened with “safe and sound in beautiful Kyrgyzstan”, where he had just landed on his way to his eventual post.  We talked about a few things and he signed off, after which my head tried to wrap itself around what just happened.

The solemn leavetaking and departure for war, whether at the gatepost of the homeplace, the train to boot camp, or the airport tarmac is clearly no more.  The pensive ” just a quick note before battle” that went into a diary or a letter and was possibly seen months later or never, has now become a text, a tweet, or an IM that instantly translates nebulous uncertainty and general worry into imminent danger.

I am concerned because he’s my nephew.  His mother is publically Spartan, but privately a wreck.  It doesn’t matter that he’s doing exactly what he wants to do and the biggest worry that he admits is that he won’t have the opportunity to earn his CAR with the other kids.  We are all extraordinarily proud of him and sick with anxiety at the same time.

I will be watching for the next chat message.

Whatcha readin’ Kenny?

Last week I looked into my Google Reader trends to see if there was anything else that needed culling.  I didn’t find much, but I thought that some of the 12 or 13 readers we have left might be interested in a updated blogroll.  This is what hits my inbox on a daily, or sometimes an hourly, basis.  Ordering is alphabetical, mostly. … Continue Reading

Cheaper Than Dirt

Their new catalog came in the mail today.  After I flipped through and found nothing that I wanted, I realized they are the J.C. Whitney of shooting equipment.

I’d rather be dead than … oh, wait a minute.

TAKE THIS, SOUTH PARK FANS: Redheads Feel Pain Differently Than the Rest of Us. “If you think redheads are inherently different, well, you’d be right; they’re better than you. In fact, they have a higher pain threshold than most of us, and can handle spicier food, too. It turns out that gingers are less sensitive to stinging pain in the skin, according to researchers who injected capsicum, the active ingredient in chilies, into the arms of patients.”

H/T Instapundit, of course.

With thoughts of that other girl at the place that time.

Joe and Magda are bringing the kids.

Obama shifts location of G-8 summit from hometown of Chicago to his Camp David retreat

The barons are holing up in their castles.

I would love to see the diplomatic traffic prior to this decision …

Obama – Let’s meet in Chicago!  They have good hot dogs.

Sarkozy – No!

Merkel – Hell, no!  Don’t you have a nice fuehrerbunker we could use?

The Phony War

I turned over the couch cushions today and lo! there were the keys to the Reb, so here we go.

A “phony war” is that period after some blatant acts of hostility end the “cold war” and when the shooting starts in earnest.  In 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, but it wasn’t until the next year with the invasion of Belgium and Holland that the “real war” began.  This isn’t to say that people were not fighting and dying during the phony war, they were, but the whole period was mostly about trash talking and screwing up the national courage once the war became inevitable.

These days, when we are in a period of more or less continuous war and the enemy wields the power of our own government, it’s easy to long for the fine distinctions of even the bloody 20th century. Depending on which particular ax you want to grind, the war for the constitutional republic began in 1860 (SC seceded), 1904 (TR elected), 1913 (Federal Reserve act), 1920 (19th amendment), 1933 (New Deal), 1971 (Fiat Money), or pick your own favorite. We have been in a cold war for liberty for decades.

In retrospect, it’s easy to date the end of the cold war and the beginning of the phony war … September 11, 2001.  This was the date that began the true buildup to the real thing.  Sure, there was the war on drugs before that, but it was only a small experiment in tyranny compared to the massive preparations for war on constitutional liberty enabled by 9/11.

So now, finally, we are in the waning days of the phony war and the really big question is when will the invasion of Holland begin.  Guys like TL Davis are tallying up a long train of abuses and usurpations, but those don’t bring things to a head in the way that will get folks shooting, although perhaps they should.  In the meantime, we have all sorts of internecine warfare, backbiting, self-aggrandizment (yeah, I mean #EFAD), and bullshit within the “freefor” community when, instead, we should have planning, preparation, team/trust building, and beer drinking.

Come to think of it, there is another example of a phony war that may be more illustrative than the 1939-1940 example I used earlier. That would be the period between the Reichstag fire (1933) when the Nazis came to power and Kristallnacht (1938) when the roundups of the Jews began in earnest. That muffin-top Israeli soldier with the AR slung over her back is the Jewish response to those events. Can we learn from their “Never Again” or will events overtake us as we hunker down in our comfortable lives?

So, where does this particular stream of conciousness lead? (Hell, if Steyn can do it, I can too.)  I think it leads to a conclusion I came to many months back. I think it’s the same conclusion Bruce came to when he bugged out of the Reb and retreated to his personal ruminations on culture and the holy grail, bless his heart.

I have pretty much gone “gray man.”  Yeah, I know I am on more than one list, although they did let me leave the country and come back the other day. Call me a coward, but I won’t be submitting myself for roundup at any Liberty Summits.  Still, I am prepping and waiting.  With WRSA, I am making my range cards.  With Arctic Patriot, I am ready to resist when challenged. With Mike, I am hating Bill and Kerodin. With Kerodin and Bill, I am hating Mike.  With Barnhardt, I am out of the market. With Causa Patet, I am keeping my dudgeon high. With Billy, I am playing my guitar.

Mostly, I am contemplating nature (see at right) and the grandkids.

Oh, and DHS, this is for you …
ATF
Fusion Center (4320 N. Shepherd Drive, Houston, TX 77091 – Oh, yeah, I know where it is.)
FEMA Camp
National preparedness
Militia
State of emergency
Ebola
FDA
AMTRAK
NBIC
Drug cartel
Sinaloa
Los Zetas
Terrorism
IED
IRA
Botnet
Keylogger

Not with a bang, but a rootkit

Israeli hackers bring down Arab monetary sites

The Israeli hackers said in a forum message that their actions came “because lame hackers from Saudi Arabia decided to launch an attack against Israeli sites,” noting the denial of service attacks against TASE and El Al, as well as three Israeli banks on Monday.

Also Tuesday, another Israeli hacker named “Anonymous 972″ published the email details, including passwords, of 89 Saudi university students. “Usually we do not like to hurt innocent sites, but there is now a cyber war, and every war has victims,” the hacker wrote. “Every time an Israeli site get[s] hacked, the same thing will happen to Saudi sites,” the hacker added.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if this was the way armageddon begins?

These kids already disrupted the Iranian nuclear factories. Now it’s the Saudis’ turn. Intellectual technology is not the battlefield where you want to fight the Israelis.

H/T Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit