Dear Waitress.

Dear Waitress,
I miss you.
Ever since the Governor closed down your place of employment, I haven't been able to get my gin martini before a relaxing dinner in a nice place. I haven't seen you and your young vibrance caring about my night out. You're worth more than a big tip.
Okay, so I don't really need a night out, but I worry about you.
Have you been able to pay your rent? Can you keep up with your car payments? Where does the U.S. Constitution authorize the Governor of this state to fire you and ban me from your table?
Would you be willing to take a risk to keep your job? If you do, I'll be there.
You may not notice just another guy who appreciates you. but you are loved and we want you back.
                                               Tom & Gayle.

White Guilt.

Feel guilty about something?
Take a knee.
Better yet, take two knees, then apologize for your crime and hand over your wallet.
Feel better?

Sick.

It was a perfect storm.

This virulent bat shit out of China, this covid 19, somehow found its way from animals' offal into the lungs of human beings. Contagious as it was, it took air among local people and on airline flights bound around the world.

Inevitably, it landed in the United States and followed its infectious course. It was an unknown virus, infectious and insidious--spooky. Who knew how deeply it might worm its way into the population? Given the death toll in China, Americans were alarmed.

Our journalists, always on the lookout for dramatic headlines, pounced on the story since, after all, we wanted to know, and exaggeration is a vital part of their trade. It's good for their careers.Thus headlines shouted and cable news covered the story 24/7. Disease! Contagion! Millions may die! Very bad news.

Enter the doctors, the scientists--the government experts. They could not afford to be wrong, because their jobs and reputations may depend on it. So they rolled out the worst case scenarios: Could be this, but might that. Safety first. Prepare for the worst.They couldn't be wrong.

People were dying by the tens of thousands in Europe and we were next.We had to do something!

Then came the governors. Instead of the big dictator in the White House Trump haters had always fretted about, what we got were 50 little dictators, one for each state. Most of them apparently adopted Donald Trump's television tag line: "You're fired," and tens of millions of Americans in service and retail industries were suddenly unemployed. By decree, businesses  were ordered to shut their doors, and customers ordered to stay at home except for essential trips--like to liquor stores (which generate lots of  government revenue).

Our civil rights were trampled left and right. Families were crippled, suddenly worried about buying food and paying the rent. As state governors pontificated endlessly on television--harvesting votes--the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, was shoved put of sight, along with freedom of assembly, speech, movement and even religion. 

All in the name of safety and security, we witnessed a creeping fascism. All it needed was the spread of enforcement troops on the streets

I keep thinking of Ben Franklin"s line: "Those who choose Security over Liberty deserve neither."

National emergencies are understandable: they are theoretically temporary, but the power of emergency government is dangerous, as in Nazi Germany, 1933. U. S. National Emergency and Public Health Emergency laws are broad and vague, giving the government power over vast swathes of media, including the internet. They expire automatically in one year but are routinely renewed. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, there have been 58 National Emergencies since 1979, and 31 of them are still in effect. 

Of course, each of us must take care for the safety of our neighbors and loved ones, along with ourselves, during a virus health emergency, but we should not give up our civil rights in the meantime.

Given the dictatorship of the states, it looks to be high time for a bit of civil disobedience.

On Scott Hart

I have never de-friended anyone on Facebook--I don't even know how to do it. But, I'm ready after seeing a post from Scott Hart, my "friend."
In a post on October 3rd, immediately after the slaughter of innocents in Las Vegas, he said that "Republicans need something to happen to them that will hit home and affect them personally." This, of course, would be to convince them to pass more gun control legislation. In a subsequent post, he suggested that someone should sneak into Congress with one of those evil guns and open fire on Republicans. His friend Christopher Howatt responded, adding that Republications won't change until they're "staring down the barrel of a gun."
"Yup," said Scott.
There you have two gun control activists.

Here's a historical note: Fascism, Nazism and communism all spring from the same root--socialism--promoted by Mr. Marx himself. Look it up and you'll know. The great dictators of the 20th century, Hitler,  Stalin and Mao, all played the socialist tune, as do leftists in the 21st century. Strip racism out of the Nazis, and you get the nationalist fascism of Mussolini. Strip nationalism out of Italy, and you get the international fascism of communism.

I define fascism as militant socialism, or, more accurately "violent socialism."
My "friend," Scott Hart is apparently calling for the brownshirts of socialism to get their guns and kill Republicans.
Hey, Scott, maybe instead of more bloodshed, we could stage a Reichstag fire, like in 1933 in Germany. Then, like Hitler, we could dissolve Congress and run them out of town, leaving the way clear for you and your friends to run the country.

Now, I have to bother to figure out how to go de-friend this nuisance, this closet fascist, Scott Hart.

LGBTMFX Bathrooms.

What the hell are we talking about?  Bathroom preferences for sexual non-conformists in some bar in North Carolina?

By now, most of us know what LGBT stands for--the awkward acronym slides off the tongue of every TV host as easily as a greased pig slips through your arms at the county fair. (For those of you who don't know what the letters T-V stand for, LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender).

LGBT is called a "community," although I fail to see how millions of unique people living thousands of miles apart qualify as a community. I guess they mean internet community. It's not like there is an L, a G, a B and a T on the street where you live--probably a lot of Ms and Fs, with an occasional surreptitious visitation from an X.

I added the M and the F to the familiar acronym to cover Male and Female, which would represent my "community," I guess, but I'm really not intimate with a lot of them, and I certainly wouldn't want to share a bed with most of them. The X stands for unknown, but it may involve sheep on a hillside or horses in a barn, so I won't talk about that.

If you have doubts about your gender, or which "community" you belong to, search between your legs for a clue. I'd call that a good start, although you may not want to settle for the evidence--suit yourself.

How ridiculous do we get?

This debate is only appropriate for two obnoxious patrons at a local bar. but we're hearing it on national news programs and among legislative jackasses in government. Nobody cares when a homosexual comes into a public bathroom, and if you're a really good transgender, nobody would know it anyway. As for the children, what are they doing in a lousy public restroom without supervision in the first place?

For perfect privacy, go home. Otherwise, restaurants will have to set up a line of private bathrooms like a row of porta-potties along the dining room, and we'll all pay for it in the check--until we decide that eating out is too expensive and all the restaurants go out of business.

I've heard somewhere that "this is a solution in search of a problem," and the saying has the ring of truth. I'm sure the disputes are extremely rare and can be resolved one at a time in any local setting. If you have special needs, you can always patronize The Pink Petunia Gourmet Lounge or Bullmoose Bill's Bar and Grill. The real problem is that somehow, somewhere along the way, we gave the government--state and federal--the power to decide such matters for everyone. "Problems" are, of course, the lifeblood of lucrative government office, where politicians can promise to solve anything.

Why don't we follow the axiom, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Otherwise, if you want to go on a Crusade, get on your horse and get out of town. Jerusalem beckons.

The Worst Generation.

Check out how the various generations living today look to very savvy businessmen, marketing professionals at Marketing Teacher.com, dominated by some insightful, and  perhaps extravagant impressions of my own:

The oldest people still alive in 2016 belong to the GI Generation (born 1901-1926), famously known as The Greatest Generation. As kids, they survived the deprivations of the Great Depression, then went to war and crushed European and Asian fascists in World War II, doing away with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo, all.

This old generation were great customers. They preferred to save and pay cash rather than go into debt, and they had a strong sense of morality and personal responsibility. They worked hard to get ahead and pay the bills, and so ushered in a renewed American affluence. They actually remember watching their parents living without airplanes, radio and TV, still worrying about food, clothing and shelter, so you can't sell them virtuoso technology like Google Glasses, which would just cause them to bump into walls.

Hey, it's okay. They're old.

Their kids became part of the Silent Generation, born 1927-1945, the first generation to take American affluence for granted. They are the richest, most free-spending generation in history, enjoying peace and good jobs enough to buy TVs, rock'n roll, flashy cars and Playboy magazine. They fought the Korean War to a stalemate and tried to conform to their parents' moral values. They could afford to indulge in social causes like racial equality and feminism, sewing the seeds for overdue civil rights and bra burning. You can sell them anything.

Fast forward to 2016, to Generation Z, the Boomlets (born 2001-on), our little babies. It's a huge bubble coming along the rubber hose of history (how's that for aggrandized metaphors?). And look: it's 49% Hispanic. Up until 2006, the most common last name in the United States was Smith--now it's Rodriguez. To make a sale, think Spanish.

Mattel. the iconic creators of action toys like airplanes, trucks and dolls, had to change their target market from 10 years old in the 1990s to 3 years old in 2000. The kids want technology. Don't worry about giving them action fun or teaching them math, just sell them a faster calculator and a new video--plus a new website for music and socializing. My suggestion would be for a site based on lyrics from a Prince song, "Crazy Nutsite" to reinforce their right to party. The results remain to be seen.

Before them came Generation Y, the Millenniums (born 1981-2000), aka the Echo Boomers. Naturally, they took for granted the affluence of their parents, including video games that could knock your eyes out and solid gold trophies for tiddlywink tournaments. They know that the world is not a very safe place, but they don't take it too seriously because they have never experienced conscription into the military for The Big War.

If you want to sell them something, do it on the internet because that's where they waste most of their time browsing and socializing. They need hand-holding, so keep them reassured as you sell them fulfillment in the form of hoodies and a better smart phone.

Generation X, which came before Y.... These gems were born 1965-1980.

Who are these people? I'm not sure I ever met one, but the marketing experts say they go to a lot of Rock concerts. They are notorious for trying to "find themselves," and I hope they do--because I can't find them.

Let us flash back to the Boomers, born 1946-1964, aka the Me Generation, the last children of the Greatest Generation and the first children of the Silent Generation. I call them the Worst Generation, and to my undying shame, I'm one of them. Heroically--and conscripted--some of us fought the war that nobody except geopolitical strategists in Washington DC wanted, dying by the tens of thousands without popular approval. You might also call them the Entitlement Generation because the luxuries of affluence had morphed into all kinds of new entitlements. President Franklin Roosevelt laid the groundwork with his famous advocacy of what he called the "Four Freedoms," notably the "freedom from want," and the "freedom from fear."

What? I'm supposed to have my "wants" satisfied, and my "fears" eliminated--by the federal government? I can get whatever I "want" from somebody else? I can get my food from a farmer because the government will force him to give it to me? If I'm afraid of a bully, I can have him arrested? If I "fear" thunderstorms, the government is supposed to prevent them? If my feelings are hurt, I can petition the government to stop all such "microaggressions"?

I could actually live in La-la Land--FREE?

The Boomers bought this agenda from their parents, who were mostly Roosevelt fans--the Four Freedoms and the good life, minimum wage, unemployment insurance, social security, food stamps, and everyday security for everyone--and they're passing this fantasy on to their kids. They are self-righteous and self-centered. They like to buy now and pay later. Of course, in the end, someone has to pay for all these luxuries, meaning someone will have to work and pay taxes for all the debt accumulated for my generation's government largess. This money is not just bullshit, as some economists think--just paper. Money represents exchange for labor, and somebody has to work for it, now or in the future.

That's you, Generation Y and Z.

Thanks kids.

Best Planet So Far.

What's happening to our planet?

Whatever it is, I'm not worried, any more than I worry about a tough winter in New Hampshire, though I shiver while warming up my car in January.

Al Gore, of course, claims to be very upset. He says the ice caps are going to melt and extinguish whole species, but this doesn't worry me either. After all, when's the last time you needed a penguin or a polar bear, much less a mastodon, a dinosaur or a dodo bird? He made a movie entitled An Inconvenient Truth full of graphic depictions of sea levels rising dramatically and swallowing great big chunks of the East Coast where I live. I doubt that Al is especially committed to "Truth," but I'm sure his scenario would be "Inconvenient." Still, I'm not worried. Long before the water level reached my neckline, I'd shag ass to Kansas where I hear there are lots of good people, just like here--even if I had to leave some material goods behind. Even in Al's predictions, it would take many years for sea levels to rise, so you have plenty of time for a retreat to Kansas.

Al blames his gloom and doom predictions on man-made carbon emissions, which is like cave-dwelling shamans blaming your bad luck on insufficient worship of the gods, or Texan cowpokes in 1880 blaming the weather on bovine flatulence--actually primitive ideas.

Skepticism of "global warming" comes naturally to a resident of New Hampshire, especially every year in January. But, of course, the Gore crowd changed "global warming" to "climate change" to make their theories more believable, proclaiming them "settled science," but we have an old saying in these parts: "If you don't like the weather in New England, wait five minutes. It'll change."

Still, Al likes to call us "deniers" and I don't mind. At one time "flat Earth" was "settled science," widely supported by all the ignorant and promoted by most powerful religious rulers of the Western World. Galileo went to jail for denying it--so I could be in good company.

SETTLED SCIENCE c.1600:

In the meantime, look at the bright side of global warming. The fish would love it. We could set up Times Square at the South Pole (North Pole is in the ocean), mount spectacular shows on the Southway in South York. We could vacation in semi-tropical islands in the Canadian Arctic, where only brave and half-mad explorers have been. Ever see a map of Northern Canada? There are a gazillion islands. Janitors will be able to afford beachfront property. Greenland would be our massive Florida with room for millions of condos. Alaska would be teeming with senior citizens, and Siberia would be a lush forest full of monkeys and fruit.

Life--including plants, animals and humans--love the heat. Today, if you try digging down through the ice, you won't find much evidence of life--maybe a mastodon here or there. Monkeys were too smart to go there.

Maybe we could sign up for seagoing excursions from South Boston (located somewhere on the coast of Antarctica), on a cruise ship equipped with submarines for taking tours of ancient East Coast America. Say we left the inhabitants of Washington DC (our rulers) encased in a bubble down there behind a big window with Al Gore. We could knock on the window and give them the finger.

Okay, now I'm dreaming.

Bad Bad Gun

We just found out about a bad bad gun that killed nine innocent people gathered in a church, and maybe us good folks everywhere should get together and--well, we can't lynch this bad bad gun, but we could confiscate it, melt it down and make political campaign buttons out of it--you know--buttons that say, "Guns Kill," or something like that?

It would be a sorry end to the gun's promising career, but--after all--it deserves it. Where was that gun when a cop or a soldier--or a citizen--could have used it to defend us? Where was it when a defenseless woman in the neighborhood was beaten, raped and robbed? Nowhere in sight.

Get rid of it.

As for the guy who pulled the trigger, he must be the victim of hate feelings or insanity roiling in his unfortunate mind, some inhuman affliction. Maybe we should help him, keep him in a cell until we can understand his psychological dilemma, pay for his bacon and eggs for the next fifty years or his sex change operation. Maybe he can explain what led to the tragedies of nine innocent families while he talks about himself.

Or, maybe we could take him around back and put a bullet through his head.

With a Good Gun.

Some Things Never Change.

In the 1890s, bicycles were all the rage, thanks to the demise of that awkward monstrosity with the big front wheel. Everybody was buying the new designs which used two identical wheels, and two brothers in Dayton, Ohio took advantage of the fashion by opening a successful bicycle repair shop featuring their own versions.

The two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright were interested also in what was commonly considered science fiction: a machine that would fly like a bird, so they spent all their spare time working tirelessly on the challenge.

Meanwhile, the U.S.War Department and the Smithsonian Institute funded their own experiments on the idea and Samuel Langley from the museum was in charge of the government money. While Orville and Wilbur were working on their experiments at Kitty Hawk, S,C. with their bicycle tools, Langley hired a team to put together his flying machine and a launch pad on the Potomac River in Washington (this might be considered the first aircraft carrier, except that there were no actual aircraft to carry). Both Langley flights ended up pretty much the same way:

Notice the downward trajectory of the "aeroplane" and its landing:

Back in Kitty Hawk a few days later, The Wright brothers celebrated a soft landing:

Cost to the taxpayer for the Langley flights: $70,000 (millions in today's dollars).

Cost of the Wright brothers' flights: $1,000 of their own money. Cost to the taxpayer: $0.00--zero.

Some things never change.

Watch Hillary.

If you like watching Hillary Clinton, don't stop now--there's lots more coming.

I especially enjoy watching her in her head-nodding mode, as in her famous "listening tour" when she ran for the Senate in New York, or whenever she sat listening to Bill pushing hot air for the crowds. Her head would nod continuously, and if you keep your eye on her, it becomes almost comical.

What's wrong with her neck?

If she was an actress in a show, the director would have to ban such nodding from the scene because it's over the top, too much. "You're indicating," he'd explain, which is a basic faux pas taught in Stagecraft 101. "We want to keep the focus on the main character. The scene is not about how much you understand and agree with the speaker. Nod on the high points, not through the entire scene. It's distracting."

Now, Hillary has bestowed upon us an agreement to attend a congressional hearing to investigate--I forget--some or other of those shenanigans she's always hiding, anyway.

Watch her. Watch how it works. Her legal eagle already declared that her time before the investigative committee will be limited to one session, so we're down to a few hours of Hillary on the hot seat, and the clock starts ticking when the gavel falls. First comes a speech from the committee chairman, tick tick tick. Then, Hillary makes an opening statement, the longer the better for her, tick tick tick. Then inquiries supposedly begin but, first, each political hack scheduled to ask questions will start with a time-consuming speech because, after all, the whole nation is watching, and these hacks must keep their own re-elections always in mind. No doubt voters in his or her district are tuned in.

A typical government committee.

Only a few questions will penetrate this peacock parade to reach clean air, and Hillary will be able to bat them away with long, evasive answers full of speechifying that add up to essentially nothing, aside from eating up the clock. If one of the hacks sums up the courage to ask a specific follow-up question that heats her seat too much (which could happen), Hillary can always throw a hissy fit, as when she threw her arms up and said, "What difference does it make?" at the last hearing she attended, which she coupled with--yup, you guessed it--.a "let's-move-on" speech.

Uh-oh, looks like she's upset. This will strike fear into the hearts of all the politicians in the room. What will the media say about this dramatic outburst? Hillary might be president someday soon, with lots of powers to oppose their re-elections--not to mention that she is actually, at this very moment, still married to William Clinton, who is working on his wife's behalf to re-enter the White House and check out the interns. Bill has many many very very rich friends--also known as political campaign donors. And, George Stephanopoulos might brand the interrogators as a bunch of bullies on ABC next morning.Yikes!

The investigative hearing might have been interesting up to that point, but it will rapidly grind down to a tiring ooze of political posturing from all sides.

Then, tick tick tick--bam--DING-A-LING-A-LING--the gavel will come down. Time's up and everyone goes home. The final result, most likely, will be another long expulsion of flatulence out of Washington.

This may be depressing, but at least it's interesting. And, don't forget, surprises happen sometimes. Meanwhile, if you miss Hillary's entertaining head-nodding show, you could get one of these Bobblehead Hillarys for your dashboard:

Available at Amazon for $19.95.

The Children's Pool: Blubberasses on the Beach.

Way down south by the sea in La Jolla (in California, that is), there's a sweet little cove originally dubbed "The Children's Pool," because it was perfect for the kids, sheltered from violent surf, with waves rolling on a shallow bottom. It is small enough so that no child can be lost on the beach and you could reach either end of the beautiful cove in 5 seconds if your child needed help. The breakwater wall construction was paid for and gifted to the city by Ellen Browning Scripps  in 1931 specifically so the children would have a perfect beach to play on and swim.

Seals, too, loved this cove with its comfy rock formations.

And the kids loved the seals, so fascinated that they would cavort and shout to see the seals react. These childish shenanigans alarmed the environmental crusaders--the little shits were chasing the seals away, they thought.

So the Powers That Be posted a lot of rules restricting the people's behavior--no running towards the seals or shouting. But, of course, no one could control the children's celebrations. So, the authorities decided that the seals needed protection. They were anxious to coddle nature, excepting, of course, the nature of children, which was a lower priority.



Thus, The Children's Pool was closed to swimming in 1991 because of "continuously high fecal coliform counts." In other words, it was full of shit and became a sanctuary for seals. They roped off humans from all approaches to the water and relegated them to 20 feet in the back of the cove, where you are free to stand in the hot sand and take pictures of nature at work--no swimming, kids.

One San Diego resident told me that the trained seals at the famous aquarium at Sea World are the cream of the crop. Any seal too fat, lazy or otherwise unattractive is taken out to sea and dropped off near La Jolla so they can take advantage of The Children's Pool.

Don't imagine a delightful proliferation of seals swimming, smooching and jumping off rocks. The population lays on the sand all day like giant slugs on a bed of wet dirt. You can stand on the cliff above watching for thirty minutes without detecting any movement beyond the twitch of whiskers or the lazy flop of a tail. In fact, some of them may be dying or dead right before your eyes. It's hard to tell, until they start rotting.



Thirty feet above the cove, an extravagant new lifeguard station is under construction. Whose lives will they be guarding?

Children have been pushed off to adjacent beaches where the surf knocks adults on their asses and, if you're downwind, the stink from The Children's Pool (still so named) stings your nostrils.

Pretty soon, the lifeguards will probably be assigned to feed the seals by hand because the poor animals are too fat to fish--welfare for seals.

Won't that be nice? You can watch the seals swallow fish and see and smell the remains ooze out the other end.

Ah, nature.

Never mind the children, why didn't Michelle Obama put these blubberasses on a diet.

Thomas Jefferson Carried a Gun.

Here's an interesting quotation from Thomas Jefferson, compliments of Tammy Bruce in one of her excellent books ("The New American Revolution," "The New Thought Police," etc):

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks."
                                                                                                    Thomas Jefferson
Hmm, maybe he was onto something.

Book Review: Race?

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.

Yali, a native politician in Papua New Guinea in 1972, struck by the volume and variety of goods and technology unloading from ships in his country, asked the author, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people have little cargo of our own?"

The author dismissed the racist answer out of hand--namely, "Because white people are superior." Instead, he was inspired to embark on a detective's journey back through 15,000 years of human history, a fascinating journey for anyone interested in wondering. How did all our ancestors, those cave and/or jungle people get to all the different continents, and why are some successful and some still trapped in primitive societies?
This book is ceaselessly fascinating, all the way through Ice Ages and land bridges, and discussions of race are always off the table. In the author's view, the presence of natural resources, especially good farmland and the presence of manageable herd animals have made a huge difference (milk and meat in your backyard and grain in your field) The mention of "Germs" in the title refers to the exchange of diseases between the newly inhabited continents. For a cogent companion to this book, see a related essay by Thomas Sowell in his book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," which addresses underdevelopment in the African continent. Read it all.

Even if you believe the conclusions of the famous book, "The Bell Curve," which  charts racial intelligence, wherein the Jews and Japanese are the gold medal winners, any experience with a variety of people and races will render these charts irrelevant to living in the real world. The charts will tell you nothing about the next person who walks into the room. No group identity can refine your own judgement.
There is NO SUBSTITUTE FOR INDIVIDUALISM--in any society.

Forget race, take the journey through pre-history and read this five-star book.

Revolution!

Revolution and revolutionaries seem very romantic, especially to young people whose bloodstreams still rage against boring parental lectures and mundane family obligations--you know--the stuff you endured as a child and teenager, all of which would be useless in the commercial world of T-shirt art.

Imagine a T-shirt saying, "Help your Mom--Do the Dishes."
Get that T-shirted guy to a clinic!

But, here's a T-shirt design of a hot-blooded revolutionary that really works:

It's excellent artwork on Che Guervera, a revolutionary in Cuba, circa 1959, very romantic, especially since he's looking up--as if seeing a distant vision from the gods.

Here's a shot of Che in real life, after the revolution:

It  doesn't look like he's consulting the gods, but, after all, he had a lot of government power at that point, and he was very busy.

Here's some artwork by me on another famous revolutionary:

Oops, not a classic--he should be looking up--and I took some liberties by giving him a beret.

 Here's how he really looked after he lost his red hair, although the portrait artist may have flattered him a bit.

It's Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorites, pictured not very long after the American revolution.

Jefferson waged war to establish a nation based on individual liberty, even for individuals who happen to be rich.

Che Guervera waged war to establish a nation based on forcing the rich to share their wealth with the poor, until there was no more.

Both of these firebrands won their wars.

So, choose your revolution--then choose your country:

,

The United States.

Or Cuba.

And, do us --and the world--a favor, whichever you choose:

Go there.

The Parasites.

Government is a parasitic organism.

All governments are made up of people whose food, shelter and clothing are dependent on the productive workers of society. Chiefs of tribes, presidents of the United States, and old-time brutal conquerors, all, feed off the honest labors of their subjects. Their tendency to build empires may be driven by the inflated egos of its leaders, but territorial expansion becomes a necessity over time.

The parasites of government eventually run out of hosts. They run out of supplies when the victims of their plundering die out, give up working or give up on life itself.

This takes time. It took the most parasitic form of government--Russian communism--about 75 years to collapse into social and economic chaos. But, of course, like maggots on a corpse, Russian government will rise again.

The parasitic personalities of government don't really care about this inevitable collapse because, in the meantime,  it provides them and their families with a fine living, and it will be many years before everything turns to shit.

And, their subjects will love life enough to keep on working, even though they know that their work is supporting despicable parasites.

Take heart, though, a lot of people are fighting against this parasitic organism.

Spying on America.

Here's what Murray Rothbard wrote 40 years ago, long before the explosive power of the internet:

"Wiretapping is a contemptible invasion of privacy and of property right, and of course should be outlawed as an invasive act."
"...it is itself criminal to invade the property of anyone not yet convicted of a crime. It may well be true, for example, that if the government employed a ten-million man espionage force to spy upon and tap the wires of the entire population, the total amount of private crime would be reduced.... But what would this be compared to the mass crime that would thus be committed, legally and without shame, by the government itself?"

Invasion of your privacy is nothing less than trespassing  on your property. Your property includes the ground outside your bedroom window (whether owned or rented) and the internet signals you generate on your desktop computer. Be aware of the agreement you signed with internet servers; most of your postings are public. If you want privacy, don't blab on the internet.

Obama on Rushmore?

Periodically, we hear about adding a face to Mount Rushmore, which includes sculptures of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.

The problem is that there is no room for another face--unless we eliminate one. Washington, of course, can't be undone because he pioneered the birth of America by courageous military action and undying commitment; European kings and dictators were astounded by his personal dismissal of power and his voluntary retirement to private life.

Jefferson, in his turn, provided the intellectual justification for American liberty, the very source of the country called America

Later, during a national conflict resulting in civil war, President Lincoln stepped up--tortured by moral conflict though he was--to expand the breadth of American sovereignty and the depth of American liberty.

These three men were Fathers, in DEED, of our country.

Which leaves us with Teddy Roosevelt.
Why is he there? On Rushmore?

Well, to get approval of government funds for the sculpture, the project's advocates appealed to President Calvin Coolidge, who stipulated that the faces should include, in addition to Washington, two Republicans and one Democrat. Jefferson was the Democrat, Lincoln was the first Republican, and Roosevelt filled the bill, being a recent, popular Republican (Later, he formed the Bull Moose Party and became its candidate for President. The Bully Moose lost, but there on Rushmore, he remains).

I think we would be safe, in honor of America, to re-sculpt Roosevelt's face--but to whom?

Conservatives have championed Ronald Reagan, and liberals have suggested Barack Obama.

I think not.

Reagan was a champion of individual liberty and American values, but he can't rise, 200 years later, to the level of Rushmore, which can and should include only four of America's greatest intellectual leaders.

Obama, too, is not an option for the monument, even though he qualifies as an historic American figure--the first black man to head the nation. Although he is equally half white, he identifies--and is identified--as a man of the black race, a people who are a vital and integral part of America. A black man on Rushmore would be a perfectly appropriate reflection of our history and a profound  icon of the liberty on which the country was founded.

But Obama is an American by happenstance (like most of us), born and at least partially raised in the good old USA (a privileged place, indeed). I would love to see a black man on Rushmore, but one who was willing to give his life for American liberty to complete the promise of America. There were lots of such black men, now gone and forgotten, but, to me, the giant of American blacks was Frederick Douglass. Douglass risked his life every day to fight the institution of slavery and, later, added women's rights to his fight. He had the ear of Lincoln and carried the day by example. He was American to the core.

So, okay, if we can't get Douglass, let's at least replace Teddy the Bull Moose.

My nominations for Rushmore:
Frederick Douglass.
Samuel Adams.
Patrick Henry.

Reality Intrudes.

I recently read a blog about nuclear weapons sponsored--though not endorsed--by Scientific American magazine which attempted to destroy a couple of modern "myths." The point of the article was that nuclear weapons have proven useless, ergo, we should get rid of them.

Really?

Nuclear weapons are useless? Well, yeah, if you swallow the author's arguments.

The author of this specious blurb, Ashutosh Jogalekar,  relies on a book by Ward Wilson entitled, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons.

For one of these "myths:"

People believe that the dropping of atom bombs on two cities in Japan precipitated the end of World War II in the Pacific and saved uncountable lives, both Japanese and American, which would have been lost by an invasion of Japan.

The two authors, Jogalekar and Wilson, argue that  the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were essentially no more effective than the conventional bombs already rained all over Japan by American bombers, and that Emperor Hirohito merely used the nuclear attack as an excuse for unconditional surrender to "save face" (national pride), as if the Japanese leaders had not noticed the difference between fire-bombing and nuclear holocaust. The authors imply, probably unintentionally, that atom bombs were horrific enough to justify abject surrender, as did Hirohito. In fact, the only faces Hirohito saved were those of American soldiers, young Japanese fighters, their women and their children.

We've heard such intellectualized armchair quarterbacking before, as when scholars claimed that even though Truman knew the war would be won by the United States, he dropped the Bomb to intimidate our future enemy--Soviet Russia--as in Don't Tread on Me--or, Don't Fuck With Us.
This may have crossed Truman's mind, but no one really knows his reasoning. It's all conjecture, most like halftime of the Super Bowl, when everyone heads to the kitchen to snack and crack another beer, with nothing else to do but talk.

Cold reality will intrude very shortly.

The second "myth" these authors try to deconstruct is the belief that nuclear weapons are a deterrence to war with hostile nations.They cite the Cuban missal crisis as the most famous example of "close calls" to prove that deterrence doesn't keep us safe because there have been a lots of "close calls," while admitting that it worked "by a very slim margin." This is an extremely weak argument. "Close call" is another term for "no cigar." In other words, nothing happened; there was no war. And, in the case of Cuba, the absence of war was not because Nikita Krushchev didn't like our neighborhood, or balked at the expense of building missal sites to threaten us.

Jogalekar's other favorite argument against the effectiveness of deterrence is Sherman's burning of Atlanta near the end of the Civil War. He claims that Sherman's march through the heart of the South did little to deter the fighting spirit of the Southern rebels, as if Confederate soldiers weren't worried about their families back home. Try that argument on Robert E. Lee when he decided that it would be best to surrender.

Finally, Jogalekar compares nuclear weapons to the inherent violence of Tyrannosaurus Rex (a useless dinosaur, obsolete and extinct--get it?). And, he goes on. Pop your eyes on this statement: "One could imagine a use for such a creature in extreme situations...".

Really? In what situation would we make use of a T-rex, with its animal brain? I assume that a T-rex could not be domesticated, like a hunting dog.
In contrast, nuclear weapons HAVE been domesticated. They have not been out of the house since 1945, shortly after they were invented, thanks to the control of the dominant nation on the planet, run by HUMAN brains.

I see that Jogalekar has quite the imagination, warped beyond reality. He argues a lot about what DIDN'T happen (like those "close calls" at halftime).

What DID happen was that Japan surrendered within days of absorbing a devastating atomic attack, and we never went to war against Soviet Russia over Cuba.

Cold reality intrudes again.

Being Middle Class.

Politicians.

Politics is a noble profession practiced by ancient Greek philosophers, handed on to Cicero in Rome, and carried down to our time, ideally dedicated to universal principles. For such dedication, though, Cicero's tongue was gouged out just before he was stabbed to death on a country road in Italy about 45 BC.

Unfortunately, most politicians in America turn out to be anything but noble. Like most of their forebears, no doubt, they became panderers, soliciting votes to sustain their own personal lifestyles, which includes plum, undemanding jobs with great benefits, nice homes and enough money to send their kids to the best schools.

I don't think this is what the American revolutionaries, many of them politicians, had in mind when they committed to democratic elections.