On, Wisconsin !

Let's start with full disclosure. I hate unions. I hated them when I was a leftist radical, and when I was a liberal, and when I was a moderate. And as a conservative, my contempt for unions has only deepened. In fact, my enmity toward unions is probably the only totally consistent political view I've held my entire life. The current loathsome activities of the unions and the Democratic Party in Wisconsin only confirm my beliefs.

The poor benighted unionized teachers of Wisconsin are having apoplexy because they are being asked to contribute to their own retirement and accept terms of employment that are still far better than comparable jobs in the private sector. Their response is to spit in the face of the voters of Wisconsin, scream that they are being fiscally murdered in droves, and to leave their classrooms to go to the capital in Madison and act like a mob. I take that last remark back. They aren't acting.

The State of Wisconsin is facing a financial meltdown much like California and Illinois, and the biggest contributor to the meltdown is the cost of union public employee salaries and benefits. The governor carved out an exception to proposed cuts for police and fire personnel, and then proposed cuts for all other public employees as well as a major overhaul or elimination of collective bargaining. Good for the governor, since that's exactly what the voters of Wisconsin just recently demanded at the polls. The police and fire union bosses sent their stooges to Madison, but it appears that the rank and file support the governor's actions.

Teachers who should have been in the classroom were instead in Madison. They even encouraged their students to join them (we're talking about kids, not college students here). The protest has turned into a full-blown mob, shouting obscenities and carrying signs that put an end to the two-day Democrat "era of civility." Not unexpectedly, these parasites on the public teat have already compared the governor to Hitler. How intellectual!

The SEIU is heavily involved and has coerced several other unions to respect the protest--or else. The Teachers Union has now called for all 98,000 Wisconsin union teachers to abandon their students, leave their classrooms, and descend on the capital. Meanwhile, back at the union Democrat Legislators Hall, the party of socialism and welfare has literally left town. In order to stop an up-or-down vote on the governor's proposal, these low-life union-owned cowards have actually left the state.

And it gets worse. Union thugs and fellow-travelers have landed on the lawns of the personal residences of Republican legislators, school administrators, and anybody else who supports the governor and the voters. To quote the worst ex-President in history, "this is the moral equivalent of war." But wait, there's more. The socialist in the White House, along with the Democratic National Committee, are supporting, funding, organizing and speechifying in favor of what is quickly becoming an illegal wildcat strike. Organizing for America (oh, crap!), the former Obama election committee, is actively funding the protests and sending its cadres into Wisconsin to agitate. Not only is this the leviathan federal government interfering in a state matter, but it is further proof of the lawlessness of the Obama administration. What next? Maybe the President will invite the Muslim Brotherhood to join in the protests.

Much though I may think the Supreme Court was wrong when it allowed collective bargaining during the FDR administration, the fact is that there is a contract in place, and the contract, signed by the same union fatcat thugs, is filed with the National Labor Relations Board. It forbids wildcat strikes. So the unions are not only behaving like the scum they are, but they are breaking the law and violating their own contract. The great Constitutional scholar and alleged editor of the Harvard Law Review supports these actions.

Make no mistake, this is a showdown. I am hoping the governor will stand firm and do what is required either to get the necessary changes made or to break the back of the unions once and for all. Accomplishing both would be even better. As a resident of the once great state of California, I am thinking of the words of a former California governor who became President of the United States who stood up against a different mob and said "if they want a bloodbath, let's give them a bloodbath." Later, as President, he repeated the words of Calvin Coolidge by saying "no one has the right to strike against the public good." When the damnable Air Traffic Controllers' Union refused to cooperate, he fired them all.

This is not only a golden opportunity to rub the face of the unions in the dirt where it belongs, but also an additional opportunity to fix a budget, hire teachers who teach, get rid of massive deadwood, and serve the original purposes of public education--to serve the students, not to enrich the teachers. Imagine there's no union, it's easy if you try. I hope some day they'll join us, and we can get something done. OK, it's not John Lennon, but it's hard to be poetic when you're frothing at the mouth.

This was not the piece I had originally planned for today. But my puppy and the two cats didn't seem to comprehend why I was yelling at the television. So I turned to all of you, since you are more tolerant of my occasional rants. Sputter, sputter, sputter.
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Film Friday: Galaxy Quest (1999)

Galaxy Quest is not the greatest movie of all time. Nor is it the greatest comedy of all time. But it is a very enjoyable movie, and it’s a great parody. Why? Because Galaxy Quest follows two golden rules for making an effective, memorable, and long-lasting parody: the film stands on its own merits without relying on the material it’s parodying, and it respects its subject matter.

** spoiler alert **

The Plot

Galaxy Quest’s plot is rather ingenious. A group of aliens (the Thermians) from a world where untruths of any kind (including fiction) are nonexistent, come to Earth to get the help of a group of actors. The Thermians think the actors are space heroes because they’ve been receiving old broadcasts of a science fiction show starring the actors, and they don’t realize these shows are fake. . . a point brought home brilliantly when the Thermians express sympathy for the plight of Gilligan and the castaways. For their part, the actors are a washed up group of never-has-beens who now appear at science fiction conventions to make a living. They agree to go with the Thermians because they mistakenly think this is an acting gig. Once in space, they discover a spaceship that looks and functions just like the ship they “crewed” in the television series. Only, this time, the bad guys are real. What could go wrong?

Standing On Its Own Merits

The key to an effective parody is making sure the film stands on its own merits. This is because many people won’t be familiar enough with the original material to get the nuances of the parody, and because of watchability. If a movie doesn’t tell an effective story, then it’s not enjoyable. And parodies that offer nothing more than a collection of gags strung together with a plot that copies what they’re parodying (like Meet the Spartans) feel lazy and derivative and give the audience little to enjoy except the punchlines. It’s one step above doing the parody as a stand up routine.

Galaxy Quest stands on its own merits. Indeed, even if you never heard of Star Trek before seeing Galaxy Quest, you still could enjoy this film because it deals with themes with which we can relate. Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) plays Commander Taggart. He’s self-absorbed and obnoxious, and he thinks his fake rank matters. Who hasn’t met this guy? Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman) plays Dr. Lazarus, the ship’s second in command. He’s saddled with a character who has a catchphrase everyone constantly wants him to repeat: “by Grabthar’s hammer. . . you shall be avenged.” He desperately wants to be remembered for something else, but that isn’t going to happen. Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver) plays Lt. Tawny Madison, whose role was blatant sex symbol. You’ve also got the child actor who grew old, though people expect him to still be a kid, and the guy who never really belonged but has been wedged into the group (“Guy” -- played by Sam Rockwell (Moon)). These characters give us a group of petty, jealous, former friends who are stuck together working science fiction conventions, where they meet fans they've come to despise. We can relate to these themes, even if we’ve never seen William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy or a single episode of Star Trek, because we’ve all shared their pain or known people like them. . . people who are trapped in the past.

Moreover, despite the constant references to Star Trek, nothing in the story requires you to know anything from the show to get the jokes. For example, you don’t need to know the Thermians are based on the episode “By Any Other Name” from the original Star Trek to laugh your rear off when the device that makes them appear human fails just as Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub) is making out with one of them, or that James Kirk always lost his shirt in fights to laugh when the actors roll their eyes when Taggert loses his shirt. These are funny moments in and of themselves and don’t require us to connect dots to the prior show. Also, as the story progresses, the actors put aside their squabbling and realize why they used to like and respect each other. Their cynicism vanishes and gets replaced with honor, self-sacrifice and love. These are classic themes of redemption that we all understand and which draw us in without needing any knowledge of the prior material.

Since the premise is strong, the acting is appropriate, the writing is funny, and the themes are things that make us happy and to which we can relate, and none of this requires any knowledge of the parodied material, Galaxy Quest wins us over on its own merit. Compare that with Meet the Spartans or Epic Movie where half the scenes require you to specifically remember the original material for the joke to work.

Good Natured and Respectful

The second thing Galaxy Quest does right is to remain good natured and respectful of its subject matter. This is important with parodies because parodies walk a fine line between fair and unfair humor. Humans have a strong sense of right and wrong when it comes to humor and they don’t think it’s funny to laugh at misfortune, cruelty, or traits that cannot be helped. Parody plays dangerously close to this line. And too often, parody devolves into snideness or ridicule and what starts as tweaking the original for its indulgences, morphs into condescension, nastiness, hypocrisy, and petty attacks.

When Star Trek went off the air the cast set about ripping each other apart for the next thirty years. There were nasty books, cast members who wouldn’t speak to each other, Nimoy declaring Spock dead, an allegation of rape against a producer, and a whole host of nastiness that absolutely tarnished the image of these people, people we wanted to see as a tight group of friends. This is the stuff of parody and Galaxy Quest couldn’t ignore it because it’s become part of Star Trek lore. But exploiting this nastiness would cause the audience to feel revulsion rather than humor. Likewise, if Galaxy Quest played into the nasty stereotype of Star Trek convention attendees, as fat creepy losers, then it would cause outrage rather than humor.

Galaxy Quest solved this dilemma brilliantly by remembering why fans love Star Trek: because it offers a hopeful vision of the future where we’ve overcome the very problems being parodied. Galaxy Quest used this vision to inform its story, (1) by redeeming the actors by having them overcome their animosities and salvaging their friendships, (2) by redeeming the show itself by using the same mistakes, bad special effects, and bad logic that we laugh at throughout the film to save the Thermians at the end of the film, and (3) by redeeming the nerds at the convention by having Justin Long, the one person who truly believed in the show, be the one person who could save the day (he also isn't the typical pathetic Hollywood nerd). In effect, after poking fun at the show’s indulgences, the film tells us these indulgences are ok after all, that we were right to like the show, and that nerds can be pretty cool people.

Galaxy Quest even carries this redemption theme into how we view the Thermians. When we are first confronted with the question of what would happen if a society with no concept of untruth or fiction ran into us, we laugh at their naïveté. This is the same thing The Invention of Lying did. But unlike Lying, which condescends until the final credits, Galaxy Quest eventually tells us there's something kind of nice about a world without lies -- a view the film reinforces when the squabbling cynical actors finally overcome their own flaws by becoming more open and truthful.

Conclusion

So what we have in Galaxy Quest is a movie which stands on its own merits rather than trying to ride the coattails of the original, and a movie which pokes fun at all the problems associated with Star Trek, but does so in a way that never feels unfair or cruel and which never insults you for being a fan. That’s a pretty good parody. Plus, it’s just a fun film.

Check out the new film site -- CommentaramaFilms!

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The Line Item Veto Is Back

Ever since Richard Nixon lost the power to impound money (something Presidents since Jefferson had enjoyed), budget hawks have been trying to give the President a line item veto. This won’t cure our budget problems, but it can definitely help. And now, once again, it’s on the agenda, and it even has Democratic support.

A line item veto is a tool that allows the President to go through the budget and remove spending items he does not like. Right now, the President only has the power to veto entire budgets.

The line item veto comes with both pros and cons. The main reason for the line item veto is that Congress has shown that it’s not capable of crafting a sane budget. Why? Because Congresscritters are answerable only to their own constituents. Thus, their incentive is to secure as much pork as possible, no matter what happens to the national interest. This is made worse in that the critters have learned to work together to make sure they all get what they want. A line item veto would allow the President to wipe out that pork because the President is not beholden to any particular district. Though, keep in mind, Presidents face re-election too and in the modern age, they are heavily involved in Congressional elections as well.

The arguments against are more numerous, but aren’t necessarily better:

● The Constitution gives the Congress the power to make budgets, by letting the President pick and choose which line items will make it into law, the line item veto shifts the budget making power to the President (at least in part). More importantly, this tool could allow the President to become an active legislator by zeroing out funding for unfavored programs.... like ObamaCare. However, it must be stressed that the President cannot add to the budget. Also, the President already has the power to veto the whole budget to get his way.

● Budgets are the results of careful deal making and allowing the President to upset one side of those compromises would result in budget chaos. Except these are dirty deals and tend to be made against the national interest.

● Presidents could use the line item veto to punish individual Congresscritters. Yep.

● Congress could get lazy, knowing that it can vote for anything it wants and the President will take the heat for being the adult. But that's not much different than what they do now, and at least the money won’t be spent with the veto.

Neither argument is perfect, but the miserably history of Congress’s budget-making suggests that a line item veto may be an excellent idea. Moreover, this is a power held by 44 of 50 state governors without major chaos (Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Vermont are the holdouts).

Ronald Reagan first asked for the line item veto in 1986:

"Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat.”

He didn’t get it. Clinton asked in 1996, and the Republicans gave it to him. But the courts struck it down in a case brought by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, on the grounds that allowing the President to “repeal” only parts of bills violated the Presentment Clause of the Constitution.

In 2006, Paul Ryan tried again. His bill passed the House but failed in the Senate. In 2009, John McCain in the Senate and Ryan in the House, tried again. The Democrats never let the bill get out of committee.

Now it’s back. This time it’s called the Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act, and it would let the President veto specific earmarks or other non-entitlement spending line items. To get around the constitutional question, this bill allows the President only to attack the bill’s spending levels, not the full line item, and then the changes would be returned to the Congress for a majority up or down vote. In effect, the President could zero out the funding without technically killing the program, and Congress would need to approve his decision. Is that enough to satisfy the courts? Probably.

The bill has been introduced by John McCain (R) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) in the Senate, and has 20 cosponsors, a mix of Republicans and Democrats. Obama too says he'll sign it. So it looks like it has a good chance of passing.

I, for one, hope it does. What about you?

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Just When You Thought It Was Safe - - - -

People often say "it's the not knowing that's causing me sleepless nights." Normally I agree with that. But frankly, I could have slept better merely guessing than actually getting the definitive information from a high-level official in the FBI. According to Dr, Vahid Majidi, Assistant Director of the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Unit, there is now a 100% likelihood of a WMD attack on American soil. Let's see you stack up Z's after hearing that.

It is cold comfort to be assured that the attack probably won't be the full explosion of a nuclear weapon, though a "dirty bomb" is a distinct possibility. Dr. Majidi says the attack will come from "foreign terrorists, lone wolves who are terrorists," and so nobody can cry religious profiling, "criminal elements." Somehow, I'm not too worried about the Crips or the Bloods setting off a WMD in New York or San Francisco, but that's another Eric Holder story entirely. Still, there are nutcases out there like anarchist Roger Bergendorff who was planning an attack using ricin (the same chemical used in the Tokyo subway attack). That's one individual. But there's only one organization I know of that has a billion adherents with bloodlust oozing out of every pore.

The attack will come in the form of a chemical, biological or radiological weapon, rather than a true nuclear device, according to Dr. Majidi. He points out that only the amateurishness of the prospective mass murderers has prevented the success of approximately a dozen annual conspiracies to loose mass destruction on American cities. I don't know how long Dr. Majidi will keep his job after making this information public, but I applaud his boldness. It's bold not only because of its intelligent assessment of pending terrorism in America, but in its frank admission that law enforcement stopped the crimes only after the terrorists were already in place, conspiracy in full bloom, weapons in motion, but technical/mechanical skills lacking. Let's hope they don't improve their skills before the FBI, CIA, NSC and Homeland Security start taking this seriously and improve their own skills.

Here are Majidi's exact words: "The notion of probability of a WMD attack being low or high is a moot point because we know the probability is 100%. We've seen this in the past, and we'll see it in the future. There is going to be an attack using chemical, biological or radiological material. A singular lone wolf individual can do things in the dark of night with access to a laboratory with low quantities of material and could hurt a few people but create a devastating effect on the American psyche."

Former FBI Counter-Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Director Arthur M. Cummings added to the discussion. Speaking about investigating coordinated information about potential terrorists putting together WMDs, Cummings said: "It's not OK to say, it looks like pool supplies, we're done. You don't finish there. Who at the pool company bought the chemicals, and who did he buy them from? What specifically was the transaction, and what happened from there? Is it a friend; is it an associate; is it somebody who wants to do us harm? We can no longer assume it's a simple commercial transaction, don't worry about it."

Dr. Majidi also warned that as remote as a full nuclear weapon might be, given all the hurdles of building it, fueling it, and delivering it, it is not an impossibility. Even a 10 kiloton bomb would be disastrous, and the possibility cannot be dismissed. A well-funded operation like Al Qaeda might even be capable of stealing an operational nuclear device from a nation which already has them (Pakistan, maybe?).

Dr. Majidi was fair in his praise of the efforts of intelligence agencies, but still thinks they have not reached a point of efficiency (and perhaps never can) which would reduce the probability of such an attack to "acceptable" levels. The increased activity of sophisticated terrorist enemies of America at our ports is of particular concern. He declares that he has seen the fact that others have unfairly or dishonestly hyped threat levels in order to protect their jobs and their fiefdoms. I suspect that his words of warning run counter to the feeble attempts of the political heads of the agencies to assure us that with enough faith and money, we can eliminate the threat.

I hope this doesn't put Dr. Majidi on the unemployment line. I also hope that I haven't caused you to lie in bed tonight with your eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, and counting terrorists instead of sheep.


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Writing The Great American Novel(s)

I’ve been doing a little writing lately. Specifically, I’ve written a legal thriller, and I’m in the middle of a second. I’ve got one more to go, and then I plan to switch to science fiction for a while.
It seems that every American is working on their own novel. Indeed, it’s the rare person I’ve met who hasn’t got at least a basic idea of what they’d like to write, and interestingly, everyone has a different reason for wanting to write. Some have a story they want to tell. Some want to understand themselves. Some want to strike it rich as writers. Some just have the writing bug, or they love the idea of creating something.
I started writing the first novel because I wanted to see if I could do it. I’ve read a lot of books and seen a lot of films in the past, and several things kept bothering me. Too many authors cheated. They let their readers into a character’s mind right until they needed to generate tension, then they cut the reader off. Others created characters whose sole purpose was to push the hero through the plot. Ron Weasley falls into this category in Harry Potter; he acts according to the demands of the plot rather than according to his own interests and beliefs. Other authors routinely rely on deus ex machina or incredible coincidences to make their plots work. This bothered me.
But criticism is one thing and creation is another, so I drew up my complaints as a list of rules and I set out to see if I could write a book without violating these rules. Yep, I did that thing.
By now I’m writing because it’s addictive to create worlds and immerse characters into them, though I find I still need to set challenges for myself. Besides my list of rules, I challenged myself to include some pretty big philosophical points in the first book, but not so that casual readers would notice. The second book needs to give a realistic portrayal of how much attorneys work in the dark about the true motives and intents of their clients and of the other side, and how little they can be sure of about what really happened. Plus, I’m trying to build a genuine mystery where all the clues are constantly there, but the reader just won't assemble them until the end. Another challenge I’m looking forward too will be making one of the science fiction stories into a comedy, without it being a wacky comedy or slapstick (which I also find to be cheating).
The more I've written, the more I’ve discovered some interesting things. I found, for example, that my characters became independent, sometimes annoyingly so. As the stories progressed, they took on real personalities, and I found they wouldn’t always do what I wanted them to do. That meant new plot twists and actually kept me guessing how things would turn out. Indeed, strangely, I found my opinions about several characters changing. Some became more sympathetic, some less so. Some I even felt probably deserved their own books.
I also discovered that the more time I spent building these characters, the easier it became to see how other authors built theirs. Did they just toss them into the story to satisfy the plot (JK Rowling)? Were they designed to hit certain plot points (Stephen King)? Were they all the same character, presumably a projection of the author (Grisham)? Or were they real people with independence. At the same time, I started to hear film dialog a lot more clearly, and I realized I could almost see the dialog printed on the page. This showed me some of the real beauty in the writing in certain films, and the utter lack of it in others, and it gave me total disdain for formulaic pabulum.
So what I’m curious about today is how many of you have written something or want to write something, whether you finished it or not. What was it? What was it about? What did you learn or what did you find fascinating? And most importantly, why did you start? Do tell!

(Let’s put the issue of publishing aside for now, that’s a discussion for another day.)

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Gun Control And Swiss Suicides

Most liberals tell us they don’t hate guns, and they have no plans to confiscate yours. They just want to stop the “destructive effects” of guns, by which they mean “gun crime.” But is that true? What just happened in Switzerland says it isn’t.

Switzerland has a lengthy gun tradition. For at least 800 years now, the Swiss have drafted virtually every able-bodied male into the army. As part of their service, they’ve kept their weapons at home. And when they left the service, they were allowed to keep their weapons. Thus, it’s not uncommon for Swiss families to have rifles, pistols, and even fully automatic machine guns in their homes. Current estimates say there are two million guns in Switzerland, a land of only eight million people.

Since we “know” guns cause crime, Switzerland must be a killing zone, right? Actually no. Gun crime in Switzerland is virtually nonexistent. It’s so low they don’t even bother keeping official statistics on gun crime. It is, in fact, lower than the gun crime rate in Japan, which absolutely bans guns. Switzerland ranks as the fourth safest country in the world and its violent crime rate is 1/100th that of England.

That means Switzerland must have strong gun control laws, right? Actually, no. Gun sales by the Swiss government are registered. BUT gun sales from one individual to another are regulated only in five of the twenty-six cantons. Retail gun dealers do not keep records of over-the-counter transactions, nor are such transactions reported to the government. So why do groups like the Brady Campaign claim the Swiss are heavily regulated? Because Switzerland proves that (1) the presence of guns does not cause crime and (2) the absence of gun control does not cause crime.

Despite the almost nonexistence of any gun harm in Switzerland, an international coalition of leftist groups recently tried to pass a law to take guns away from Swiss homes and require they be kept in armories. Sanity prevailed and the initiative lost: 20 of 26 cantons rejected the initiative, as did 56.3% of the population (it had to be approved both by the people and the cantons to pass).

So what was the gun groups’ ostensible reason for pushing this imitative? Gun suicides. According to these groups, Switzerland has the highest level of gun suicides in Europe. But is that a legitimate claim? Consider this.

1. Switzerland’s suicide rate is not appreciably higher than the rest of Western Europe, and is significantly lower than Eastern Europe. So there’s no logical reason to think guns contribute to Switzerland’s suicide rate.

2. Nor is gun suicide a serious problem. Switzerland has about 1,500 suicides each year, with about 340 (23%) of those involving guns. But this represents only 0.00425% of the population.

3. Suicide is acceptable in Switzerland. Indeed, Switzerland has become infamous for “suicide tourism” because you have a right to assisted suicide in Switzerland if you are “suffering from an illness that inevitably leads to death, or from an unacceptable disability.” In other words, you don’t even need to be suffering yet, when you decide to off yourself. Several people have used this law to kill themselves long before they began displaying symptoms of diseases. So logically, if there’s nothing wrong with committing suicide at the nearest suicide booth, then why is it suddenly a crisis when guns are used?

This is the real issue. Gun control groups have created a pretext. That have seized upon something they would otherwise consider acceptable when guns aren’t involved and they’ve spun this into a crisis that requires almost every household in Switzerland to hand in their guns, even though this "crisis" involves only 340 people a year, i.e. less than 0.00425% of the population -- 1 out of every 25,000 people (three people per NFL stadium). And to make this number sound large, they’ve compared it against other countries in a way that makes it sound large, even though overall suicide rates in Western Europe are fairly similar. . . and the slight increases in Switzerland and Denmark can be accounted for by assisted suicide.

What this tell us, is that there is a real dishonesty among the gun control crowd, the same dishonesty that has them lying about the level of gun control in Switzerland because Switzerland puts the lie to all of their claims. And what they're trying to do with this initiative is to eliminate the world's most obvious example that guns don't kill people, liberal permissive culture kills people.

Finally, let me point out the other side of the equation which the gun groups conveniently ignore. Do you really think Switzerland is the fourth safest country in the world by accident? Or do you think the possession of these weapons by everyone has a role in that? And if that’s the case, ask yourself two questions: (1) how many of those 340 suicides will actually be stopped by this, and (2) how many of those 8 million people will die as victims of crime once they’re disarmed?

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CPAC Winners and Losers

CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) is where Republican contenders strut their stuff. Some candidates get made at CPAC, some get broken. And CPAC is a good way to give the rest of us a sense about where the conservative movement is going. Why is CPAC so influential? Because CPAC is a gathering of the people who “make it happen” for conservatives on the ground, in the media, and with fund raisers. Let’s talk about CPAC's winners and losers.

Winners

CPAC: CPAC has made itself into the gatekeeper of the Republican primaries. Despite being incredibly unscientific, its straw polls can literally infuse a candidacy with life, or kill one off. Here are this year’s results:

31%	Ron Paul
22%	Mitt Romney
7%	Sarah Palin
6%	Tim Pawlenty
4%	Newt Gingrich
4%	Mike Huckabee
5%	Mike Pence
2%	John Thune
2%	Mitch Daniels
2%	Rick Santorum
1%	Hailey Barbour

Chris Christie: Christie didn’t even speak at CPAC, but he came in third in the straw poll, and he seems to be the candidate everyone mentions they most want to see run.

Congressional Freshmen: The biggest winners at CPAC were the new generation of stars among the Congressional freshmen class. As a group, they were treated like rock stars and they lived up to the billing. Rep. Allen West (Fla.) brought down the house and Rep. Kristi Noem (S.D.) delivered this great quote: “A lot of us freshman don’t really have a lot of knowledge about the ways of Washington – and frankly, we don’t really care.” Others made an equally strong impression. Look for some of these people to be on the Republican ticket, possibly as early as 2012.

Obama: Despite the primaries beginning in earnest soon and a plethora (yes El Guapo, a plethora) of candidates, there is no real GOP leader to take on Obama. That makes it hard for the GOP to present unified criticism.

Conservatism: GOPproud is a conservative gay rights group. This was the second year they were in attendance, and as before, several evangelical groups protested or boycotted CPAC because of it. Despite the disagreement, the expansion of “official conservatism” to new groups is a good thing as it will broaden the appeal of conservatism, bring new ideas, and soften the caricature of conservatism as a white, evangelical movement.

Donald Trump: Trump is beyond unelectable and everybody knows it, including Trump. What he wants is publicity, and he got it.

To Be Determined

Mitch Daniels: By all accounts, Daniels gave a well-received speech, though his “sobering” style has never worked in the past. Yet, he drew only 2% support in a weak field. That’s pretty bad for the guy who may be the most qualified in the bunch. But it's also clear Daniels is THE media darling. The press corps, left and right, love this guy and they intend to drive his candidacy. He is the only candidate The Economist has profiled and The Washington Post has slobbered all over him. One liberal even described his CPAC speech as "intellectually compelling" and "eloquently crafted." That may be enough to eventually make him the front runner, just like with McCain in 2008.

Tim Pawlenty: The party began pushing Pawlenty the moment he won in a liberal state, a line Pawlenty continues to use -- unlike Romney, who pretends he’s never heard of Taxachussettes. But Pawlenty went into this election cycle with a lot of conservatives calling him a RINO. His speech did little to change that perception. In a weak field, 6% might be enough to keep him alive long enough for others to drop out.

Losers

Mitt Romney: Romney pulled a second place finish, but he did nothing to squelch the problems conservatives have with him. He lacks fire, conviction, and he lacks conservative street cred. And his failure to address his support for RomneyCare continue to rankle. In fact, despite a generally good speech, most of the activists continued to mention RomneyCare first and foremost when asked about him. His support is derisively described as "a mile wide and an inch deep."

Newt Gingrich: Gingrich has been thriving for years on the facade that conservative activists are just waiting to draft him. His 4% showing in a truly weak field may finally be enough to knock down that facade.

Ron Paul: Paul continues to show that he has hard-core supporters who, like Steelers fans and Deadheads, will travel anywhere to support him. But his defense policy disgusts conservatives -- he was even kicked out of a college conservative organization (Young Americans for Freedom “YAF”) in response to it. My sense with Paul is he’s marginalized because everyone knows he’s peaked in terms of support and he’s not political enough to leverage his support with another candidate. That makes him someone everyone else can overlook.

The Democrats: The Democrats still have no one they can target as the main opposition leader, and as they are discovering, attacks against little know congressional figures just don’t light the public’s imagination. So they are still stuck defending Obama.

The No-Shows: Palin, Huckabee, and Huntsman failed to show up. Palin and Huckabee have their own support networks, but if they ever want to be anything more than evangelical Ron Pauls, they need to start building bridges. Skipping the Super Bowl of conservatism is not a good idea, as evidenced by their poor 7% and 4% showing among people who should be their fan base. Huntsman failed for a different reason. By not showing up, he confirmed what conservatives already knew, he bleeds RINO blue.

Rick Santorum: Santorum proved that when your only issue is abortion, you aren’t relevant. Apparently, the hall was barely 2/3 full when he spoke.

Haley Barbour: Barbour always struck me as a corrupt Washington insider, but I could never remember why. Then he said this. . .

“I'm a lobbyist. The guy who gets elected or the lady who gets elected will immediately be lobbying. They'll be advocating to the Congress, they'll be lobbying our allies and our adversaries overseas, they'll be asking the business community, the labor unions. You just -- that's just what presidents do for a living.”

Good point! Maybe we should hire Charlie Manson to write our criminal laws or Satan to create a new religion. . . they knew how to deal with bad people. No thanks. Put a (pitch)fork in Barbour, he’s done.

The Johns: John Thune. . . John Bolton. . . Gary Johnson. . . Jon Huntsman. . . who are these people?

Conservatives:> It is deeply troubling that all our candidates are known more for their flaws than their virtues. Some are de-inspirational or unprincipled. Some are idiots or flakes. Some aren’t even conservatives. Nobody’s perfect, but is this the best we can do? It feels like we’re looking for a babysitter and our only choices are a stoned teenager, an ex-con, and a creepy clown who’s got pedophilia written all over him.

This is the moment leader emerge, when no one else is holding the reins. It's time someone stood up and made the sale. We're waiting.

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Announcement

We're going to update our blog tonight. Here is a link to what it will look like: LINK. Please check this out and tell me if you have any problems with the new format. I'd like to fix any problems that come up before we do the update... Thanks! [+] Read More...

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A Tale Of Two Exits

R.I.P. Democratic Leadership Council. Bye-bye Senator Jim Webb (D-VA). Although both exits are strong indications that the left has finally gotten complete control of the Democratic Party, the stories are somewhat different. The DLC had many manifestations, but was largely considered to be a moderate Democratic group that was not hostile to business.

Webb ran as a conservative Democrat with strong pro-national defense credentials and a major disdain for the Democratic left and the McGovernites. He opposed the Iraq War, but not because he could be described as a peacenik. Webb was not particularly unfriendly toward the DLC, but he despised its major player, Bill Clinton. He quit his position as Reagan's Secretary of the Navy because of his opposition to defense budget cuts, and endorsed Republicans George W. Bush for President and George Allen for Governor of Virginia (the same man he defeated in his bid for Senator). As Virginia temporarily moved toward the blue side of the spectrum, Webb ran as if Virginia were bright crimson.

During his Senatorial run, Webb advocated cutting capital gains taxes, strongly supported Second Amendment rights, and was willing to support the nomination of conservative judges. But once elected, and unlike the DLC which wavered only slightly on its middle-of-the-road positions, Webb made a sharp left turn and ended up with one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. Suddenly and seemingly incomprehensibly Webb became bosom buddies with Bill Clinton and even stranger, with John Kerry. Webb had refused for at least two decades to shake hands with Kerry, whom he considered a traitor for his bashing of the American military during the Vietnam War.

We may never know for sure what caused Webb to veer to the left. Perhaps opportunism, or expediency, or even a genuine change of heart toward the role of government. Whatever the reasons, it was a dramatic shift from being to the right of the DLC to being to the left of it. But Virginia is poised to make that move back into the red state zone, and Webb would have had a much more difficult time being reelected, particularly if his rival would have been the man he defeated previously. Still, that alone didn't cause his resignation. There are those who say it was simply that he didn't like the snail's-pace and formality of the Senate. Or possibly that he didn't have the political will for another battle against the trends. Or even that he simply couldn't figure out how to explain his dramatic shift from right to left.

But I would suggest that some, and perhaps all of those surmises are at least partially correct. Yet Webb made one major miscalculation. He supported Obamacare, and that could have been a death sentence (pun intended) in Virginia which is in the forefront of the battle to repeal the Health Care Act or gut it in court. So let me wander off into a couple of fantasies about why the funeral orations for the DLC and Senator Webb are occurring at the same time.

The DLC was on its face largely moderate. But underneath, it was about identifying hot-button issues on which Democrats had previously demonstrated serious weaknesses unpopular with the public. Issues such as national defense, crime and free enterprise. The DLC worked very hard to convince Americans that Democrats could and would take moderate and popular stands on those issues. Their problem was that after a brief ascendancy in the 1990s, the DLC was overwhelmed by the Pelosi-Reed left. That coalition worked long and hard to undo the Clinton triangulation and the public relations facade of the DLC.

By the middle of Bush's presidency, with an unpopular two-front war in progress, and Bush Derangement Syndrome at its height, the Democratic Party gained from its direct opposition to Bush, where the DLC had advocated cooperation. And then came the crash. Suddenly the left could plausibly (if inaccurately) blame Republicans and free enterprise for the crash. That allowed Pelosi and Reed to push the party even farther to the left with massive government programs, supported by Barack Obama, on the promise of using socialist schemes (which they never called "socialist") to "solve the crisis" and "fundamentally transform America." Too many Americans panicked, saw change as a good thing in and of itself, and voted for a leftist Democratic President and Congress.

In 2010, America had come to its senses, recognized what the Democrats were really up to, and Republicans re-took the House of Representatives by a substantial margin and got close to taking the Senate in a year when the challenged Democratic seats were largely in solidly blue states. That left Webb with a Party that was inarguably far left, particularly hammered home when the remaining House Democrats chose Nancy Pelosi as their majority leader. It also left the DLC with practically no base at all in a Party that could only hold the left and lost in almost every moderate, centrist or conservative area of any importance.

But it also left both the DLC and Webb with the underlying problem that all good socialists and John McCain disdain--money. Despite their obvious and sometimes vast differences, and with the political and social issues determining the existence of both politicians and political movements, the two suffered from an inability to raise real money and set up war chests large enough to conduct winning activities. Neither Webb nor the DLC remain fiscally viable, and are therefore not politically viable.

Only by re-reinventing himself could Webb stand a chance of getting his Party's nomination. But Virginians are fans of the dictum "burn me once, shame on you; burn me twice, shame on me." How could he possibly raise money for another run when he already stiffed the people who believed him the first time around?

The DLC did not share that problem, but it did share the problem of not being able to raise money from the remaining ruling Democrats who have been almost totally radicalized. Taking the middle ground doesn't work for Democrats anymore. Many Blue Dog Democrats were defeated in the last election. The remaining Blue Dogs have either been isolated or co-opted. Of the thirteen remaining Blue Dogs who voted against Obamacare, only three voted to repeal it. For the time being, the Democratic Party is a leftist political machine that retains only its most radical members from its glory days from 2006 through this past election.

The public has figured that out, and will spend its money supporting candidates who take a genuine stand and stick to it. This has created an informal coalition of Republicans and Independents who will monetarily support the moderate to conservative candidates, while Democratic money will go only to avowed liberals and radicals. And that is the exit music for the DLC and Jim Webb.
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Irony Is Alive And Well In Berkeley

Remember those signs? The City Council of the People's Republic of Berkeley passed a series of ordinances designed to drive Marine Corps recruiters out of the hallowed haunts of radical wretchedness. While America is at war with a vile mass-murdering terrorist enemy disguised as a religion, Berkeley decided that it was no place for the Marine Corps that had put its first overseas action into its hymn: "To the shores of Tripoli." Same enemy, different century, different location.

OK, that's typical of Berkeley, but not ironic. The irony comes a couple years after the height of the Marine Corps brouhaha. Berkeley has a dandy little leftist governmental entity called, believe it or not, the Peace and Justice Commission. The Marine Corps is in charge of the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. An American city chooses to insult, demean and ban a branch of the US military during a time of war. In order to complete its disloyal slap at America, the Berkeley City Council, acting on the recommendation of the Peace and Justice Commission, has decided to be the premier welcomer of "one or two Guantanamo Bay detainees and use city funds to assist them in resettling in Berkeley." Terrorists, yes. Marines, no.

Now settle down. As Al Jolson famously said, "you ain't seen nothin' yet." To make sure that nobody could mistake the intentions of the Commission and the Council, Commissioner Rita Maran says: "The idea is to invite to Berkeley the kind of people you'd like to have living next door to you, or dating your cousin." Maybe, if you like neighbors such as Jeffrey Dahmer or potential relatives like the Hillside Strangler. The Islamic terrorists likely to become the new mayor and chief of police of Berkeley are one Russian and one Algerian. The weasel-word of the feds is "cleared" and the weasel-words of the Commission are "they pose no threat to the United States." True enough, if they had been kept at Guantanamo.

"Cleared" means that the terrorists might not be convicted by a jury if they had been charged with civilian murders, committed on American soil, in a court using the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. It's another example of the left, and particularly the Obama administration, not understanding the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions, and the difference between civilian criminal charges and enemy combatants captured in a theater of war. And then there's that small detail of a Supreme Court gone mad allowing the right of habeas corpus for wartime detainees captured outside the United States who are not American citizens. A number of warriors for Allah have been "cleared" using habeas corpus, a procedure never even seriously considered by any previous Supreme Court.

What did the weak-spined Commander-in-Chief's own task force have to say about the 240 detainees at Guantanamo? Couched in words more elegant than mine, they determined that while some detainees may be deserving of transfer or conditional release outside the United States, none of them are innocent wandering clerics or schoolmarms. A prime example of a "cleared" detainee is Ahmed Ghailani, charged with being an active conspirator and agent of Al Qaeda in the 1998 US Embassy bombing. By the time the clever leftist legal eagles got done, he had been demoted from co-conspirator to "Osama bin Laden's cook."

That one worked so well that one of the future Berkeley residents went from being an enemy combatant to being a bookworm and a chef, who learned his high culinary art in Kabul, Afghanistan. The other has gone from being a terrorist trained at the Al Farouq terrorist training camp to being a Russian ballet dancer who experienced anti-Muslim sentiment, moved to a Muslim country, and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The only people crazier than these guys are the fools in Berkeley who want to welcome them with open arms.

The Director of National Intelligence reported last December that 25% of released ("cleared") detainees have been subsequently confirmed to be back in the terrorism business (whether as chefs or ballet dancers is unclear). The Berkeley City Council may be gamblers, but I'm not. I am not going to be in charge of the welcome wagon for neighbors who have a 25% chance of slitting my throat as I'm heading out for church on Sunday.

And so I close with a quote from my favorite UC Berkeley law professor and former adviser to President Bush, John Yoo: "It's the perfect combination of futility and stupidity. It is futile because what happens to Gitmo detainees is up to the federal government. It is stupid because only Berkeley would want to be a magnet for resettlement of Gitmo detainees." I agree with Professor Yoo in principle, but I do want to point out that there is such a place as Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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It's Republican Godzilla!!!

When the GOP freshman class came to town, people wondered what they would be like? Would they quickly fall into the arms of lobbyists? Would they quietly wait their turn, putting in their time, carrying water for their leadership? Or would they turn into a conservative Godzilla? Well, bring on the rubber suit, they’ve flexed some pretty powerful muscles this week and Capitol Hill Tower is going down!

The freshman class is 87 strong, and right away everyone knew they were different. Be it rejecting the luxury health insurance plan Congress gives itself to cutting the House budget by $35 million to sleeping in their offices, this group acted upon their rhetoric. And they say things like this, by Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD) at CPAC:

“A lot of us freshman don’t really have a lot of knowledge about the ways of Washington – and frankly, we don’t really care.”

But in the scheme of things, these are token gestures, would the freshmen do more? Last week showed they would.

It began with the freshmen tripping up part of the Patriot Act. This provision likely will eventually pass (it failed because of the procedural technique the House used), but everyone was shocked. And what really impressed me about this was that the new class of Tea Party people signaled they were not beholden to sacred cows. Too many Republicans (most in fact) blindly vote for anything marked “security.” This was a resounding response that these new freshmen intend to view all actions in light of the Constitution. Hurray!

Then the big one hit. Goaded on by the Republican Study Committee, which proposed the cuts discussed here, the freshmen demanded that the Republicans include $100 billion in immediate spending cuts, as promised, in the continuing resolution needed to keep the government running. This caught the leadership entirely off guard -- notably Hal Rogers (R-Ky) the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. His original proposal cut only a third ($32 billion) of the figure the freshmen demanded.

And this isn’t even the end of the issue, because the bill now goes to the floor, where individual members can propose amendments to make even more cuts. In other words, Godzilla will get another bite.

What makes this even better, is that the leadership happily got in line with the freshmen! Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), a leader of the Republican Study Committee, met with House leadership over this issue and said they were “happy with the result” and were “receptive to going higher with cuts.” Rogers too is on board now.

Why the change? Said one insider, the hard-line approach by the freshmen stiffened the backs of the leadership:

“They understand that we will take some arrows from liberal interest groups for whatever we attempt to cut. So, we should be more aggressive.”

This is the exact opposite of the Pelosi years, where a small cabal of hard-left House leaders imposed their policies on willing and unwilling House members. The new dynamic involves a groundswell of House members pushing the leadership in the right direction. That is much more sustainable, and should embolden everyone.

The guy who explains the new relationship best is Rep. Allen West (R-Fla). Patti has been covering much of what West says, and he is impressive (he wowed them at CPAC too). Here’s how he describes the relationship between the freshmen and the leadership:

“We’ve got your back, [now] you’ve got to step out there and take a bold and aggressive look. We’re all part of that crew that said if you make a commitment and make a promise to the American people you got to stand up for it. . . . It’s important that we do the hard work because that’s what folks are expecting us to do.”

This is great. This is how a party is supposed to work, with a unified core of people supporting (and pushing) their leadership to advance party goals. This should stand us well when it comes to (1) improving the number and quality of ideas, (2) avoiding being blindsided by ideas created in a small bubble, and (3) keeping the leadership from failing to follow through.

So let me finish with some bad poetry.

Government tape is red,
Our budgets are too,
Our government's a mess,
We’re counting on you!

Happy Valentines Day everyone!


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This Is A Stickup--Give Us Those Offerings

Well, it's Sunday, so I thought I'd warm your hearts with another story of government taxation of churches. Yeah, I know. That's unconstitutional. But when has the Constitution ever stopped an institution determined to bleed everyone and everything dry, including churches?

If you're expecting a story about California's Sin Francisco or Los Demones, you will be disappointed. You see, government intrusion into religion isn't reserved for big cities. And hostility toward religious gathering-places isn't the exclusive domain of money-hungry municipal jungles like Chicago or New York City. This lovely story comes out of the little town of Mission, Kansas.

The little town last August passed a "driveway tax." Note for your reference as this article progresses that the the town council itself frequently slips, and refers to it as a tax. Residences and businesses already pay a property tax. But the profligate city government decided that wasn't enough. So they passed the driveway tax which imposes a fee for each car that passes over the driveways of any building in town. The property tax is in line with the Constitution by exempting churches and places of worship, but all that potential income was just too much for the city to ignore. The driveway legislation does not exempt places of worship.

Obviously big businesses and retail stores pay the highest taxes on traffic, usually seven days a week. Residences pay a flat annual tax of $72 (yep, $72 to use your own driveway). I'm not quite sure how they get money out of residents who don't have driveways. But the biggest activity in the town of Mission on Sunday is church-going. Unwilling to ask for tithes with a surcharge for use of the church driveways, several churches have declared the legislation an unconstitutional tax on religion.

The town council, town manager and supporters of the levy have all used the term "tax" multiple times. But they are not completely stupid, so the tax was cleverly disguised as the "Transportation Utility Fee." Fee, schmee. A turd by any other name will stink as bad. Protest signs have appeared on lawns all over town. The local Baptist Church estimates its "fee" will be about $600 per year, while the local Catholic Church places its liability at about $1700 per year.

A spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund, which litigates church-state issues on behalf of religious entities and activities, puts the issue rather clearly: "This revenue program is a tax on church attendance." Naturally, the mayor who strongly supports the measure says "this is not a tax, this is a fee." Well, if she says so, and its title uses the word "fee," it must be true. Not.

The legal geniuses for the city claim that this is no different from charging the churches a fee for water, garbage collection, or electricity. With all due respect, those actually are services. What service does the city provide when a car enters the church driveway? Their argument just won't hold holy water. Plainly and simply, the city is taxing the churches on the number of people who enter their premises. And the city officials don't even need to put monitors at the entrances because they assume that unless the tax is overturned, the churches won't lie about their attendance. Cute, huh? Hoisting the churches on their own Christian petard.

While this matter is pending, I would comfort the Christian residents by reminding them that "This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Likewise for the Jewish resident at Sabbath services. I'm not quite sure what to say to the congregants at the local mosque, if there even is one. But given time, I'll come up with something.
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Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

Last known photo of Lincoln
taken April 10, 1865

Today is the 202nd birthday of Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 to April 15, 1865), 16th President of the United States of America.

In remembrance of this great man, here is the text of one of his speeches you may recognize...

Time: November 19, 1863
Place: Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the occasion of the dedication of a cemetery for the Union soldiers who died during the Battle of Gettysburg July 1 to July 3, 1863.

President Lincoln was invited to speak “as Chief Executive of the nation, formally [to] set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.” He took the podium after a two hour speech given by master orator, Edward Everett. His "few appropriate remarks" lasted only two minutes, but will live as one of the "most elegant and eloquent" speeches in American history.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal."

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Just a reminder that as a nation, we have been through much worse than what is going on today and survived... [+] Read More...

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B.O. Learns A Lesson From O.J.

No, I'm not talking about killing his wife. Obama is the height of non-violence, he loves Michelle, she's too tough, and despite a certain movie, it's difficult to cover up a murder at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I'm talking about the art of the slow-speed chase.

OJ probably didn't originate the concept of the slow-speed chase, but he brought it to a form of high art. Do something that would draw the strong ire of the police and the average human being, then draw attention away from the investigation by doing something very openly that will distract the police, the public and the media from the real crime. Meanwhile, back at the crime scene, you have your cronies cover up the evidence and cry racism about what is left to prove your evil deed. Instead of a white Ford Bronco on an L.A. freeway, Obama is shown cruising down the beltway at 25 mph in the Presidential limousine. The rest is pretty much the same.

While the MSM, the lefty blogs, and much of the public are busy watching Obama diss the Queen of England, bow to the Saudi King, and give a big hug to the Premier of Red China, he is busy having his minions in the regulatory agencies ignore the courts and proceed with minor but heinous acts that it will take years to undo, if they can even be undone. He successfully got Congress to ram a 2700 page health care takeover of a major portion of the American economy down the public's throat. When caught and "shellacked" at the polls and two federal court decisions, he simply has his bureaucrats and czars proceed to implement the Act piece by piece.

The plan is to keep putting portions of the Act into action one at a time, creating a smokescreen (slow speed chase), and hope that by the time Congress or the courts can do anything about it, it will be so deeply embedded in the economy as to be nearly incapable of reversal. White House official blogger Stephanie Cutler takes notice of the Vinson Virginia ruling that declares the individual mandate unconstitutional and inseverable from the rest of the appallingly mislabeled Affordable Care Act. She concedes that a court of competent jurisdiction has effectively voided the Act in twenty-six states, but that's just a minor inconvenience. So her simple announcement following the decision is that "implementation of the Health Care Act will continue uninterrupted."

The White House is banking on Congress being unable to repeal the Act even if the Republicans gain control of the Senate two years hence. It is also banking on the Supreme Court refusing to hear the case until all the federal appellate jurisdictions have ruled on the issue. An expedited petition for immediate hearing before the high court has already been filed, but as yet it is unknown if the Supreme Court will allow the case to be expedited ("grant certiorari") without further decisions at the appellate level. And even if the Supreme Court does hear the case, more time will have passed with pieces of the legislation already in place, and there is no guarantee that the justices will issue a definitive opinion that all actions on the Act be stopped or reversed.

At the same time, Congress refused to pass the Cap and Trade scheme. But multiple actions by federal agencies in slow-speed chase mode may render that meaningless and by the time the high court can rule on the piece-by-piece implementation of an Act rejected by Congress, the damage will already have been done. Recent news indicates that Congress might reverse the CO2 actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency. Maybe. But when? And how much of each EPA action will be modified or reversed? It's like punching at air. You hit at it, but it just moves aside and puts itself in another position, requiring more wasted effort to punch at it again.

And then there's Ken Salazar, current Secretary of the Interior and former Senator from Andrew Price's home state. Ashton Ellis says "he's turned the Bureau of Land Management into an eminent domain machine." Salazar's department has grabbed huge chunks of land from individual owners for "wilderness purposes" without adequate legal protection, notice and fair compensation. He ordered the mass slaughter of wild mustangs on federal lands in order to preserve the natural environment (huh?). Like the Obamacare defiance, both of these actions were in direct violation of court orders.

The Salazar cases will move on to higher courts, and if and when they make it to the Supreme Court, the actions will likely be declared both illegal and unconstitutional. But the same question has to be asked--when? And the slow-speed chase goes on. By the time a final decision is reached on these piece-by-piece power grabs, what good will their reversal do?

Salazar's department took advantage of another crisis to grab power and implement Obama administration green policies when the Deepwater Horizon caused a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana's valuable coastline was in immediate danger. While the Obama administration fiddled and fumbled with the spill, Salazar's department ordered the cessation of all oil drilling in the Gulf, particularly singling out American interests anywhere near Louisiana. A federal judge in New Orleans overturned the ban in May of the same year, stating that the action had no rational basis. Salazar then issued a new, and nearly identical order that hasn't yet been litigated. The ban has since been lifted, but his department has yet to issue a single drilling permit.

Do you see the plan? Draw attention away with big deal public battles like Obamacare and Cap and Trade. At the same time, knowing you will be facing lengthy litigation and/or slow or no action from Congress, put your agenda into action piecemeal through federal agencies. Ignore the courts if you need to. Appeal if you lose. But keep acting, piece by piece, until the goals of the original acts are like concrete that has already set. Another name for this kind of plan is "death in small doses."

If you think it doesn't work consider the following: Assume that ultimately every single action is found invalid by the high court, or Congress repeals the Acts upon which the actions were taken. Say, five years from now (and in some cases, a mere six months from now). What effect will that have on the actions which have been declared invalid?

The mustangs won't be brought back to life. The owners of the property have already been ruined and have moved on. 5,000 jobs in Louisiana have already been lost, probably forever. American companies in or dependent on the oil industry have already moved many of their operations overseas. The chaotic effects of the early plans to go forward with Obamacare are destabilizing the economy, throwing Medicare into panic-mode, and wreaking havoc with the medical profession. It will be small comfort that we won every court battle while we're standing in bread lines. Or like the Brits, standing in National Health Service lines waiting for inadequate medical care, or at home trying to make an appointment with a doctor to treat the cancer that's killing you.

This is a political crisis, not a legal crisis. The law will go on either way. And 100% decisions against the actions of the Obama administration some time in the future will set legal precedents. But the political precedent being established right now is to ignore, dance around, defy, appeal and mangle the meaning of court decisions while the political policies become self-actuating and permanently cast in concrete.

The last best hope for the time being is that the Republican House will set another precedent--de-fund any agency that willfully acts after Congress and/or the courts have told it not to. Whether the Republican Party has the will, the guts and the votes to do so is a question for the future. I can hope, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Film Friday: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Many people list 2001 as the greatest movie of all time. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a very good film. Yes, the effects are great and Kubrick’s use of music is excellent. But the plot is weak and Kubrick could have told the same story in a fraction of the time; that’s not good filmmaking. Moreover, the main selling point to 2001 is the film’s “philosophy,” but Kubrick cheated on the philosophy. Still, it raises issues that are fun to think about.

** spoiler alert **

I’m conflicted when it comes to Stanley Kubrick. I recognize his genius, but I find his films hard to like. His topics are unpleasant, his style is sterile, and his characters are lifeless. His films are like a painting that perfectly recreates a bowl of rotting fruit -- you may marvel at the technique and feel “enriched” for having seen it, but you don’t really want to see it again. 2001 fits this pattern perfectly.

Why 2001 isn't a great film.

My biggest problem with 2001 is the dull and simplistic plot. 2001 consists of four loosely related stories. The first twenty minutes are the story of mankind evolving in the shadow of a mysterious black obelisk to learn to use tools. Nothing happens here that couldn’t have been told in a minute and in more interesting ways. The second twenty minutes are the story of an NSA-type man called to a futuristic moonbase to examine the first evidence of alien life -- another black obelisk. Again, Kubrick stretches two minutes of information into twenty and the information given is less than fulfilling. Moreover, despite his efforts to give the main character depth by feeding us images of his kids and talk of happier times, the character is as sterile as the environment. He’s so sterile, we don’t even remember his name. The next thirty minutes are the most famous as a spaceship’s computer, the HAL 9000 (a one letter shift from IBM), goes insane and kills the crew. This is the part everyone remembers as it involves the only real plot in the film. But again, what Kubrick presents could have been shown in a fraction of the time and the only interesting character is the computer -- the others are robotic and lifeless. The last thirty minutes are a drug trip filled with symbolism as lacking in subtlety as kids looking through a dictionary for dirty words.

Indeed, I have a good deal of contempt for the ending. Kubrick tries very hard to make a “deep” film at that point, but he doesn’t really have anything to say. So instead, he throw a series of symbols at the audience in the hopes that you think there is more going on here than meets the eye. There isn’t. These symbols are obvious and they all relate to a single point: creation/procreation. They include barely disguised religious symbols, stylized images of sperms and eggs and symbolic orgasms, and even a large fetus floating in space. Then Kubrick gives the illusion of progression by adding the symbology of one of the astronauts aging and dying, before the floating fetus is born. While he’s hoping this makes you think something deep is being said, all he’s really saying is: God, sex, birth, youth, old age, death, rebirth. That’s not very deep or original. He might as well have said: bread, fridge, mustard, ham, eat, store. Both represent the cycle of life.

What I do like about 2001 though, and what makes this film so memorable, are the mysteries Kubrick presents. Now I admit up front that Kubrick is playing us for suckers in this regard because there is no solution to these mysteries -- and they are likely tautologies and thus cannot have solutions. But they are still fun to talk about. Let’s discuss.

Mystery No. 1: What are the black obelisks?

The big mystery in 2001 is the appearance of the black obelisks. The first appears at a time when man was still an ape-like creature. It appears one day and does something we cannot see (though we hear it ringing). Soon thereafter, one of the apes learns to use a bone as a tool. This is the beginning of the rise of man, discovering the ability to use tools. From this, we can infer the obelisks are pushing along man’s evolution. The final obelisk seems to reinforce this when it results in astronaut Dave discovering the nature of the universe and morphing into some space-baby.

But what about the second obelisk? Obelisk 2 is a bit of a problem, because no evolutionary change appears to accompany its arrival. In fact, the sole function of Obelisk 2 seems to be to point the way toward Obelisk 3. Yet, surely, if these obelisks are there to cause evolutionary changes, then Obelisk 2 could have done what Obelisk 3 does, so why force mankind to travel to Obelisk 3? Was Obelisk 2 just out of order. . . "this aisle closed. . . go to next obelisk"?

It’s possible Obelisk 2 was there to mark the evolutionary point where man becomes dependent on his tools. If you compare the sterile, but still human characters you meet on the moonbase against the inert and robotic humans onboard the Discovery One, there is a remarkable change: the position of human and machine are reversed. Indeed, on Discovery One, HAL does everything as the humans sit idly by. And when HAL goes insane, the humans struggle with the question of whether they have the ability to control Discovery One without HAL. By comparison, the humans on the moonbase still handle everything themselves. We even see the pilots steering the Pan-Am spaceplane. Maybe this is what Obelisk 2 was really doing, heralding the replacement of mankind by the tools man created?

If this is true, then all kinds of interesting questions arise. Who built the obelisks? In other words, who is controlling our evolution? And is evolution inevitable, i.e. is it being forced on us or is it only a choice, i.e. can we reject it? Dave and Frank fight back against HAL, but they don’t survive the movie. And if it is God causing evolution, then why use the obelisks? Surely a supreme being could cause these changes without using a mechanical device? Perhaps, God was replaced by his own tools and these obelisks are the tools that took over the universe? None of this is addressed in the film, but it's interesting to consider.

On a final note, our inability to explain Obelisk 2 really could be a sticking point in the “philosophy” of 2001. If Obelisk 2 doesn’t have a meaningful purpose, then how can we say what purpose any of the obelisks serve? Maybe their only purpose is to give the viewer a mystery? If so, that would be a tautology: they are a mystery because they were meant to be mysterious. If that is the case, and it could be, then Kubrick really is a jerk, and 2001 starts to become a pretty big fraud. Hmmm.

Mystery No. 2: Why does HAL kill the crew?

So why does HAL kill the crew? Several explanations have been advanced for HAL’s murderous behavior. The first (and the one accepted by the film 2010) is that HAL was confronted with a paradox. He was told to complete the mission, but he was also told to protect the crew. When he became convinced the crew had become a danger to the mission, he resolved this conflict by killing the crew. There are some problems with this theory however. For example, HAL’s solution seems pretty extreme for such a sophisticated machine. A better solution would have been to lock the crew up, which he could have done. At the very least, there was no reason to kill the sleeping crew members. Also, how can HAL complete the mission without the crew?

Now it’s possible HAL simply saw all humans as flawed and, therefore, a danger to the mission. We get a clue about this with HAL’s insistence that any mistakes made by the 9000 Series computers were the result of human error. . . you damn dirty apes! But even if that was the case, why doesn’t HAL just kill the crew by cutting off the air? Why does he try to cover up his murders by staging an accident? If his decision really was based on logic, i.e. he followed his programming, he should have executed the humans and then reported his successful saving of the mission, just as he would report other functions. His deceit tells us something else was going on. And you can't argue that HAL was just responding to the threat that Frank and Dave intended to shut him down because HAL was already being deceitful at that point. Clearly, his decision to kill them was premeditated.

The best explanation is HAL had attained some level of consciousness and for reasons unknown became homicidal. But why become homicidal? One could argue that because he was programmed to mimic mankind, he included our worst traits as well as our best. But you would think his propensity to homicide would have shown up in the nine years of testing before he was installed. . . "hey, where's my lab assistant?" A better explanation is that HAL suffered a mental breakdown when he learned about the obelisk. In fact, this point also makes sense in terms of explaining the role of Obelisk 2. HAL represents man’s mind before Obelisk 2 was discovered, as he was programmed in 1992 to mimic human behavior. He is incapable of dealing with the idea that man is not alone in the universe. Thus, when he learns of the obelisks, he goes crazy and decides to kill the crew to prevent them from discovering the truth -- a sort of “if we ignore it, then it’s not there” approach. By comparison, the crew, who were evolved by Obelisk 2, are now capable of dealing with their loss of place at the center of the universe. HAL cannot because he is a machine and did not evolve.

Of course, this is just speculation again, as Kubrick gives us nothing to solve this mystery. HAL’s own words make no sense because killing the crew would end his ability to perform the mission. Dave never speculates. And no other facts appear to help us solve this riddle. In fact, looking only at what Kubrick gives us produces another tautology: HAL kills the crew because he becomes homicidal.

In any event, this raises additional interesting questions. How comfortable are we putting our lives in the hands of machines? Can we ever truly program a machine to handle the sorts of paradoxes and dramatically unexpected facts which humans apparently can handle with ease? And do we in fact infuse our own creations with our own vices, i.e. (kind of like the Blade Runner question) could we make a computer that only acts according to our better instincts, and how would it react when it finally met us?

Conclusion

All in all, 2001 is a film you should see. It’s culturally relevant. It brought science fiction to the adult world and made it respectable. It ushered in the realism phase of science fiction -- its treatment of the silence and frictionlessness of space is truly impressive. It is an important film. Just don't expect to enjoy it.

Check out the new film site -- CommentaramaFilms!

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Who's A Chicken?

You all know that this is a high-tone conservative opinion site. But in pursuit of the goal of becoming the HuffPo of the right, I felt that we needed a few more of those news alerts about items that you wouldn't hear about anywhere else. As a Second Amendment purist, I support the right to bear arms as a sacred individual right. And I don't limit it to guns. Here's an example of the right to bear knives as exercised in California.

Kern County Headline: "Knife-wielding bird kills local man." See what happens when you oppress angry males? This is a story of how simple physical size and strength is not enough to win against a smaller potential victim who is armed to the beak. Jose Luis Ochoa, a resident of Lamont, California, was known to the local authorities to be a chicken-oppressor. He was well-known in the cockfighting community. Ochoa took innocent young roosters away from their families, taught them how to commit dangerously illegal tasks, imprisoned them in filthy cages, fed their lust with voluptuous young hens, and paid them chickenfeed.

No right thinking being with any self-respect will tolerate this kind of maltreatment for long. And though he would otherwise have been denied his Second Amendment rights, this rooster was no chicken. While the oppressor's attention was focused elsewhere, this proud gamecock deviously attached a very sharp, very large knife to his leg. Ochoa and his fellow oppressors sent two of the gladiators into the Tulare County arena, but instead of the usual feathered blood sport, this guy turned on his tormentors and attacked Ochoa. He went for the jugular, but apparently missed and hit the femoral artery instead. Rumors circulate that the rooster's name is Spartacus, but I don't yet have independent verification of that.

Ochoa did not expire immediately, but instead fled when the local police arrived at the arena. Deputies found five dead avian gladiators and other evidence of cockfighting, but their masters and arena-owners were nowhere to be found. There is some evidence that if Ochoa had remained at the scene instead of fleeing, his injury might not have cost him his life. The autopsy conducted in neighboring Kern County determined that Ochoa died of "sharp force injury." Ochoa had tried to make it to his home in Lamont, but decided he'd better stop off at a Bakersfield hospital first. He didn't quite make it.

Ochoa apparently hoped not to be caught and charged for cockfighting. He had already paid a $370 fine earlier in the year on the same charge. In California, a first offense is a misdemeanor but a second offense is a felony. Ochoa didn't want to be placed in the same kind of iron cage he kept his roosters in. What he didn't realized is that unlike the chickens, the caged humans get HBO.

Now you can't say we don't do breaking news. And I learned something as well. As a lawyer, I knew a second gladiatorial offense was a felony. But it took finding this story in the deep recesses of local newspapers to realize it carried the death penalty. It sounds like rough justice to me. As a sidenote, the ACLU (American Chicken Liberties Union) has offered to represent the rooster and offer the battered-bird syndrome as a defense. So far, however, nobody seems interested in prosecuting.
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