You can take the politician out of Chicago, but you can't take Gangster Politics out of the Chicago politician. President Obama and his left-hand man Rahm are determined to run the country. Not govern, mind you, but control all that they can grab.
There are many lessons to be learned about how Obama turned General Motors into Government Motors or, more accurately, Gangster Motors. Lessons that we should heed before giving his Congressional Mob more power over our lives – such as regulating the health care services that we seek.
LESSON 1: Politicians run government. The more things that government controls, the more things that politicians control.
LESSON 2: The politician's Number One Constituent is the politician himself (or herself). Politicians who seek greater regulatory control will always do so for the benefit of those who fund their campaigns and put them in office.
LESSON 3: Government intervention gives politicians the power to pick winners and losers in private enterprise.
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann (R) articulates LESSON 3 in action with the new Gangster Motors:
If left unfettered, this is a sign of things to come.
By controlling GM, politicians have more power to control what we buy. They have already killed the Hummer and shut down many of your local GM and Chrysler dealers. Fewer choices in cars and fewer choices in dealers. Look for higher prices (or taxes) for those cars that aren't blessed by Algore's Chicken Little followers in Congress.
Which leads us to another lesson:
LESSON 4: Politicians control choice by limiting it. In everything they touch – from current regulations on health care insurance, to drilling and refining oil, to GM and Chrysler – the choices in products and services available to the public have been limited by politicians. While the free-market exists to satisfy consumer demand, it is the nature of politicians to stifle it through regulation.
Government isn't what made America great. Personal freedom is. And the free-market is personal freedom in action. It is the means by which free people pursue the American Dream. It is also the antithesis of tyranny. A government bent on controlling its populace will aggressively seek to destroy the free-market – and personal freedom with it.
Politicians helped drive GM and Chrysler to collapse so they can come to the rescue by taking over. They are using the same template to take full control of the health care industry.
Let me be clear. It is not their mission to fulfill consumer demand for health care services. It is their mission to control it.
As we learned in LESSON 4, politicians control using limits. This is a service industry. They cannot force doctors and nurses to serve. A closer look at Obamacare (and Hillarycare before it) reveals plans to limit what doctors can practice and what they can earn. Yet there are no limits on ambulance chasing among the lawyers who fund Democrats in Congress (see LESSON 2). Together, this control will make the medical profession less profitable for those who serve it. Doctors and nurses – particularly the good ones – will seek other professions and medical school will attract fewer students. The result? Long waits and less service for those who need medical attention.
When you think government run health care, think politician run health care. This is no cure. It's new form of cancer on personal freedom.
The Wall Street Journal pretty much sums it up in the subtitle of their piece in todays edition: Franken wins by changing the rules.
In good journalistic fashion, the first and last paragraphs of the piece provide a good summary of the debacle (emphasis mine):
The Minnesota Supreme Court yesterday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of last year's disputed Senate race, and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman's gracious concession at least spares the state any further legal combat. The unfortunate lesson is that you don't need to win the vote on Election Day as long as your lawyers are creative enough to have enough new or disqualified ballots counted after the fact.
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Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election. If the GOP hopes to avoid repeats, it should learn from Minnesota that modern elections don't end when voters cast their ballots. They only end after the lawyers count them.
Although there is nothing we can do about the wormy little guy the DFL controlled power structure selected to embarrass us as our senator (as if our other one isn't embarrassing enough), we on the Right need to learn from this debacle. Norm Coleman's RINOism and unfaithfulness to his base allowed the election to be close enough to be stolen. He needs to quietly fade away and not even think of running for governor.
"Selected, not Elected" - it does has a familiar and catchy ring to it.
I've been pondering what to call Franken. Have not been able to come up with a word or phrase that describes him. Sure enough, Right Hook has done it. From this point forward I will always refer to Franken as "wormy little guy."
Call me crazy but the ideal ticket for Republicans in 2012 would be Chuck Norris for President and Bill Cosby, Vice-President.
First of all, Republicans are going to need celebrity because no politician on the horizon is popular enough or communicates well enough to win even if Obama falters in popularity. Norris and Cosby are likable and well-spoken. If I’m a good judge of character, there’s not a lie in them, and not a hidden agenda they would agree to.
I’m not sure these two have even met. I’m not sure of Cosby’s political leanings or even if he would consider politics. Still, a Norris-Cosby ticket would be ideal.
The public is looking for someone who will talk to them honestly. These guys will.
Mike Steele, get on the phone with Chuck Norris and Bill Cosby right now!
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I’ve often thought that humor might bring Middle East peace rather than traditional diplomacy. Could you imagine Bill Cosby with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators in the same room. He’d have those guys in stitches, laughing hard enough to forget old wounds.
All he’d have to do is tell them about himself, when he was growing up in the Philadelphia projects. Here’s just one of his jokes:
“When I was growing up my family was broke. There’s a big difference between being broke and being poor. When you’re poor you still have something!”
Bob Benke has been appointed to the Ramsey County Charter Commission.
Just what is his motivation for this? Why would he want it?
Bob Benke is the past Mayor of New Brighton. He's a friend and adviser to the current Mayor. He was co-chair of the re-election committee for County Commissioner Jan Parker.
Benke has a MN-DOT background. He fancies himself a traffic "expert." His firm did an early study on light rail if I'm not mistaken. Basically, Benke has lived and breathed government -- and has profited from government -- his whole life.
But I think the key is Jan Parker. Just my opinion, but I think he's on the commission by request to watch out for her interests. Her outlandish salary, her regal benefits. (The commissioners raised their own salary 20% in 2003 and again by 25% in 2007.) Just so happens the Charter Commission is discussing salary limits on the commissioners. I wonder what position Benke will take on this. One guess allowed.
As government at all levels moves toward total world takeover, I propose that one piece of the strategy to Starve the Beast is to make it no fun to work for the government. The people who work for the government should have to deal with cranky, non-compliant, detail-stickling, skeptical, slow-paying, end-run-arounder, playing-dumb types all day, every day, until the pool of people willing to occupy those positions shrinks to about 3 in every county.
Suggested ways to annoy government workers: 1. Give the toll-workers pennies. In fact, pay all bills to the government in pennies, to the extent possible. Visit your city's utility office, for example, with a nice big bag of pennies, smile peaceably and say, when they protest, "It says, Legal tender for all debts public and private. Would you like me to wait while you count it?" 2. Pay your taxes as late as possible. If never works for you, it works for me. 3. File Freedom of Information requests. I've always wanted to know the average length of CIA agents' shoestrings, for example. More constructive, perhaps, would be demanding the data sets of NASA's "climate change" researchers. 4. Go to city and county council meetings and play the fool. Ask questions out of turn, insist on answers, rustle candy wrappers, whisper to your neighbor, anything short of getting yourself thrown out (which might be fun, but defeats the purpose of being a thorn in the side). 5. Don't buy things. The less you buy in consumer goods, the lower the sales tax revenue. If you don't buy a house, property values continue to slide and local governments are forced to shake hands with reality (so are you, but that's all good; reality is our friend). If you don't buy a car, the sham "reorganizations" in the auto industry get exposed sooner. The less you buy in general, the less likely you're in debt, the more likely you have savings, and you are overall more independent. The government needs people to spend so that China and Japan have continuing motivation to buy our debt at low interest rates. Furthermore, the government wants people in slavery to debt in many forms, so that its devaluation of the currency doesn't hurt the people at the bottom so badly. Delays the riots, you know. So speed up the riots and the default by the Feds--clean out the wound--don't buy things. When you're not afraid to live with less, you can tell the mayor, the Congressman, the city inspector and the city councilwoman to get off their cans and get real jobs, because you don't need them. 6. Lower your income. Moms, now's a great time to slash your household budget and legitimately declare lots less income, meanwhile strengthening family bonds by quitting your job. The government at all levels wants access to children and wants families to feel chained to their lifestyle. Cut the strings and train up your kids yourself. Your life will be simpler and you will be helping to Starve the Beast. And government workers may (okay, maybe this is wishful thinking) be forced to give up some pension and health benefits, in light of plummeting revenues. 7. Do NOT do what you're told. Smile, nod, and then drag your feet. Are they telling you you can't have a sign in your yard? Are they telling you you must cut your grass? Are they telling you where to put your trash can, that you must submit to inspections, that you can't have 8 vehicles on your property? Smile, nod, and then wait until they're an inch from fining you before you do anything. If they complain, play dumb. "I didn't get any letter. That darn postal service--raising rates all the time, and this is the service we get!?" "Watering on the wrong day? Must have been my kids. I'll talk to them." "Really? I can't keep my garbage cans here? I never knew that!" 8. COMPLAIN. Whenever justified at all, complain bitterly. Remind government workers that you pay their salaries, and you expect SERVICE. I was recently told, for example, that the sending of license tag renewal notices is "just a courtesy" and the DMV is not actually at fault, even if it can't prove you were sent a notice, if you are ticketed for late tag renewal. By the time I left the DMV office, you can be sure the workers there wished they worked somewhere else. 9. Tell stupid government worker jokes. Preferably to or in the presence of government workers. 10. Read the law. Insist your local representative, city council member, mayor, county council member, and so on hear about how they're failing to follow the local ordinances. If you possibly can, file lawsuits protesting your city or county ordinances as vague, unconstitutional, or whatever other theory fits the case.
Join the campaign. Spread the word ... we're Starving the Beast, and that includes its supply of workers.
This kind of attitude brings only shame on the name of Republican. You certainly do not have me convinced to misbehave. I'm embarrassed now to have been associated with the R title.
I suspect John Galt is saying a lot of this in jest. The point is that government at all levels is getting too big and arrogant for its britches. The responsible thing to do is vote Republican, and stay on the elected person's case, to make sure he or she is on task. That means reducing the burden of government on the ordinary productive taxpayer.
Anonymous, don't listen to Force50. I mean it all. There's no humor in my posts at all, ever.
Seriously (or not, you never know), I intend to be embarrassing. But what makes you think BootsOn is a Republican vehicle? This site is for conservatives. And trust me, the conservative thing to do now is to Starve the Beast.
The only question is whether the Republicans should be embarrassed to be associated with humorless people such as yourself, Anonymous.
This is a Republican site affiliated with BPOU 50B. Rarely is editing necessary but they could pull the plug at any time.
Normally posts are interesting and on a higher intellectual plane than this post. This post sounds more like anarchy without the violence. Not a Republican or conservative value.
Fact is we are going to have public employees, elected officials and taxes whether we like it or not. Only Republicans appear to want government to be small and efficient. Government is supposed to be the servant of the people. What has happened is that too often it is the boss and the controller and getting greedier and greedier. It is up to Republicans and conservatives to educate and persuade the public that bigger government is not the answer.
John Galt is very cerebral and does much better when discussing banksters and the monetary system.
Why haven't you pulled the plug on this post? The author is an anarchist. This is a terrible reflection of my Conservative and often Republican values. Take it down!
I think this post artfully demonstrates how fickle the Beast really is. The Beast feeds on the dependency of the constituents of the Beast's elected handlers. Yet, it is the Beast – and its elected handlers – who are most dependent. They depend upon our money, upon the voluntary relinquishing of our freedoms, and upon our own dependency on the Beast.
It is a long standing pearl of conservative wisdom that identified the single most effective means to smaller government – starve the Beast.
Good humor – and calls for anarchy – are best served with a foundation of truth. And, there is a lot of truth in this post. Debate the tone all you want, but consider the truths upon which it was written.
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As to Force50's concern, fear not. This blog most assuredly does NOT answer to the HD50B Republicans. We are not censored by nor take marching orders from the BPOU. Some of us who post on this site have supported the BPOU's noble efforts, but this is where the affiliation ends.
As our About This Site page suggests, we are dedicated to promoting conservative ideas. Sometimes this equates to promoting Republican issues and candidates. Often times it means promoting more conservative backbone in the Republicans who seek and hold office.
We are certainly Republican-friendly, but it is the grass roots Republican whose voice we most often echo for we are among them. We welcome the moral support and the endorsement from members of Republican organizations like HD50B, but we are not their official voice or communication vehicle.
As a founding member of this blog, I have and always will insist upon our independence from any party organization. It is the function of the Republican Party to elect Republicans. We believe the promotion of conservative ideas is the best means to do so. But, sometimes political operatives within the party lean too heavily upon the art of politicking and too little upon promoting conservative thought. We insist upon our independence because we often find the need to rhetorically kick these operatives in their political derrieres – to the right of course.
President Obama has quietly reduced the number of US warships in the Persian Gulf to its lowest level in two years. What’s more, no US aircraft carriers are anywhere near the Gulf region.
Meanwhile, Russian warships made their first appearance in the Bahrain port of Manama, seat of the US Fifth Fleet in the Gulf. (No such thing occurred under Bush.)
Why is Obama allowing all this? He wants Iran to feel at ease in preparation for upcoming talks.
Obama is a weak President who will bow deeply to tyrants. The tyrants know this and are taking advantage.
History Lesson – WWII was avoidable if England showed strength, determination and preparedness. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did not show strength, but did everything to appease Hitler. Result, 400,000 died before it was all over.
Under the appeasement President, count on an ever-building tragedy as a result of U.S. weakness.
I underestimated the deaths in WW II. There were 400,000 American military deaths and about that many from the United Kingdom as well. Some estimate that total military and war-related civilian deaths in all countries were a staggering 73 million.
I remember my wife was furious at the intrusiveness of the questions and so was I. In order to comply minimally with the law, we answered some basic questions but left most items blank.
We thought that was the end of it, but no. Then the phone calls started coming, in the evening along with the usual junk phone calls. Believe me it tried my patience. They kept pressing for more information. I told them I did not agree with the survey. Finally, about the third phone call, I answered a few more questions over the phone.
Eventually the caller asked “How many rooms do you have in your house?” A scene from Dr. Zhivago immediately popped into my head.
That was the last straw. I said that’s enough, and hung up.
I recommend complaining to your elected federal representatives about the American Community Survey. It is Orwellian, intrusive and almost surely will be used in ways adverse to you. Remember that socialism is the equal distribution of misery and that is what this survey is really about.
Dead Austrian's Prophecies Trump Gitmo Controversy
Ludwig von Mises: "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Vice President Cheney is obviously a more competent person than the blabbermouth non-entity currently occupying that office. Heck, he's far more competent than the Teflon Liar occupying the seat of the Boss of the Civilized World. Unfortunately, under the best light, he has not been competent enough to deal with the foremost threat to our security, which is not attacks by deranged Islamofascists, dire as that threat is, but the deliberate, massive expansion of credit by our Treasury and central bank, which reached startling new dimensions during the administration in which he last served.
It's possible he just doesn't understand it--that's the most charitable position to take regarding the Bush administration's failure to rein in the Fed. More likely, Cheney and Bush either profited or were pressured into silence. Tells you something about the power of the Federal Reserve that a man with the clarity of mind Cheney possesses can be bought or bullied by it.
The Republicans should confess past sins and gain the position of leaders by ignoring the Teflon Liar's posturing on Gitmo. If he gets ready to take real action, oppose him then. Until then, they should be positioning themselves as the party that saw the future and took steps to change it before it jelled into the present. Don't spend energy arguing over what happened when, though the lying from the left be never so exasperating, and the failures of the journalists to expose it be never so weasely; that's the politics of the past, and the Republicans lose that game every time.
After listening to the self-serving propaganda of the Obama Administration regarding GITMO and the Bush Administration policies in the Global War on Terror, see the non-fiction version here as presented by former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Remember when we had a real (not to mention competent) Vice President?
Bush and Obama, Fulfillment of Prescient Beach Boys' Lyrics
"You know, I hate to be a downer, but I'm the guy she left before you found her; Oh, I'm not sayin' you won't have a good love with her, But I keep on rememberin' things like they were ..."
So sang the Beach Boys 50-odd years ago. As I look at the headlines forwarded to me by Cisco (that's Sr. d'Anconia to you who are still not hip to Rand's fictional sermons), Mike Love's peerless voice pops into my head, the weird foreshadowing of our dalliance with the tired, failed mistress of Cuba, Eastern Europe and Russia, North Korea, and a dozen other failed and failing States. Socialism, dressed up and embodied in its male figures, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, animates our entire public life. I hate to be a downer, but in case you've been feeling too sanguine lately:
"Several policy missteps suggest that investors should stop trusting -- and lending to -- the U.S. government. These include the state’s pressure on Bank of America Corp. to buy Merrill Lynch & Co.; the priority given to Chrysler LLC’s unions over the automaker’s secured creditors; and the freedom that some banks will regain to supersize executive bonuses by giving back part of the government money bolstering their balance sheets.
Currency markets have been in a weird state of what looks almost like equilibrium for the past couple of months. What’s really going on is something akin to an evenly matched tug of war that fails to move the ribbon tied around the center of the rope, giving the impression of harmony while powerful forces do silent battle until someone slips.
“All currencies are being debased dramatically by their central banks at extraordinary speeds and so in relative terms it appears there is no currency problem,” Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QB Asset Management said in a research note earlier this month. “In reality, however, paper money is highly vulnerable to a public catalyst that serves to acknowledge it is all merely vapor money.”"
Vapor money. Yes, indeedy.
2. For a profoundly sad description of the real-life consequences involved in the utter demise of the rule of law, especially contracts, in America, read George C. Joseph's letter to the editor, reprinted on this blog:
I called the dealership and confirmed: the authorship is authentic and the story is all true.
3. A very slightly more subtle means of killing the rule of law is described in another Bloomberg article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aApnVJt5uKQg&refer=home All you people (and that means you, especially, Mr. (Self-Proclaimed) Libertarian Jason Lewis) who think the rule of law is possible in a country with a central bank, read it and weep. Since 1913, these days were inevitable. There is no way to limit the power of a central bank effectively. He who holds the power to make dollars magically appear on balance sheets holds the power to make contracts meaningless, and that power is inexorably tempting; whether it takes 10 years or a 100 years, eventually he will print away his debts.
4. And here's the illustration of what happens when people get wise to the deliberate devaluation of fiat currency. Cisco writes:
"The Fed bought $7.398 billion in Treasuryson Thursday....Dealers submitted $45.694 billion in debt maturing from 2013 to 2016 to be bought"
That's a tender-to-bid ratio of SIX TIMES. That's the worst yet. What does it mean? It means that demand for Treasury debt is well below issuance, and if the Fed insists on offering above-market prices for U.S. Treasury debt, they will end up OWNING IT ALL. The Fed can't support Treasury prices in this insane mode---unless they're prepared to buy $7 trillion in U.S. bonds. They bought a piddling $7 billion, and instead of going up, Treasury prices fell. Unless they buy all the tendered bonds, it only serves to undescore that there's way too much supply, and the Fed is NOT prepared to sop it all up."
5. Finally, also from Cisco, a list of people to whom you ought to be paying attention, who know what's going on and all make one prediction in common: "We're not even half way through this, if you can believe Peter Schiff, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb, Jim Rogers, George Soros, Antal Fekete, Mike Morgan, Karl Denninger, Joseph Stiglitz, Rick Sharga of RealtyTRAC, MDA Dataquick, Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, plus a few hundred other shrewd observers."
Cuba, North Korea, Sweden et. al. have not even had the grace to give us verbal warning. They're still in denial that Socialism is damaged goods, and stand merely as mute pictures of where we're headed. The Beach Boys at least tried to tell the sucker who thought the girl "was perfection," "She made me feel so bad, She made my heart feel sad, She made my days go wrong, And my nights so long ... You've got to keep in mind Love is here today And it's gone Tomorrow It's here and gone so fast."
We may break off our affair with the current Socialist fling, Obama, fairly soon, but we're going to be singing the blues a long, long time whether we do or not.
Tim Pawlenty sometimes surprises me. His announcement that he will use the full powers of his office to single-handedly balance the budget if the DFL-controlled legislature won't seems to have pulled the rug out from under the DFL, who are now whining about "bullying" and "monarchy," having, as the Pioneer Press puts it in today's article, "slouched" toward the end of the session believing they were going to be allowed to grandstand yet further in favor of higher taxes in a special session.
You should all call Gov. Pawlenty's office and pass on your congratulations on his discovery of a political spine and your agreement with his determined stand against higher taxes.
Ha! I love when these organizations are shaken to attention. They don't know what to do until someone else does, then they are in full control. Thanks for this amusing post.
Education Minnesota and the Democrats are planning another kick in the stomach to ordinary taxpayers.
It seems their pension plan is down -- and they want tapayers to bring it back up to "fully funded" level. To the tune of millions upon millions of dollars of course.
Well, I got news. Lots of pension plans and 401ks and 403bs are down. There's no bailout for those people. Yet Education Minnesota expects those same people to bail the teachers out because they are special. How about this: live with less the way working folks must do.
Some teachers will retire early and receive the princely sum of $4,000 a month or more from their pensions. Sorry, but any sympathy for you guys just drained away.
Has anyone noticed how for-profit companies have phased out their pensions, yet public employees keep rolling merrily along on the strength of the hard-working people who have no pension. How long can this go on unchecked?
Meredith Whitney is famous because she was the first to call the downgrade of Citibank's dividend cut long before anyone else could believe the financials were going down. She continues very bearish, to use Wall Street lingo.
Here's Cisco's sage summary: "Whitney explains part of the banks' big Earnings Miracle: they set up a scheme with the Fed, where the Fed preannounces large purchases of agency debt: "Pssst. We're gonna need a bunch of Fannie/Freddie bonds" and the banksters rush out and frontrun the Fed purchases by buying up all the agency debt they can leverage. Then the auction begins and the banks sell the Fannie Mac paper to the Fed at inflated prices. It's a win-win: the banks make a killing, and the Feds take a bunch of unwanted agency paper off the market while recapitalizing the worst banks in the world. Only the taxpayer loses. I'm not paying for this."
To tie this back to politics: It is farcically ridiculous that our historic president, a Teflon Liar, trumpets his commitment to saving money to the tune of $100 million, while handing over trillions, through the Federal Reserve Bank system, to the criminally credit-impaired biggest and most powerful global banks. It is wickedly wrong that our so-called journalists allow him to get away with pretending to be for hope and change for the little guy while stacking his cabinet and bureaucracy full of ex-Goldman Sachs con-men. And may God reserve a special place in hell for the people who continue to load debt onto future generations and current elderly and foreign buyers of our Treasuries, who think they're getting a safe investment, while pretending to be worried about homelessness and the trouble Joe Six-Pack is having buying his groceries. Do all in your power to hold the feet of any pol who supports the evil transfer of taxpayer dollars to rich and powerful bankers to the political fire.
If you're a conservative who's been reading my posts and thinking, "What does all this financial gobbledygook mean?" my reply is, get busy with your homework. If conservatives want to have any influence in the next two decades, they're going to have to expand their repertoire to include not only decrying the social illnesses we face, but the ability to explain what's happening in the world of finance and how it links back to our cultural demise, and how the government is deeply implicated in the causes of both. Start paying attention to financial and monetary policy above all else, because the numbers are so big that right now, in relative terms, nothing else matters. Study it until you can explain the gist to your neighbors and friends and family, and then hammer away at their thick skulls until they, too, can understand how the Federal Reserve system, Congress through the Community Reinvestment Act and other meddling in the markets, and all the financial regulatory agencies practically conspired to defraud the taxpayers, with the eager help of the greedy banksters.
Francisco d'Anconia advises you, with me: Starve the Beast. Find whatever ways sit comfortably with your conscience to pay as little as possible in taxes in any form. Preferably none, particularly to the Feds. The sooner they can no longer convince anyone to buy debt from us, because the revenue stream has slowed to such a trickle that noone can pretend we're a safe investment anymore, the better. The sooner this perverse Ponzi scheme that we've called capitalism, though it isn't, crashes, so that we can start over with real capitalism, the better.
Coleman Helped Justify Obama's Threat of Prosecution for Bush Admin. Lawyers
A couple of years ago, I sent an e-mail to Sen. Norm Coleman's office expressing my disgust at his decision to vote in favor of expanding the federal government's role in prosecuting crimes, to include stepping in where certain classes of "hate" crime had been committed. The new special victims entitled to greater protection through the threat of heavier punishment for their harm included those selected due to the perpetrators' supposed hatred of the victim's transgendered state or homosexuality. The provision, which had been attached to a defense spending bill, died during negotiations to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions.
Sen. Coleman's reply was lame. He said that as a Jewish person, he understood what it was like to be in the minority, targeted for hatred and violence. In other words, Jews and gays are the same--we can ignore all the issues surrounding choice and behavior versus blood lineage and status. And we should also ignore the total lack of evidence for any need of the federal government to meddle in the entirely adequate State prosecution of violent crime, and the fact that 45 or 46 States already have hate crimes legislation. And we should also overlook the Republican Party's long-standing and entirely reasonable opposition to eroding the even more long-standing tradition that we only punish people for actions, and not for their thoughts, ideas, opinions, or beliefs.
Wherein we reach the current day. First off, John Conyers has introduced a sweeping new version of the defeated federal hate crimes legislation that is predicted to work its way through committee rapidly. It would be well, though perhaps fruitless if you live in my State of Minnesota, to call your Reps and Senators and urge them not to vote for any hate crimes legislation, and especially not John Conyers's HR1913.
Even more ominous, however, is that our historic president today indicated his willingness to entertain the possibility of considering prosecuting Bush administration lawyers who prepared the interrogation memos, finding some torture techniques to be legal. Now, this is unlikely to come to anything. The Teflon Liar, as usual, leaves his statements fat with uncertainty: whether to bring charges "is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don't want to prejudge that," and "there are a host of very complicated issues involved." These statements are a lame attempt to placate the slavering far Left, but I suspect they are also intended as a sinister warning to those on the Right.
The link to Norm Coleman is this: instead of defending the only sane policy of prosecuting people only for actions, he helped move us to this day, when we see the President of the United States deliberately planting the possibility in people's minds that they could be held criminally responsible for their professional legal opinions, and by extension, that non-lawyers could be prosecuted for their beliefs or opinions expressed in other areas of life. This is intended as a shot across the bow, a very oblique way of letting conservatives know that they'd better not get involved in public life; their opinions are so objectionable as to merit criminal prosecution.
So it's hard to mourn Coleman's likely ultimate loss of the Senate seat, except to the degree that it indicates that something very close to half the Minnesota electorate thought Al Franken a suitable person to hold that seat instead. Coleman was a symptom of the disease that's debilitating the Republican Party; all we can do is vigorously oppose the tyranny sought by our historic president (and his party) and dose the GOP with real conservatism, hoping it's enough to save the body politic.
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