THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER

Vol. 3                                                   Issue 1                                                01/05/03

A FREEWHEELING CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY DEDICATED TO THE DEFENSE OF FREEDOM, TO THE

NEXT GENERATION, AND THE WAY THINGS OUGHT TO BE.   READER DIALOG ENCOURAGED.

Produced occasionally when I decide to do it.

J. E. Sohmer, P. O. Box 129, Jefferson, CO 80456

Flyover country, where the air is thin and the hunting and fishing are good.

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SECOND AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."     (It's not about hunting ducks.)

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Blowing off steam:

The Republicans are in charge of Washington, and they do not know it. Rather than coming out of the gate running they are already caving all over on their domestic agenda, or so it would appear.  I am sick and tired of these overfed wimps who are already running away from the tax issue, the affirmative action (reverse racism) issue, our open borders and probably everything else that needs to be done to rescue this country from Liberal Fascist Statism in Waiting.  Meanwhile we grovel before the United Nations and the European Union seeking their permission to do what every informed person knows needs to be done to protect ourselves from a world full of thugs.  The Administration is already too preoccupied with the 2004 election, rather than doing its job.  What I see going on here, in the strategic sense, is that with the collapse of Democrats into left wing nuttiness, Republican leadership and strategy is also moving left to fill the political vacuum.  More and more, the Conservative spectrum is left leaderless.  Anticipating the worst, as the Republican Party chokes and gasps in the Kultursmog of Liberalism; perhaps it is time to develop a truly Conservative alternative; Nationalist and American.  I think I will work on that.

            Is Bill Frist going to be a leader or a wimp ?

Paul O'Neal is gone. That's a very good mid-course correction.  I could never understand his appointment in the first place.

                        Stephen Friedman- White House Economic Advisor.

                        John Snow- Secretary of the Treasury.

                        William Donaldson- Chairman, Securities & Exchange.

            We need serious tax cuts, and it remains to be seen if this bunch can get, or be allowed to get, the job done.  I am not optimistic.

Bush Score Card:

            Good Job:

You are to be congratulated for the signing of an order to Executive branch departments and agencies that provides direction to end discrimination against faith based organizations providing social services.  However, I believe that the long range plan should be to move the Federal government out of the social services business entirely, whatever the vehicle, on Constitutional grounds.

Not So Good:

You continue to fail to defend our borders from massive illegal immigration.  I hear about a new policy of "deterrence".  What we need to do is pull all our assets out of Germany and Bosnia, where we have no national interest, and re-deploy a division or two of Army troops along our own borders with orders to shoot on sight. Stop all this mollycoddling and get serious.  Throw some American employers in jail for hiring illegals.  Promote some legislation in Congress to severely curtail legal immigration- to hell with Ted Kennedy. The only effective "deterrence" will be a few thousand well placed rounds, women and children excepted.

Why don't you fire George Tenet and hire a real spook to run the CIA ?

Terrible--or even worse:

            Our open borders.

The reason you will screw up in the end is the same reason you are so popular now: You really are a very nice guy.  You give away too much, and expect too little in return. It is a characteristic that is the current national affliction.  Those of my persuasion call it Liberal Guilt.

Wall Street & Main Street:

I continue to be concerned about the health of our apparent economic recovery.  In addition to the negative impacts of some of our foreign trade relationships, my concern domestically is a runaway real estate "investment" binge as the new substitute for stock price inflation.  The question is whether or not we have begun to build a new false bubble. Perhaps, perhaps not.  After all, what is a bubble?  Eventually the market will answer that question.  Meanwhile I would suggest caution in assuming, case by case, that real estate valuation growth is an automatic, and remember what happened in Japan with real estate during the '80s.  While the analogy has its limits, neither can it be dismissed.  There has never been, anywhere, a failsafe investment, and risk is what capitalism is all about.  But there is, or should be, a clear distinction between investment and casino gambling, a point, I fear, that tends to be lost on the younger generation. But, of course, there is no government solution to this problem.

We need to keep a close eye on Venezuela, and pray for the removal of the Castroite government.  The price will be upward pressure on petroleum prices for awhile, but in the end it will be worth the wait if the Venezuelan producer class can prevail.

In the coming months you may hear Democrats defensively speak of "tax rebates" as a counter to some real tax reduction proposals that are sure to be advanced by Conservatives.  A "tax rebate" is akin to selling toothpaste at "20% off" something, an ancient sales tactic that dependably works.   An across-the-board permanent tax reduction is a different critter.  Hopefully, most Americans will understand the difference, and I am optimistic that they will.  The real challenge will be to keep soft (Northeastern) Republican Senators, and Carl Rove, pointed in the right direction.  Meanwhile, in the background, the companion issue is the need to reduce/cut/slash government spending.  Of course, all of this talk scares the hell out of Democrats because we are proposing a serious reduction in their ability to buy votes.

Incidentally, the reduction of payroll taxes is also an excellent idea, but only on the condition that it is extended equally to the employer, as well as the employee, and is permanent.

Grayout Dufus, newly re-elected Governor of California, has just confessed to leading his state from a budget surplus to a 34 billion dollar debt in 4 years.  In typical Liberal fashion,

his analysis is that California has a "funding problem", not a "spending problem", i.e. raise

taxes while at the same time proposing a new free universal health care plan.  Small wonder that Colorado election races this past November were heavily influenced toward Republican victories with the help of newly relocated Californians fleeing inland.   Now we will have to teach them how to drive [in snow], a small price to pay.

Ad Nausium:

Credit Trent Lott with touching off one of the greatest firestorms of political hypocrisy and demagoguery in recent history.  The Senator has a long history of political naiveté, evident over recent years with foolish attempts to be nice and "fair" with Democrats over issues of committee organization, leadership, and allowing impeached Presidents off the hook.  Cave here and cave there and before you know it you can't tell the difference between a Republican and a Democrat, and the New York Times is still mad.  He has had this tendency to give away the store to the jackals of Liberalism.  Reminds me of a certain "Republican" Yankee Senator from Rhode Island.  Currently, he has made unnecessary comments, politically stupid as a practical matter, that undercut the sincere efforts of many Republicans to cultivate a serious and constructive relationship with black Americans.  At the same time he has further damaged the ability of the South to advance a legitimate regional perspective on the constitution of the Republic. 

Now the Senator has further disgraced himself with so many apologies and ass-licking re-awakenings that he has lost credibility with about everyone.  As of 12/20 he had made himself so useless as a Majority Leader that he finally surrendered.  I have no use for the man most responsible for letting OJ Billyboy off the hook.  It will be necessary for Republicans to conserve Mr. Lott's vote, perhaps by throwing him a fish in the form of an important sounding committee chairmanship.  In the next election cycle, the citizens of Mississippi will need to determine his value to them.  That is as it should be.

Sadly, the Lott affair has been exploited by the mainstream Liberal press as an occasion of further race-baiting and demonization of the South.  It's the War of Northern Aggression all over again. The South is mis-represented again, and not without the help of a lot of radical Republicans (Abolitionists) failing to recognize that the only reason they now are in power is because of an aggressive white Southern and Mountain States constituency, many of whom have a different perspective on what actually happened during the 1860's.

            Sooner or later this country needs to come to grips with some fundamental facts:

1). Slavery was and is wrong because it is intellectually corrupt for one man to own another when both are morally equal in the eyes of our common Creator.

2). Our Founding Fathers understood this, notwithstanding the intellectual fraud of "presentism", i.e. the assessment of the past in terms of the perspective of the present.

3). 500,000 white men, on both sides of the War of Northern Aggression, did not die primarily over the issue of slavery, not to mention a lot of black men who did die in the defense of the Confederacy.  The hypocrisy and demagoguery over the years since have only served to prolong a just and equitable resolution of affairs between the races.  We are all Americans, and a final resolution of these affairs needs to begin with candor, which is difficult in a highly charged political climate.

4). The first casualty of war is always the truth, and I      would argue that in a cultural and political sense, the War of Northern Aggression has never ended, led by the Northeastern Liberal Establishment, which includes many Republicans.

5). The system of segregation, a Southern by-product of the Reconstruction Era (itself a product of Northeastern Republican social engineering), was a reaction with its own evils that needed to be ended.  Thank you James Meredith.

6).Americans must come to grips with the fact that there are bell curve differences among our population components, and that profiling is a perfectly legitimate tool to apply for the purpose of developing certain constructive repairs.  To recognize this is not "racist", but to accept the hard data of objective reality.  The same data shows that many American blacks, as individuals, have an advantage over many American whites, as do most Asians.    The answer to whatever difficulties are presented by this data lies in the application of individual effort.

7). The Conservative appeal to all Americans is that each of us is an individual, not a race, and that we are all Americans, the only group that counts.  Each of us as individual Americans has a God given right to be the best that we can be based on our own individual efforts, abilities and initiatives.  As individuals, we are each unique, not equal.  The key is that we each confront life and realize life's opportunities, as unique individual Americans, in mutual respect for one another.  That is the framework of self respect, which must be earned, and the framework of legitimate community action, which is founded on a mutual respect for individual effort.. This was the premise of a Divinely inspired American Founding.

8). Sadly, we continue to flounder with Statist notions (affirmative action, quotas, reverse racism, government education, political correctness, and group think, etc.) that substitute Big Government for the Plantation (and the Reservation). Conservatives retain a greater faith in the ability of individuals to confront and solve their own problems, most likely within the context of a family including a mother and a father.

9). When black Americans finally come to their senses and recognize that they have been used by Democrats, they typically complain that Republicans "don't reach out".  Aside from the fact that historically that is utter nonsense, the Conservative response should be "of course not".  The Conservative imperative is to get the Government off your back.  Stand up on your own two feet and be a man.  But the fact is that most American Blacks continue to hide under the skirts of Democrats who continue to stoke the notion of Big Government as a shield for the "helpless and defenseless" against wicked white Christians.  Not on my dime, and I won't pander.   Fortunately, there are a growing number of black Conservatives beginning to spread their wings publicly, but it is clearly a difficult enterprise.

I understand that charitable giving is falling off.  Aside from a weak economy, I would speculate on two additional reasons:

                        1). People have gotten suspicious about the integrity of charitable organizations.

2). People are wising up to how their tax dollars are being spent on social programs, and figure enough is enough.

I need to make a couple of comments about the Christmas season.  It is sad to witness the fact that for too many it is not a religious holiday at all, but rather just a commercial opportunity.  The birth of a Christ who made the ultimate sacrifice for us has been converted, for many, into a pagan celebration of personal acquisition.  In recent years the fraud of "Kwanza" has appeared, advancing 7 principles of Marxism.  Not a healthy development.

Finally, a crack in the wall of academia, in their otherwise solid defense of Liberals and Liberalism.  Professor Michael Bellesiles has been forced to resign from Emory University after the fraudulent research behind his book, ARMING AMERICA is uncovered and exposed.

With the victory of a kiss-ass left wing government in South Korea, the North Korean government has chosen to throw another tantrum concerning its nuclear program.  I trust that the Administration will ignore the predictable advise of it's own State Department and Collin Powell, and dismiss this childish outburst by the North Koreans.

Watch Michael Bloomberg, fake Republican and Mayor of New York City, repeat the past as a double for John Lindsey.  Sometime, somewhere, someone coined the phrase "race to the bottom".

Can anyone out there tell me how to get rid of that stupid butterfly on my new Microsoft XP MSN Explorer screen?  And then there’s that stupid paperclip.    

Homeland Security: A Running Log of Required Corrective Actions:

1). Close the borders, at least until we regain control of illegitimate aliens currently running around loose

2). In some areas, and on certain issues, local    jurisdictions are bucking certain features of the Patriot Act.  Save for local Liberal "hate America" tantrums, it is very healthy that a bottoms up citizen based assessment of the details of this legislation is on-going. Mistakes will be made, but the process can be healthy, and Washington should be made to listen.

3).Checking bags by opening them without the owner present is a very bad idea. This must be ended.

4).We need to reverse immediately the paranoia against profiling.  It is not cost effective and it advances the concept that everyone is guilty until proven innocent.  Security is not enhanced by shaking down 78 year old grandmothers.  We need to focus our examinations on Middle-eastern men who exhibit certain characteristics and behaviors consistent with Islamic extremism.  If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and looks like a duck, it just might be a duck.

We have this problem with airport screening because "compassionate conservatism" required that a Japanese American, and a Democrat, needed to be in the Cabinet.  So it is that Norman Mineta has been so traumatized by the profiling of Japanese Americans and the camps during W.W.II that he can't think straight about the current situation.  So it also was about forcing the Administration to allow pilots to carry guns in the cockpit.

The evidence is now on the table that 09/11 may very   well have been prevented had the FBI not been so curtailed by legal constraints that it dared not do its job.  All of this crap is directly traceable to Liberal congressional activity over the years designed to advance left-wing political correctness.  The Bush Administration needs to cut loose from this left-wing loonytunes fast.  Our priority needs to be national security, not sucking up to the New York Times.

Prediction:

Republicans will blow the Domestic agenda and allow themselves to be bullied by Democrats.  It is also possible that Heartland Americans may see and understand exactly what is going on, which will not necessarily benefit Democrats.  The potential for major political re-alignments may be at hand, on the order of that which last occurred in 1860.

Heartland rebellion update:

            A lot of us are just getting fed up with all the pussyfooting.

CURRENT READING RECOMMENDATIONS

1.) THE BELL CURVE: INTELLIGENCE AND CLASS STRUCTURE IN AMERICAN LIFE                         

            RICHARD J. HERRNSTEIN & CHARLES MURRAY

            THE FREE PRESS                     845 PGS                      XXX

2.) THE RISE OF SOUTHERN REPUBLICANS   

EARL AND MERLE BLACK       

            HARVARD                                384 PGS                       $29.95

3.) .MILITANT ISLAM REACHES AMERICA

            DANIEL PIPES

            NORTON                                  256 PGS                       $25.95

                                                                    God Bless America

                                            JIM

                                                                    JIM SOHMER   

                                                                           AMERICAN NATIONALIST CONSERVATIVE

                                                                           JEFFERSON, CO 80456

                                                               IN GOD WE TRUST