THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER

Vol. 3                                                   Issue 4                                                06/01/03

A FREEWHEELING CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY DEDICATED TO THE DEFENSE OF

FREEDOM, 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.

***************************************************************************

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.)

www.republicanmarket.com                        2004 campaign gears up

www.re-electbush.com                                2004 campaign gears up

Blowing off steam:

It is difficult for most of us to understand the fear that confronts people compelled to live, on a daily and hourly basis, under terrorist regimes.  Occasionally, we Americans need to be reminded how lucky, and blessed, we all are.   I am really fed up with the war protesters.  The Democrat Party is setting itself up as a big bulls-eye for 2004.  Lock & Load.   God bless America and our precious freedoms.

The preoccupation of the President’s enemies with the issue of “where are the weapons of mass destruction” is getting a bit tiresome.  It is a fact, documented by the United Nations, hardly a friend of the United States, that certain WMD weapons did exist in 1995. Since then, multiple intelligence sources have continued to corroborate these original findings and ongoing activities.   Iraq is the size of California, and the Middle East is filled with thousands of folks willing to indulge themselves in the fantasies of Islamic holiness.  Iraq also remains full of folks still terrified of the continued potential reach of the Baathist Party.  Question.  Where are the 3 freighters which departed Iraq very shortly before the commencement of hostilities?  Be patient.  This and many other open questions need to be worked through.   The WMD will be accounted for without the interference of Hans Blix; we need not share our intelligence with pollywogs.

Still to come to the American public is full exposure of the details of the corruption of the United Nations Iraqi Oil for Food & Medicine Program.  As details of the money trail emerge, and who was getting what from whom for what, the pre-war behavior of the United Nations, Koughup Addon, Jocko Shearock and their various fellow travelers will make much sense.  The United Nations, et al, were on the take, big time, and the oil money financed very little in the way of food and medicine for ordinary Iraqis.  The Administration has properly embarrassed this crowd behind the scenes into a quick lifting of the sanctions and a decoupling of UN veto power over the post-war administration of Iraqi oil production revenue.

The size of government continues to grow.  The political will to confront the issue does not currently exist, and the initiative will never come from Congress.  Someday, by executive direction, and in spite of Congressional direction, the process will have to begin with an announcement of an, oh say, 5% absolute cut, not a cut in growth, in the bottom line spending of every Cabinet level Department (and Independent Agencies?), except Defense.  This would allow the wiggle room within each Department/Agency to force the process of establishing priorities and Constitutional justification.  Interdepartmental trade-offs could be allowed.  (Time to dump a few.)  This would only be the tip of the iceberg in the effort, which would need to be continued, or selectively accelerated, on an annual basis, including the very existence of certain Departments, until such time as the Federal Government as a whole has been resized to proper Constitutional limits.  A key to understanding this approach is to recognize that the spending reduction limits would be at the top, so as to allow the shake out of priorities to ripple down.  This would require tremendous political clout on the part of the President, something the current President does not have.  It would also require his will to do it, and a supportive electorate.   Now listen very closely, children, to the following: Some day fiscal reality will force  this, or a similar, process of reform.  The United States is the engine of the entire world economy; the Federal government has no one else to turn to except the U.S. Taxpayer.    People in their 20’s today are not going to tolerate the tax rates that will become necessary to support government “entitlements”, as currently structured, 20 to 30 years hence, or ongoing international giveaways.   The question to be answered, in the future, is whether fiscal discipline can be supported through the normal political process, Congress excepted, or assisted at the point of a bayonet?  Under any circumstances, fiscal discipline will have to be driven, somehow, by popular will; the question to be resolved revolves around the institutionalization of fascistic statism, and how far it will become embedded before a serious effort of Constitutional reconstruction, politically, can be mounted.   It does not automatically follow that the political class in Washington DC, including the Senate, responds to their heartland constituents as much as to a well connected bureaucracy, or what I call the true 4^th branch of government ( I refer to the press as the 5^th.).    I am inclined to think that the 17^th Amendment, providing for the direct election of Senators, was another mistake, upsetting the balance of power, within the originally intended federal scheme, between the states and the national level.  

Fiscal reality says this will happen; the question is how, and under what circumstances?  If Conservatives take themselves seriously, they must acknowledge this fact, and begin now to gauge their political actions accordingly.  I would suggest that the key to eventually untangling the problem, and inoculating the body politic from its return, necessarily requires the enhanced repeal of the 16^th Amendment.  A Conservative Court would also help, simply by interpreting existing law and reading the Constitution.

The monster continues to grow because the budgetary process is annual, and there is no systemic discipline to establish or impose long range fiscal controls on both discretionary and non-discretionary spending.  That is why Congress is useless in accomplishing a repair and a fix.  There is no corporation in the private sector that comes close to the size of the American federal government, and there is no corporation in the private sector that could function in the absence of 10 and 20 year planning, but corporations are not democracies.  The government stumbles at the Congressional oversight level because fiscal planning is constrained by election cycles, as it should be.   Aside from true Constitutional limits, the government must be reduced in size to a point where intelligent oversight can be accomplished by responsible representatives.   Part of the Statist strategy over the years, both Democrat and Republican, has been to deliberately sabotage this function by promoting runaway growth and conceding real power to an unelected bureaucracy which has become the 4^th branch of government.

We need to defend the Country and re-create the Constitution, not continue down the path of Bull Moose Progressivism, or Liberal Marxism.  As for Democrats, American voters need to face the fact that the top priority of Democrat politicians is to suck the life blood out of the private sector so as to fund socialist programs.  Republicans have served largely as decoration on the cake.

Conservatives often complain, properly so, about knee-jerk Liberals.  As someone who has worked my own way through the political spectrum, issue by issue, I can tell you that there is such a thing as knee-jerk Conservatism.   Left or Right, knee-jerkism is a malady that generally betrays a growing up process in which early cultural indoctrination trumps intellectual stimulation.  Today, on the Left, government schools are engaged in that process in lieu of responsible parents.  On the Right, there are those who attempt to erect the straw-man of neo-conservatism, i.e. allegedly “unqualified” interlopers from the Left.   Like refugees from Communism, I would suggest that those of us who have actually worked through the spectrum are intellectually stronger than anybody who is merely responding to childhood habits.   David Horowitz, please comment.  Intellectual laziness, or sloppiness, is not a monopoly of the Left.  Incidentally, I do not consider myself as a neo-conservative today, as the term is commonly understood.   On the political Right, aside from the fault lines between conservatives and libertarians, there are fault lines among conservatives between neo’s, trad’s and paleo’s.   All of this is tricky business, made unnecessarily complicated by the clash of enormous egos.   Labels are dangerous, but I am heavy into nationalism, and my Founding model is George Washington.  Everything he said then is pertinent today.  Needless to say, on the political Left, modern American Liberals are not even part of this discussion.  The Left is in the twilight zone and your generic Republican wanders around in the middle, generally clueless.

Senator Bill Frist, Majority Leader: “When you have qualified (Court) nominees the Senate should fulfill its Constitutional role of ‘advise and consent’ rather than ‘stall and obstruct’.”  Well said.  Now what are you going to do about it other than turn loose that old pussy cat Trent Lott?

Corrections:

Perhaps my predictions of the failure of Congress to accomplish a meaningful tax were premature.  However, you will notice that the tax package was accomplished only under the whip hand of the White House.  Welcome as this very marginal effort is, the real answer is to get rid of the whole damned thing.

Bush Score Card:

            Excellent:

Your visit to our entire military, onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, was very well done.  You are also to be congratulated on your tax package, and the strategy that is implicit for next year. 

Not So Good:

If we must coddle the United Nations, can’t we at least insist on their relocation to Reykjavik?  I do not say this in jest.  We do, after all, have controls on toxic waste that should be enforced.   We also need to re-examine our child-like relationship with Saudi Arabia.  They are not our friends, and we do not need their oil.  They have been using us, and all of this has been true for a long time, and I believe you know it.

Terrible--or even worse:

I understand that your intentions with the “roadmap” are honorable, but it will not work.  We need to turn Israel loose, get out of the way and let God sort out the results.  It is only a matter of time before this becomes apparent.   You really need to fire the whole State Department, except the janitors.   While it appears in the headlines that you have Ariel Sharon on board with the “roadmap”, I think we all know what is going on and where this is really going.  You need to first fix Syria, Iran and Lebanon, and someone else has to fix Arafat.  We shall see.  All this shadowboxing drives me nuts. 

You really continue to coddle Mexican illegals.  I would be interested to know how Jeb will deal with this.  Perhaps I will be as disappointed in him as I am with you on this matter.  Tom Tancredo is right, and the 1986 immigration “reforms”, as a whole, must be reversed.

When are you going to veto some spending bills?  Alleged Conservatives must either put up or shut up.

More is at stake than the budget.  There is the matter of the Constitution and American freedom.

Wall Street & Main Street:

While Conservatives have a natural bias towards a strong dollar, we also believe in the ultimate wisdom of a free market, and it is from this perspective that the Administration is encouraging the dollar to float.  On the foreign trade front, this is good news for American manufacturers and labor because the floating dollar is weakening relative to other currencies, helping exports.  The cheap imports will tend to get more expensive, but that is academic if you don’ have a job.  A stronger dollar can be re-built, but it must be based on American production and measured spending restraint, public and private.  As the Federal Reserve, properly concerned about deflation, pumps up the money supply and considers further interest rate reductions, the real danger is mis-use of the cheap money to “invest” in real estate that may ultimately prove to be over priced.  That’s what free markets will come to determine, but meanwhile, don’t you be suckered by the 2^nd mortgage racket on your home.   If you need the cheap money, and your credit is good, don’t endanger your nest.

The Administration has won a significant tax victory, and has displayed some brilliant political strategy doing so, engineered in the White House, not the Senate.  What is being installed, one chunk at a time is a long range program to correct the most serious structural absurdities of the tax system on our economy.  To get most of what the President actually set out to get, the Republican side has, as was selectively necessary, conceded “temporary” for “permanent”.  Forced by the reality of political fault lines to bend somewhere, what this does is get what was really wanted now, while setting up the foes of further and more comprehensive tax reductions to explain themselves in the middle of the 2004 election season, when the President will come back for more, as he most surely will.  What has emerged in the first 2 ½ years of this Presidency is gutsy and principled leadership, except on the Mexican border.   All of this in spite of certain Republican dissenters, like John McCain, pouting in the corner because he is not the President.   Perhaps someday tax destruction will filter through to the electorate at large in a serious manner, and the electorate at large will actually get infected with the idea of freedom from big government before the dollar is worthless.  I, of course, will never cease to remind everyone that the most serious structural absurdity of all is the 16^th Amendment.  The real problem for the country is that, in the meantime, the American Law Institute is shoving legal polices in our faces that will culminate in the destruction of marriage.  Keep your dog out of the neighbor’s yard.  I call it the collapse of the ability to think.

Meanwhile, areas of the nation under the regional and local occupation of commielibs have a more complicated tax matter to address.  California and New York come to mind.  In the case of New York the problem is particularly acute in the city, the Mecca of Liberalism.   Fake Republican Michael Bloomberg (he switched party registration to ride on Giuliani’s coattails) is following the good Liberal tradition of attempting to solve a funding problem by raising taxes on everything in sight.  Of course, what these people fail to understand is that they do not have a funding problem, they have a spending problem.  They have a spending problem because over the years their spending policies have structurally embedded a tax dependant culture, and they have created a political cul-de-sac for themselves when the economy goes soft for any reason, now further complicated on the local level by the 09/11 attack.    The denizens of the City are completely unprepared for the fiscal fumigation that sooner or later must occur, as what remains of the private sector flees elsewhere.   I am not quite sure how the Twin Towers will ever be replaced because that will require funding, and investors will require tenants, insurance notwithstanding.   Perhaps that will not be a problem, but then again, perhaps it will be.  Are the taxpayers ready to substitute themselves with fake government dollars?  Not this old donkey.  Gerald Ford years ago suggested that New York “drop dead”.  I would prefer that New Yorkers wake up and brush up on their mathematics.  New York needs to attract private sector investment, not drive it away, which means it must purge its socialist mentality, but it is hard for me to imagine that happening on a voluntary basis.    Meanwhile, cigarette vendors in New Jersey are doing well.   The problem in California is largely identical.  However, both areas tend to attract the residency of the entertainment types whom, by definition, professionalize in faking reality, and politicians who encourage the electorate to suckle on the tit of big government.  How many times have I just used the word “fake”?  I could go on.

Ad Nausium:

One might wonder why, over the years, the Hashemite Kingdom in Jordan has routinely been given a pass on failing to extend democracy to its majority Palestinian population.  In addition to the most obvious answer, could it also be that, to do so, might raise the question as to what the fuss about the West Bank and Gaza is really all about.  Is it also possible that certain significant inducements, of, shall we say, a large monetary measure, have been flowing into the Kingdom, perhaps from several sources, including Iraq?  Certain documentation has begun to surface, as the Coalition Forces rifle old files, which beg the question.  Arabs generally, including the House of Saud, in addition to their genetic hatred of Israel, have used the Palestinian people as a fuse in longer range plans of subversion of the West.  Rule by terror takes on many faces.  What, exactly, does our own State Department have to say about this, and who has been funding the Arab press?

Bob Hope, Honorary Veteran, “Thanks for the memories”.  DOB 05/29/03.

Nothing could better illustrate the reason I am an ex-Yankee, and my contempt for Liberalism, than the recent demonstration of hypocrisy and social paternalism by the New York Times.  I refer to the knowing and willing, coddling and harboring, of a totally out-of-control “reporter”, by the name of Jayson Blair, who just happens to be black.    It would seem that White Liberal Guilt has no limits, including the subversion of the imagined standards of the Newspaper of Liberal Record, where the performance of this sorry sack of xxxx got so bad that the pimple finally burst on the ass of Liberalism.  Will Executive Editor Howl Raines lose his job?   He ought to, but probably not.  A recent epidemic of white Liberal “reporters” and authors, caught confusing their imaginations with the facts, have been properly exposed.  The problem with Jayson Blair was severe, long-standing, internally well known, and even occasioned a promotion before the festering could no longer be contained.    Question.   How, exactly, does this kind of racial coddling help sincere and personally responsible minorities from advancing themselves on the basis of actual skill, and who, by definition, is actually a racist ?  Left unchecked, reverse racism, aka affirmative action, will destroy the United States.  Meanwhile, Jason is now laughing at his former employers, and, in fact, flipping the bird at Liberals everywhere.  Children, you are witnessing a cultural subversive in action.  No, I mean Howl Raines.  In lieu of addressing the real problem, the Newspaper of Liberal Record has announced that it is investigating itself, hardly the sort of catharsis they prescribed for Enron.  I think it’s the right time for New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to go to work.  Yuk Yuk.

According to Left Wing conspiracy theorists, our President, who reportedly is a dim-witted fellow, takes orders from a vast Right Wing Cabal interested only in cornering the market on oil and forcing little old ladies into the streets.  As a proud member of this vast Right Wing Cabal, I hereby instruct the President not to sign a treaty just adopted by the World Health Organization that further attempts to demonize tobacco and everyone who has anything to do with that Indian plant.  Sorry, I reserve the right to smoke myself to death.  Apparently a Florida Court of Appeals is also part of the Cabal, having just set aside a $145 billion award to a class action audience, having in common only their inability to read warning labels and think for themselves.

I shed no tears upon the announced retirement of Christie Todd Whitman, prototypical northeastern Republican. The nature of her replacement will point the way concerning the President’s future direction on environmental politics.  Notice, I do not find the answer to this question obvious.

Two hundred year anniversary celebrations marking various milestones of the Lewis & Clark expedition will begin popping up.  This was my America.  Watch the Lefties attack from every direction the formation of this nation, and reveal themselves as the subversives that they really are.

Senator Rick Santorum, stand tall.  You’ve got it right.

Remember that fifty three years ago North Korean T-34’s came crashing across the 38^th Parallel on June 25^th, initiating a UN “police action”.   It is still an open item in Koughup Addon’s in-basket. 

The Administration is exactly correct in pursuing the issue of posthumous citizenship for foreign nationals who have served and died in our uniforms.  Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 22, a Guatemalan and one of the first casualties of the recent Iraqi conflict loved this country, played by the rules, and made the ultimate sacrifice.  In all these cases, citizenship is the least we must do.

Apologists for illegals streaming across the US-Mexican border are all upset because the American Border Patrol, a privately organized and self funded group, is about to deploy a small camera laden drone aircraft.  The group has been hugely successful in rounding up thousands and turning them over to the government.  Perhaps their second plane could be built big enough to also carry HARM missiles.  It would help reduce the budget requirements for government busing.

Terry McAwful is right!  Michael Bloomberg should re-register as the Democrat he once was.  All the new taxes guarantee that New York City is on course for a crash landing.  Imagine the financial center of the nation located in Hoboken.

I have a problem with Heinz Catsup.   You can’t get a new bottle to pour without renting a drill rig to get it started.  Aside from the fact that it’s good stuff, I put up with this nonsense because the more money John Kerry gets from his wife and spends on advertising his Presidential bid, the sillier all Democrats look.

The tattered remnants of the DLC (Democrat Leadership Counsel) actually are the tail wagging the dog.   The party base is well to the left of the DLC, or so I am told, which will become apparent as the next election cycle unfolds.   The intellectual fraud of the DLC concept is that they say it is possible to pursue a Liberal agenda under the camouflage of a “third way”.   It is an Americanized version of what were known for years in Europe as Social Democrats.  Either way, the attempt to hide your Marxist foundation under a cloak of respectability will be found out.   That was O J Billyboy’s problem, and it is Tony Blair’s problem.  Even your political base is smart enough to figure this out sooner or later.  

Meanwhile, Republicans need to keep an eye on Donna Brazile going into 2004.  This is not a stupid woman.  Her biggest problem is her own party.   She might actually be smart enough to become a Republican, of sorts.

In the War on Terror, one must recognize that the nuances encountered require targeted responses and expectations.  Afghanistan has an economy based on the production of heroin.  Iraq has an economy based on the production of oil.  Both cultures have maintained and produced terrorists.  Solutions must be tailored, which may, or may not, include democracy as we understand it.

Conservative Political Targets: 2004

            At the earliest opportunity, Republican Senators who love taxes:

                        Lincoln Chaffee R-RI

                        Olympia Snowe R-ME

                        John McCain R-AZ

                        George Voinovich R-OH

Prediction:

The “roadmap” will not work.  I am not convinced that it is intended to.

Heartland rebellion update:

And so it seems that another self-absorbed know-it-all “reporter”, Chris Hedges, from the New York Times made the mistake of wandering into Rockford IL (corn country, and damned proud of it) to lecture the peasants at a graduation ceremony about all that was wrong with America, and a certain President from Texas.  After pulling the plug on his microphone 3 times and running him off the stage, this pathetic envoy from the  Liberal Newspaper of Record was, reportedly, lucky to escape the campus with his toupee.  Under the 1^st Amendment commie/Libs have as much of a right as anyone else to think and say what they want, but there is no Constitutional right to be heard.   The Heartland is fed up with these people, who also seem to be the authors and promoters of politically correct speech, 1^st Amendment be damned, in the name of “diversity”.   We are also tired of “reporters” who function as editors, and who don’t have the guts, or brains, to admit it.

CURRENT READING RECOMMENDATIONS

1: THE EDUCATION OF AN AMERICAN TERRORIST.)  HARVARD AND THE UNIBOMBER

            ALSTON CHASE                                              

            NORTON                                              432 PGS           $26.95

2.) THE WORM IN THE APPLE: HOW THE TEACHER UNIONS ARE DESTROYING AMERICAN EDUCATION

            PETER BRIMELOW                                          

            HARPERCOLLINS                                 320 PGS           $24.95

3.) DERELICTION OF DUTY: THE EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF HOW BILL CLINTON ENDANGERED AMERICA’S NATIONAL SECURITY                                                 

            LT. COL. ROBERT PATTERSON USAF (RET.)

            REGNERY                                             219 PGS           $27.95

Old Country & Western Song: “Drop kick me Jesus through the goal poles of life”.

I have been asked from time to time about my sources for this Letter.  The answer is very simple.  All material in this Letter is sourced from widely available Conservative print media, Liberal print media, and the Communist Manifesto, all publicly available.  I reserve to myself ownership of the synthesis of this information into a coherent and logical message.   You too, could do it.

                                                                God Bless America

                                                                           JIM

                                                                 JIM SOHMER                      

                                                                AMERICAN NATIONALIST CONSERVATIVE

                                                                JEFFERSON, CO 80456

                                                                      IN GOD WE TRUST