THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER

Vol. 3                                                   Issue 5                                                 07/01/03

 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.

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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.)

www.republicanmarket.com                        2004 campaign gears up

www.re-electbush.com                                2004 campaign gears up

www.saudiacademy.net                   Saudi Arabian education in America

www.worldnetdaily.com                   Credentialed by Congress in September 2002

Blowing off steam:

Without any doubt, the finest President this country ever had was George Washington, of Virginia.  He will forever be the standard against which all the rest must be measured.  Without him, the United States never would have happened.  More than any other individual, General and President George Washington, of Virginia, defined the American Experiment.

On the subject of WMD in Iraq, I would like to propose a possible scenario as to what may be going on.   Saddam Hussein, anticipating the possibility a defeat at the hands of the Americans, may have long ago made preparations for underground guerilla warfare.  I would suggest that a sudden, but well planned, retreat into this mode may well explain the rapid disappearance of his most loyal soldiers and his worst weapons, waiting for the right time and place to strike.  It will require us to locate and publicly terminate Hussein, and his Baathist leaders, to loosen the tongues of many who know more than they currently dare admit.

The United States Supreme Court knocks 2 out of the park on behalf of the Liberal agenda proving my point that we do not yet have a Conservative Court, and that the dead hand of Marbury vs. Madison (1803) still subverts the founding principle of balanced responsibility for maintaining the integrity of Constitution among the three primary branches of government.

-In the matter of admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School, the Court turned a blind eye toward the 14^th Amendment and chose to endorse the hideous principle of “diversity” and reverse racism, ensuring that for decades to come all Black Americans will need to convince the rest of us that they actually possess any personal ability, on an individual level, to do anything, and the separation of cultures will continue along group lines.  Now Liberal sponsored racism has been legislated by the highest Court in the land, and thanks to the excuse provided by John Marshall, neither Congress nor the President will display the guts to take it on.

-In the matter of “privacy in the bedroom”, the proper issue before the Court was not whether the Federal government had a concern about the private propriety of gay behavior, but rather, under the Constitution, including the badly battered 10^th Amendment, whether the Feds had any jurisdiction at all over Texas in this matter.  So it is that, with the logic of this Court’s decision, 138 years after General Lee’s statesman-like surrender on the Appomattox Courthouse steps, the role of the States in this Republic has been effectively abolished.  Arrogant Liberals do not understand that events at Appomattox could have developed in an entirely different direction.   However, most Conservatives will continue to work toward a reconstruction of Statehood prerogatives, as originally intended. 

-As for the matter of “privacy in the bedroom”, Conservatives have a concern with defending the sanctity of traditional marriage and the family, and the dangers of accepting moral and legal equivalency with historically bizarre arrangements which the wisdom of the ages has repeatedly rejected as antithetical to the health of civilization.  Resolution of the issue revolves around a discussion of the proper relationship between religious institutions and the state.

Liberals themselves have chosen to re-open the debate about the significance of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the inquires into subversive activities during the early 1950’s.  I say, bring it on.  Liberals need to have the Venona files thrown right into their faces, and Liberals will regret the day.  Much to follow.

It is not yet clear to me where the President thinks he is going with the issue of Federal government involvement with medicine.  With the passage of “Medicare reform”, there are many conflicting and inconsistent messages.  The bottom line is that the legislation about to be signed expands federal spending by $400 billion in an area where it ought to be $0.00.  Aside from the Constitutional issue of any Federal involvement with health care, take a survey of veterans as to their experiences with the quality of operation of the VA health system.  This is not to question our responsibility to veterans; it is to question the system of government hospitals and care facilities as  a tool to do so.  Government medicine just doesn’t work.  With the money you pay in taxes in your pocket, you could afford all the private medical care and insurance that you could possibly need, and with free market competition and tort reform, the prices would tumble.  If you are sick or injured, the matter should involve only you and your doctor.

Bush Score Card:

            Excellent:  ?

            Let me see here:                  Mountain Observer: Hamas = al Qaeda

                                                            The President:  Ariel Sharon = Yasser Arafat

Evidently there is something about the “War on Terror” that the Mountain Observer has missed.

Again, let us take a look:      Conservatives believe in smaller government, free markets and personal responsibility.

                                                The President believes in tax rebates to people who do not pay any taxes, an enormously expanded Federal program to fund payment for pills, and an extension of a bogus restriction on “assault” weapons.

Dear Sir, with all due respect; Subsequent to an impressive start with the “war on terror” and tax cuts, is it possible that you have chosen to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

                                                And the nomination issue with the Courts continues to fester. 

Not So Good:

The Democrat Party is currently in a state of collapse; the base is in disarray.  You are trolling for conversions for 2004, and all this is understandable, but not necessarily smart.   My concern is that, historically, getting in bed with statists is akin to getting half pregnant.  Tax cuts aside, I am not comfortable with much of your domestic agenda.   The expansion of the Federal government and the Liberal agenda, with your help, continues apace.

Terrible--or even worse:

So I see your new found buddy Mahmoud Abbas claims to prefer peace with Israel, but is unwilling (unable) to use force against Hamas, etc.  Can’t you see Arafat behind the whole dammed thing?  This whole “roadmap” business is a complete joke, and to the extent that people on both sides keep getting killed it is immoral to continue to keep facilitating this wet dream.  The fastest and least costly “roadmap” to peace is to simply let Israel beat the hell out of them all and be done with it.  Nothing leads to real peace more effectively than unconditional surrender.  It’s just about time we all grew up.  Benjamin Netanyahu, stand by.

Wall Street & Main Street:

Responding to the twin engine thrust of victory in Iraq and a comprehensive and accelerated tax cut program, the economy is slowly beginning to inch forward down the runway towards takeoff.  Strap yourselves in folks, as the President pulls back further on the stick of further tax relief.  As always, the government’s biggest contribution to a healthy economy is to get the hell out of the way.  Now the President needs to follow through with more of the same, remembering that if the pollywogs aren’t shooting back, you’re not on target.

While the President is doing the right things for the economy with tax cuts, the comprehensive process of the government, as a whole, has failed over the years, to come to grips with spending that is out of control, and an ongoing international balance of payments problem that has been chronic since the mid ‘80’s.  Japan continues its slow descent into economic hell; the Nikkei has lost 80% of its value since 1990.   The European economy(ies) are slowly sinking in a sea of  socialist “entitlements” without an exit strategy and German unemployment is at 11%.   Argentina is bankrupt and Brazil is close behind.  Africa is largely run by goons.  Russians are afraid of themselves and the Chinese have been quarantined by SARS.   With all these problems, the US economy is the healthiest in the world, but I believe it is gravely threatened by international financial links (anchors on short chains) and domestic spending habits, public and private, that put us at serious risk in an age of extreme marginal reserve banking and financial trading.   The American taxpayer is at risk, extreme risk, and nobody is listening.  I am sure you are tired of my negativity, but then so am I.  It’s just the way things are.  Part of the problem is that voters and tax payers are not the same people on a one to one basis.  Some day this will all come to a head.  However, real Americans are at their best when they are confronted with real challenges, and I would expect nothing less, again.

After 70 years of spending your hard earned money like drunken sailors (I apologize to drunken sailors, I was one once), it is amusing to watch Democrats attempt to climb on the high horse of indignation about the Federal debt.  When was the last time you heard a Democrat propose slashing Federal programs, except, of course, for national defense?  It was FDR who really got things rolling, and what Democrats have really been all about ever since is controlling you and your life with your money.  If I was in a position to do so, I could fix their “concern” about the deficit in about 5 minutes.

Two years ago in this Letter I pointed out that part of the problem in California with the price and availability of electricity was the fact that the wackos had tied themselves to natural gas for power generation without supporting steps to allow for more drilling.  Now the problem is going national, and as NG prices rise, Congress is asking questions.   Well the answer is the same.  Let drillers drill.  The country is blessed with hoards of gas in the ground, but you have to drill to get to it.   And, yes, as for California, it continues to race toward third world status for a host of reasons.  Thirty eight BILLION dollars in debt, and counting, frequently in Spanish.   That Gov. Grayout Dufus is now likely to be the object of a recall vote is fine, but it begs the question as to who will replace him, and, in any event, still leaves in place a left wing legislature.  Watch for suppliers to begin to go unpaid this Fall.  In the private sector this is called bankruptcy.  Rob Meathead Whiner’s solution: raise taxes.

Over the years, I have made frequent references to the dangers of fascist economics unfolding before our eyes in this country, and the necessarily corrosive impact of this phenomena on the American Experiment.  I promise a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the matter on the pending website, however recent events bearing directly on the issue require comment now.  I am referring to the problems at Freddie Mac, the government mortgage corporation that owns and/or guarantees millions of household mortgages.  The cute trick about this outfit (there is a long list of such outfits) is that it pretends to be private at the same time that Congress, in the chartering process, exempted Freddie Mac from certain basic financial controls and disclosure rules that generally apply to, shall we say, more typically private corporations.   One yardstick that I apply to entities claiming to be participants in the private sector: If the rules that authorize your existence recognize that you are subject to the discipline of bankruptcy, then you are, at least substantially, on the private side of the ledger.  To make a long story short, Freddie Mac may be in a lot of trouble, and the taxpayer could be on the hook for billions.  Freddie Mac, by law, you see, is shielded from bankruptcy.  Stay tuned.   Americans must better weigh the risks of indulging themselves with middle-class welfare (artificial mortgage qualification and interest rate protection) against the risks of statist ownership of critical activities.  Most of us have been slurping indulgently at the government trough for too long.

Ad Nausium:

Will Republicans get serious about fixing the Senates Rules problem with “cloture” on judicial nominees, or would they prefer to once again relax in the shadow of minority status?

Who has been funding al Jazeera?

During the ‘90’s, the Good Lord slapped us all up alongside the head with his “gift” to the country of O.J. Billyboy.  If it was His purpose to get our attention, He most surely did, and we really needed it.  For myself, I would confess that I just could not believe how deeply the maggot of leftist statism had burrowed into the side of the body politic.  So it is in this context that Democrats should realize how well their “message” has “gotten out”.  You Democrats think in 2002 your problem was that your message had not gotten out?  Your problem is exactly the opposite; your “message” did get out, big time.  Yes, that is your problem.

On the issue of “hypocrisy”, Jonah Goldberg has nailed it exactly right: Liberals don’t defend standards.  In leveling charges of hypocrisy against Conservatives, they are defending the lack of standards.

I have been long conflicted about what we should do about the “drug problem”.   I certainly am not an advocate of a nation tanked out on dope, but as a Conservative, I also am a fierce advocate of personal responsibility, as opposed to the state functioning as a parent or the church.  Those who support the current “war on drugs” are properly concerned about the consequences to innocent third parties caused by drug abuse.  At the same time, this drug war effort, now decades old, has taken a tremendous toll on our civil liberties, the public treasury and the resources of the criminal justice system, with questionable results.  I do not claim to have the answer to this dilemma, except that I think that it is necessary to recognize that some change in direction is required.   There are some in the Conservative “community”, who have suggested that perhaps the time has come to re-examine the national policies on marijuana, at the same time recognizing that any move in this direction may be mis-interpreted as advocacy.  It’s a tough question.

I think that, as a Conservative, we need to back off and reflect upon the fact that, from the overall perspective of addressing the various issues of public social policy, great inconsistencies exist that offer wildly conflicting messages.   Be it drugs, prostitution, pornography, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, etc, etc, I think it is incumbent upon Conservatives to develop more mutually consistent policies and strategies that are also more consistent with the broader Conservative message of personal responsibility.  One of our national mistakes, over the years, has been to focus in on each of these various social problems independently of one another, generating inconsistent, confusing and contradictory “solutions”, which frequently are not “solutions” at all, not the least because of all the inconsistencies.   

Accordingly, as a Conservative, it seems to me that as a matter of public policy, at the national level, our legal and regulatory interventions on all these matters need to be made consistent with the following principles:

-Is the proposed intervention actually Constitutional, narrowly construed in the Founding sense, including the question as to whether the issue to be addressed is properly a Federal or state concern?

-Is the proposed intervention of the sort that is the business of the government at all, or is the        issue more properly that of non-governmental entities and individuals?

-Does the proposed intervention confine itself directly to the matter of public safety and cultural integrity, and if so, is the proposed intervention actually confronting the problem, or a symptom?

-Is the proposed intervention actually a criminal justice issue, or if the matter is in the regulatory arena, are the public’s resources in danger of being co-opted by a statist agenda or raw bureaucratic empire building?

-Does the proposed intervention promote or subvert the principle of individual responsibility and the sanctity of the family?

-Does the proposed intervention define success, and is it in some way self terminating?

-Does the proposed intervention include protections against “mission creep”, and somehow inoculated against bureaucratic “empire building”?

-Does the proposed intervention support, or interfere with, private and “faith based” efforts, to take on the issue at hand?

-TBD, but you get the idea.

Considered from this perspective, I would suggest that a whole bunch of Federal activities need to be reviewed, and most probably terminated, and/or re-assigned to the states.

As a senior citizen, I want to register my thoughts about a certain issue that has long troubled me, and that is the scope of influence of the AARP, or American Association of Retired Persons.   Over the years this left wing commie/Lib outfit has engaged in very slick marketing of itself, leaving the impression in the minds of many that it alone represents the interests of American seniors.   To the extent that, as a senior citizen, you think it necessary to have someone else looking out for your interests in Washington DC,  I would like to put in a plug for the TSC, or The Seniors Coalition, a 13 year old conservative leaning, free market oriented, alternative to the socialist advocacy of the AARP.   For more information, call 800-325-9891, or go to www.senior.org.   I reserve the right to cross swords with anyone over specific issues, but this group is at least pointed in the Right direction.

The citizens of Colorado hold their breath after the denizens of Denver replace a term limited, spend everything in sight, mayor Wellington Webb with local “business man” John Hickenlooper.  The problem here is that Mr. Hickenlooper is also a Democrat, the only [erectable] species in Denver, and Denver, as a practical matter, is bankrupt.  This will be interesting to watch.

In other political news on the Left, Hillary Rodham OJ Billyboy, the smartest woman in the world, releases her book in a shopworn attempt to establish herself as a victim, and thus, best qualified as a Liberal, to have a go at the Presidency in 2008.  This too, will be interesting to watch, but what may work on the Upper West Side will have a tougher time in Peoria IL, in Guymon OK, Lubbock TX or Kit Carson CO.  Could it be that Democrats will just walk the plank?

It is now widely understood that, except for straight white Christian men, there are many job openings at the New York Times, the National Liberal Paper of Record.   Under the administration of that famous Guilty White Southerner Howl Raines, it would only be the natural thing to do to extend an offer to “Baghdad Bob”, aka Mohammed  Saeed al-Sahhaf, who has re-surfaced in an Abu Dhabi television interview.  With his credentials, surely the performance (pun intended) of the N Y Times could be expected to improve.  However, to take it all a step further, perhaps the N Y Times should extend an employment opportunity to Fidel Castro?

Call me what you will, but I have a problem with the idea of women in combat.  On rare occasion, a true Amazon might show up who can actually deal with the training and combat standards originally applied to men.  I can accept that, but lowering standards for the purpose of qualifying women is totally unacceptable.

Political Targets: 2004, or ASAP

            At the earliest opportunity, Republican Senators who love taxes:

                        Lincoln Chafee R-RI

                        Olympia Snowe R-ME

                        John McCain R-AZ

            At the earliest opportunity, Democrat Representatives who love Saddam Hussein

(They went to Baghdad just before the war started to apologize for America):

                        Jim McDermott D-WA

                        Jim Thompson D-

                        David Bonior D- OH

            At the earliest opportunity, Democrat Senator “married” to O J Billyboy:

Hillary Rodham Clinton D-NY

            At the earliest opportunity, these people desire to disarm law abiding citizens:

Richard Gephardt D-MO

                        John Conyers D-MI

                        Nancy Pelosi D-CA

                        Henry Waxman D-CA

                        Charles Schumer D-NY

Heartland rebellion update:

On June 9^th, in Peebles Ohio, about 30 citizens were arrested for attempting to prevent the removal of school monuments which bore the Ten Commandments in public, as so ordered by a Federal Judge.  Meanwhile, the local Blockbuster continues business as usual renting Hollywood trash under the protection of the 1^st Amendment.  The locals are challenging the Federal Judge’s ruling, appearing to believe that they should have some say in this matter.  Americans, carry on.

CURRENT READING RECOMMENDATIONS

1.)  HATRED’S KINGDOM: HOW SAUDI ARABIA SUPPORTS THE NEW GLOBAL TERRORISM

            DORE GOLD                                                    

            REGNERY                                 309 PGS                       $27.95

2.) THE DEATH OF RIGHT AND WRONG: EXPOSING THE LEFT’S ASSAULT ON OUR CULTURE AND VALUES

            TAMMY BRUCE                                                           

            PRIMA                                      341 PGS                       $25.95

3.) FEDERALISM, THE SUPREME COURT, AND THE SEVENTEENTH AMENDMENT: THE IRONY OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY                                      

RALPH A. ROSSUM

            LEXINGTON BOOKS                 307 PGS                       $26.95 PAPER

Condoleezza Rice: “In America, it is not about where you are coming from, but where you are going”.

                                                                  God Bless America

                                                 JIM

                                                                   JIM SOHMER                       

                                                                  AMERICAN NATIONALIST CONSERVATIVE

                                                                  JEFFERSON, CO 80456

                                                                           IN GOD WE TRUST