THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER

                             Vol. 3                                       Issue 8                                                            10/18/03

A FREEWHEELING CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY DEDICATED TO THE DEFENSE OF FREEDOM, THE NEXT GENERATION, AND THE WAY THINGS OUGHT TO BE.  READER DIALOG ENCOURAGED.

Unafraid to say what others only dare think.        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.)

Blowing off steam:

Well, well, well.  As I previously predicted, Arnold Schwarzenegger (barring further intrusion by the courts) is going to take the helm in California.  As you may surmise from my previous comments on this matter, I think it remains to be seen how this is actually going to work out.  Where do I begin?   Some facts:

1)      Arnold is not a Conservative, he is a very talented, and well intended, hustler.

2)      The L.A. Times is not a newspaper, it is a leftwing political rag.

3)      After OJ Billyboy, Democrats can’t condemn Arnold, and Republicans can’t excuse him.

4)      The California Legislature is still what it was, a domestic version of the French National Assembly.

5)      The southern border with Mexico is still wide open.

6)      The people of California, through the agency of Grayout Dufus were destroying the state. Now the people of California are proposing to fix the mess, sort of, maybe, they hope.

7)      Upon taking office, an immediate freeze on hiring and a cancellation of all planned and pending pay raises would signal seriousness, including judges.  I don’t expect that to happen.

Questions to be answered:

1)      Can some combination of political will be realized that will permit the tax cuts necessary to staunch the hemorrhaging of business out of the state?  That is what is required.

2)      Can some combination of political will be realized that will accept the even greater cuts in spending necessary to balance the budget and work out the deficit?  That is what is required.

I am, shall we say, skeptical.   I am not persuaded that even Arnold really understands what needs to be done, let alone able to accomplish what needs to be done even if he understood.  California Republicans have now really set themselves up big time.   Tom McClintock, stand by.   Going into 2004, I think Carl Rove should regard all this with great caution. There is a reason why Conservatives are always skeptical about great bursts of democracy.  We shall see.  In all of this, there is one definite positive; the pending recovery of the national economy [which may help].

As the decade of the ‘90’s opened, the old Soviet Empire collapsed upon itself, and at the time I observed that, contrary to the views of some announcing “the end of history”, a new and far more dangerous international climate was about to unfold.  Multiple nationalisms about the globe, long constrained artificially by the Soviet lash and countervailing American discipline, would re-emerge and re-assert themselves.  (Remember Sohmer’s first law of international relations: nationalism trumps ideology every time.)   Americans rushed to deceive themselves about a newfound “peace dividend” that was not to be.   I was preoccupied at the time with the long term threat to American interests of mainland China, and I still am.  For years I had maintained that, in the end, the Chinese peasant was always tougher, smarter, more innovative and positive than his Russian counterpart.  In my view, there have always been two sides to this coin, a positive and a negative.   The positive dimension was that the Chinese, almost genetically, have always seemed to be born capitalists by instinct, in direct opposition to their Communist masters, themselves, as it turns out, a contradiction in this regard.  The negative dimension is the emergence of the nationalist dragon, skillfully exploited by the Communist Chinese leadership (as it also was by Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam) as a tool of political control.   Capitalism, unguided by law that defends private property rights, and unguided by a moral code, is a set-up for Fascism.   In any event, I still believe my original assessment of the Chinese remains true.   What I admit I missed was the strength of the additional challenge of Wahhabism in the Middle East.  While I’ve always been vaguely conscious of a general dysfunction in the region, Arabs, frankly, have never posed an economic threat (contrary to the conventional wisdom on oil) or serious conventional military threat.   September 11, 2001 marked a clear point of departure, in the sense that it was now clear that we were faced with the suicidal challenge of determined Islamic Fascism.  What we are confronted with now is the twin challenges of Islamic Fascism (loosely, a sort of Pan Arab/Persian Nationalism) and the original Chinese Communism, re-packaged as vulgar racist nationalism morphing into fascism.  Ultimately, the Chinese remain the greater threat.  Thanks to the (purposeful?) drawdown of our military and intelligence capabilities throughout the 1990’s, pending a re-build, we are very vulnerable.  I am a conservative of the old school, in that I believe our foreign entanglements should be confined to dealing with clear and direct threats to our national security and interests, in the narrow sense of the word.  This Constitutional responsibility should never be ceded to international organizations or courts.  Our national failure, so far, not to recognize the dangers of allowing various international dependencies to develop could be fatal. This century could prove to be more difficult than the last.  Meanwhile, in working the issue of the North Korean nuclear threat, the Chinese are in a position to fix this problem, but to date it has not been useful for them to do so.   We have a club over the Chinese on trade, the proceeds from which they are using to re-arm and position themselves for Pacific hegemony, however to date it has been more important for us to buy cheap at Walmart.

As the political season gets started, the President is coming under increasing attack from our domestic enemies over our policies regarding Iraq, and the question of the connection between Iraq and the attack on America on September 11, 2001.  What the President has said, and when he said it, has suffered some gross distortions, no doubt with political mischief intended.  In fact, the jury is still out on the details of a hard connection between Saddam Hussein and the specific events of 09/11, and the President has never claimed otherwise.   Investigators are still looking into who cashed whose checks when, and it is already clear that Hamas and other Wahhabi types were drawing heavily on Iraqi and Saudi accounts.  What the President has correctly and consistently pointed out is that the mutual hatred of this country shared by both Islamic fundamentalists and Arab Baathists poses a threat to our national security that demands a proactive response.  There is a clear and well documented trail of connection and cooperation between the old Iraqi regime and Islamic fundamentalists ranging back for years, and our Administration, properly, made a determination to act.  Terrorists cannot, and do not, function in a vacuum absent state sponsorship.  The evidence, as it is developing, overwhelming supports the mutual cooperation of our Islamic and Baathist enemies among themselves against us, and the correctness of  our  actions in Iraq.  Indeed, what all members of the Axis of Evil plus Saudi Arabia have in common is state sponsorship of Islamic terrorist organizations and individuals.  History will vindicate the United States, and the President, big time.  Meanwhile, underlying the mystery of the whereabouts of the WMD is an assumption that the solution still lies within Iraqi borders.  It may or may not.  Baathist Syria, and Lebanon, are next door, and the porous borders of the USA were only a container shipment away.  This is why a dispassionate and thorough investigation must continue, wherever it goes.

The greatest threat to this country are our own domestic subversives, conscious or of the fellow traveler variety, who are numerous.  Before our eyes, a sorting out process is going on, and Real Americans need to stand up.

In view of the limited number of troops available for the War on Terrorism, the time is ripe for a reconsideration of our pre 09/11 deployments around the world.  Subsequent to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, no proper consideration of this matter ever happened, and, indeed, additional deployments continued throughout the 1990’s in support of various “nation building” projects exclusive of our national security interests, while at the same time funding and troop strength was severely cut.  For starters, we need to entirely get out of the Balkans and Germany.  Our deployments in Asia also need to be re-examined, consistent with our legitimate ongoing concerns in Korea and the challenges posed by China to our legitimate interests.

As a young teenager in 1955, there were certain things in my world that one assumed to be fixed until the end of time.   In my experience these things included, for example, the Episcopal Church, patriotism, and the Pennsylvania Rail Road, although the distant, hard to imagine possibility of the end of the steam locomotive was being whispered about.  The church was a rock, and if one was to personally lose their moorings, one could always return.  The country under the Eisenhower administration was solid, and that things would ever be different was unthinkable.  The Pennsylvania Rail Road was the Standard Rail Road of the World, and nothing man would ever invent could shove coal like an Altoona built 2-10-0 Decapod, except GP9’s could do it cheaper.  Today, all of this is gone with the wind, there are people alive who have never heard of the Pennsylvania Rail Road and as I survey the fruited plain from the mountaintop, I am finding it increasingly difficult to imagine that the Republic itself can survive the cultural assault upon it.  Full disclosure requires that I reveal my pending conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, which itself, today, is facing strong headwinds.  With my last breath, I will go down fighting. 

The full bore guttural hatred by the American, and European, political left for our President is really directed at American Conservatism more generally.  The Left has come to recognize that they are against the wall, and cornered.  The Left can no longer win elections on the substance of their ideas, because they are intellectually bankrupt; their only recourse is subterfuge, misrepresentation and the occurrence of scandal, manufactured if necessary.  So it is that those of us who would wish for more conservative initiative and behavior than we have seen so far by the President, must recognize that, for whatever his shortcomings in behalf of advancing a truly conservative agenda, this President today is the point man taking the heat, and we need to get him, and a bunch of conservative Senators, elected and re-elected next year.  I will continue to be hard and unyielding in my assessments on behalf of conservatives, but political reality is what it is.

To wit: The current left wing barrage against the President involves an attempt to manufacture a scandal concerning the so-called outing of an alleged CIA “operative” with regard to the facts surrounding Niger “yellow cake”.  This is a fast moving day-by-day story which will go nowhere because the press can’t handle the dilemma of ratting on itself.  The mainstream press desperately wants Democrats back in office, but will not cooperate at the expense of surrendering to demands to reveal their own sources.   Factually, the CIA remains well salted with OJ Billyboy era holdovers, including its boss, George Tenet, many of whom appear to have agendas inconsistent with the will of this Administration.   You will recall ongoing disputes between the CIA / State Department and DOD analysts over the nature of various security threats, including not only the Taliban and Iraq, but Hamas, Pakistan, China and Russia.   As for the current flap, there is nothing to it except a perceived opportunity to tar and feather the President, and create the appearance of a scandal, thought politically useful going into next year’s election cycle.  The manufactured issue is who was it that “leaked” to columnist Robert Novak the “secret” that Valerie Plame Wilson was Joseph Wilson’s wife and a CIA employee, allegedly an “undercover operative”.   The truth is that within Washington DC circles this is the equivalent of revealing that Upchuck Schumer is a Democrat from New York who once went to Washington.  I am optimistic now that enough of the electorate is savvy to the left wing slant of the mainstream press that this fiasco will backfire on its authors. 

The next time you are confronted by a Democrat politician ranting against this Administration, ask him to explain to you exactly what they would recommend as an alternative to any particular Administration position; what are they for as opposed to what they are against that is consistent with the priority of American national security, clearly defined?  Chances are, if they have any ideas at all, it will require additional spending, more regulation and, perhaps, further sabotage of our national defense apparatus.  Democrats are so empty of constructive ideas that they are in a tailspin, so desperate, that their only recourse is scandal, real or imagined. 

Going forward into the 2004 election cycle Democrats should remember that in the Heartland, for many, the only legitimate civil rights organization is the National Rifle Association.

Corrections:

Some copies of Vol. 3 Issue 6 got out incorrectly dated 07/01/03.  Should have been 08/01/03.

Bush Score Card:

            Excellent:

I understand you finally got the Air Force out of Saudi Arabia.

Your presentation before the United Nations September 22^nd was good, although a notice of eviction would have made it excellent.    We need to stay in charge, or all will be lost.  More recently, your achievement of obtaining the endorsement of the Security Council for more U.N. support is a two edged sword.   As a practical matter, we could use some help, but one wonders what we had to give away to get it.   An optimistic spin would have it that support for this Resolution, coming from unanticipated directions, is a signal of recognition of our slowly gathering success, and a fear of being left out in the cold.  In any event, we need to keep the reins taunt, and it appears that you are doing so.

Not So Good:

I have complained before about how I think your biggest political vulnerability is the fact that you are a decent and honest fellow.  Coupled with your successes in the War on Terror, and the tax cuts, your approach seems to be working, more or less, with the mushy political middle.  As a consequence, you are driving hard core Liberals literally nuts.  I hope that after this next election you might re-think all of this pandering for Democrats and just become a really mean SOB.  That would really be exciting.  Even with respect to those matters on which you appear to have been successful, a follow through emphasis of the conservative over the compassion needs to be re-emphasized if you are to ultimately prevail.   You are driving us hard core Conservatives nuts too, and without us, ultimately in the long haul, your brand of Republicanism cannot win.   Your appointment of that obvious big government toady Ed Gillespie as Chairman of the RNC is not encouraging.  Surrounding yourself with Fake Reagans is not self becoming.

Terrible--or even worse:

The total unfunded liability of the United States Government today is 44 TRILLION dollars. ^[1]   What are you doing about it, or for that matter, what is the Republican Party proposing to do about it?   Congressional Republicans can take credit for actions in 1995 that started to tap the breaks on spending, but then they lost their nerve.  Historically, of course, Democrats structured the problem, but now Republicans control the House and Senate (almost) and the White House, and go-a-long Republicans have always let the Democrats get away with it.  Shame.

I think it’s time to put Paul Wolfallfits in charge of the State Department.   Who funds the State Department these days, American taxpayers or the House of Saud?  The correct answer is both.  Absolutely disgraceful.

Wall Street & Main Street:

Economic professionals identify March 2000 as the beginning of the collapse of the market soap bubble of the ‘90’s.  This was before either Al Gor(bachev) or G.W. Bush were even nominated to run for office later the same year.   Today, third quarter numbers clearly indicate that a recovery, barring unforeseen terrorist inspired events, is underway.  The uncharted component to this recovery, however, is the unprecedented factor of the degree to which international trade, and trade policies, may ultimately affect the result for the American worker.  I would suggest to younger folks that they consider investing more in themselves and the marketability of their own personal skills, at a personal level, as opposed to relying on the continued health of large corporate organizations.  I think personal economic security in the future will be better served in the context of a personal entrepreneurial approach, even if you choose to work for someone else.   If you choose to be an electrician, do it on your own.   The union route, assuming the continued health of other people’s wealth to loot, will become less and less viable.  We are in a global market, and our very legitimate concerns about the impact of this fact need to be focused on national security issues (significant).  As for the jobs, we need to refocus our energies on positive incentives for the private sector to stay in America and get off the class warfare kick.  People who have lots of money (not me) are the people who create jobs, and the global opportunities today are too great for them to need to put up with any socialist crap.  Investment funds are fungible, and can be re-directed with the click of a computer mouse.  I consider myself to be an American patriot, and I want to keep the jobs in America, but that has to be done by positive incentive, not negative regulation or criminalization of economic freedom.  Each of us, as individuals, are responsible for developing our own economic worth, and independence, in the marketplace.  Reliance on the protection of third parties, going forward, is foolish, and largeness, public and private, going forward, is in for some tough sledding that you do not want to be caught up in. 

I applaud the total purge of management at the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange).  Clearly, released CEO Richard Grasso had been indulged by a clubby and out-of-touch Board of Directors, now themselves all slated for replacement.  It appears that newly appointed temporary Chairman/CEO John Reed is the right guy to apply an enema to the management of an organization that is central to re-establishing the integrity of the Wall Street community.  We expect the best and wish him well.  There seems to be an ongoing problem with conflicts of interest, and the absence of professional discipline, by Directors.  It does not help that Congress has never clearly defined what it means by “insider trading”, or the definition of corporations and corporate responsibilities, leaving the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to sort of “wing it”.   Arguably, the SEC is, upon close examination, legally rudderless in many areas with the predictable result that if it acts at all, such actions tend to take on the qualities of a runaway Pope.  So it is again that Congress, institutionally, over the years, has done a poor job in executing its Constitutional responsibilities with respect to providing proper and effective direction to federal regulation of interstate commerce.  In the absence of a firm hand on these matters, we risk disintegrating into the cronyism of South American banana republics.   However, beyond the reach of Congress and the SEC, we have a larger cultural problem.    Macro financial integrity, under the law, is critical to the survival of American capitalism.   However, absent the moral code of our Judeo Christian tradition, our system can only come to be self consuming, and eventually unravel into state protected racketeering, not unlike the current Russian model.  There is a reason many “ordinary” Americans are disquieted by the forced removal of the 10 Commandments from the public forum, and the elevation of pornography at the expense of the original intent of the 1^st Amendment.   Incidentally, this is an issue that divides Conservatives from free market Libertarians.  I’ve been warning Republicans about this for years.

We do not buy oil from Saudi Arabia.  We buy oil on an international market.    The world’s proven reserves rise and fall as a function of what the consuming market is willing to pay.  There is no actual shortage of oil now or in the foreseeable future.  There is an oversupply of handwringers.  Someday, any genuine insufficiency in adequate oil reserves will be reflected in market prices for the raw product, not falsely inflated by taxes, regulatory overburden and tolerated international extortion.  Accordingly, a sound market basis will develop for the introduction of competitive alternatives, including tar sands.

Economists, in their field of study, recognize a difference between microeconomics, dealing with specific commodity sectors and producers, and macroeconomics, dealing with an economy as a whole, usually national and under the purview of a central banking system.  So it goes, in the conventional scope of analysis of the health of most national systems, amended, especially in recent years, by supra-national trade agreements.  I have long felt uncomfortable with the adequacy of analysis at this level.  The fact is that there is a political overlay to all this that tends to get ignored, or not adequately analyzed and considered in the development of both economic and political policy in popular discussion.   In this country, under our system, politicians are always focused on the next election, while the captains of industry are most often focused on the next quarterly report.  The national institutional absence of a sense of reflection on politically integrated strategic policy analysis by anyone in the popular arena has been further eroded in recent years by the political reduction of the body politic into competing groups and “group think”.  The breakdown of trust and confidence among various self identified groups of citizens (and non-citizens) thus works against a necessary healthy public discussion of matters that, for want of a better term, I will call hyper-macro political/economic analysis and policy development, or Hyper Policy, for short.  One tiny piece of this pie, for example, is the future of the Social Security system, and the need for action to replace this Ponzi scheme with a mechanism that is not only financially sound, but also constitutional, if at all.   There is much fine work being done in many Conservative/ Libertarian “think tanks”, but little analysis, for example, of the serious conflicts between Conservatives and Libertarians which severally hampers the common cause against modern Liberalism.  Expect much more in the future from The Mountain Observer on a wide range of issues from the perspective of  a “Hyper Policy” consideration, and my concern about the nation’s long range drift into statism of the fascist variety.  Any hope of corrective action must be preceded by analysis and understanding at a popular level in support of practical political action.  Eggheads talking among themselves in privatized academia, even of the Conservative sort, are of little help.  It is necessary to broaden the awareness and interest of the more general constituency.

As previously noted in this column, we do not need the equities markets to “take off” on another wild roller coaster ride, and so far there is evidence of some mature restraint.  At the same time, there is also evidence of attempts on the part of some “investors” to go crazy again with margin purchases.  Ideally, the markets this time will chew these people up and spit them out, but then again people have short memories.  The market needs legitimate investors in profitable companies, not stock price speculators, which, of course means we need profitable companies.  Please, Mr. President, bring us more tax cuts, less corporate social engineering, and behead more lawyers.

Ad Nausium:

It is good to see that Congress has now officially fingered Syria as the junior troublemaker that she actually is. Meanwhile, it appears that the President has quietly given the green light to Ariel Sharon to step up military pressure against a broader field of tormentors.  Quite big of us, don’t you think?

I sense that the withholding of 28 pages by the Administration of the report on 09/11 issued by Congress may have been a tactical move to possibly lever some cooperation out of certain Saudis.   At least the general thrust of these documents is a poorly kept secret, and this move may tie into the pending release of the comprehensive report due on Iraqi WMD.  We shall see.  Critics of our actions in Iraq should understand that what we have done, and are doing, is cracking open the front door in Riyadh, and perhaps the key to the events of 09/11.  The unspoken 5^th member of the Axis of Evil will be exposed, in time, I am sure.  The slow but steady progress on this front, evident to most Americans, is the foundation for continuing support of this President.

My frequent critical observations about matters obtaining to New York City should be understood in the context of Liberal ownership of the politics, and most of the culture and media of the city.   There are, of course, many good people, even Right thinking people, who take up residence there, and the city is part of the United States.   I happened to be in the area most of the day on this September 11, and listening to the radio as I worked, it was apparent that the “tough” image New Yorkers love to project with regard to themselves does not always work.   Since 2001, I have noticed a slight subtle shift away from unrestrained arrogance toward a more nuanced and well deserved pride, in themselves and the city.  As for what should be done with the site at “ground zero”, a very emotional debate continues to rage.  New Yorkers have an exclusive right to resolution of the matter, and responsibility for the results.   The process of coming to grips with the fact that things will never be the same again is ongoing, including recognition of the fact that another act of terror is possible, even likely.  New York, the rest of America is looking out for you.

Democrats reveal much about their priorities when they criticize an additional $87 billion for the effort in the War on Terrorism at the same time that they regard $400 billion for pills for the elderly as “only a start”.   That $400 billion would fund a new navy carrier task group, a much better buy, and the $87 billion investment in a restructured middle east is cheap in comparison to allowing an uncontested unraveling of American strength before the depredations of Islamic Wahhabism.   As for the pills, cut $400 billion out of the waste and fraud in a $2.2 trillion budget (very easy) and furthermore, reduce taxes by that much further.   We need to get serious about more really serious tax cuts; I’ll buy my own pills.  Tax cuts take Democrats out of business.

Miguel Estrada gives up, presumably because, in his world, life goes on, all quite understandable and sad for the rest of us.   Gutless Republicans in Congress refused to force Democrats to engage in a genuine old fashioned filibuster.    At the beginning of this year I asked the question about what kind of a man Bill Frist would prove to be.  Now it is confirmed.   Bill Frist is a zero.  Ted Kennedy runs the Senate.  So much for compassionate conservatism.

Again, the President has named a highly qualified candidate for a post on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but expect a hell of a ruckus from Democrats.  You see, the problem for Democrats is that Janice Rogers Brown, daughter of a sharecropper, is both Black and a Conservative, and that just won’t do.  Leftwing racism is in full flower.  Stay tuned, but remember that Bill Frist is a zero, Ted Kennedy is in charge and Republicans are gutless.

In an entirely uncharacteristic burst of effort, it took Congress 48 hours to take hard action in an attempt to reverse a court ruling upsetting a new national system to block unwanted telemarketing.  I say attempt, because no sooner than Congress acted, another federal judge stopped the show again.  Congress also has a Constitutional responsibility for defining the jurisdiction of the courts, and since 1803 Congress has wimped out.  Meanwhile, bear in mind that a price is being paid here for modern liberal activist court notions concerning the freedom of speech.  The 1^st Amendment was designed to protect freedom of political speech.  The gradual extension, over the years, to include the most outrageous acts of show business types gives cover to  the  incorrect notion that someone has a “right” to interrupt the tranquility of your evening so as to force a commercial pitch upon you. The real issue is breaking and entering.   It now appears that the Administration is going forward with enforcing the list.  This could be huge, with implications way beyond the particular issue of the “don’t call” list.  For years I’ve been beating on the matter of both Congress and the Executive hiding under the umbrella of the 1803 Court decision creating the principle of judicial review.  Judicial review, up to a point, is fine, but all three branches have a co-equal responsibility to the Constitution, and when the Court screws up, both Congress and the Executive have a responsibility to say enough is enough.  Since 1803, the modus operandi has been for Congress, especially, to pass outrageous legislation on the open assumption the Court will “sort it out”, with frequently more outrageous results, specifically untested before the electorate.  In the present matter at hand, populist outrage is forcing the hand of the Congress and the President.  One wonders what would happen if  taxes were paid on October 15^th and there was no “withholding”.

I speak very little about Rush Limbaugh, because he has clearly expressed his distance from those of us who wear jeans and drive pickup trucks with gun racks.  It appears that he has gotten himself into something of a pickle over drugs, and at this point it is too early to know exactly what this is all about.  What we do know is that he has had to take a few weeks off to dry himself out.  Whatever the outcome, as a Conservative, I would hope that he can find a way to set aside some of the constant self promotion, bordering on the narcissistic, and find the courage just to be a regular guy.  As for the drugs, I am in no mood for excuses.  We all have to live with the same laws and consequences, and under the judgment of the same God.  The toughest thing for any man to do is to confront himself with his own sins, but it is now too early to draw earthly conclusions on this matter.

I finally got the roof on my cabin, so I will be able to start moving out of my old travel trailer.   Actually, this may take several years.   Now I need to find portraits of George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Calvin Coolidge and Russell Kirk to hang on the wall.

The Episcopal Church has fallen in disgrace, partly, I believe, as a function of association with the larger Anglican community and the relationship of the Church of England with the British constitutional system and government.   In my opinion, no Christian in their right mind should want a formal relationship with a government, such as has existed in England, which sooner or later, given the government’s greater scope of jurisdiction, must subvert the more exclusive standards of the faithful.  Again, the wisdom of our Founding Fathers shines through with the 1^st Amendment.   Meanwhile, the American Catholic Church is in the midst of a life and death struggle, internally and externally, against the same forces of evil that have apparently overwhelmed Episcopalians.  The outcome of this battle is seminal for the future of the Republic.

I am not medically qualified to state that Lt. Col. (Collin Powell’s term) Wesley Clark is a certifiable mental case, but I suspect that, upon examination, those who are so qualified will come to that conclusion.   It says much about those who support this pathetic sorry sack’s candidacy bid, to take the man seriously.   He is being used by certain folks within the Democrat Party Civil War for their own purposes.  It is fun to watch, but pathetic.

Time Magazine comes out with an issue that announces “What went wrong with American Strategy in Iraq?”

The answer, you blithering idiots, is nothing, except your constant reinforcement and encouragement of scattered remnants of Hussein’s regime, the Taliban and Hamas, all to the detriment of our own soldiers and Israeli civilians.  You complain about being charged with anti-Americanism and wonder why?   It is because you are anti-American, and subversive, at the very least.

Political Targets: 2004, or ASAP

Every Liberal in sight.

Prediction:

Pentagon informants tell me to expect the release of a massive comprehensive report on Iraqi WMD by next March.  The raw data is so extensive it will take at least that long to sort it all out.  Piecemeal release has been ruled out as too subject to manipulation by those unfriendly to the defense of the United States, foreign and domestic, but I am assured that the evidence is considerable.  Meanwhile, “no comment”.

Heartland rebellion update:

The ongoing public debate about the dangers of the Patriot Act(s) is healthy.  While much of the discussion reflects ignorance, real or willful, about what the various measures do, and don’t do, real Conservatives should remain honest about the potential for future Statist abuse.  I have concerns.

CURRENT READING RECOMMENDATIONS

1.)  THE NEW CHINESE EMPIRE: AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE UNITED STATES

            ROSS TERRILL                                                                                               

            BASIC                                                  432 PGS                                   $30.00

2.)  JOURNALISTIC FRAUD: HOW THE NEW YORK TIMES DISTORTS THE NEWS AND WHY IT CAN NO LONGER BE TRUSTED                                                                                

            BOB KOHN

            WND                                                    334 PGS                                   $25.99

3.)  MEXIFORNIA: A STATE OF BECOMING                            

            VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

            ENCOUNTER                                        150 PGS                                   $21.95

                                                                    God Bless America

                                                                      JIM

                                                                       JIM SOHMER                      

                                                                      AMERICAN NATIONALIST CONSERVATIVE

                                                                      JEFFERSON, CO 80456

                                                                                      IN GOD WE TRUST                             

^[1] Walter Williams