THE MOUNTAIN OBSERVER ON-LINE  

                             ISSUES, PEOPLE, OBJECTS & POLICIES- CLOSE UP 

                     "The power to tax involves the power to destroy"       Chief Justice John Marshall

                                    Vol. 07                                    Issue 02                         Start APR 01, 2007

Serious Considerations: 

06/29/07  “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” quotes Chief Justice John Roberts.  In a predictable 5/4 decision, the Supreme Court finally begins to unravel perhaps the original modern Liberal activist court decision from 1954: Brown s. Board of Education.    The damage over the decades of this social engineering experiment has been, and is, incalculable.  JES

06/29/07  Yesterday, in the Senate, the great McCain/ Kennedy/ Bush Amnesty "compromise" plan of 2007 for illegal wetbacks and terrorists of various heritages came to a halt.  Finally.  Mr. President, now go and enforce the law.  Shut down the circus on the border.  And I want to see some employers go straight to jail.  You have the tools to do this, and have had all along.  Now just go do it and quit protecting your corporate, Democrat and RINO friends.  JES, American Nationalist Conservative.

06/21/07   Visit www.Vote4FredThompson.com

06/20/07  Again it is time for the Mountain Observer to be blunt about Iraq.  Our activities in Iraq are central to the entire effort against IslamicFascism.  In the opinion of this observer, our efforts there have been successful way beyond the hopes and plans of the original authors of the policy of pre-emption against Saddam Hussein.  The original thinking was "better over there than in Central Park", and that was, and remains, the fundamental logic.  Far more successfully than many originally imagined, the IslamicFascists have taken the bait, and by their own admission have bought into the idea that Iraq is the focal point of the fight.  They recognize, and have openly acknowledged, that it is in Iraq that they will succeed or fail.  We have got them right where we want them.  There has been a steep learning curve on our part, and mistakes in tactical strategy have been made along the way, however the underling strategic logic has been correct all along.  Our primary problem today with the whole matter of confronting IslamicFascism is not Iraq, Iran, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, or the French.  Our problem today is ourselves and our willingness to believe in ourselves and the legitimacy of our own American Purpose.  In our history we have been up against this wall before; again our national character is being tested.  We can either choose to prevail, which we most certainly can do, or slink back into the backwater of history with the condemnation and approbation of future generations that appeasement and surrender would most surely deserve.   I could go on.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

06/20/07  The President gets one right with his veto of legislation attempting to authorize tax payer support of embryonic stem cell research.  The President, and all Conservatives, support adult stem cell research, where all the progress is being made.  Embryonic stem cell research, which is legal if privately funded, technically is going nowhere, hence the starvation of private funding, hence the attempted raid on the public treasury.  However, there is a larger issue at work here.  Supporters of embryonic stem cell research know full well that it is a technical bust; their real agenda is promotion of the idea that human embryos are not human so as to bolster their real agenda of abortion rights.  That this is what the discussion is really all about is not arguable.  JES

06/20/07  It is time for the President to set aside all the excuses and to act immediately to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.  I regard it as his constitutional responsibility to do so.   The issue was the man's memory before a grand jury, adjudged criminally defective by a dumbed down jury and another out-of-control special persecutor, one Patrick Fitzgerald, empowered in the first place by another spineless Bush DOJ fish farmer.  This sort of persecution is the legal cousin of "hate crime" law logic, which is to say, an investigation of one’s brain.  We were supposed to have defeated this kind of thinking with the end of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  In considering special persecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's behavior in this matter, I am struck by the parallels of legal and moral arrogance with one Durham County District Persecutor Mike Nifong of Duke University Lacrosse scandal fame.  TV and the present day legal system are wreaking the nation.   JES

06/20/07  AlGore's newly published The Assault on Reason brings to mind the intellectual effort of a cat chasing it's own tail.  It is totally incomprehensible psychobabble, devoid of reason.  He is living in a parallel (?) universe.  JES

06/18/07  At the behest of the President, and likely unknown pressures on the congressional "leadership", the grand scam immigration amnesty package is reappearing for reconsideration by the Senate.  The tenacity of this effort to instantly legalize millions of illegals raises the suspicions of the Mountain Observer as to what exactly the pro passage forces may be trying to cover up.  We need to take a harder look at the money trail.  Aside from struggling house contractors, spinach growers and grass cutters, who is it, really, that has such a huge stake in all the cheap labor?  Why is it that the Social Security Administration and the Homeland Security Administration can't, or will not, talk to each other?  What is the depth of big corporate America's role in this controversy?  The Mountain Observer does not approve of fueling wacko conspiracy theories, however, neither was he born yesterday.  Something in this whole matter just does not smell right, or add up.  We need to keep digging, wherever it leads, however insisting on verifiable and documentable facts.   Selling out the country is a serious matter.  JES

06/18/07   Now I understand that Senator Trent Lott considers talk radio to be the problem.  Of course he has this exactly backwards: it is the multiple Senator Lott’s in the Senate (and the House) who are the problem, And yes, we of the new alternative media, through whom real citizens (the People) can actually speak, will have to deal with that, and in particular, Senator Lott.  Frankly, I have never been a fan of Senator Lott, and was not among those who enthusiastically attempted his rescue after the birthday party fiasco.  You can look me up on that.  JES

06/11/07   Mr. President, enforce the current law, and no amnesty.  JES

06/11/07  Regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales ,who I, I believe, I have not mentioned since the Harriet Miers fiasco.  (The president has always been tempted to offer up Gonzales as a court candidate).  I have always regarded the man as a fly weight, and in Washington only as a consequence of old Texas loyalties.  I have complained repeatedly from the beginning of the Bush 43 presidency that the biggest problem with George W. Bush has been, and is, that he is a nice guy; not really a qualification for the job of President.   A sub-text to this complaint is that Bush has repeatedly allowed personal loyalties to trump competence, and this has cost him, and the country, dearly, on several occasions.  So it came to pass that these Presidential habits led to the elevation of Alberto Gonzales to the office of Attorney General of the United States.  Predictably, for this observer, it has become apparent to those close to the scene that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not up to the challenge of his office.  Now the President has a problem.  The Gonzales tiger has got the President by the tail, and the President can't let go.  The liberal (Democrat) establishment, seething with rage against the President, sees the political opportunity to possibly bring the President down by finding any way possible to ditch Gonzales and then demanding a special persecutor as a condition of Congressional approval of Gonzales' successor.   The legal outcome of any such persecution, guaranteed to be highly political, is not the priority; tying up the Administration in knots, with the possible added utility of forcing our surrender in Iraq, is the real political objective of this matter.  Democrats really don't give a damn about the 8 fired attorneys.  They see the perfect opportunity to go straight at the President; to hell with the American national interest in conducting the War against IslamicFascism for which they prescribe defeat anyway.  So it is that the President, irrespective of the incompetency of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is forced to stick by his man, and Conservatives just need to stand by and swallow hard.  What's best for the country has come to this.  JES

06/11/07   Visit www.Vote4FredThompson.com

Current Reading Recommendations:      

SACRED CAUSES: THE CLASH OF RELIGION AND POLITICS, FROM THE GREAT WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR.

MICHAEL BURLEIGH                                                                                                                         

HARPER COLLINS                                                                   557 PGS                                                 $27.95

THE FORGOTTEN MAN: A NEW HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION

 AMITY SHLAES                                                                                                                              

 HARPERCOLLINS                                                                   480 PGS                                                 $26.95

Serious Considerations:   

06/08/07   Finally, thankfully, the inside brokered deal in Congress over amnesty for illegal immigrants falls apart in the Senate.  We have just witnessed Congress at its worst.  In the opinion of this observer, passage of this legislative monstrosity would have been fatal to the continued existence of the nation.  George W. Bush, you are now on your own.  In the course of this process, you have stabbed us, your own base, in the back.  This came as no surprise; we have watched this storm approaching for a long time.  I do not doubt your honesty and sincerity, and never have.  Your recognition of the threat of the international threat against the West after 09/11, and your decision to preemptively target Afghanistan and Iraq as you did were absolutely correct.  However, in the execution department you are an absolute bumbler, both foreign and domestic.  I am too disgusted at the moment to write the list here now, and in any event I would just be repeating myself anyway.   This matter of your ideas about border security and amnesty for illegal aliens however, just pushes everything over the top.   General David Petraeus, who is now running the show, carry on.  I look forward to your forthcoming report  in September.   For Iraq, it will be determinative.  It is ironic that your boss in the White House, by his own actions and operational decisions, has done as much to undermine the War on IslamicFascism in several ways as all the Democrats and RINOs in Congress, and those Americans who elected them.  This observer fears that another 09/11 event, perhaps nuclear, will be necessary to get folk's heads on straight.  JES   

06/06/07   GO FRED GO

Go straight to www.imwithfred.com, and do not look back. JES

06/04/07    GO FRED GO 

Fire up that old red pickup truck.  Let's Go!        

Go to http://draftfredthompson.com/. or,

TOPICAL GUIDE AMERICAN POLITICS FRED THOMPSON

06/04/07   On what's wrong with the "compromise" immigration proposals currently being debated in Congress, go to

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/misc/index.cfm#research for an examination of the details.  JES

05/30/07   Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has had an repeatedly bad habit of throwing his own political base under the bus.  (The "where else can they go" theory coming from the political middle.)   However, yesterday, on the subject of border and immigration policy, the president crossed a bridge too far.  Go to GEO. W. BUSH - IMMIGRATION 05-29-07   He has now become the Texas Democrat I predicted he would shortly after last Fall’s election.  I repeat some of what I said at the time:

11/09/06  If you think that President Bush will protect what is left of the tattered GOP with the veto, think again.  In  the last six years he has used the veto pen one time, correctly vetoing a measure that would have funded embryonic stem cell research.   More to the point, he let pass train loads of bills generated by a so-called Republican Congress that were entirely out of line with Conservative principles.  The Mountain Observer has been more than tolerant of both a wartime President and the GOP in the face of outrageous Left Wing political assault.  However, that same Left Wing is now in charge of Congress, not necessarily because the American people are now all Deaniacs (Ask Joe Lieberman), but because the President and the GOP betrayed the base that elected them.  In the same election that swept Democrats into control of both houses of Congress (frequently by razor thin margins), the same voters in 8 out of 9 states voted to declare that marriage means a man and a woman, and in Michigan that affirmative action has no place in higher education.  Political bases really do not like being mis-lead by their political representatives.  Now as for President Bush, forget the veto pen.  Throwing Donald Rumsfeld under the bus, watch him morph into a Texas Democrat.  And watch the GOP tear itself apart between big government Libertarians and small government values voters as the GOP swings Left.  Time for an American Conservative Party.  As for Democrats and Liberals, this was no victory.  They are now faced with the problem of feeding their fish with zero substance.  Sand castles on a wet beach.  Great comedy if the international security consequences weren't so serious.  Oh, yes, and 1.5 million abortions a year.  JES

OK, I was wrong about the veto (he has recently forced the hand of Democrats in Congress on the subject of funds for the military in Iraq, thankfully, and hopefully to come on a couple of pending right to life issues).  However, on the border, and spending, he has been, and will remain, useless.  The GOP split is hard; the issue is much bigger than George W. Bush (Sen. John Kyle R-AZ, among others, are now in much trouble).  It is a split between actual Conservatives and the Libertarians who have infested themselves into the party over the last 30 years.  It is a split between the heartland and the coastals.  It is a split between rural and urban, all of which has been discussed many times previously by the Mountain Observer.  As for the President, it is one thing to be principled, and not poll driven.  It is another matter to be politically stupid, especially when, as a matter of principle, you are simply wrong and have low approval ratings going in.  Mr. President, you chose the wrong hill to die on; you are history.  Senator Fred Thompson, where are you?  Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES  

 05/25/07   The President finally gets funds for the Pentagon from Congress that will keep the War on IslamicFascism going through September.   Then it will start all over again.  The fact that there is even the need for a debate about the fundamental policy of this support of the troops, and the fundamental polices of pre-emptive action against IslamicFascist terrorism is self destructive, corrosive and subversive to the interests of this country and free peoples everywhere, and continues to raise questions about the motives of those who so insist.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

05/24/07  On immigration: I've said it all before.  Go to TOPICAL GUIDE AMERICAN POLITICS IMMIGRATION.  Democrats want cheap votes.  Republicans want cheap labor.  So nothing gets done and the problem festers.  It's been this way for decades.  Now, driven by security concerns and original problems grown too hot to any longer disguise, politicians are in full panic mode; their primary individual priorities, as they imagine them to be, to head for the tall grass.  What has not changed is any real intent to fix the problem, which is to say, enforce current laws.  The current proposed legislation is a traveling train wreck, akin to throwing more gasoline on the fire.  Under the current highly charged political moment, the best result would be no new legislation at all.  Whatever happens, or doesn't happen, at this point, we know one thing for sure:

The Republican Party is a bunch of old fools being led around by the nose by Ted Kennedy.  Again, here's what needs to happen:

a). Secure the border, which is to say: lock it down with a 2000 mile electric fence or its functional equivalent.  Authorize Border Patrol personnel to shoot to kill, with immunity from prosecution, smugglers, "coyotes", drug runners or anyone who looks like they might be, and authorize "hot pursuit" into Mexico if that's what it takes. 

b). Put any American employer in jail who hires an illegal immigrant.  Period.

Trust me.  The swamp will be emptied in a hurry.  Then we can sit down and talk about immigration reform.  JES

05/20/07  During World War II, George Orwell is quoted as observing that "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve the possibility of victory.  The chief activity among left-wing writers is a rather pettifogging criticism which turns into a kind of dismay when England wins a victory, because this always falsifies their predictions." 

The Left will never change.  Today, with nuclear weapons falling into the hands of IslamicFascists determined to destroy us and who, at once, thrill to the prospect of 72 virgins in heaven, American Conservatives have a problem with the Leftists among us.  Existentially, most are Democrats.  It must also be said that none of this is helped by a GOP President caving into the current nonsense of "immigration reform", recognized by the rest of us as amnesty that is already provoking a mad rush for our southern border.  Our world is going nuts.  JES

05/08/07  Red state / blue state cultures.   Watch the difference between the local responses to nature's havoc between New Orleans (Katrina) on the one hand and Holly, CO / Greensburg KS (tornados) on the other.  The residents of Holly, CO / Greensburg KS have, and will continue to, cope with their own respective recoveries pretty much on their own initiatives.  For over a year the residents of New Orleans have tended to stand around hopelessly waiting for others, and the government, to rescue them.   It's the difference between accepting personal responsibility and exercising initiative on the one hand, and, on the other hand, falling prey to the escapism of victimology and dependency.   How would you guess that each of these groups tend to vote?   JES

05/06/07  GO FRED GO 

05/06/07  In today's French elections, Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative in the French context of things, wins the presidency with 53% of the vote, on a turnout of 85% of the voters.  Segolene Royal, sort of a French Hillary Rodham, however more honest about her far Left inclinations, rounds up 47%, which is to say there was no 3rd party monkey business.   So it appears that there may still be life left in the French corpse, or was this only a involuntary twitch.  Time will tell.  Expect much rioting to follow; all very French, of course.   JES

05/01/07  The President vetoes the war spending authorization which was constructed by Democrats with a hard schedule to surrender in Iraq (read War on Terror).  An unacceptable policy choice, a stab in the back of the American military and a signal to the world of an American lack of resolve to confront IslamicFascism.  If Democrats truly wish to open up the floodgates of hell, they should simply defund the war now, without stretching timelines.  In fact they are cowards and appeasers, unable to round up enough simpleton GOP collaborators to over-ride a veto.  It is a pathetic sight to behold.  Stay tuned.  Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES

05/01/07  Ah, yes, today is May Day, the religious point on the calendar for communists everywhere.  Watch them all celebrate their hatred of America, George W. Bush and American Conservatives everywhere in the world.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES

05/01/07  GO FRED GO

05/01/07   General David Petraeus has a tough assignment, which as we all know, at this late date, may or may not work.  So it is that I was particularly fascinated with the attached observations of a Lt. Col. Paul Yingling regarding the condition of our officer corps.  Go to General Staff, and read this carefully.

Now as to his suggestion that Congress needs to fix some problems, he is correct that that is the way it ought to be.  However, the real problem, which he elsewhere seems to acknowledge, lies with the American people as a whole, who created the very Congress (and I am speaking over decades) that is responsible constitutionally for the mess in the first place.  We have some very broad cultural and institutional problems here about which the Lt. Col. is very properly concerned.

There are two broad points to his thesis, one explicit, one implicit, which I could not agree with more, and have for some time.  Explicitly, are the points he makes about our need to shift gears, long overdue, to a counterinsurgency war fighting framework.  Implicitly, through his recommendations for a higher and broader level of educational discipline of the officer corps, he is suggesting a level of intellectual preparation for leadership roles that at some point may be necessary for intervention in a collapsed civilian government.  This is perhaps not what he intended, or what he would recommend, however the result is inherent in his recommendations, and consistent with what the Mountain Observer sees as possibly necessary in our national future.

For background, I would refer you back to my comments made 10/09/06 in the 06 05 letter concerning the post Vietnam general staff.   Also relevant were comments made in letter 06 06, 11/09/06, concerning the Rumsfeld resignation.   Finally, were comments made 07 01 letter on 02/07/07 concerning the Petraeus assignment.  JES

05/01/07   Occasionally I like to eat sardines.  It seems that with the exploding worldwide increase in the whale population, a competition is occurring.  I'm pulling for Japan in its efforts on the International Whaling Commission to restore commercial whaling.  JES

04/24/07   For the record, the Mountain Observer supports global warming.  Fewer people will die in the cold.  JES

04/24/07   So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-CA, using his official position, instructs President Bush, General David Petraeus, and the Nation that the war in Iraq (in the shriveled brains of the Left something apparently separate from IslamicFascism) has been lost and that the "surge" is not working.   Now the fact of the matter is that, at least since 1992, major elected Democrat officials have almost routinely engaged in what  Originalist Americans describe as treason.  In the present circumstances we are actually at war, and properly so, against evil forces whose clearly and credibly stated purpose is to destroy us.  In the opinion of the Mountain Observer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-CA is a traitor, and ought to be dealt with according to the law, as originally understood, forthwith.  The Mountain Observer is absolutely beside himself with anger.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES

04/18/07  Incidentally, aging hippy Don Imus could use a haircut.  Man is silly looking and ugly.  JES

04/18/07  I am not ignoring what happened 2 days ago at the University of Virginia in Blacksburg.  I am waiting for the facts to be sorted out.  One thing is clear.  Virginia needs a serious concealed weapons carry law.  Another point is also coming into focus.  True evil had taken hold of the South Korean killer, and too many people on campus knew it and did nothing about it.  There appears to have been no positive action or support, demanded or offered, of or to, an individual in obvious trouble. JES

04/18/07  Finally Conservatives are making progress on the abortion front.  The Supreme Court sustains a challenge to the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act signed into law in 2003 by President Bush.  Infanticide is unconstitutional: imagine that.  JES

04/14/07  I think full disclosure requires that I report that as of yesterday I have re-registered from "unaffiliated" (independent) to the Republican Party.  When I left the Republican fold in 1995, I was angry.  Yesterday I signed up again because now I am really angry.  After a very long debate with myself, I came to decide that with the time I have left and the much collapsed state of the GOP, it would be a better to use of my time to scream at them from the inside rather than from the outside.  I am under no illusions.  However, fair warning to Republicans around me: put on a hard hat because if you aren't Conservative I will be coming straight at you. JES

04/14/07  Regarding the firings of Dom Imus.   Don Imus is of the Left, no friend of the Mountain Observer.  However, the  Imus' firings were not because of his politics, but rather his race.  He was, after all, fired by those imbedded in the culture of Liberalism that he shares.   Even White Liberal guys who interfere with the Liberal Elite agenda of sucking up to Black Victimology will be tossed overboard, especially if the situation also presents the possibility of setting up talk radio in general for a renewal of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine".  Now that same Liberal culture has a problem; they picked off Imus at the same time that they have elevated the much more noxious Al Sharpton of Tawana Brawley fame to the post of moral arbitrator of American values.  So it goes with moral relativism.  Black rappers have free reign and the double standards between Black and White continue to expand and corrode what some of us remember as America.  The hypocrisy of the Liberal Elite Left Wing Mainstream Media stands totally exposed.  This is not to defend Dom Imus; he should have been fired long ago.  However, long before that, the noxious Al Sharpton and the entire "hip-hop/ rapper" culture should have been called out by a more responsible journalism.  In the postmodern Kultursmog of current American culture, the simple concept of Right and Wrong, good for previous generations, has been buried and long forgotten.   May they all go straight to Hell.   JES.

04/01/07 The Iraqi government has made a painful, and likely contentious, decision regarding the future of the city of Kirkuk in an attempt to untangle a knot tied by Saddam Hussein during the 1980's and 90's.  On the southern edge of the Kurdish autonomous region, Kirkuk historically was a Kurdish city.   Saddam's "Arabization" effort was an attempt to overwhelm and drive out Kurds with Sunni Arabs; the real issue being oil.  Today's Iraqi government, through the constitutional process, has decided to reverse the whole thing, intending not coercion but rather offering generous resettlement support to Arabs to their original home towns.  Returning Kurds are even now in the likely position of approving by referendum to reattach the city formally to the Kurdish region.  Whatever the wisdom of all this may be, the good news is that at a moment of its greatest apparent weakness, the Iraqi government has found the courage to make a truly tough decision on its own.  The significance of this fact is huge.  JES

04/01/07  April Fool’s Day.  Regarding the funding of the war, schedules for bringing the troops home, and as many unrelated ear marks as Congress can tack on.  We hope the President means it when he promises a veto.  This is one of those key moments in history when an entire culture teeters on the precipice of suicide or salvation, literally.  We are on the edge of a major confrontation with Iran, either which way.  It occurres to the Mountain Observer, as it has to Newt Gingrich, that Iran's only gasoline refinery is a very inviting target as the price we might expect of Iran for their continued meddling in Iraq, Lebanon and beyond.  This is, no doubt, a contingency option at a certain point.  Newt suggests following up with a naval blockade to shut down gasoline imports, this too an obvious contingency option.  However, sooner or later, we must end Iranian sophistry about a nuclear program for peaceful purposes.

As Margaret Thatcher advised the President's father, "It's no time to go wobbly, George".  What is truly disturbing is that the Bush clan seems to need this sort of advice and council  from time to time.   General David Petraeus: carry on.  JES

 Current Reading Recommendations:      

 A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES SINCE 1900

 ANDREW ROBERTS                                                                                                                     

 HARPERCOLLINS                                     752 PGS                                                 $35.00 

                                                                   Jim                        

                                                                   American Nationalist Conservative

                                                                   Jefferson, CO 80456

                                                                   God Help America