Barack will save us
From unemployment malaise
With clever taxing.

Barack will save us
From global warming danger -
He’ll lower the seas.

Barack will save us
From free market ravages
And give us free drugs.

Barack will saves us
From national default shame -
Call our Chinese friends.

Barack will save us
From Middle Eastern warfare -
Give them all the Jews.

Barack will save us
From judicial activists -
Send Prof Kagan in.

Barack will save us
From fat and lazy children
If Michelle has say.

Barack will save us
From Islamic terror threats
Trying Navy SEALS.

Barack will save us
From global low opinion
Bowing to despots.

Barack will save us
From Europe’s collapse sending
Them borrowed money.

Barack will save us
Ev’rybody sing along,
He’s the Chosen One.

All that being said,
Who will save us from Barack
And his Hope and Change?

I will be posting – this time I promise – a follow-up post concerning financial and monetary reform this week, and there will be links to lengthy, scholarly support for my positions, as well as recollections from my recently deceased uncle, a PhD (University of Chicago) economist who retired from the University of Missouri with an extensive background in agricultural economics and economics in general. I hope many of you will find it enlightening, or at least interesting. Feedback and respectful discourse will of course be welcome.

One particular meme that I’ve seen cropping up among the Tea Party circles is those signs with pics of Bush and Cheney, along with the line “Miss Me Yet?” This is something that never fails to send the vomit shooting up the back of my throat. I won’t recount, yet again, the multitude of sins against limited government and fiscal sanity that have been promulgated by the Bush-bots and their neoconservative counselors. Sure, as Karl pointed out to me this weekend, for all his wretchedness, McCain probably wouldn’t have been foisting socialized (or cartelized) healthcare on us, at least this year (although it’s not inconceivable). Nevertheless the prominence of these die-hard Bushie fanboys among the supposedly revolutionary Tea Partiers is the number-one piece of evidence that the movement has been co-opted by amoral GOP set and its talk-radio enablers.

Depressingly, Ron Paul types and associated libertoids, apparently, were completely non-existent among this crowd. In fact, I would guess that, say, a Ron Paul Revolution t-shirt would get some hostile attention from these guys. That’s too bad, because the hard-libertarian forces are younger, more geographically diverse, and are much more serious about pushing back at against the growth of the state. This is not to criticize the undoubtedly fine and dedicated middle-American family men who seemed to make up the bulk of the Partiers, but a broad-based coalition is becoming increasingly essential.

Now, maybe it isn’t fair to pick on the Tea Partiers when after all, they, and indeed the GOP, were at the forefront of the opposition to this monstrous healthcare bill, as Karl pointed out in his post. So on that front, good for them, and I mean that, and I proudly stand with them.

But you get the idea if you ask these guys what they really want, it would boil down to a recitation of stale Heritage Foundation website copy. Let’s see, how about a reduction in marginal tax rates? Invade Iran! Support Israel! And we don’t like the welfare state, but we’re happy to ignore it, for the most part. Basically, Bush/Cheney. Miss ‘em yet?

Worse yet, the fringier of the Tea Partiers seem wont to eschew serious thought in favor of garbage like the birther movement or the “Barack is a Muslim” nonsense. Less stupid, but still stupid, is the tendency to characterize Obama as some kind of a hardline Leninist. Chatting with Karl that evening over some beers I characterized this tendency as, basically, rightwing mental masturbation. (To those who would characterize Conservative Donnybrook similarly: you’re wrong!) Fixating on these obsessions is a good way to push an already disfavored movement into total irrelevance.

If these Tea Party guys really want to keep what’s left of this country from disappearing down the shitter, the answer isn’t Marco Rubio or Scott Brown, and, for God’s sake, it’s not installing some sort of Bush/Cheney 2.0. It isn’t fiddling with marginal tax rates and, emphatically, it is not raining bunker-busters on Iran or expanding NATO or amping up bloodthirsty rhetoric towards China. It isn’t about kicking out DC Scumbag Team A and replacing it with DC Scumbag Team B, which will make comforting noises about its “conservatism” while advancing its own National Review-endorsed assaults on our liberty. And it certainly won’t come from joining the personality cult of the vapid, narcissistic and stupid Sarah Palin, an ardent fan of state power when it benefits her personally, whom we love anyway because she shoots guns and has lots of babies, and exudes family-friendly MILFey sultriness that sends middle-aged white dudes’ pulses racing.

What’s needed to counter the loss of freedom and the growth of centralized power in every sphere of life is nothing short of a rollback of the state on all fronts. Will the Tea Party crowd commit to this? Do they even want it?

How many of these “middle-American radicals” would vote today to repeal Social Security? Heck, ten years from now will these same “Kill the Bill” tea-partiers, as they load up on their government-provided diabetes and blood pressure meds, even be willing to repeal universal healthcare? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t like them.

UPDATE: If you still refuse to become depressed about the Tea Party movement, read Derbyshire.

This morning we awake to a brave new world. By sleight of hand, trickery, and lies, the House Democrats have passed the Senate health care reform bill by inducing those who were inclined to vote against the measure with empty promises. Astoundingly, Pelosi was able to convince otherwise sensible Democrats to switch their votes by making promises that she has absolutely no ability to deliver and which everyone should have known have little chance of being delivered.

What Pelosi and company did was to load up an amendment bill with all sorts of goodies specifically targeted toward those Democrats who were maintaining no votes on the Senate bill. The problem is the bill that goes to the President’s desk is the Senate bill – not the amendment bill. That bill still has to go to the Senate to be voted on by the Senate. This is where it becomes obvious that those who changed their votes because of measures placed in the amendment bill have been duped – in some cases probably willingly. Most of those measures have absolutely no chance of passage in the Senate. Indeed, the Senate Republicans have made quite clear that they do not intend to pass any of the measures and that they will publicize the individual bribes which induced each of the former no-voting Democrats to change their votes.

Of course one presumes that the members of the House know the rules and that the promises being made were unlikely to be kept. Therefore, the only conclusion that one can draw from this is that these members are full-blown cynics who believe they can go back to their constituents and claim that they only changed their votes because of the promises made to them without ever mentioning that they knew full well that those promises were illusory. In other words, the amendment bill was simply cover to allow those Dems who were afraid of their constituents to flout the desires of the folks back home. Indeed, Nancy Pelosi, who had considered using the “deem and pass” rules of House procedure for this landmark legislation, spoke to liberal bloggers on Monday saying, “Nobody wanted to vote for the Senate bill….It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know, but I like it because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” While they ended up voting anyway, the amendment bill is designed to give Democrats with cranky constituents cover. Each knew that it was the Senate bill that would go to the President’s desk.

Probably the most astounding reversal came from Bart Stupak, whose amendment banning federal expenditures on abortion caused problems during the initial round of passage. Indeed, the Stupak Amendment was one of the major differences between the House version and the Senate version of health care reform. The Senate version contains no limitations on federal spending to kill babies. Now Stupak has aligned himself with those who urge American women to kill babies for convenience sake. He must know that a presidential executive order is entirely worthless as the President cannot, by executive order, repeal a bill passed through Congress. The President has no power to prevent the operation of the Senate mandate that abortion be covered by the new health care plan. Yet Stupak willfully allowed himself to be duped into compromising whatever principles he may have once had.

This morning, the Change™ promised by our savior, Barack Obama, is headed to his desk. That change will be fundamental and, I fear, irrevocable. I was speaking to a friend who has a two-year-old daughter. His daughter will grow up in a country where every time she has a sniffle, she will run to the government to take care of her. Her individual relationship with government will be substantially different from the traditional one in which Americans viewed the federal government as a threat to liberty. Instead, she will see the government as the source of her rights and welfare, the font from which all good things come. After an entire generation or two of this new relationship, it is impossible to imagine a true conservatism taking root in the psyche of the American people again. We will never again be independent from the care of, and control by, an all-encompassing government. And once that impulse to individual responsibility for our lives has been quashed there is no impediment to despotic rule or even outright dictatorship, which will be instituted for our good.

Karl and Willmoore protesting the health care bill

It was with this thought that I drove to Washington D.C. this weekend to join in the protest against the end of our American experiment. The photo above shows that there were thousands of like-minded people who also made the same trip. I met with fellow Conservative Donnybrook contributor Willmoore. Willmoore and I took the Metro to the Capitol and were greeted at the top of the steps by an operative from the Republican National Committee who was passing out signs that read, “Listen to me!” The West lawn of the Capitol was packed with people who rejected the notion of a government large enough to give us everything. While we listened to House members and ordinary citizens take turns at the microphone, someone reported that the Park Service had estimated the crowd at 25,000 people. And, even as that announcement was made, more continued to join the throng.

I had attended a local Tea Party rally in Indianapolis last summer and Willmoore had attended the Rally for the Republic back in 2008. While outwardly the basic format of the Tea Party protests where ordinary citizens addressed the crowds alternating with Tea Party-friendly politicians was followed at this rally, the overall tenor seemed to have shifted ever so slightly to the mainstream Party line. Indeed, the Tea Party has been crashed. On the other hand, not a single Republican voted for the health care overhaul bill so it appears that at least they heard the voice of the people. It remains to be seen if the Senate follows through with its promise to obstruct the overhaul. At this point, we are left to hope that the Supreme Court will read the Constitution and realize that nothing in Article I, Section 8 authorizes the Congress to mandate health care for all and strike down the bill. The only other hope is that after November 2, the Republicans will find a way to repeal the law before it goes into effect, at which point it will never be repealed. Indeed, if universal health care goes into effect, it will only ever be expanded, like all entitlements.

Upon my return after twenty hours’ round trip in the car, my wife asked me if I thought the trip was worth it. Did the presence of thousands of people outside the Capitol mean anything? In the short run, it appears that our exertions were wasted. After all, the Democrats passed the health care bill and the Senate bill will now go to the President’s desk. But, had there been no one outside the House chambers, the decision for the Dems who caved would have been easier. They could have argued that nobody cared. This way at least they know that there is an angry mob ready to take their seats from them. The same goes for the Republicans. It is good (and perhaps a little surprising) that not a single Republican voted for the bill. Had there been no crowds outside, one wonders if that would have been the case. In the long run, it will be interesting to see if the coherence that we have seen among the Republicans in this fight will remain once the amendment package goes to the Senate. Let us see if the Senate Republicans can show the same mettle that their brothers and sisters on the other end of the Capitol have shown. If they have, I believe, it will be in part because of the crowds that gathered in Washington this weekend. That may be the true measure of whether all the driving was worth it.

It’s customary to make fun of Washington for shutting down completely at the slightest dusting of snow, but I think by the time you hit two feet of accumulation, it’s pretty understandable that stuff just isn’t going to happen here. Plus, it’s Saturday.

Unfortunately for anti-government activists, the DC shutdown will probably only last through Monday and thereafter the wheels of the State will continue to turn in their depressing fashion.

Those looking for salvation from the RNC are likely to be disappointed. I can’t agree with my colleague Karl’s optimism about the recent noise being made from the bowels of RNC officialdom about withdrawing support from candidates who don’t hew closely to the 2008 Republican platform.

Of course, the Republican party has been an unmitigated disaster to conservatism in America.

Just take a look at that platform that’s supposed to be the basis for ideological cleansing. Section One: “Defending Our Nation, Supporting Our Heroes, Securing the Peace.” Translation: maintaining the aggressive, expansionist foreign policy that has been at the heart of exploding government spending, the curtailment of civil liberties under a bipartisan national security state, and the unprecedented expansion of the military-industrial complex.

Meanwhile, vague platitudes about “reducing spending” and “reforming the budget process” serve as promises to tinker with, not demolish, the corrupt fusion of the State with corporate interests that has resulted in the wholesale robbery of trillions of taxpayers’ dollars by corporate elites — under the watch of Democrats and Republicans alike.

What would the consequence be of a successful purge of non-GOP-approved candidates? For one thing, the promising candidacies of such genuine anti-government figures as Rand Paul and Peter Schiff would have been strangled in their cribs.

Unifying behind “GOP values” would spell the end of reform, not the beginning, and would represent a betrayal of the grass-roots Tea Party phenomenon, constitutionalism, and traditionalist conservatism.  It comes down to this: You can’t be anti-government and pro-Empire. The cause of liberty won’t be furthered by strengthening the RNC leadership — instead, it must be overthrown.

The particulars are starting to appear less thrilling than Uncle Barry’s promises at first appeared at the SOTU.
For example: the second stimulus proposal appears to be simply another TARP for smaller banks, most of which only carry around 80% debt (as compared to the Big Boys, who carry around 92%). The small banks don’t want it, and they will sit on it rather than loan it, just like the Big Boys did. Anyone out there building a new high-rise because you got a loan in the past six months? Didn’t think so. Neither will anyone be financing all new office furniture, office equipment, tools, raw materials like wire or PVC with any new loans from the new “stimulus.” Example 2: the hinted at nuclear power plant boom is apparently contingent on Republicans playing ball and voting for crap-and-tax, er, cap-and-trade. Sure, the two “could” be separated. And Uncle Barry might sprout a third arm and use it to reach across the aisle, too. Example 3: targeted tax cuts (which won’t work) attached to the dangling carrot of capital gains rate reductions. Along with those few select rate cuts are other rate hikes and permanent extensions of further entitlements for the dependent class in the form of “tax cuts” for people who never pay them to begin with (i.e., more spending under the moniker “tax cut.”) Aren’t words wonderful things, Humpty-Dumpty?

Peril abounds, as it always has. Folk wisdom tells us not to bash a bee hive with a creek rock. Doubtless, the occasional sting will occur, even with due caution in the apiary. Such stings do not imply that the caution we were exercising was inappropriate or should be jettisoned in a fury of pain and trauma. Especially when an epinephrine pen won’t work to prevent the anaphylaxis anymore.

Debt looms insanely large, and yet more and more clamoring is heard from old and new quarters. A serious audit of the books is due, and serious cutbacks are not only necessary but inevitable, regardless of how they come. Borrowing billions to send $50 billion annually in foreign “aid” is no longer feasible. We have long since shifted from a manufacturing and production economy, and thus the idea that we as a country can or should take on the burdens of other countries is as ridiculous as taking out a third mortgage on my house to pay my neighbors’ cable and electric bills. That’s one slice of a tragically large pie that has to be — finally — served.

Lastly, liberty should not be spoken of apart from attendant responsibilities, because it is derived therefrom. We are created beings, social beings, and the most basic duties we have are to the One Who created us and to those whom we are familially and then societally related. It is inside those boundaries that we are truly free from fear, from want, and from oppression.

We have our work cut out for us, friends and readers. Let us get to splitting the wood.