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  • Stan Meckler Responds

    [Stan emailed the following piece to me.  I am posting it with his permission (encouragement actually) in response to the recent comment thread on my 18jul10 'Who is a Racist?' post.]

    Stan Meckler
     
    As you may not know, I do not go to the blogs.  The reason is these people who sit at home and bitch, complain, call names, and offer nothing positive to any discussion, are of no interest to me.  I have offered to met with any of them, in the light of day, but they have no interest.  Jeff PellStine and Steve Enos are just two of the many that I have tried to meet. Why won't they meet?  What are they afraid of?  Are they scared of the truth?  They should meet and show me the facts they have to prove their points.
     
    As the President of the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots I am willing to meet with anybody from any group.  All they have to do is email me and we'll set it up.  I have met with the heads of the Democrats, Libertarians, Republicans, a member of Move On, and many others.  Why won't the liberal bloggers meet? 
     
    We now have almost 2,000 members in Nevada County.  We have over 18 million members nationally.  We have over 2,500 chapters of Tea Party Patriots around the country and are adding 50 chapters a week.  We are the largest grassroots organization in the history of the USA.  If you want to see the survey results from Gallup, Rasmussen, ABC, CBS and the Wall Street Journal, I'll bring them with me.  The latest polls show that Liberals make up just 20% of the voters in this country.  Moderates are moving to the right at a rapid rate. What facts can you bring to the table?
     
    Let's talk about Mandy Morello.  Mandy Morello is not a founder of the Tea Party Patriots.  I have been there since the beginning on April 27, 2009 and she wasn't there.  I was!  She was at an event on April 15th, 2009 as a photographer.  I know Mandy and I like her.  But, if she says she was one of the founding members, it just ain't so no matter what her blog says.
     
    Am I biased in favor of my son, Mark Meckler?  You bet I am!  But, anyone that actually knows us, not the lies that are told, will tell you that we are honorable people.  Meet us and find out for yourselves.  Do you have the courage to do so?  Or, are you going to sit in the dark and continue to type hatred?

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  • Liberty’s Twilight

    George Rebane

    We are living in dangerous times.  Among the countries that used to be known as the ‘free world’, America is the leading jailer and the world’s title holder as the country that imprisons the largest fraction of its citizens.  The rate of criminalization and incarceration has been quietly mushrooming in the US, and is now at a level that attracts the attention of other countries, most notably our allies.  How and why is that?

    The 24jul10 issue of the Economist is focused on “Rough Justice: Too many laws, too many prisoners”.  Our jails are loaded with about 2.4 million inmates, making one out of every hundred of our adults sit behind bars and one out of 31 adults being under some form of supervision ‘in the justice system’.  Per 100,000 population the US has 748 behind bars, Russia is second with 600, in third place Brazil drops down to about 240, and then it goes way down from there.  We win.  Or do we?

    In America you can be thrown into jail for the damndest things as we try to live our lives in an ever-growing spaghetti bowl of regulations.  There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times more regulations that carry criminal penalties.  Every day more human behaviors that were legal yesterday are becoming overnight criminalized.   “(O)ver the last 40 years an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalization the first line of attack” on most social problems.

    And today with trillion dollar deficits, new trillion dollar social legislation, and trillion dollar regulatory injections or ‘stimulus’ packages raining down on our heads, the restrictions on our liberties are accelerating at a pace that makes child’s play of the alphabet soup programs in FDR’s National Recovery Act of the 1930s.  In the last 18 months the Obama administration has brought into being five times as many regulation spewing federal agencies than did FDR in the eight years preceding WW2.  And as some of us know, at the bottom of every stack of state regulations lies a government gun.

    Why do we need so many rules to tell a supposedly free people in their own land how to behave?  Why do we need so many pages of legal code that set down myriads of criminal behaviors, and why do these rules need to multiply beyond any sense, comprehension, or reason?  Almost all of them are unknown to the people, and almost all of them are such that our natural instincts and cultural traditions are totally useless in advising us whether today this is right and that is wrong.  And tomorrow these social tools will be of even less use.

    In simpler days societies relied on the traditions and customs of culture to define, direct, and constrain normative behavior.  For example, the shame that people then felt when they misbehaved served as an effective constraint on aberrant and socially destructive actions.  This allowed some fairly large and complex communities to thrive and grow as nation-states.  Visitors and minorities from different cultures knew how to deport themselves within dominant cultures.  (My own immigrant family was a typical example of this in the mid-twentieth century.)  Their choices ranged from assimilation to isolation into their own enclaves.  In no way were these minorities allowed to openly challenge the dominant culture; change was evolutionary not revolutionary.

    When two or more cultures in a sovereign nation-state achieve peerage or equal power, then history records very few cases where strife and trouble are not the result.  In modern times peace in such polyglot societies has been kept by a strong central government claiming to be culturally neutral and fair to all.  Such a strong central government is faced with a situation that can be explained with the help of the figure below.

    CultureSets1   

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  • Dumb and Dumber 2 (updated 1aug2010)

    George Rebane

    ObamaBiden We really have the dynamic duo of dummies in the White House.  Ol’ Joe Biden has been taking a lot of solo heat for way too long on being the fastest blank shooting lip in Washington.  As RR, other conservative sites, media programs, and published pieces have pointed out for almost two years now, El Presidente is the least qualified holder of that august office, perhaps in the country’s history.  He even lags a bit as he works his way up to the VP’s level.  But he has achieved parity in being able to hip shoot embarrassing blanks.

    Earlier in the week (here) Obama announced that the material in the Wikileaks emails from Afghanistan were “old news” and nothing the country should concern itself about.  The people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and at the Pentagon almost tossed their lunch when they heard El Hefe come out with that little piece of interpretive wisdom, and they have been trying to do a little reconstruction of the story without making our Chief Executive look like an absolute idiot.  Not to worry folks, Sec Def Gates and his trusty troop have handled the case.  But to accomplish that it has required the lame stream media to switch operations into extreme ‘What me worry?’ mode.

    NPR reported this morning Gates was pressed to admit that what happened was according to him a “massive breach of security”.  It was immediately clear to anyone who has dealt with military security that such raw reports revealed “names, methods, and processes”.  (In the early sixties I also served as S-2, intelligence officer in a nuclear artillery battalion, and was privy to such reports from both our and the Soviet side of the curtain.  Part of my job was to extract pieces that would impact our battalion’s battle plans and summarize these for my boss, the battalion commander.) 

    The full impact of this loss will yet be felt, but Gates already has pointed out that it will now be much more difficult to garner “future trust” of current and potential Afghani informants and security forces when they know that their identities are already known or tomorrow will be known to the Taliban.  Two murderous retribution attacks by the Taliban have already taken place this week because of the released emails, and there are more to come.  Gates is literally begging Wikileaks and anyone else in possession of additional emails to not release them on the web.  As the well-read reader knows, the counter-insurgency effort in any country, especially Afghanistan given its history of dealing with foreign forces, depends almost wholly on gaining the trust and co-operation of the indigenous people.

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  • Ruminations – 29jul2010 (updated)

    George Rebane

    Man Bites Dog Story – Of all places, in San Francisco we find Democratic Supervisor Sean Elsbernd challenging the city’s powerful mass transit workers’ union to back off on their contract with the city that is doing its share to wreak financial havoc (here).  This kind of conduct, especially with Mayor Gavin Newsom’s support, would have been unthinkable in the recent past and has been the ‘third rail’ of liberal politics in that very progressive city.  Now that they can’t get the folks in Ohio to continue supporting their generous benefits and poor (according to San Franciscans) service, a quiet introduction of a bit of sanity is attempted but with no guarantee that it will work.

    The local know-nothings brigade that has been defending the public service unions may currently be sullen and silent, but that is not evidence that any of them understand the sources of the fiscal fiascos in political jurisdictions that now blanket the land.

    There is a real useful and informative post on a local leftwing blog that shines light on the difference between people who share the Tea Party core values and principles of governance, and those of the progressive persuasion.  Hat tip to Jeff Pelline to whose post I was directed that contains an excellent discriminant which helps distinguish the two national groups.  It comes in the form of “a ballad for non-Tea partiers”, and is offered as an answer to the current TP favorite musical offering ‘I am America’.  The liberal ballad’s telling chorus summarizes our current direction of hope and change to a fundamental transformation of America.  It is ‘People Like Us’ sung by John Goodman and has the chorus –

    We don’t want freedom
    We don’t want justice
    We just want someone to love
    Someone to love

    Please visit Jeff’s blog to read the rest of the lyrics, they are of a piece with the chorus.

    This song would also have been a natural preamble in the Russia of 1917, the China of 1948, and several other locales of similar historical note.  Even though history shows the freedom and justice parts of those people’s wish lists were granted, I’m not sure that they found anyone else to love in their new worlds except their fearless leader du jour.

    [update] The Nevada County Tea Party Patriots announce, "Please watch the Glenn Beck show on Friday July 30th.  Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots with Mark Meckler, will be on this show.  We heard that it was great.  This is the first time that Glenn Beck has featured the TPP.  If you can't watch it live, record it on your DVR."  For all of our readers who may have a love-hate relationship with the TPP, or simply want to see what's happening, tomorrow on Fox News at 2pm is a great opportunity to get a snoot full.

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  • Tea Party Patriots Update

    George Rebane

    My spies in the TP movement inform me that the nationwide number of organized local TPP groups now number in excess of 2,200 and growing at a rate of approximately 50 per week.  More good news rolls in from the left in that it appears the progressives are discounting the TPP as nothing more than a retread of conservative Republican copy.  However the fear there is real in that we now see the launch of some pretty crass hit pieces like this one cobbled together of a TP gathering on Huffington Post (here).  Note the injection of the screams and tussle of someone being manhandled.  This is serious stuff.  As one of my liberal friends in the news business wrote me, “The gloves are off.”

    Some recent information from Mark Meckler, national co-coordinator of the Tea Party Patriot movement.

    46% say tea party movement is good for America (145 million), 31% say bad (Rasmussen).  16% say they have signed up as "members" of a tea party (49 million) (Winston Group)
    42% of Americans self identify as "conservative,"  30% as "moderate" and 22% as "liberal".

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  • The Barack Obama Show (updated 28jul2010)

    George Rebane

    President Obama made a televised White House appearance today to announce that the 20K+ Wikileak emails of raw field operations reports from Afghanistan and Pakistani aid to the Taliban were no big revelation, in fact they were “old news”.  Meanwhile all those dummies at The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Guardian (British), etc were reporting this as a major new development, the effects of which on our ‘allies’ and the war were yet to be determined.  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, announced from the Pentagon that he was “astonished” at the release of all this White House old news.

    Meanwhile, Arizona sheriffs are showing videos of heavy illegal entrant traffic and ongoing gunfights that regularly now take place 70 to 90 miles inside the US border with Mexico.  The local authorities and Border Patrol are out gunned by the cartels deep inside our country.  Obama not does not care about any of this but continues to hold out sealing the border until he reaches a political settlement with Republicans on amnesty for the 12 million illegal aliens already here.  American sovereignty and the Constitution be damned when there are that many potential Democrat votes to be garnered.  Obama has been invited to visit the border area by both Arizona authorities and his own Border Patrol.  But with the elections coming up, that’s the last place he wants to be photographed, showing support for maintaining the integrity of United States territory.

    This litany could go on for pages documenting the unique stance this post-American president has taken on rejecting the constitutional, traditional,and historical duties and customs of the office.  I close by drawing your attention to Obama’s rejection of having anything to do with the Boy Scouts of America as its honorary president – a traditional office that all previous presidents have held.  His latest is refusing to put in an appearance at the centennial celebration of the Boy Scouts this year.  Instead of attending this 100-year event, the man is making time for an appearance on ‘The View’ TV show and a Democratic fund raiser.  First things first.

    Oh yes, did you hear of the latest little zinger they snuck into Obamacare.  Henceforth, when we sell our home the feds will dip in for a new 3.8% tax.  That calculates to an additional $3,800 from your wallet for every $100,000 of profit you have been able to accumulate in the major nestegg of your life.  More zingers on the way from the Chief Community Organizer.  This will go a long way to solve the housing crisis – happy retirement!

    The lies, neglect, and sophomoric sophistry just keeps rolling out of this White House.  And his base continues lapping it up as the hope and change they have been waiting for.  The plea from the rest of the country is –

    Changeitback 

    [28jul2010 update]  Mikey McD’s comment below needs highlighting because the hidden ‘gold zinger’ in Sec 9006 of Obamacare is one more example of the sleaze overflowing Washington’s rush toward socialism.  Government confiscation of gold is provided for and enabled in the depths of this healthcare bill because it could never have passed in the light of day.  Now the lame stream media outlets (e.g. ABC) are joining the government’s propaganda team airing outright lies that the government cannot confiscate your physical gold.  FDR did exactly that through Executive Order 6102 in 1933.  Government’s institutionalizing of lying has now reached Soviet levels, and the floundering fourth estate, waiting for government subsidies, is a full partner in the enterprise.

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  • Why the White Gold Standard?

    George Rebane

    Race and racism is again very much in the news.  Obama had a white mother and a black father which makes him a mulatto who draws equally from the gene pools of at least two races and continents.  Then why is he automatically called a ‘black President’, our first black President?

    Hands Not too long ago every race saw the ‘mixing of their blood’ as something to be avoided.  This extended from race through ethnicity and region to nationality.  Japanese didn’t want their sons and daughters to marry a white, and American southerners didn’t want their kids to marry ‘damyankees’.  And I recall some Estonian parents carefully advising their son to look for another Estonian young lady to marry after he had fallen for a deep-rooted American.  That son was me.

    But in today’s world it seems that the offspring of all cross marriages (or unions) between a ‘white’ partner and a non-white partner get labeled with the non-white partner’s dominant racial characteristic.  It’s as if the world thinks that in some way the ‘white race’ (polyglot that it is) is some kind of baseline or standard from which all departures should be measured and called out.

    Why can’t a Malaysian-white mixture still be called white, or given a unique new name that recognizes the person’s diverse racial background?  Why the common denominator that all such mixed race people must instantly lose their ‘whiteness’ never to return.  It’s as if mixing white and something else were an act of pollution where the resultant mixture instantly inherits only the name of the pollutant.  To me that is an insidious form of racism that we have practiced for a long time.  No doubt in the past it was considered exactly that – race pollution – but have we not progressed beyond that today?

    Other non-western cultures have very specific labels for offspring of their race mixed children.   The races that are today members of what may loosely be called western civilization continue a very anti-white and information-destroying protocol for race labeling people who are not ‘pure white’.  It’s as if to count coup against the white race – ‘once we get one from you, you have lost them from your ranks forever.’  Is it not time for a more enlightened view?

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  • Getting the Balance Right

    George Rebane

    [This aired last night on KVMR-FM 89.5 as my bi-weekly commentary.  It continues on the recent thread of how our journalistic industry is changing in an environment of ever rapidly evolving events, ideological polarization, propaganda, government's desire to control content, and the availability of new technologies.]

    Dr Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University, recently made an impassioned argument in the national press that journalism needs government help.  He started with the laudable notion that “free speech and a free press are essential to a dynamic economy”, and then proceeded to lay out a path that all but guarantees that neither of these essentials will be met.

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  • Buying Votes

    George Rebane

    Tis the election season when we all become aware of how candidates buy our votes.  Nevada County’s iconic cartoonist Bob Crabb published this little piece of thought provoking wit in The Union this week (used with his permission).

    Crabb100720 

    Looking at Meg sitting there, and all the various stimulus and spending programs that continue to come our way, the thought occurred that maybe there is a telling difference between Republican and Democratic candidates.  The Republicans tend to buy your votes with their own money.  And the Democrats tend to buy your votes with your own money.

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  • Our Cuban Future?

    George Rebane

    I recently finished reading two important essays.  The first was “America’s Ruling Class—And the Perils of Revolution,” by Angelo M. Codevilla.  This essay was an eye-opener in how it summarized and knit together the things that we have all witnessed happening to our country over the last several decades.  I filled the margins of this piece with notes and links to happenings and experiences.  I was going to post on Codevilla’s piece, but Martin Light on the CABPRO Report beat me to it.  Please take the time to go there and read his excellent introduction (here), and then download the pdf itself to see to which American class you belong.  I found myself firmly in the ‘country class’.

    “Know this well: our ignorance, our underdevelopment, is paid for with freedom.”  – Fidel Castro, speaking with students at the University of Havana, September 1970.   Compare this with Jefferson’s ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

    YoaniSanchez The second essay I read motivates the title of this post.  ‘Freedom and Exchange in Communist Cuba’ is written by Yoani Sanchez who lives in Cuba where she maintains what must be a surreptitious blog called Generación Y.   The essay outlines the political and social history of Cuba from 1959, when Fidel and the boys came down from the mountains and threw out Batista.  She goes into lucid detail to show how bit by piece the Cuban people, over a two year span, traded their freedoms promised by the revolution for a new and irrevocable form of dictatorship.

    Her writing is eloquent, every other paragraph contains a profundity suitable for the marble cornerstone of a public building or monument – ‘… it is much easier to redistribute wealth than to create it …”, “To demand individual freedoms was to loudly declare one’s selfishness.”.

    What struck me most was her analysis of how the socialist system proceeded rapidly into communism, and how that system then subverted the best intentions and abilities of people to recoup their freedoms and society.  This type of subversion is intrinsic to all forms of collectivism and rises in and of itself.  It is self-starting, self-promoting, and self-maintaining, even within such an inefficient system of governance.  All it requires is ignorant people to trade in their freedoms in advance for a promise of future utopia.

    And as you read Sanchez’s words, you cannot help but start drawing the analogs to what is happening around us.  The one-to-one correspondence of the path we are on is striking.  The Cato Institute makes this essay available in monograph form and online here.

    Finally, what conclusion can we draw from the dribs and drabs the ruling class sprinkles over an unreliably liberal Nevada County?

    NCARRA100723 

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101 comments on Stan Meckler Responds