Rope, Trees, Some Assembly Required

Rope, Trees, Some Assembly Required

Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese cut loose in the mid-80’s. It’s even more pertinent now, and it’s making the rounds of the blogosphere, updated by someone. Here’s my little assist.

545 PEOPLE

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are really against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are really against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.

Don’t you see now the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the Speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. Stop and think how long she has been Speaker of the House…..

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red .

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq, it’s because they want them in Iraq.

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way. If they were on Social Security then they would fix it fast.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do. Change the law so that it is unlawful for quasi public companies (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to donate to politicians or political parties etc and unlawful for those persons/organizations to accept donations from those over which they have oversight.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power..

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses … provided the voters have the interest and incentive to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

We should have, long ago. I think it’s too late for that to ever happen now. As I’ve said before, Claire Wolfe was wrong. It’s not too early to shoot the bastards, it’s too late.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

It’s always the same, isn’t it? They’re going to infringe our rights just a little bit — and all for our own good. Little itty-bitty law, passed with nobly-strained faces.

Then, once it’s passed, next session of Congress, they take that law, and they tack on one itty-bitty extra sentence. Next session, they add a teeny,tiny little paragraph — and next thing you know, the whole stinking bloody camel is up under the tent. – Lawdog, Sweet zombie Jeebus here we go again

This behavior is often associated with the original nobly strain-faced lawmakers saying “We never intended THAT!

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of it.

We Keep Losing Them

We Keep Losing Them

You entered the plane on a rickety jump ladder in the tail, walked through the fuselage filled with wooden ammo boxes and gun emplacemements, climbed around the retracted ball that was his home for forty missions, and then had to walk on a catwalk less than a foot wide between the bomb racks to get to the cockpit. All this for a man who needs a walker.Sippican Cottage, My Father Asks for Nothing

Read it all.

(h/t PrinceWally)

Our Lawmakers and Their Ignorance

This subject came up on AR15.com just recently, and I had to share. First, Caroline McCarthy getting pwned by MSNBC talking-head Tucker Carlson:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospNRk2uM3U&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
Immortal Quote:

“Um, no, it’s not.”

Which brings us this masterpiece:


But how about this ballistics expert, NY Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRQqieimwLQ&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=425&h=344]
Heat-seeking bullets! Man, where can I get some of those?!?!


From the 1984 movie Runaway.

As one poster put it,

Fuck, that makes me laugh every time I see it. Until I realize that she is a real person lawmaker and isn’t joking. She is that retarded.

And just remember: they know just as much about banking, running corporations, mortgage lending, . . .

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ­­- Anonymous, found at AR15.com

Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation

Zero Oversight and Insufficient Regulation

Mostly Cajun has a very interesting post up on government interference regulation of his industry, the pumping of natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico up North where people use it to do stuff like, oh, heat their homes. Excerpt:

One of the things I learned was that when these engines were designed, the EPA was some sort of bad dream only found in the diseased minds of abusers of heavy drugs. That was then. This is now. Students of engine operations know there is a certain proportion of fuel to air that produces maximum power. We can’t run many of our engines there. Why? Because we’re not interested in maximum power any more. We’re interested in minimum pollution, and that ‘maximum power’ thing give a higher level of oxides of nitrogen.

That’s okay, though. We learned how to operate there, and we tested our engines regularly to see that they met the goal, and if one was acting up and emissions went up, we dutifully took it off line and fixed it. Life loped along. So they changed the rules. Where we could hit a “twenty” on the spotted owl-killing scale, they dropped the number to five. Okay, you guys on the pipeline, tighten up your acts. So the engineers twiddled and tightened things even more. And goals were met. But the baby seals were still crying from their big, soulful eyes, so the number was changed again.

You know, it’s getting VERY hard to meet the numbers. And our people tell the rulemakers. And the rulemakers say “Meet the numbers or face fines.” And our people say, “We can’t meet these numbers. We’ll have to shut down horsepower.” And the rulemakers say “Meet the numbers.” And that’s where we’re heading.

The policy-makers apparently think that we’ll keep lights on and homes heated by means of windmills and unicorn farts. I’m telling you that we folk who work in a real world have real and immutable laws to work with, things like Ohm’s Law and Boyles’ Law, and these laws and others like them say that you can’t move gas from the well to the end user without horsepower. There are other laws too, and those laws, despite the attitude of the current administration, say that when it gets to the point that it costs more to do a thing, then you stop doing it, and that’s where a lot of industries, mine included, are headed.

Read the whole post. Pay particular attention to the last two lines.