This will not be one of my typical long explanations as to why the Left does what it does.

On April 19th (Hitler’s birthday) 27 year-old Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 died. A cold chill ran up my spine. This was the first time a home-grown American had taken innocent lives to make a political point.

Then on April 20, 1999 (the day after Hitler’s birthday, and two days before Lenin’s) 18 year-old’s Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado. Unlike McVeigh, both boys came from the best of families, so President Bill Clinton rushed to the city…not to grieve with the families, but to grant them all absolution.

Finally, Yesterday, a 22-year old kid killed 6 in a shooting rampage in Tucson, leaving behind his “political” manifesto, a la Ted Kaczynski, on video.

To be sure, we’ve had other “massacres-of-indifference;” Bath, Michigan in 1927, the Texas Tower sniper in 1966, and Virginia Tech in 2007, but all those killers were certifiable in one way or another.

I know, to many of us, all mass killers are insane, but not all do we allow to escape the gallows on that account. Only McVeigh survived to stand trial, until this young man in Tucson. So we will see.

But yesterday should have proved to us that something vile, other than mental illness, is in America’s water.

The Comprachicos, as you will soon see, were a group of 17th Century nomads who bought children for the express purpose of deforming them so that they could then sell them as circus freaks. They were good at what they did.

I ask you simply to read this essay by Ayn Rand, (1970). She had never heard of video games or avatars or social networks, but she certainly did know “alienism.” Even if you’re not a fan…as I am not that big a fan, myself…you will find her analysis compelling.

After you have read it, then you will know that the course should be clear for us;

…politically, philosophically and morally.

From the diaries. - Caleb

Only last week I wrote a piece The Next President, Seeking a Legacy of Leadership, in which I responded to a commenter with:..I’d love to be able to talk to many of the candidates…

…and lo and behold, a member of Herman Cain’s staff calls to ask if I’d like to talk to Mr Cain.

So, on New Year’s Eve we sat down for a teleconference, and Mr Cain was nice enough to give me almost an hour. For background, I met Mr Cain once before, in a private meeting in July as part of a group who briefed him on GOTV (The Concord Project) and the Precinct Project, both well known subjects here at RedState.

This is the first of two parts, as I’d like to deal with Mr Cain’s views on leadership in this piece, and whether a man from the private sector is qualified to be President, in the second, which is a hot-button issue with me.

I won’t do a bio here, as Mr Cain is already well known at RS. You listened to him and shook his hand if you were at the RedState Gathering in September. His speeches are all over the internet, and I suggest you watch one…and compare. (There’s a reason for this.) His reputation as a corporate executive is also legend, having pulled a national company (Godfather’s Pizza), back from the ashes and to good health in the late 1980’s, where it remains today…along with a second generation of leadership who earned their spurs under Mr Cain’s tutelage. Godfather’s had all but been written off by its parent company when Mr Cain was brought in to perform major surgery. He understands “rescue management”.

Read More →

OK, I’ve checked all the birth certificates in the Shantytown Hall of Records, and can’t find a single child named Reince born to anyone in the lower 99% of American income levels, although I did find several Dawg’s and even a few Jedidiah’s. And just one Vassar. Probably got picked on in school, too.

But I digress.

There is speculation right now as to whether Reince Priebus is an actual contender for Michael Steele’s RNC chair or there is actually a deal with Mike to keep the job “in the family”.

Michael Steele came to the RNC a professed conservative, but is now a disappointment of undetermined origin.

Priebus is also a professing conservative. (Question: Why do Republicans seeking leadership positions always profess to be conservative? That’s a rhetorical question.)

Anyway, he had been General Counsel for the RNC until recently, working hand-in-glove with Steele, also the GOP chair of a Blue state, Wisconsin, plus a member of a prominent law firm in Milwaukee. (That’s pretty close to Chicago, FYI.) In the Johnson-Feingold race, one of the big stories was the way in which the Wisconsin state GOP (mis)treated local Tea Parties. Not a very conservative thing to do. And his law firm is up to its ears in accusations of Stimulus support, in which Priebus claims he wasn’t involved, as well as some pretty damning comments about the constitutionality, and overall goodness, of Obamacare. Again, not very conservative things to do.

In the words of Chico Escuela/aka/Garrett Morris of the old “Saturday Night Live” show, Obama “have been berry, berry good” for Priebus’ law firm.

But the issue had been raised here earlier as to whether an attorney should be held accountable for the political meanderings or leanings of his firm, and on the whole, I say “no”, just as the author suggested. But during the 90’s I worked with (hired) some of the larger litigation teams in Chicago, where I noticed that the turnover of partners in those firms was often associated with political changes Downtown or in Springfield. I found that partners in larger downtown firms were apt go out to form 10-15 man firms on their own, just so they all could agree that the mayor was a crook without having to take the argument out into the back alley.

In that sense, the stimulus is a tough call, but Obamacare should be a deal breaker for a real conservative. If a partner-colleague of mine said is was “constitutional”, or “good”, it would be pistols at dawn. One of us was leaving.

So, what we know is that Priebus has stayed with a law firm in Wisconsin that sorta benefits from Obama, approves of Obamacare, and heads a “law firm” in DC that is in the tank financially, in part, because of loans and “projects” that were passed through his office instead the Budget Committee…with nary a discouraging word.

Should any conservative care?

Actually, no. I’ve always assumed that the word “conservative” is used inside RNC headquarters more as an epithet anyway, and carried in public much as Bill Clinton carried a Bible.

But it would be nice to see the GOP and Conservatism once again join hands. There must be something magic in the name if they’re going to go out on the public street proclaiming it everyday. We both know the brand sells. Why not its substance?

And we can do so many good things together. Just imagine. But the only way that can happen will be to have a conservative chairman, and a conservative TEAM, on board. Both Saul Anuzis and Ann Wagner seem to carry conservative credentials into this race for chairman, which ends with a vote on January 15, just two weeks away. I like Saul, probably even nudge a little his way, but with women bearing so much of the weight in the last election cycle, and most of the ‘hones, Ann would be a good pick too, it seems.

In fact, putting a conservative in the RNC chair two years in advance of a second wave of conservative congressman and senators, and a REAL conservative president, would be a real boon for the cause of restoring the Constitution, which I argue, is the THE overarching issue of all politics for the next twenty years at least. Besides, imagine all those Lefties and media types (but I repeat myself) having to go back and learn all those really old, hard words, they used “over a hundred years ago”, words like “We the People…” (h/t to Ezra Klein for the “Joke’s-on-me of 2010″. You go, girl!)

It would be better if we could sweep away all but the vestiges of the old ruling class elites sooner than later.

Follow the Money

Bringing conservatism back into the inner sanctum of the RNC wouldn’t do the GOP any harm either, since they’ve been all about the money anyway and are losing it almost as fast as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

What I’m having a hard time getting my arms around is just what the RNC is good for anymore…I mean with guys like Steele and Priebus in charge? All they ever seemed good at the past several years was to launder money. You give them a million, they keep 20% for admin fees; company car, gold cuff links, silk regimental ties, a golf-conference in Nassau, then distribute the rest, mainly to people who are more apt to re-appoint them to this really sweet gig over on 1st Street the next time around. Somehow, Priebus-Steele sounds more like Skillings & Fastow…and Cornyn (NRSC) makes three.

The Fly in the Buttermilk

But these sweet dreams of candy canes all began to fall apart in 2009-2010 when conservatives, in droves, decided not to give the RNC a dime. Instead they gave directly to candidates all over the country. Sure, they came in at $50-$250 a clip, but the candidate got it all and not one cent went toward the house man’s cut. The GOP’s planned revenue’s dropped.

To make matters worse, those “free-booter” candidates mostly won, (giving us the new freshmen who Lindsay Graham says the GOP now “fears” most) while some of our most heartbreaking losses (Angle, Buck) had been because of tepid support from the RNC and NRSC, who had backed the wrong ponies in the primaries, demonstrating in the process what will forever be remembered as “Mike Castle classlessness”. They backed Charlie Crist and Lisa Murkowski, (who finally stole her seat back fair and square), and threw Christine O’Donnell a few table scraps in her campaign against an avowed Marxist…but who also buys his shirts at Everard’s on Wisconsin Avenue…which is the only connection I can make.

Right now, at year’s end, the GOP is $15+ million in the hole, and you have to scratch your head and ask, How can you go that far in debt and still not be able to get the snow plowed, Mayor Bloomberg? Er, Mr Steele, ?

So, if you’re Steele-Priebus, what’s to win here? One last hope that the ruling class can get it all back in Ought 12? Or to captain a giant ship, and grab that one last long swig of fine Napoleon Brandy, as the Titanic slowly slips beneath the lapping waves?

It’s a mystery, for with Steele, or any Steele lookalike or acolyte in charge, RNC revenues will go down even more, not up the next two years. That’s a fact. Unlike the government, with revenues dwindling, but no ability to print money or borrow from China, staff will have to be cut, elbow patches sewn on those Hart, Shaffner Marx blazers, and the company fleet reduced to used 2002 Hyundai Elantras.

I’d say “Reince in cold water” and hang out to dry.

But revenues can and will grow by joining hands with all the constitutional groups out here. Change/reduce the staff anyway, top to bottom, to reflect, if nothing else, a simpatico with the rest of a country that’s struggling with its own budget problems. Invite innovation and creativity in, then embrace them, hell, kiss them, then kick process out. For what? First, get the “new” GOP message out, then get GOP candidates who have been selected by the people elected, and third, as a necessary by-product of that effort, (and not the principal raison d’etre), raise the money to accomplish those things. In other words, design your plans first, then seek money for targeted operations and projects. Finally, declare an unrelenting war against the Left (which we’re already doing out there, thank you) as it wages its own war against the American people and the US Constitution. And make sure the American people, not just crusty old party members, know what you are doing, and why. There’s a lot of black folks in the inner city who want to know you’re coming to save them.

I’d also like to see you meet or talk with some special people every day, people like Ken Blackwell and Erick Erickson. Every day. Keep them on speed dial. And speaking of Mike Castle, I’d “de-castle-fy” relations between the national HQ and the state headquarters. New sheriff in town.

And yes, toning down to Shoe Carnival and Steinmart may be a good idea, too. Just keep the Regimental ties, though. I like them. Just make sure the stripes come down over the right shoulder, not the left. It’s a Euro-commie thing. Secret handshake and all that.

At some point, and I hope you will agree, there comes a time when it’s time to stop wondering what to think about a thing, and start thinking about what to do about it.

I don’t need anyone to tell me the Democrats as currently comprised are a race of liars and thieves. I don’t need anyone to remind me that the media aren’t really stooges for the Left, but rather were founding members of the Left a century ago, which you can find highlighted in any Marxist handbook under the chapter “Propaganda”. I don’t need to be further outraged about what happened last week in Connecticut’s public pension plans or New Jersey’s school system, just as had happened the week before in California’s and Oregon’s. I don’t need to know that socialism by any other name still dehumanizes, impoverishes and enslaves. Or that it ultimately collapses into chaos, anarchy and finally totalitarianism.

What I want to know is what any candidate hoping to be president plans to do about it….especially considering the “teams” we’re assembling for him to work with.

I don’t want a candidate who comes out and asks me to place my confidence in him, “let me do this or that”. I want a candidate who comes out, with the bark on, and says, “This is what’s wrong and this is what we need to do…so follow me.”

So, anyway, I was reading the comments from last Wednesday’s most recent presidential star poll, and was taken once again by the handicapping of some of the (as yet unannounced) candidates, as if this were the 5th race at Aqueduct, instead of one the most important presidential races since 1824. Who’s more photogenic, for God’s sakes? Pity poor Abe Lincoln if he lived today. Who’s quicker to make a decision, tougher on crime, more likely to get the unmarried female vote, etc, etc. You’d think we were trying to select the replacement for Simon Cowell on “American Idol”.

I’ve been harping on this since ‘08, and conservativecurmudgeon did an FP post here at RS (“I don’t care WHO (yet) the next President is, but WHAT the next President is”) laying out criteria that suits my tastes in presidents pretty well. But then, first crack out of the bat, the handicapping began, starting with Ron Paul, and working through 181 comments that had absolutely nothing to do with the central theme of CC’s article; THE WHAT of being president, not the who.

I don’t care if you’re a paid or a freelance shill for the candidates, I don’t think we should proceed with this knife fight until we get some rules straight.

And those rules should be: The candidates, and their shills, shouldn’t be telling us right now how we should like their chances better because of this demographic, or that resume enhancement. We (The People) have been setting forth in no uncertain terms what our “new standards” for being president are, just as The People established new standards for the members of the Congress only a few weeks ago. I like those standards set out by CC, for starters. So if you want to tell us that Ron, Rudy, Herman, Mitt, Sarah, Newt, Mike X2, Chris, Bobby, is your man (or your babe), fine, fit them into that mold first, step by step. Don’t measure them against each other, or as Karl Rove would do, against various key demographics…until you have first measured them against our Gold Standard.

But there’s more, at least as I see it.

The Legacy of Leadership

We have 60 plus new House members moving in, and six new senators, and their prime objective is to pave the way for yet a newer class of almost equal size in 2012, at which time, the real game of power will begin, since a new president will also be seated then. By 2014 a new Speaker may well be elected from this first class, the incoming freshman of 2011, and the US Senate will have adopted a changed public personae vis a vis a whole rang of policy issues, from taxes, to entitlements, to the size of government.

By 2012-2014 the new Congress will not be your father’s Oldsmobile.

The changes will be monumental, not incremental. And for the Dems? Let’s just say that what starts out as a chattering of sore losers will quickly diminish into a gnashing of teeth.

Just remember, when Ronald Reagan left office in 1988 the Republicans, even more than the Democrats, couldn’t wait to see him go away. In a way, I never forgave RR for two things; one, for not making unrestrained war on the federal bureaucracy (which I’ll discuss in more detail as the year progresses) and 2) not securing a conservative legacy in the White House and the GOP leadership.

Now I know GHW Bush is a nice man, and held to many conservative principles enumerated by CC. I like him. But he was a ruling class Republican, and noblesse oblige is not really a way to restore the natural rights of the people as enunciated in the Constitution. And in the long run, the same can be said for his son, GW, a fine Christian man, a warrior, also standing for most of CC’s postulates, but who turned his other cheek just one time too many when it was my face that was being slapped….not by Al Qeada, mind you, but by Congress.

But both of these good men were sandwiched between two of the most viral assaults on the United States Constitution and the liberty of men in our history, albeit for different reasons, and I’m convinced that neither Bush knew or understood this had been the primary purpose of the Left, and had been for a century. They simply saw the battle as between two factions of a competing political elite.

Ronald Reagan did see this, but for whatever reason, wasn’t able to make conservativism stick among the leadership.

This has to be an objective of this next president. We have to do better if we are going to really recapture the original dream of the Founders and become once again, “that shining city on the hill”, “that beacon of freedom to all men”, and “that slayer of tyrants” (my words). And it must be designed to last forty years…with a blueprint for the next forty.

Now if a long term plan of 40 years of Congressional and Presidential dominance by conservatism sounds too Bold and too Greedy…let me remind you that the Left started out on this same journey of dominance, trying to destroy the Constitution about 40 years ago. The final assault on Fortress America began two years ago, in 2008. We’re in the countdown. The ball is rolling.

They’ve always meant business, so we damned sure better had, as well.

This will either be the generation that saved Liberty or let it slip from our fingers. History has thrust that charge upon is whether we want to accept it or not.

You may think it strange that Christmas makes me think of V I Lenin, the founder of the USSR. But for 50 years he was the symbol of everything good and holy in a powerful and sizeable portion of the world. As Mark Twain once said of the Devil, “anyone who is spiritual head of half the world…and political head of the whole of it” should be considered a man of some consequence.

I doubt Leftists in America pay much attention to Lenin anymore. They’ve gone “way past him”, as they would say, or as Ayn Rand might have said, they have returned to an even more primitive state. I’ll save that discussion for another time, but compared to Marxists who’ve come after him, Lenin was a true giant, and I’d always had a measure of respect for the man, in part because, just before he “got sick” and died, he realized that the “reforms” he’d brought to Russia wouldn’t work. Reality had walked right up and kicked his government-by-theory in the shins and he tried to walk it back, which may have caused him to “become ill” in the first place. I was stunned to find the number of people in the USSR who believed that Lenin had indeed been murdered in 1924 by Stalin so as to hang onto those original theoretical programs he’d initiated, and which, in just a few short years, had become such a sweet paradise for so many paper-hanging bureaucrats…and not Workers, as they proclaim even to this day.

I first visited the USSR in the Christmas season of 1991, just before they started pulling those giant Lenin statues down. But I found the awe and fear of the man still palpable. Early on I jokingly referred to Lenin as OBH (the Old Bastard Himself), and found, even among young people, a reaction almost like being slapped when I called him that. It was as if I had uttered an oath or profanity, not unlike taking the Lord’s name in vain. They would look around to see if anyone was looking, than at each other, then, let out an uncomfortable laugh under the breath, more to keep from offending me than anything else. I quit being so cavalier with the OBH term very quickly as I saw it made people very uncomfortable. (I practice good manners wherever possible.)

As I said, I always had a little grudging respect for Lenin. But it was not until I spent some time there that I realized how pervasive his “religious” personna was…and what it said about the emptiness of communism, and what we refer to today, as the progressive left.

You see, there were always Lenin-Marx-Engels posters, dating back to the war years. China still has them up. And those huge statues. Even a few pins. (I collect them, those from the 50s quite valuable.) But 1967 was the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, and Lenin’s image took a transformation, or maybe even a transubstantiation. For you see, the Party felt the people, after 50 years of privation, were falling away from the “true meaning of communism”, missing the “reason for the season”, as it were, and decided to use the iconography of Lenin to “market” those values anew.

Packaging, repackaging, re-repackaging, the meme of the Left even today. However commies measured marketing in those days, it must have worked because by 1970, on his 100th birthday (April 22) Lenin had become a certifiable messiah-crucified-god.

And they stole it all from Christianity.

Little Baby Lenin, born in Bethlehem-by-the-Volga, under a Bright Red Star

You don’t have to be Fellini to figure out the source of all this symbolism. There are thousands of types of Lenin pins (called “zenatchki”, little medals), but especially telling were the Little Baby Lenin pins (shown here), and regular pilgrimages to his home, not quite like the Hajj, mind you, but if you were from a distant republic your position back home depended a lot of having the full panoply of pins showing you’d attended Lenin’s home, his tomb in the Kremlin and all the other places associated with his life.

Christmas and New Year

The old Russians celebrated Christmas under the old Julian calendar, January 7th, so the communists were able to simply merge many of its symbols with the New Year: tree, Christmas cards, boughs of holly, red and green, sleigh bells, the whole shebang, and just call it “Novo Godini” (New Year). A Soviet New Year card looked almost identical with modern “Holiday Wishes” or “Seasons Greetings” cards. A Season without a Reason, just like Berkeley.

Easter

Easter falls at a time that has been recognized for millenia as a special time of renewal. Marxists had seized upon May 1st (May Day) as their day long before Lenin. But Lenin was born smack dab in the center of that season, April 22 (also known as Earth Day to that inbred branch of Marxism that wants us to cut our steaks with sea shells). So, Easter, Passover, Lenin’s birthday, the Feast of St George (of dragon fame) and May Day (also Adolf Hitler, April 20) were all rolled into one…and, from the time of Lenin’s 100th, there were cards, even cards with the Hammer and Sickle, festooned with Easter lilies and other garlands.

Suffering Sanctimony!, the commies even had a Garden of Gethsemene scene for Lenin, the OBH sitting next to a tent and fire, on a desolate spot by a lake, reading (sorry I don’t have a downloaded image), waiting for a triumphal entry into St Petersburg in 1918. Anyone who knows Hoffman’s “Christ in Gethsemane” will easily see the intended similarities in a flash.

There’s a lesson here.

The most obvious is that an un-Truth must constantly be repackaged, renamed, and re-branded in order to be able to be kept alive. This can be said for the Left in general, and Marxism and the No-labels in particular. Even RINO’s and Castleites, when viewed under a microscope can be seen to be little more than pigs with a constantly changing boutique of lipstick and pearls.

On the other hand, for reasons that are easy to understand for critical thinkers, not so easy for the rest, Christianity, (actually many religious faiths) seem to have built-in regenerative qualities where the Truth becomes brand new the moment it is revealed to a person for the first time. It is not an old Truth relearned, but a brand new Truth discovered; not a thousand years old, but just one minute old.

In secular human affairs, this same can be said for the Truth of Liberty and the un-Truth of tyranny, for every time a man feels the shackles removed form his ankles, just as from his soul, he has discovered a things as fresh and pure as new driven snow. Its selling requires no special packaging, no slick slogans or silver-tongued devils. It is eternally new because it is something always searched for by men…and when found, received as joyously as a first child, with gratitude and thanksgiving. This law is everlasting.

When the Soviet Communists saw this big empty hole in the soul of 250 million of its people, that had caused them to have thirty consecutive crop failures, empty food shelves, and massive hangovers every Monday morning, they had to try to fill this void with the only substance they could find that the people had received some benefit from in the past. Religion. But all they could use was the smoke and mirrors of a hologram.

In the end, the deification of VI Lenin only proved the emptiness of Marxism…while in turn proved the eternal nourishment of the Truth.

At least, that’s how I see it.

I’d always grouped Lindsay Graham with the French, who, maybe once every century, did or said anything memorable.

But as Erick quoted Graham yesterday, it was a doozie.

“I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans; I can’t understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans.”

There you have it.

Charles Krauthammer said that this had been a very good week for Obama, intimating that Obama had schemed and maneuvered, a la Bill Clinton, or maybe Richelieu, to bring about this sudden reversal in his fortunes. Yeah, sure.

Maybe Charles was merely damning Obama with faint praise…he is susceptible to that…but clearly, as everyone of you know, the secret to all of Barack Obama’s success to date…from 2008 on, has been first, Republicans being afraid of Democrats, then Republicans being afraid of new Republicans.

In short Republicans being afraid.

That’s about to change.

But the culture of the GOP side of the United States Senate is about to change in a more dramatic fashion than we will see in the House. God, what an awesome power they will be if they will work in tandem, and in solidarity. While the new freshman class of senators will not have the size or putative power of the freshman in the House, the change in culture there will be more magnified. Lindsay may find himself afraid of those same freshmen himself, before all is said and done.

Our lesson on this 23rd day of December, is that there is still much to be done. It is the culture of Washington the People want to change, but all we won on November 2 was a foot in the door to that change. We have two hard years in front of us.

I’ll dedicate my next 20 months to examining the nature of leadership, the long view, and this new culture we want to see emerge in Washington, as well seeing if we cannot launch a relentless pursuit of the Left outside Washington that will be as effective as the one the Left has carried on against us these past forty-fifty years. Watch for it.

That said, for the next few days enjoy family, peace, and joy, and the true Reason for the Season, as LadyP so poignantly reminded us yesterday….

…’Cuz on Monday, the 27th, not the 3rd, it’s battle armor in full dress regalia.

Many Blessings on your House, and God bless the United States of America.

Sometimes a single image from a film can make a thousand impressions. You know, like the shower scene from “Psycho”.

Another was the trailing image of “Santa Fe Trail” a perfectly awful movie of Jeb Stuart (Errol Flynn) and George Custer (Ronald Reagan) trying to round up John Brown, the radical abolitionist, (Raymond Massey) at Harper’s Ferry.

Brown had run a reign a terror through Kansas all in the name of ending slavery, then was captured and hung. During the Civil War he then became one of its theme songs, “John Brown’s body lies a moulderin’ in the grave”. Then in 1929 Stephen Vincent Benet wrote a book-sized poem which is considered to be on the finest pieces of American literature ever written. I have it.

But in that final scene what I saw was a wild-eyed man standing tall against a back-lit sky, a Bible clutched in his right hand, his left hand out-stretched to heaven, his white hair blowing wildly in the wind, as if to claim “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”. At 12, John Brown was my Freddie Kruger, a madman much to be feared, not honored.

But you have admit, in these times, John Brown had sand, and I can understand, if not forgive, men like Eric Rudolph. I’ve spoken to a lot of old people the past two years who wish they could as much as go on Jack Bailey’s old TV show, just to be voted Avenging Angel for a Day. I understand that sentiment too, for there’s some people I’d sure like to sit down and have a little chat with, with a Saint in front of my name, and wings on my shoulder.

The first would be Bob Bennett.

From my vengeful side, I’d like to hang his head on a pike at the entrance to the Senate Office Building, with the inscription, “Go and sin no more.” But then I thought, what if Gabriel’s on duty that day instead of Michael? Gabriel wouldn’t do that. He’d be more apt to just sit the end of Bob’s bed and scare the bejeezus out of him.

Yeah, that’s better, anyway. especially since there are a whole lot more “greetings cards” we could send that way. Besides, St Michael isn’t Vlad the Impaler, and he doesn’t bother with pipsqueaks.

You know where this is going.

I’m mad as hell, as are a million more of you, for you’ve been led to believe you only thought you won anything November 2. We won a big election, our guys aren’t even in office yet, and the media is already saying that the Tea Parties had been snookered. RINO’s Republicans and “elitist” faux-conservatives have come out from under cover, just as I predicted when Christine O’Donnell got the Tea Party nod in Delaware. I told you then that they, and the media, in unison, if not in common purpose, had to go all in in making sure Christine lost, for if she lost, then they could declare victory in their own minds. She did and they have.

I just got off the phone with one of my Vinnie & Augie cricket batsmen, who says they’ve (his buddies) already decided not to vote for any more Republicans. I asked why. “This vote, dammit!” he yelled. I tried to quietly tell him that no, the guys we voted in haven’t even been sworn in yet. “Then who, then?”

Who, indeed.

The Omnibus Bill

To be sure, all but five US senators have asked for earmarks in the upcoming Omnibus Bill, which must be voted on by Friday in order to become law. It is unconstitutional I might add (in my opinion, since I’m not a judge), and in that I find more discomfort than knowing that Ruling Class Republican and Democrats, who we already know to be mangy dogs, are cashing in as usual. They think the game will be the same. They think they will be able to control the game. I told you during the campaign that for two years Lisa Murkowski gets to pretend pretend to be a queen bee. (Drop it, Joe Miller, she stole it fair it square. We’ll take it from here.) After that, she gets a broom closet and a phone. The same for Scott Brown. He owes RedState for almost everything, but as sure as we brought him into this world, we can take him out. (Cliff Huxtable). He’ll be lucky to survive a primary if he goes along with this Omnibus Bill. (I promise, see below.)

The Omnibus Bill also establishes all of next year’s budget, from a Congress that will largely be gone next year, and has many other hidden bombshells which no one will ever know about until after the bill has been passed. We’ve been down this road before, or can you remember Obamacare, March, 2010?

While I agree that a lot of Tea Party voters moved into this last election with a little-pie-in-the-sky expectations, what they’ve lacked in political insight might just be made up, in spades, with just plain old ill tempers.

We need to make this known now.

The Democrats, top to bottom have asked for roughly 75% of earmarks by volume, and 90% by dollar amounts in this new Omnibus Bill. Several billion. Below are the their requests.

Republicans

Grassley (R-IA) 86
Bond (R-MO) 78
Bennett (R-UT) 76
Voinovich (R-OH) 68
Hutchison (R-TX) 63
Collins (R-ME) 57
Murkowski (R-AK) 55
Vitter (R-LA) 48
Cornyn (R-TX) 45
Snowe (R-ME) 44
Chambliss (R-GA) 42
Crapo (R-ID) 41
Risch (R-ID) 41
Brownback (R-KS) 39

Burr (R-NC) 38

Roberts (R-KS) 35
McConnell (R-KY) 35
Shelby (R-AL) 32
Inhofe (R-OK) 32
Alexander (R-TN) 30
Lugar (R-IN) 29
Graham (R-SC) 27
Thune (R-SD) 26
Isakson (R-GA) 24
Sessions (R-AL) 21
Bunning (R-KY) 21
Ensign (R-NV) 20
Gregg (R-NH) 13
Barrasso (R-WY) 4
Enzi (R-WY) 3
Corker (R-TN) 1
Brown (R-MA) 1

Democrats

Murray (D-WA) 172
Harkin (D-IA) 152
Reid (D-NV) 129
Menendez (D-NJ) 123
Feinstein (D-CA) 121
Lautenberg (D-NJ) 120
Lincoln (D-AR) 114
Inouye (D-HI) 113
Schumer (D-NY) 106
Johnson (D-SD) 105
Landrieu (D-LA) 104
Specter (D-PA) 103
Pryor (D-AR) 96
Levin (D-MI) 93
Stabenow (D-MI) 91
Boxer (D-CA) 90
Brown (D-OH) 87
Durbin (D-IL) 86
Bingaman (D-NM) 86
Akaka (D-HI) 83
Wyden (D-OR) 83
Cardin (D-MD) 79
Merkley (D-OR) 79
Gillibrand (D-NY) 79
Casey (D-PA) 76
Udall (D-NM) 73
Reed (D-RI) 70
Kerry (D-MA) 69
Cantwell (D-WA) 69
Hagan (D-NC) 69
Klobuchar (D-MN) 68
Rockefeller (D-WV) 67
Dodd (D-CT) 66
Mikulski (D-MD) 65
Tester (D-MT) 65
Lieberman (ID-CT) 64
Baucus (D-MT) 62
Dorgan (D-ND) 60
Warner (D-VA) 60
Webb (D-VA) 58
Franken (D-MN) 58
Leahy (D-VT) 56
Whitehouse (D-RI) 55
Kohl (D-WI) 54
Conrad (D-ND) 52
Nelson (D-FL) 43
Bennet (D-CO) 40
Carper (D-DE) 39
Begich (D-AK) 37
Sanders (I-VT) 33
Shaheen (D-NH) 32
Udall (D-CO) 30
Nelson (D-NE) 23
Bayh (D-IN) 1

Besides Bennett, there are other departing GOP senators in that list, Voinovich, a little pixillated anyway, Kit Bond, Jim Bunning, Judd Gregg, and quite a few more we’re just chomping at the bit to send packing in 2012-2014. Erick Erickson offered up quite a list of good GOP targets for primary challenges last month. Just watch this vote for early indicators.

It’s the departing GOP, plus the ‘usual suspects’, the Maine Blueberries, and Scott Brown who very well can make this Omnibus travesty become law, plus a feckless House leadership who really hasn’t a clue what to do when the Senate acts unconstitutionally.

Gentlemen, just what part of “pitchfork” do you not understand? (A note  to the freshmen.)

Although most of the GOP senators have indeed listed their earmarks for public notice, they can still vote “no” to the omnibus package. Their history of not caving in at the last moment is not very comforting, in part due to those usual suspects, who will probably hold out, plus at least a couple of the retiring senators, and of course, the one bootee, the inestimable Mssr Bennett.

A solid GOP bloc vote defeats Reid…and defeats this entire Democrat ploy, which isn’t just about a parting shot of a trillion dollars, and isn’t even a final in-your-face to show the new GOP leadership they can still play better politics and hard-ball, especially the game of “Blink” better than Republicans…but to show the entire country, especially the Tea Parties…that all those who eventually vote “Aye” on this measure are just as low-down and corrupt as the Dems are, only, they will sell out their country for far fewer pieces of silver than most gold-toothed Democrats require.

Because Bob Bennett was shown the door by his own party, and has chosen to partake of this theft out of spite and malice, of love of party, even state, and heaven forbid, God and country, I think Gabriel should make an example for the rest, by sending them, through Bennett, this greeting card.

Tell Bob that he will be a man without a state. Indeed, a man without a country, and will do well to retire of the protection of one of the new Latin American dictators. Sao Paulo is nice. Security is expensive, ask any ex-pat drug lord, but life is good.

There they won’t throw rotten eggs at him as he drives by. There, they won’t hang him in effigy. But neither will be ever be able just to go down to the corner 7-11 to buy a Slurpee. But there, he will have to make an entirely new set of friends. (I have always hated that these crooks could escape the final judgment of the people as millionaires with that snarky little “I gotcha” grin Harry Reid always has, so now stay up nights just to think of ways to make Harry Reid’s millions spend as poorly as the guy who stole the Mona Lisa, then couldn’t fence it….because he couldn’t provide any provenance. (Proof of authenticity.)

Then I’d like to make sure every swinging standing member of Congress understands that is what is in store for them. You can run but you can’t hide, and hell, you can’t even enjoy your money. You will be dogged by a committed, dedicated, and eternal committee of cricketeers who will make your every stop to pee at a gas station between Vega and LA an absolute nightmare. You’ll spend the rest of your lives looking over your shoulders.

All legal of course, the same way every indecency you have foisted on the American people was legal.

We’ve already notified the Freshmen members of Congress to just sit back and watch. The House will be able to vote on this Omnibus Bill as a bloc for the simple reason they have already taken the pledge on earmarks…which in this Omnibus Bill are clearly being used as bribes…and it will be interesting to see who, in the final analysis, for even if if Mitch loses because of Olympia and Susan, and throws up his arms in disgust…he still wins. See how earmarks.  It ain’t the dollars and cents. It’s the prostitution. And a $500/hr  hooker is no different than a street whore in Saigon. Right guys?

Rush Limbaugh brought up a subject earlier this week that we’ve been talking about there as long as I’ve been at RS, and for a couple years before, primarily because my skill sets are in long and short term planning, “field ops” you might like to call them. I’m not really a writer, as many of you know. But neither do I drone on and on, a la so many talking heads and think tanks, about the awful problems that face this nation, then lean back to enjoy the smoke rings of my post-coital self congress. What I do is figure things out.

You don’t have to be Fellini to figure out we’re getting screwed. And it doesn’t take rocket science to know what has to be done.

So, sorry, we will not swap one form of fascism for another.

This issue, in fact, has been decided, by the People, sometimes fronted by the Tea Parties, sometimes not, but always the People, and oh, Glory!, how that does scare some other people. November 2 wasn’t about candidates, or even parties, It was about who is in charge. And yes, we will prove it again in 2012.

And also, since we also know now how and why our forebears fell asleep at the switch, we will still be standing at that switch forty-fifty years from now, long after all the dreams of the Left, and the elitists, have turned to dust…along with their bones. You want this nation, you have to take it by force of arms. No more sleight of hand. No more lies. No more plantations. No more squeaky wheels, and teat fits. No more media.

So, in the end, we have to drop this Avenging Angel act, and simply continue to march as we have the past two years. Don’t break ranks. Keep looking straight ahead. We always knew it was a four-year game, not two. Maybe even eight, or twelve. No matter. Whatever it takes.

We always knew it would take two, maybe three cycles to clean that nest of vipers out. And so what if Delaware, Rhode Island, and that nest of the Castleites everywhere get left behind? Every day, every week they become less and less effective, for every day they have to fight new battles on fronts only a few weeks ago they thought safe and secure. Even the Delaware Republican Party will have to look for new digs by 2012, mainly because ofpeople like Cold Warrior, Ron Robinson and LaborUnionReport, the Concord Project, are only picking up speed. What has been small buzzing sound this past year, will be a giant swarm by the end of 2011.

The times they are a’changing.

Just make sure each and every member of Congress, House and Senate, who vote for this Omnibus Bill know they have just painted a big bulls-eye on their office door. Just make sure they know “if they don’t deserve squat, they won’t get squat, and there is no place they can hide. And the People judge.

Just know we will not stop until Lisa Murkowski is the loneliest trollop in Washington.

Another in a series about common people I wish you could have known.

I was born in a small town of just over a thousand people. It was a company town that ran the length of a creek that hugged a huge mountain, for most of a mile. The entire town was on one side of the creek, the streets all running perpendicular to the creek. Like bureaucracies, law firms, and corporate offices, you knew who was who just by where everyone lived.

There were only five professional managers; the general manager who lived in a “palace” at the top of a hill; gated entrance, kitchen help, gardener, and just below him, outside the gate, the chief engineer, then the second engineer, then below him the chief accountant, and bookkeeper-paymaster…plus better homes for two doctors, both Harvard men from the FDR era. Flanking this one street beneath the big house on the hill were three more streets of salaried foremen, all according to rank and seniority, then, as you went to the end of town and far up into the hollows…one street ran straight up half a mile…the newer employees lived. All of their kids walked to school every day. I walked thirty yards.

I was raised in a broken home, sort of, since my dad was one of those engineers. So we lived near the top of that hill. My mother, on the other hand, had dropped out of school in 10th grade, and they had different ideas about entitlement and about raising their children. Especially the oldest son. Me.

My mother believed, being “management” that she could enjoy the perquisites of the title, and that her children shouldn’t have to suffer the ordinary rites of passage others’ kids did. Mother wanted it known that my dad’s name was stenciled on my forehead in invisible ink and anyone who messed with my hair would have hell to pay from on high. If I came home with dirty clothes from fighting…which in first grade was almost daily…not only did I get a tarring but the other kid’s mom got a phone call, or my dad got an earful when he came home for supper. Mom was a real storm trooper about “privilege”. Piano lessons were even involved.

My dad on the other hand had come up hard, having been raised in the back alleys of that very town, his father an ordinary coal miner, and only after having been recognized as having engineering skills after three years in North Africa and Italy, was sent to school by the Company to become an engineer. It was the only job he ever had his entire life. And he finally ended up in that big house on the hill. But he wanted his kids, me especially, to learn certain rules of manhood.

So, while Mom whomped me if I fought, Dad whomped me if he ever heard I’d walked away from a fight. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Other mothers were in on this conspiracy as once I remember Gary Lewis and I once stripped down to our skivvies to duke it out, just so as not to get whipped for letting our clothes get dirty.

So for a few years, into fifth grade, it was dodge ball with Mom and Dad.

Then came Mick Hensley.

When I was in fifth grade Mick was placed in my class. He was 14 or 15, while most of us were 11, head and shoulders bigger than anyone else. Mick was like a lot of big roughneck kids then, he was still too young for Shop, and had no interest in anything they taught in school, and only wanted to wait until he turned 16 so he could go to work in the mines. (In those days, school teachers earned about 3,000/yr while miners earned closer to 5,000.)

My mother immediately tagged Mick as a thug and a bully. She knew the family, way, way up Machine Shop Hollow. Kept pigs underneath the porch. Never came to church. Kids, all eight of them, always looked like they needed a bath. Heathens!

In truth, since we grew up side by side for a few years, Mick was as gentle as Dan Haggerty, just real rough around the edges. A true nature’s child, he ran the hills like a goat, barefoot as often as not, held the record for typhoid shots I guess, from rusty nails and barbed wire. He built a cabin from saplings and binder’s twine (I used to camp in it when it rained.) Long shocks of red hair, freckles all over his body, and a big grin, a genuine Huck Finn…who coulda played fullback for Notre Dame.

Most of all, Mick had a native, uncultured sense of honor, honesty, and integrity that no kid could learn in Sunday School. On weekends we’d all meet behind the school and play Cowboys and Indians, or somesuch, dividing up into two “armies” usually of 8-10 each. And for guns we’d use sticks we’d find on the ground, that curved just enough to give the stick, and us, some class.

One of those days I ran smack dab into Mick’s sense of justice. We were running and diving behind corners of building, trees, big bushes, going “Bang bang, Gotcha”, when I was running one way and all of a sudden Mick stepped from behind a bush. I jumped behind a half-inch poplar sapling which wouldn’t have concealed my left hand, just as Mick yelled “Bang, Gotcha”. I yelled, “No, I was behind…” only before I could finish my defense, I was trying to pick myself up off the ground, my nose wrapped around my right ear, blood gushing all over a fairly new shirt that Mom told me not to get dirty.

Mick just bent over, with a big “ah shucks’ grin and helped me up, and said “Y’ought never lie” as if he was telling me to zip my fly. I’d never even thought a cuss word before, but a big “Oh, hell!” just shot through my mind as i looked at my shirt. What will Mom do? One of the other guys had a handkerchief, which I used to staunch the bleeding, then I walked that long march home, never reflecting on the lesson of the day for many years to come.

Most people learn these lessons quickly. One bloody nose usually does it. I never knew I was law school material until Mick had to teach me again, a year later, up in the mountains, during an acorn fight. Thrice broken (football), I had to have most of the cartilage surgically removed so i could breathe, but from that day forward, every time a lie comes rushing to the tip of my tongue, like a fellow who ducks walking under helicopter blades, i just naturally flinch…and the lie retreats. Even today.

It was in this mangled state that I entered law school in 1968, only to realize that not one other of those students had been initiated into the secret rites of truth as I had. I knew stuff they didn’t know, news they could use, and as it turned out, would likely never learn. It was then I first appreciated Mick Hensley.

Mike Hensley had an irresolute respect for truth. Actually a lot more, I learned, as he stayed in town well after I’d moved onto college. Like Franklin, he believed the greatest deterrence to crime (sin) wasn’t the severity of the punishment, but the absolute certainty of it. Pretty damned swift, too. Two tries, I still never got to finish my final argument to jury either time.

So I’ve always been in his debt. Merely thanking him isn’t enough. I’ve always wondered what happened to him. He moved away while I was in college, took a job in the Ford plant in Cincinnati, married I guess, children…never knowing he’d saved a life…and I mean this as deeply as I can mean anything…

…or that I had saved his, for when I went home that night, my new shirt all bloody, my mother demanded to know what had happened. I told her I fell. Had she known Mick had cold-cocked me, he’d have been in reform school within a month. And Polly’s boy would have been the whiniest snitch in town.

Sometimes, in the smallest of things, we can all see how civilizations, and enterprises, can rise and fall.

I think about Mick from time time because as the years passed I thought of all the genuinely fine minds that passed through America’s law schools, business schools, and colleges, Bill Clinton comes to mind, that were just one bloody nose away from being men. So sad.

Mick Hensley was one common man I wish a lot of you could have known. Maybe you had one too. I hope so. I sure am blessed, I know that, for sure.

America would be a much better…and safer…place now if we had more of them.

This too, is why we fight.

The 60 plus freshmen Republican congressmen and women will not take office until January 5th. There is a lot of water that will run under the legislative bridge before then…primarily the extension of the Bush tax cuts and what is now being called “The Deal” struck between Obama and the GOP House and Senate Leadership.

This isn’t about that tax deal.

Rather, this is how those 60 plus congressmen and women might want to watch this political theater develop, only imagining themselves inside, not out, and especially how the national media works its magic to superimpose itself over what the people hear back home through local media.

What they should watch most carefully are the current GOP members of the House, who also had to run in November, and note how they must handle promises they also made to their constituents, only for the second, third, fourth etc time. Guys like Hal Rogers.

Then note, the Old Rules do not apply and quite a few of them, (Ol’ Hal among them) think they will…once again.

Then they will get a glimpse early of just what 50%, 75%, even 90% of a promise to the people of their district will mean for them in their re-election bid in 2012, for possibly some of those returning GOP congressmen will be dead men walking before they have even been re-sworn in January.

The Old Rules do not apply. Period.

This past November was called a “wave” election and most pundits, many right here on RedState, are ready to sit back and begin counting up the new gains this “wave” will entail. How will our victory equate in legislative victories, and Liberal rollbacks over the next 24 months?

Well actually, precious few, i can tell you now. And this presents a special problem to the freshmen. If Obama is the Obama we all still must assume he is, he will simply try to accomplish by executive fiat what he cannot gain in the Congress. (He/they do have a Plan, still yet, bank on it.) This in turn will throw much of the conflict for 2011-2012 over into the states, their governors and attorneys-general, and the courts, which will offer the new freshmen some respite.

If you are a freshman, thank God for this.

But about that “wave”…beg your pardon, this was a “first wave” election, for which there will be a second wave, and third wave, and however many further waves that are necessary to begin taking back what the Left has stolen from us in a period of nearly fifty years.

This is the People speaking now, Ladies and Gentlemen of the House, so take heed. Even before you draw you first paycheck, be on notice, you can be replaced. In fact…in most districts head-hunters are already abroad, taking resumes and vetting candidates.

Old election mathematics, then, as to when the Democrats get the pendulum to swing back in their direction does not apply. Period.

As long as the Democrats remain “of the Left” that pendulum will never swing back, I’ll wager. In fact, within 6-8 years, we’re going to pull that pendulum out of the ceiling and re-nail it about 20-30 feet further to right, so that the right today will be the new center by 2020.

And you can say you read it here first.

Of course, and here’s the rub, there is an “inside politics” many of us (the People) can’t fully appreciate, about the ability to actually move mountains, as many of you promised. In fact, you won’t move squat.

The question is, will you be moved?

Some people out here believe that by 2012 it will all be finished. They are fools. That’s like what Leftists thought in 2008, walking on water, raising the sea levels (or was it lowering?), then throwing the damndest tantrum you ever saw when it didn’t happen. (Been watching British kids this week, having to finally pay tuition? They prove the British National Health Service has failed these past fifty years, for every parent should have known it is far better to jerk the teat out of the kid’s mouth before two, not twenty-two.) Many conservative voters are of this ilk, only out of a state of exuberant expectations, not youth or stupidity.

This should be the wind Obama inherited, not you.

Some people will expect you to do wonders this first two years. Not by a damned sight as you already know, so one of the objectives of this new class should be to create communications alliances with reputable spokesperson to the People who can relay timely appraisals of how things are really going. In other words, you will need others to explain for you for awhile. Communications. Unconventional communications. And you need to do this collectively, not just as individual representatives answering back to your districts.

More specifically, you should reach out to certain pundits and public voices, some of the Tea party groups with the better reputations for credibility and selflessness, since, for the foreseeable future, maybe this entire term, your credibility and integrity is being held very much in doubt…not because of anything you’ve done, mind you, but because of all the promises and promissers who’ve come before you. Most of us still remember the Class of “94, who, in the end, couldn’t wait to dress up in the accoutrements of power and privilege just like the scalawags they replaced. Do this and the rules noted above will apply.

This is just how it is, just as you if you were plebes, or on the rat-line, or freshmen from my day when they all had to wear those stupid beanies. So, yes the People will be sending reminders constantly, even on swearing-in day, as I have noted in an earlier post about TheAmericanDriveIn.com.

The Prime Objective

Your primary job is to make sure the People understand the speed at which the freshmen, that’s you, can be expected to move this First Wave, and the limits of power you can be expected to exert…(not a lot during Wave One)…while knowing that even 10% failure in your word to the People ain’t good. The People have to have to be able to expect 100% in honesty, and 98.6% in factual correctness (the Limbaugh standard) for a very long time.

It is this standard you of the First Wave have come to cement into Washington politics; an unbending fealty to your word and your honor. This is the Prime Obective. Do this and your mission will be accomplished and the People’s demands will have been met. Try to state this in dollars and cents and you’ll be on the wrong track.

One of your principle missions then, will be to deflect a media who will want to hold you to a dollar standard, while you must stand up and project yourselves as the personification of the Gold Standard.

The 2011-2012 Stalemate

What will happen then should be easy to see. The second wave in 2012, as many as 50 plus, many “old Rule’ Republications, guys like my old rep, Hal Rogers, who only slapped an R in front of his name because it was an R-district even during FDR, will either retire or be fired during the primaries. Again, that process has already begun, and we here at RedState are in the thick of it.

As I said, the biggest challenge facing you, as convicted liars before you even take office, is how do you relay to “the People” why, in two short years, you haven’t fixed everything? Or anything?

Escape this hurdle…and it will take a group effort (nothing brings men together as much as a mutual attempt to escape a gang lynching)…then 2012 will be yours. And ours.

The media will be all about “divided government” in Congress, paying almost no notice to the wave of state counter-attacks against what will be viewed here at RS as impeachable excesses by the White House in those years.You should go through 2011-2012 virtually unnoticed except as part of an obstructionist House. Take comfort in that, inasmuch as you can vote against the leadership as much as you want as, for almost nothing will be signed into law. God is good!

The Second Wave

The meat and potatoes of our revolution, and your purpose in being there is that second wave. Leave that to us. For when the second wave of 50+ come on board in 2012, they won’t be running up to Cantor’s or Boehner’s office, they’ll be coming to yours, to see you, to ask your counsel…just like ambassadors, to present their credentials to the NEW WAVE. You, not the leadership, will be the patriarchs of the New Wave that cause that pendulum to be unseated and move twenty feet to the right.

Then you will know why the People sent you, and it will be the finest feeling you ever had in all the world…with or without your clothes on. The old GOP leadership will not drift away, but rather, like parousia, the Congress will be suddenly transformed.

And then finally, after all these years, we can all get about to the business of reclaiming our country…one house, one street, one church-bell at a time.

I know it’s become a tired old phrase…mainly because George W Bush said it…but it was taken from Paul’s letter to Timothy, “Stay the course”. Stay true to your word, even use this phrase from Timothy, only use it as David Farragut did, when he said, “Damn the torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead!”

We’ll understand.

No slander ever accused Bob Dylan of being a “conservative” as we know the meaning of the term.

In the early 1960s he was a “Liberal” kid-philosopher/poet, just a few years older than me. But was he really of the Left? After all, Dylan was a Civil Rights poet who seems to have actually believed his own stuff. And still does. Moreover, it seems, while the Left used the “religion” of black Americans as a prop in those days, Bob instead took their religion on as his own for awhile, and today continues to be shrouded in the tallit of prayer. Not a very Left wing thing to do, you’ll have to admit.

I never liked Bob Dylan’s singing. In fact, he couldn’t sing worth a damn. He had a gravelly voice that gave me a headache. But I loved his lyrics, only better when someone else sang them, people such as Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez and Judy Collins. And he wasn’t real handsome as singing stars go. His dress? Ugh!  Worse, what it represented, which was an unwashed, uncombed smelly menagerie of children…my exact age then…who insisted that I was an establishment conformist in my button down madras shirt while they were free spirited non-conformists in their tie-dyes and seedy dungarees…only to be caught red-handed by Madison Avenue while standing in line to buy, New, Off-the-Rack dirty shirts and jeans, designed and manufactured to look as if they if had just fallen off the back of a UNICEF truck in Gambia, only costing $24.95 instead of the usual 3-for-a-dollar down at Goodwill.

This beat  goes on, you know, not unlike many bloggers today. Looking seedy is expensive. PT Barnum was right. There’s a sucker (and phony) born every minute.

In two-three short years these armies were wearing “uniforms” just like me, which told me far more about them than all their recitations of Marxian dialectics, interspersed with incantations of “Yeah, man”, combined.

And I decided not to be one of them. Although a liberal, I hadn’t taken complete leave of my (common) senses, for try as I might, I could not draw a straight line between fighting to give the vote to black people in the South, who, since I lived there, I knew to wear suits, white shirts and ties, and sitting around in dirty hovels like howler monkeys picking nits out of each others’ hair. And gad! Although I was bedazzled for a few weeks at the sight of an un-encased breast, I soon came to understand why God had invented the brassiere, since in femininist breastdom, at least 80% of them were in dire need of support. No wonder the Germans laughingly called them Floppenschtoppers. Ever time I hear “Going Up the Country” (Canned Heat) I get a cold shudder up my spine.

Now I’m not the first conservative to comment that the Left long since abandoned the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “freedom” music. Take “In The Wind’s”

“How many years must some people exist

Before they’re allowed to free”

Who believes that on the Left today? Or even in 1980?

The “Times are A’Changing” has even become a theme song for several Tea Party groups. Again I like Peter, Paul & Mary’s version, who interestingly were Christian, practicing Jew and atheist respectively.

I’m not a student of Dylan’s music but could cite several lines from his “freedom music” that the Left abandoned as soon as they came into daddy’s money, or got seniority in the English Department. His anti-war music still “rocks” among the uninitiated Left, only since Roe V Wade, it’s long since lost any anti-death theme. It seems the Left is opposed to only certain kinds of death, while Dylan, much like Roman Catholics, had a thing about killing all things, not just the enemies of the United States (and freedom) on battlefields around the world. And while I might disagree with this view, I always admire people who mean what they say. (That’s why I get along so well with “real” communists.)

Lenin once said that religion was the opiate of the masses. But he didn’t say that it couldn’t be spoon-fed to people to keep them on the plantation.

Since Dylan didn’t sing other people’s music, he never sang religious music in the old days. But in the late 70’s, after composing one of the sexiest songs ever, “Lay, Lady, Lay” Bob Dylan up and got born again. Mind you, he didn’t “find God” or have a “personal revelation” as one might try to find God hiding about in an Anglican chapel in England; he was born again, knocked-down-to-his- knees saved. A few years later he became a Jew again but still a practicing one…a return to his roots, and who can argue with that? He’s never left God.

But some interesting things happened along the way.

The Left left him…

….telling us nothing about Bob Dylan, mind you, but proving everything about the Left, which sadly, very few African Americans know.

I only wish they could know this.

You see, when Bob Dylan “got saved” in 1979, for 2-3 years all his music was religious. He even refused to play old standards at concerts. He was a missionary of his new found faith. The Left’s retreat from Dylan was based entirely on this religiosity. It started out as a planned withdrawal, deftly and subtly going after Dylan “bitter clingers” music critics and serious fans (his first album was a huge success, interestingly titled “Slow Train Coming”), but by the mid-80s this had turned into a full scale retreat more like Napoleon at Moscow, where only the chosen survived. Pro-Dylan careers were dashed, and pro-Dylan fans were excoriated in all the places only music aficionados go. The Left’s love for Bob Dylan had turned to icicles, and in the music business, as we saw when no less than Tipper Gore tried to take on the rap-masters at Time-Warner, the Left and plantation politics call the shots.

During the 1960s, every folk singer or group, except Bob Dylan, had a musical repertoire that included religious music that was predominantly associated with the black community and the Civil Rights movement. I’ve collected it for years. Civil Rights and Religion and folk music were joined at the hip. “We Shall Overcome”, “All My Trials Lord”, and an assortment of folk songs, before “Negro spiritual” had fallen into disfavor, all about the bondage of the Children of Israel which black Americans identified with in their history stemming back to the days of slavery up to the Civil Rights days.

I’d give worlds if some Republicans would go back and listen to some of those songs…BECAUSE THEY WERE OUR SONGS, Martin Luther King, Jr’s, (a Republican’s) songs, and not the songs of these filthy unwashed nit-picking howler monkeys in the Democrat Party and the plantation trustees like James Clyburn, Jessee Jackson and Jeremiah Wright.

Some things never change, so, carpe diem!

Bob Dylan brought all this to light. I’m just reporting it, and why I am reporting is that I just bought a new car which came with a free 90 day subscription to XM radio and the only station my wife and I could agree on was the folk music station, which, for the first time since 1964, I recognized as being as Leftist and sick as it probably was way back then…only then I didn’t know any better.

Go Tell It On the Mountain