Month: March 2017

… thirty or forty hulking giants?  I intend to do battle with them, and slay them.”  Don Quixote.

When it comes to our national defense, we are apparently helpless without our European allies.  We’re counting on them to rush to our assistance if we’re ever attacked.  We’ve got 27 such allies in NATO right now, and we can all sleep well knowing that all those Slovakians and Bulgarians and Luxembourgians and Albanians and Estonians are poised to assist us if they are needed.  How would we get along without them?

The walking, talking case for term limits  — octogenarian crusader John McCain —  apparently thinks we’d be more secure if we also could count on the help of the 620,000 Montenegrins.   If we come under attack, their help could prove decisive.  So he wants them in NATO, and if they are attacked we will be obligated to come to their defense.

Montenegro is bordered by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania in the Balkans.  Bismarck didn’t think the Balkans were worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier.  A quarter century before World War One, he said, “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damn silly thing in the Balkans.”   But what did Bismarck know, compared to the master of weltpolitik John McCain?

So when Rand Paul objects to bringing Montenegro into NATO, and obligating us to defend them, he’s labeled the agent of Vladimir Putin, and thus a traitor.

But McCain’s lunacy is not the scary part.  What’s frightening is that apparently Rand . Paul was the only Senator who was willing to make this objection, and put an end to McCain’s madness.  Where the hell was everybody else?  Are they all afraid of being labeled isolationist America Firsters?  Pathetic.

The Washington establishment seems so indoctrinated with globalism that they can’t think straight.  It’s like they’re on a power trip, and feel free to stick their noses into every nook and cranny of the globe.

McCain’s daddy and grand daddy were Admirals, and he was brought up to fight the Russians.  He got to fight their proxies, the North Vietnamese, but he never got to fight actual Russians, and it seems he regrets it.  It was a relief, in one sense, when he lost to Obama in 2008.  If he’d won, there was a fair chance he would have involved us in a war with the Russians over the Ukraine.  He seemed like he was just itching to get it on with the Russkies.  At least Obama wasn’t that much of a fool.

I was 16 when I enrolled at Cal in 1962, too young for the NROTC.  But they made some sort of temporary exception, and a couple weeks later, on my 17th birthday, I became the only kid from St. Mary’s High to be a midshipman in anyone’s memory.  In my junior year I intended to take the Marine option, and graduate into Officer’s Training School of the USMC.  I would have been just in time to get my ass shot off in Vietnam.  But I dropped out of Cal after one semester, and never did wind up in uniform (busted up an ankle, 4-F).

So even though he’s an old fool, I respect McCain for his honorable service.  I didn’t do it.  But that has no bearing on American foreign policy, and this guy, and his belligerence, are a menace.

There’s a time and a place for warriors, and, after Washington, Andrew Jackson was the best this country ever had.  Watching Trump salute his grave site on his 250th birthday was a pleasure.  I’m just not sure Trump really understands the crucial role Jackson played in early American history.  No matter.  He went.

God bless Andrew Jackson and God bless the United States.

 

Smart Democrats used to understand that elections are won and lost on bread and butter issues, like jobs, wages and economic vitality.  You get the impression that boring stuff like that doesn’t really interest them anymore.  Social justice requires some form of socialism, apparently.  No serious person really believes in socialism any more, but the progressive left isn’t serious.  It really just wants to preen and flaunt its moral superiority.  Jobs have nothing to do with it.  Everything points to an impending economic boom, the like of which we haven’t seen in 35 years.  The economy will allow Trump to ride out a lot of political storms.  As long as the caravan keeps moving, he’ll be fine.

New Mexico Democratic Speaker Brian Egolf and Arizona Republican Speaker J. D. Mesnard are 41 and 35 respectively, but aside from their early political success they have little in common.  Egolf chose to make rescission of the BBA his personal legislation, and as such it was wired, and we lost New Mexico today.  Rep. Yvette Herrell did all anyone could have done, but a bill sponsored by the Speaker is going to pass.  Every Senator has a bill sitting in the House, and they all need the Speaker to agree to let their bill on the floor.  Nobody wants to piss him off.  So the signal achievement in young Mr. Egolf’s career, from a national perspective, is killing a Balanced Budget Amendment, something that at least 2/3 of New Mexicans support.  He’s earned the affection of George Soros and his gang, and that will help brand him a member of the New Left.  We’ll see how far Mr. Egolf gets, with that kind of political judgement.

Speaker Mesnard, on the other hand, made passage of the BBA Resolution his personal bill, and we’ll make up for the loss of New Mexico when it passes the Arizona Senate later this week.  I’ll make a prediction.  His sponsorship of this legislation will make him a leader of the Article V movement.  When Arizona adjourns in about three weeks I intend to discuss this with J.D.

So we begin and end the week with 29 States.  There are seven remaining target States that are under complete Republican control.  We need to get five of them.  Under the right circumstances, we could get them all.  A great deal hangs on the success of the Planning Convention.  There’s no reason in the world it shouldn’t be a rousing success, so we’ll get her done in ’18.  Or bust.

Donald Trump, like his spiritual comrade in arms Andrew Jackson, doesn’t quit, and he doesn’t apologize.  So it is entirely appropriate that he’s at the Hermitage today, on the 250th birthday of our seventh President.   Our country’s manifest destiny was only a vision for Washington and the other heroes of the Revolution.  We actually spread from sea to shining sea because Andrew Jackson made it happen.  He ratified the Louisiana Purchase, in blood, at New Orleans, and his lieutenants Houston and Polk, under his direction, annexed Texas and seized most of the rest of the American West in the war with Mexico.

Trump was elected by Jackson’s America, and paying homage to our greatest patriot, save only the Father of his country himself, is fitting.  I look forward to hearing his remarks.  If he proposes putting Elizabeth Jackson on the $50 bill, my personal little campaign on her behalf could become reality.  Below is a post I put up two years ago.  I called it “The Mother of Her Country.”

 

In 1765 she came with her family to the Waxhaw region on the border of the Carolinas.  They were poor Scotch-Irish, and couldn’t afford good land, and her husband worked himself to death within two years, trying to scratch out a living.  She was carrying his third son, which she named for him.  She moved in with her cousin Jane Crawford, who had eight children of her own.  Jane was unwell, and she did the work of two women, taking care of the whole family.

When the Revolutionary War came to the Carolinas her oldest boy, Hugh, rode with William Richardson Davie at the Battle of Stono Ferry.  He died from exhaustion right after the fight.  He was 16.  Her remaining sons rode with Davie at the Battle of Hanging Rock, then became guerillas, and were captured and imprisoned at Camden with 250 other men.  They were dying of starvation and disease when she rode the 45 miles to see them.  She pleaded with the British to let her boys go, and they were finally released in a prison exchange.  When she got them home they were in desperate condition, and after two days her middle boy, Robert, died.  He was 15.  She nursed her youngest, 13, to a semblance of health, and then rode with two other ladies to Charleston to nurse and comfort the Americans being held on prison ships there.  Some of them were her kin.  She contracted cholera and, shortly after the great victory at Yorktown, died and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Her surviving son became a truly ferocious man, a lion.  He was his mother’s son.  She gave birth to him on March 15, 1767, and in less than two years we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of that day.  If she’s not the Mother of this country I don’t know who is.  Let’s all honor the life of Elizabeth Jackson on that day.

Opponents of Article V come from both political extremes, left and right.  There’s little we can do to dissuade the leftists.  They’re just don’t want a Balanced Budget Amendment . But for the conservative opposition, there’s at least the possibility of persuasion.

That’s really what September’s Convention of States, or BBA Planning Conventon, is all about.  It’s to convert people like Montana Senate President Scott Sales, Idaho Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, and various other legislators from Minnesota to South Carolina.  These people are serious conservatives, but they labor under some major misunderstandings.

Congressman Andy Biggs remains the leader of this group.  He’s written a handbook  of opposition, entitled “The Con of the Con-Con.” , which has been cited to me.   The “Con-Con” is his way of branding an Article V Amendment Convention as a Constitutional Convention, which of course it is not.

While he was the President of the Arizona Senate, Biggs was an immovable object, and all Article V applications were D.O.A.  But the Good Lord provided, opened up a seat in Congress in his district, and let him win the Republican primary (and thus election) in a recount.  Now that he’s gone, CoSP was able to pass yesterday, and we are locked and loaded for later this week.  The problem in Arizona was all Biggs.

Since I started pitching State Legislators for the Task Force, three years ago before the Utah House State Affairs Committee, I’ve run into the same argument, over and over.  “We trust the people we’d send to an Article V Convention, but what about all these other crazy States, like California and New York?  These people have no use for the Constitution, and I don’t trust them.”    I’ve tried, in a variety of ways, to counter this argument, usually to no avail.

But at a formal Convention of States, an assembly of Commissioners duly appointed by the Presiding Officers of as many as 40 States, this concern will evaporate.  Sure, there might be a few whack jobs from Massachusetts or Hawaii, but, overwhelmingly, the Commissioners will be constitutional conservatives, a lot like Biggs, who seek to resurrect federalism, and the Constitution itself.  Just by being in the same room with them, for general session or committee work or cocktails, the right wing skeptics will see for themselves.  There’s nothing to worry about.  The Amendment Process is in good hands.  Because the people at the Planning Convention will, by and large, be the same as at the Amendment Convention.  It’s a matter of trust, and this fall, perhaps in Phoenix, we’re going to create some.

In his tract in opposition to Article V, Biggs states,  “When we start electing people who are committed to individual freedom, we will know that the time is soon coming when it is safe to convene an Article V Convention.”  The Commissioners at September’s Planning are committed to individual freedom.  And if the Convention is held in Phoenix, it should be held at a venue located within his Congressional district.  He should be invited to attend, and address the assembled Commissioners.  As he looks out over the audience, he should be asked if he still  believes, as he said in his book, “It isn’t the process that will produce a run-away convention, but it is the personnel attending the gathering.”

You mean us?

There is great diversity within the community of Americans who descended from Spanish ancestry, just as there is diversity among Americans of any ethnic background  — even more so.  It’s not uncommon to know Mexican-Americans in California who think of themselves, and are thought of, as part of the Anglo minority.  At the other extreme are recent illegal immigrants, who speak no English and identify completely with their country of origin.

The Spanish were the first to settle North America, and extended into northern New Mexico with the founding of Santa Fe in 1607.  If you want to get technical about it, they were here first, and their descendants are as “American” as any Pilgrim.  To lump them into a group of recent arrivals, many illegal, is mixing apples and oranges.

45% of New Mexico is Hispanic, and many of these people have been there a very long time.  Among them is Democratic State Senator Richard Martinez, Chair of Judiciary, where the the Resolution rescinding the BBA application rests.   Our woman in New Mexico, Rep. Yvette Herrell, was to meet with him today.  From afar, it looks as though our fate is in his hands.

Senator Martinez is not a George Soros Democrat, that much is clear.  He’s got a 30% rating from the American Conservative Union, 50% from NFIB, 64% from the NRA, and 100% from the New Mexico Prosperity Project.   This latter is affiliated with BIPAC, and is dedicated to “free market prosperity”.  It would seem to me that Yvette will have a lot to say to Senator Martinez, and he would appear to be a receptive audience.

I have a good feeling about Senator Martinez.  The people in his district call him “el jefe”, and former Gov. Bill Richardson titled him “El Tigre del Norte”. He’s a retired judicial magistrate, and a man who has likely seen it all.  He was born in the little town of Guachupangue, in the northern, mountainous part of New Mexico.  I think Sen. Martinez understands how the world works, and that a Congress that can’t control its spending is a threat to every State in the Union, including New Mexico.

CoSP passed the Arizona Senate, 16-14, giving them their ninth State.  Sen. Judy Burges was the only Republican “no”.  She’s opposed to term limits.  That’s why you don’t want a multiple subject Amendment.  Senator Burges likes the BBA, so when we hit the floor in a few days we should pass 17-13.

The Convention of States planned for Nashville on 7-11-17 has been delayed until September, and its location is not yet quite certain.  Bill Fruth and the rest of us now have more time to make sure this thing is done right.  This is the first one in 156 years.  We can’t blow it.  This is my last trip on the merry go round, and this Convention will finally but Article V on the map.  We’ve got six months to get ready, and a lot of willing hands.  This is going to be fun.