Month: March 2017

I spiffied up a post from a couple days ago, and it’s up at American Thinker today.

 

The senatorial filibuster is all about increasing the power of individual Senators. Most of the arcane and clumsy rules of the Senate serve the same purpose. Around the bonfire of the vanites in Washington, the members of the United States Senate are distinguished by their absurd, even comical self-regard, and the filibuster feeds it.  A minority of Senators can block a majority of its own members, the majority of the House of Representatives, and the President.  That’s juice, and these popinjays live on it.

The Senate consists of 90 or so mediocrities, and a few very sharp cookies.  One of the latter is Ted Cruz, Donald Trump’s new pal.  Cruz took his whole family to the White House for dinner, and his two little girls have a nice photo of themselves with the President of the United States in the Oval Office.  Cruz wants to help Trump in the Senate, especially on health care, which is the first item on Trump’s agenda.  This is how bygones become bygones, and new friendships are formed.

After spending his first four Senatorial years pissing off almost the entire membership, Cruz has decided his best course is to make himself useful, and he wants to get rid of the filibuster.  Being a sharp cookie, he’s figured out that it’s merely an extra-constitutional road block to reform, and he wants to gut it.  I say more power to him.

The Constitution is chock full of checks and balances, and Congress has pretty much ignored them all.  The one check the Senate wants to keep — the filibuster  — isn’t even in the Constitution, but it’s the one they care about, because it empowers them, individually.  A pox on them.

Sly dog that he is, Cruz isn’t making a direct assault. He’s just making an interpretation of a provision in the 1974 Budget Act.  That law said that budgets couldn’t be filibustered, and Cruz is saying that the definition of what can be included in a budget bill is decided by the Presiding Officer of the Senate.  So if Mike Pence says that repealing and replacing Obamacare can be included in the budget, it can’t be filibustered.

This is the course that I have been urging on Alaska’s Senators for almost a year, with respect to opening ANWR, but this duo doesn’t seem capable of grasping this strategy, even though it’s been around for twenty years.

The Democrats would have a conniption fit, saying that if Obamacare Repeal and Replace can be included in the budget, then damn near anything would qualify.  And they’d be right.  This statutory interpretation would take one humongous bite out of the filibuster.  And it would pave the way for opening ANWR.

Maybe somebody ought to explain that to Murkowski and Sullivan.

A gorgeous afternoon here in the Gold Country, on what feels like the first day of spring.  The wildflowers are just starting to blossom, as the sun’s rays strengthen.  A beautiful full moon will rise right after dusk, and it’s a great day to be an American.

Ronald Reagan got sucked in to sending our Marines to the Middle East in 1982.  It was the worst mistake he made as President, costing 241 American lives.  For nothing.  This was after Israel had invaded Lebanon, and we weren’t in Beirut to fight.  We were peacekeepers, our presence was a deterrent, and we were trying to prevent further bloodshed. It was all moonshine, and right after these young men were killed for his stupidity, Reagan got us out of that hell hole.

The United States Marine Corps is an expeditionary military force.  It’s mission is to take ground, not occupy it.  It’s not designed for nation building.  That’s why Marines don’t have “forts”, like the Army does.  They have “camps”.  If they’re in Syria to destroy ISIS, and leave, fine.  But that’s not what we’re learning.

Matthew Continetti in the Washington Free Beacon spells it out.  In the northeastern Syrian city of Manjib our military isn’t fighting.  It is, in Continetti’s phrase, trying to “… dissuade rival factions from massacring one another.”    Just like Beirut, 35 years ago.  What the …..?

I got out of the business of beating on Trump after the election.  I want him to succeed.  As far as his domestic policy goes, I don’t have much to criticize.  But if he lets the military hawks around him suck him into long term involvement in the Middle East, he’s making the same mistake Reagan did in Beirut, and it will cost American lives.  If we take casualties in eradicating ISIS, it’s the cost of war.  But if our soldiers are killed trying to keep the peace, Trump will, and should, pay a high price.  He’s got a lot of balls in the air, but this one could explode on him.

Because this country, and all it stands for, is an existential threat to Islam, we are the prime target for jihadis.  We don’t take the loss of American life well, as these fanatics  are well aware.  It took one barracks bombing in 1983 to get us out of Lebanon.  If we’re on offense, taking the fight to ISIS, it’s combat, with all its danger, and the American people can accept that.  But if we’re hanging around trying to win hearts and minds, it’s a recipe for disaster.  One of the main reasons Trump won the GOP nomination was his complete rejection of Bushism, and the Bush invasion and occupation of Iraq.  He was not elected to solve the problems of the Middle East.

It’s one thing to have this sort of muddled thinking in Syria.  It’s quite another with respect to Russia.  Trump needs to stick to his guns, and with his gut instinct.  The war hawks dumped Flynn, and are now at the highest levels of his administration.  These people are Cold War veterans, accustomed to thinking of Russia as the Soviet Union.  But it’s Russia now, a fellow Christian nation, and it’s not bent on conquest, but security.  Our differences with the Russians can be resolved diplomatically, and here is where Trump needs to stand his ground.

It seems to me that the Russia Scare hasn’t worked, and the attack on Sen. Sessions’ contacts with the Russian ambassador was the last, weak, straw.  I’ve read that a meeting with Putin is in the works.  Slovenia, a perfectly lovely country, and the birthplace of Melania, may be the site.

The next meeting should be on American soil, in the former Russian America, Alaska.  Despite being abused by the Russians, the Aleuts of Alaska have retained their Russian Orthodox faith, and would love to worship with President Putin at their beautiful Holy Resurrection Cathedral.

As a scheduled adjournment approaches, the inner workings of a State Legislature changes dramatically.   The budget is always at center stage, and legislators carrying bills are frantically competing with each other for hearings in committee, special joint committees, and floor votes.  Favors are traded, friends rewarded, and enemies punished.  If you’re the chair of a major committee, or otherwise in leadership, you’re in the catbird seat.  As the deadline approaches, power becomes more and more concentrated, so that, in the end, it may take some phone calls between the Speaker and Senate President to sort out what passes, and what doesn’t.  That’s the final cut.

The BBA Task Force’s very own Rep. Yvette Herrell is leading our fight against rescission in New Mexico.  She’s in the Minority now, so she has very little power.  But what she does have is her reputation and her power to persuade.  She’s an attractive, well spoken woman, who is passionate about saving her country.

There are Democrats in New Mexico who don’t worship at the temple of George Soros.  They are our best hope.  Adjournment is scheduled for a week from tomorrow, and activity in the Capitol goes on until late in the evenings.  This is the atmosphere where it’s far easier to kill a bill than pass one.  There are a variety of procedural and other gambits which Yvette has at her disposal, and her prospects for success are hopeful.  If we can save New Mexico, it’s the same as passing a new State.

In Maryland Tom Llewellyn is marshaling our forces to stop a rescission Resolution, and he is making some progress.  Maryland won’t adjourn until two months from now, and until it does we have to watch this legislature carefully.  But there is hope.

On the positive side is Arizona, where a floor vote could occur next week, and the vote count of Loren Enns and uber-lobbyist Constantin Querard show a narrow win.  It’s not over til it’s over, but this vote looks solid.

Wisconsin State Senator Chris Kapenga has our Resolution up in committee next week, and has indicated he would appreciate the presence of the Task Force’s Dave Guldenschuh.  Gary Banz of Oklahoma has been our only contact with Kapenga, and it would be very helpful if Guldenschuh and Kapemga can work together..  Tom Llewellyn reports that the vote count in the Senate still looks good, and the House has never been a problem.   There’s really no reason in the world we can’t get Wisconsin, and soon.  If there’s one thing the State Legislature of Wisconsin has shown in the last five years: when they want to move a bill, it moves.  Kapenga is an extremely capable legislator.  I just hope he moves it quickly.

In South Carolina the clouds have given way to a sunny day.  A lobbyist retained by Lew Uhler and Dave and Suzie Biddulph has secured the backing of  our best hope in the State Senate, and in the South Carolina Legislature.

So, there’s the math.  Arizona, 30.  Wisconsin, 31.  South Carolina, 32.  We’re live in Minnesota and Kentucky, so 34 is technically in reach this year.  Stranger things have happened.  But more likely is that we’ll need the BBA Planning Convention to put us over the top in 2018.  At the moment, the location of this, the first Convention of States since 1861, is uncertain.  But what is certain is that it will happen.

 

Given what else we know about him, it’s hard to think of Bill Clinton as a man of profound spiritual understanding.  In fact, it’s hard to take him seriously at all.  He’s a sexual predator, a political criminal, and one of the phoniest people in public life.  But there he is today, at the Brookings Institute, pontificating on globalism.

This is the sum of his deep wisdom:  “The whole history of the world is basically the definition of who is us, and who is them, and the question of whether we should all live under the same set of rules.”  Good God, what a moron.

It’s actually quite simple, but apparently a mystery to Billy Jeff.  “We” are Americans, and “they” are not.  We have our rules, and if anyone else in the world wants to adopt them, they’re free to do it.  But if they’ve got their own set of rules, such a sharia law, that’s their business.  Attempts to unite the world under one set of rules always fail, and almost always are steeped in blood.

The Moslems hate us for our rules, and would rather die than adopt them.  They are a rigid patriarchal society, and we celebrate the equality of women.  We’re not a matriarchy, but we have tendencies.  Thus we are the Great Satan.  At the very core, the essence, of Islam is the absolute authority of the husband over his family.  This is the basis of their culture, and their entire way of looking at the world.  The family is the basic unit of a society, and a nation’s family values are its values.  Islam cannot tolerate the equality of women.  It would undermine their families, and their culture would collapse.

The true equality of women is only found in countries that feature the Absolute Nuclear Family.(ANF).  We got it from the English, who got it from the Germans.  Tacitus describes it in the German tribes 2,000 years ago.  The center piece of the ANF is a woman’s right to choose.  Her body is her own.  She can choose to give herself to a husband, or not.  It’s up to her.  And when she does marry she is not subject to anyone’s control.  Her husband’s family has no control, and she and her husband will not control their children when they marry.  It’s a culture of liberty and women’s rights.  The two go hand in hand.

These are “The Origins of English Individualism“, as set out by British historian and sociologist Alan Macfarlane.    Because the English had the Absolute Nuclear Family, their women were free to choose.  As a result, as many as 20% of women never married, and those that did married late.  Marriage at 25 was the norm.

This is the family structure that came to Jamestown and Plymouth, and it is ours today.  It’s responsible for our success in populating this continent.  Because, in the ANF, each married couple was expected to set up their own household, apart and independent from their parents.  This is difficult in settled societies, but it was easy in early America.  There was land, everywhere, and these colonial families averaged nine or ten children, knowing that there would be new lands for them to settle.  America and the Absolute Nuclear Family were made for each other.

But it’s not for everybody, it’s incompatible with Islam, and the world would be a lot better off if fools like Bill Clinton didn’t go around telling everyone we’ve all got to live by the same set of rules.