Miscellaneous

I’ll wager the vast majority of Millennials have never heard her.  Since Bill Clinton wants to be, at the minimum, a Co-President if Hillary wins, it’s relevant.  She was his, or so he said.

Paula was working as a receptionist at a hotel in Little Rock in 1991 when Governor of Arkansas Clinton spotted her.  She was 25, and attractive.  So he had a state trooper escort her to his hotel room, where he pulled down his pants and asked for sex.  A few years later she read an article In American Spectator that misrepresented what happened.  Her reputation damaged, she sued Clinton for sexual harassment.  Placed under oath and questioned, he committed perjury.   For this he was cited for contempt of court which cost him his law license in Arkansas.  He paid her $850,000 in an out of court settlement.

This same man now wants to go back to the White House.  His wife would be President, but I think calling him just a Co-President is selling him short.  He’d be pulling the strings.  Hillary is old and tired, and will rely on him to guide her.

I think the story of Paula Jones should be told in a sixty second TV spot.  You don’t have to mention Hillary’s name, though you’d want a lot of footage of her, with Bill.  People need to understand she wasn’t a victim in all this.  Paula Jones, and dozens of other vulnerable young women, were the victims.  Hillary was a facilitator, an enabler.  She and her team called these blameless women bimbos and trailer trash, even though they had done nothing wrong.  It was a real war on women, but the victims aroused no sympathy.  Poor Southern whites seldom do.  Towards the end of the ad you could have Clinton talking about how Hillary was his Co-President.

Paula Jones is no longer heard from.  If I could find her I’d like to talk to her.  Maybe she could be convinced to do a voice over in the ad, and be seen in the final shot.  I interviewed her lawyer on my radio show, even had R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., publisher of American Spectator, as a guest.  He was being accused of leading a vast right wing conspiracy, which I wanted to join.

I think, professionally done, this could be a powerful ad.  I can hear, in my mind, the shrieks of protest from the Clinton Machine.  If it was a hit we could follow up with one on Monica Lewinsky, or even Juanita Broderick, who claims Clinton raped her.  This could be a lot of fun.

Younger people, especially, really don’t know anything about Clinton.  They need education.  You could go after Hillary on a whole raft of scandals, but, politically, you’re on very dangerous ground when you attack a woman.  Women, and men too, really don’t like that.  It makes them uncomfortable.  But her Co-President is fair game.  I’ve got a year to sell this idea, get some money behind it.  Even if it doesn’t ever happen it’s fun to talk about.  And I can always come up with another one.  Something about Clinton stimulates my creative juices.  I really don’t like anything about this man.  He is the essence of a punk.  If I could play a role in sticking it to him I would be very happy.

Women are the key to success in politics, as in most things.  When I meet a politician in a social situation, I try to pay close attention to his wife.  When she talks, I listen.  Political wives, from Nancy Reagan on down, judge you not on your politics, but on your character.  And they’re not shy in telling their husbands what they think.  My wife always told me her mind, on this, and everything else for that matter.

On our first date she told me about her Porsche, and why she was working at Payless.  She was a full time student at Cal, living at home, and didn’t need a job.  Her parents wouldn’t buy her a Porsche, because the engine was in the rear.  So she took some money she had inherited and bought the damn thing herself.  She was working to pay back the principal on her inheritance.

I’d never known anyone who had an inheritance, much less a Porsche.  And she lived in a damn mansion in Piedmont, the ultra ritzy part of the East Bay.  She was tall, blonde, slender and very smart.  Oh, and she was beautiful.

After the movie we sat in a bar in Orinda, drinking beer, for close to two hours.  I’ve made some pitches in life, and some of them have been pretty good.

None better than that one.

I hope to be involved, somehow, in the Presidential election next year.  Not working with a campaign.  I want to associate myself with an independent group, to attack Hillary.  When I heard about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth I immediately sent them all I could afford.  It wasn’t that much, but I knew these guys were on to something.  Kerry was a phony lying bastard, and they proved it.  Another such group, or groups, will form to take out Hillary.  I’m going to join up, and we’ll do some damage.  I haven’t thought it all the way through, but we’ll come up with something.  There’s so much to choose from, such a target rich environment.  Snakehead Carville will be pissed.  It could be a lot of fun.

I dislike Hillary, but my personal motivation is to get Bill.  They ought to do a poll on him, approve, disapprove, or despise.  I’d be in the latter category.  People don’t change.  You are who you were in high school.  And Bill Clinton was a slimy chalk board monitor, a kiss ass and a punk.  That’s who he was, and that’s who he is.  Ask yourself, what kind of man gets elected President and then seduces some fat intern to come to the Oval Office to give him blow jobs?  Is that your kind of guy?  He’s been that way all his life.  He’s a sexual predator, who tries to take advantage of young women.  I hate that kind of guy.  When I was growing up in Richmond my father wasn’t around.  He was a sperm donor, and that was it.  The less said of him the better.  I was raised by my grandmother, my mother, and my Aunt Mary.  I was not deprived.  My mother and my Aunt Mary worked in retail, and didn’t make much, but it was enough.  They were both beautiful women, though they were just working poor.  They were the kind of women who attract sexual predators, men who want to take advantage of them.  When I heard about Paula Jones, down in Arkansas, I knew she was kind of like my mother and my Aunt Mary, and I tried to raise money on my radio show for her lawyers.

I never want to be in the same room with Bill Clinton.  He’s got Secret Service protection, and I want to punch him in the mouth.  Knock him on his ass.  He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t get up.  We’re the same age, but I hope to outlive him.  He’s on my bucket list.  I want to piss on his grave.

On a lighter note, I’m off to go camping with Danny, who is an anti-Clinton.  He’s everything that Clinton is not.  He’s a big, tough guy.  Girls were always crazy for Danny.  He married the most popular girl at Piedmont High.  If there was ever any trouble, you wanted to stick close to Danny.  He’d take anybody on.  Everybody liked Danny.

And still do.

Along with Kraig Powell, he got us Utah.  He’s been all over the country talking to legislative leadership in his role as incoming President of NCSL.  There was a story in the WaPo yesterday which quoted Utah Senate President Wayne Niederhauser.  He said you can’t really be sure what would happen at a Constitutional Convention.  Rob Natelson took exception to his comments, and put out an email highly critical of them.  Curt took exception, and fired back.  I jumped in and promoted the Reagan Initiative Summit.  This led to a long phone call with Curt, which I had been looking forward to.  He liked the idea of having the meeting, and said there would be a big Utah contingent at NCSL, and some of them would attend.  I’d already talked to Kraig, and so I was counting Utah as one of the seven states I had so far.  This was confirmation, from the President pro tempore of the Utah Senate.

Georgia Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert was in on the emails, and emailed me back, saying count him, and Georgia, in.  I was counting on Bill, and Georgia makes eight.  I’ve emailed Article V Caucus Co-chair Yvette Herrell, and she and I will talk tomorrow.  I’m quite confident she’ll be eager to participate, which would mean New Mexico can be added as number nine.  The way things are breaking we might get to 26 by the end of the month.  Then on to 38, or more, if possible.

The national media will not be our friend.  They will undermine us however they can.  It’s really impossible, at this point, to have any message discipline.  Too many people involved, and no coordination.  That’s something we could talk about in Seattle.  I’m not too worried about the press.  State Legislators in West Virginia and Idaho don’t pay a lot of attention to big media.  They all know it’s biased.  In some cases, like the New York Times, they’re nothing more than a publicity machine for the Democratic line, whatever it is.  The real left wing media is going to accuse us of wanting to repeal the 13th Amendment, and bring back slavery.  I’m not kidding.  They will say anything.

I’ll be off the blog for a few days.  I’m going camping with Dan Fleming, a friend from high school.  He’s on daily dialysis, so I don’t know how this is going to work, but we’ll find out.  I doubt I’ll be able to do much camping with Dan in the future.  We’ve been going camping for fourteen years.  This may be it.  I owe this to Danny.

When I was 25 I moved from Alaska back to California.  I had applied to several California law schools, and was sure I’d be accepted somewhere.  I went to work at Payless Drugs in Oakland, where I’d worked in high school and college.  I was trying to save money for law school.  I think I only had a few thousand dollars to my name, and knew I needed more.

So Danny comes in one day, and we have a nice talk.  Everybody likes Danny.  He’s one of those kinds of guys.  He tells me there’s a cashier I should ask out, Babbie Hawksley.  He was engaged, and Babbie was his fiancée’s best friend from Piedmont High.  I’d noticed her before, of course, but hadn’t really thought of asking her out.  I’d graduated from Cal four years ago, and hadn’t really accomplished anything since.  I couldn’t afford to hang out at bars, or do the kinds of things you might do to meet girls.  I figured all that would come later.

So a few days later I worked up my courage and asked her out.  We were married eight months later.

Yeah, I owe Danny.

Hal Wick doesn’t think the Reagan Initiative is necessary.  He’s afraid it might backfire.  By providing an agenda for the Convention, and a basis for organizing it, it’s designed to allay the fears of a runaway.  Hal thinks it might stoke them.

He’s going to Arizona next week to see family, and promised to go to Phoenix to touch base with sponsor Bob Thorpe.  He may even get to see Senate President Andy Biggs, the man between us and a win in Arizona.  He’ll get the lay of the land, and see if he can help come up with a plan of action for next year.  One that doesn’t include the Reagan Initiative.  It will be interesting to see what he thinks.  I’m all ears.

Thorpe has made some D.C. liberals uncomfortable.  He got a bill passed that directs state agencies and sheriffs to ignore executive orders from Obama.  It’s nullification lite, and an idea that might have some merit.  I’m not sure.  I admire him for coming up with it.  I haven’t met him.  I hope he can get to Seattle.

Earlier today I wrote a little about the first Americans, the Virginians.  The Puritan political philosophy was communistic, in that land, and the proceeds thereof, was all to be shared.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  The preachers would decide these things.  It was a kind of religious tyranny.  As you can imagine, that didn’t work out well.  They nearly starved to death.  Many of them did.  Then they saw the light, became capitalists, survived, and celebrated at the first Thanksgiving.

They weren’t communists in Virginia, they were feudalists.  The rich men who financed the whole thing wanted to be landed gentry, and to monopolize political power.  Everybody else would have to work for them.  The poor, who were the vast majority, simply refused.  They wouldn’t work unless they had their own land.  They also nearly starved to death.  And many of them did.  Then the rich relented, and gave land to the poor, who soon prospered.  They found a crop, tobacco, they could sell in England, and had the basis of an economy.

Two of these people were my ancestors.  In 1633 they had a son, James, who was the first Pettyjohn born in this country.  He married Isabel Heath, and they had four children.  I am descended from their youngest, John.  John’s grandson, also named John, now in Delaware, was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  It’s possible that he served under Washington.

In 2033 I’ll be 88 years old, if I’m alive.  My family is long lived.  My sons have promised me they’ll get me back to Virginia on the Fourth of July.  We’ll all celebrate the 400th birthday of James Pettyjohn.

Lord willing.

One of the better books I’ve read recently was “The Origins of English Individualism” by Alan Macfarlane.  The first Americans landed in Virginia, and were English.  Their culture evolved into ours.  It was a culture of liberty.  It wasn’t the culture of the religious zealots in Massachusetts.  They were fanatical about their faith, and that fanaticism took them far afield.  If your religion varied from theirs, they expelled you.  They were intolerant then, and their political heirs are intolerant today, just in service of a different faith.  If they thought you were a witch they killed you.

Macfarlane was a British patriot, and didn’t like to admit it, but he basically said that the ultimate source of his culture was Germany, home of the Anglo-Saxons.  He quotes Montesquieu, “In perusing the admirable treatise of Tacitus “On the Manners of the Germans” we find that it is from that nation the English have borrowed their idea of political government.  This beautiful system was invented first in the woods.”

The reason it came from Germany is because this is where women first emancipated themselves.  Equal rights for women is the foundation of freedom.  These German women of 2,000 years ago, famously described by Tacitus, insisted on freedom of choice in the selection of their husbands.  And when they married they were under no one’s control, from their husband’s family or their own.  When they acquired property they and their husbands owned it outright.  They could leave their estate to their children, but were not obliged to do so.  Unworthy children could be disinherited.  A man was expected to leave his father’s home and make one of his own for his own family.

This is called the Absolute Nuclear Family.  It died out in Germany, but migrated North to southern Scandinavia, western Netherlands, Brittany, and, with the Anglo-Saxons, to England.  It’s the basis of our culture today in America.

Tacitus describes the German women as tall and well built, with pale skin, red hair, and bright blue eyes.  They would follow their men in battle, to inspire them.  They were women to fight for.  The Romans found that out in 9 A.D. when they tried to conquer Germany.  Three legions were completely annihilated.

Spiritually, at least, they were our mothers. I’m proud of that.