An alarming thing has happened and the most alarming bit is that no one is alarmed. Things seem to be proceeding apace in Egypt and the intellectuals are salivating at the prospect of a new Egyptian constitution, to be drafted by around June. That doesn’t leave much time so they are soliciting advice from foreign corners and from one corner was dislodged sitting Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg who used the occasion to suggest that under no circumstances should the Egyptian reformers consider the US Constitution as any sort of guide. It is, after all, laughably aged and enfeebled. Much better ore is to be had in the post-War world. Look right at 10:00 to see where she swallows the Constitution she has sworn to defend in one gulp. Most emphatically does she advise the Egyptians NOT to look at this document for guidance even as she describes the ordinary Rights of public participation and arrest that have been made real in the world, in large part, because of the attention given them in our Constitution and the spread of these, through means fair and foul, to every aspiring society.  How the Egyptian fellow did not show shock or even surprise is a bit mysterious but a larger puzzler is how this could have been on youtube for a week and only now drawing attention. Hopefully this was a clever bit of disinformation. The dimmest Cairo cabbie could not fail  to realize, Ginsburg is a Jew. Perhaps the State Department and the Justice came up with a plot of reverse-psychology. “Ruthie,” Hillary might have told her. “You go in and you tell ‘em, don’t you look at our Constitution. There is NOTHING in there for you, and they will tear into it like Bill through a Ladies’ Auxiliary!” But no, with the specifics and enthusiasm it is plain, this is Ginsburg Unplugged.

Her condemnation of our Constitution is sotto voce. She seems to only complain of its age. Glass houses, Madame Justice. Glass houses. I’m sure her objections are fleshed out in her writings from her lengthy career as head of the ACLU. What we have from this interview, however, what she has boiled down to an essential essence that might aid the new leaders of a turbulent desert nation, is a chirpy, if vapid, endorsement of the South African constitution. Certainly it exceeds our Constitution on grounds of freshness; if it were an American citizen it would just now be able to drive. But it is a prodigy, leaping past the old tatters of  parchment. The SA constitution, in contrast to our own, “was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights… ” As a Supreme Court Justice, she must indeed know her stuff.

We know what Ginsburg is on about. She mentions a couple other documents but all attempt to secure the rights in our Bill of Rights (except, always, the Second Amendment) and mostly do so in language aping the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. So that cannot be Ginsburg’s indictment. Plainly what she desires although even she knows enough to speak only vaguely, is to have Constitutional mandates in the US promising healthcare, housing, education, food, water and “social security”, a term obviously ripped from the American fabric though not our Constitution. Who can doubt that this is also what Obama has in mind when he complains that the US Constitution is flawed and encumbering? So what lucky city is going to reap the hotel taxes and bar tabs generated by a New Constitutional Convention? Sadly there will be no such boon. Obama and his Progressives do not seek to add the South African provisions under public scrutiny. Rather they will redefine federal food aid as an Establishment of Justice, federal housing subsidies as Ensuring Domestic Tranquility. Pay-offs will Provide for the Common Defense. Tuition grants Promote the General Welfare. Government doctoring is a  Blessing of Liberty secured to Ourselves and our Posterity. These are the building blocks of A More Perfect Union. So says Obama. So says Ginsburg and Kagan; Sotomayor, Breyer and Kennedy but also Alito, Roberts, Scalia and to the least extent, Thomas. Also Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and yes, even the adamant Ron Paul. Rush Limbaugh is on board as well, as is Mark Levin, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, George Will, Charles Krauthammer or anyone else on the so-called Right. And quite probably YOU and everyone you know. How do we know this? Actions speak louder than words but we have BOTH and perhaps the most revealing of all are not actions but in-actions; not the words spoken or written but those unspoken. The most revealing of all are those words forbidden to speak. What is the Cow Most Sacred that to even mention her name in any but adulatory terms is to be torn out of the American ledger? You know and I know, it is that term adopted so fully and respectfully from America to South Africa. Social Security.

The professional talkers who reap bags of cash and decibels of applause for their embittered pronouncements and have no elections to lose will defend Social Security in terms both strident and dogmatic. Even the secular-saint Reagan is found to be a New Dealer at heart. All the Constitutional gyrations that are rightly denounced as subterfuge as regards Obamacare or other new iterations of wealth redistribution are swallowed whole cloth as regards Social Security. Limbaugh is as willing to explain as Hillary that, Social Security is not “socialism” in any sense and by the way, the OTHER guys are out to destroy it! The protege of Ed Meese, Levin, will calmly explain that the Commerce Clause is the foundation for Social Security and Medicare as well. This while he draws the line acerbically at the diktats of Obamacare and Romneycare that say, you will not pay us for your medicine but rather we will tell you whom to pay, how much and what you will get for it. Paul Ryan stands no further than Howard Dean from the justifying principles of these programs; he just aspires to make them actuarially sound. Ron Paul? Yes, he does denounce them in Constitutional terms but what is his solution? To continue them except with an opt-out for the young.

Both the Paul and the Ryan plans have one thing in common with ALL the other solutions out in the public realm, that is they DO NOT TOUCH current beneficiaries or those with about ten years until eligibility. This is mathematically impossible. You can’t just sever those paying in from those receiving the payments even if they stay flat (which they will not). Where do the truly mammoth amounts to make up the difference come from? Only from taxes, borrowing and printing. So just as the youthful opt-out is working in his first office job, he is neither paying into nor drawing from Social Security but somewhere, if he is not taxed into poverty, there is either an auctioneer or a high-speed press operating at high speed in his name. And in the meantime when he DOES save for his own infirmity, he has no guarantee of returns. He has no guarantee of his principle. These are the inevitable burdens you lay on a prostate America when you press your claims.

Who? Me? I’m not “pressing” any claims. I’m filing for my entitlements. And hey, didn’t I pay for ‘em?

This is the fatal rub; the deadly misconstruction and it is what separates the ten Articles in the American Bill of Rights and rights delineated under Chapter 2 of the SA constitution. The Rights in the Bill of Rights don’t require anyone to do anything for you to enjoy them. Rather the Bill of Rights is a menu of restrictions laid on the federal government and its subsidiaries. Citizens “shall not be denied due process of law…” not provided with anything except the restraint of the authorities. “…shall not be infringed.” That is plain and definitive language and as adamant as law can be. The equivalent South African codice has thirty-two sections, each with sub-sections and indexed paragraphs. Our Bill of Rights can be plainly seen in the first half though it is watered down like a cheap cocktail. It bargains away the clarity of our First Amendment for a slew of claims now dressed up as Rights. It seems the citizen is wildly empowered; he has a claim against the state for his subsistence. In South Africa this was expressly meant to atone for Apartheid. You will find the same arguments in America claiming reparations for slavery (but improperly). So there is a powerful pseudo-moral case for the claims as just compensation. Its morality is false however since government has nothing to give unless it is taken first from The People; so the claimant, if he considers himself a free, equal, sovereign citizen; one among many, holds nothing but a chit from himself which he honors with taxes (whether those levies are called “taxes” or not). This only applies while we recognize One class or sort of citizen. Once you assert that say, white people owe me. Or rich people owe me, and you write that class out of protections you reserve to yourself, we say good-bye to Equal Protection. No one has Rights but everyone will have claims, to some extent, of being ill-used. So their claims then become sacred rights while all an unconsensual debt can ever be is a license to enslave which was the problem in the first place.

Even if one still asserts a theoretical superiority for a system of common holdings based on “just” claims, it must be admitted that it does not work. Even for the Soviets there was a practical limit to printing roubles; phony money to pay any claim. If all claims, legitimate or not are honored then in short order no claims, legitimate or not, can be paid. It can’t work. It is a math based on the infinite of human wants converted to claims against human industry but painted as Civil Rights. There are only two ways out once embarked down this road; one is for large numbers of citizens to forgo their claims, just or not. Unlikely.The other is for everyone to press their claims to the maximum until the pot is drained and smashed to bits. The State based on claims will die and the claims with it. Rough freedoms will return because no one will be paid to stop them. Trade and thievery, enterprise and loot will thrive. Then by necessity genuine charity will replace the system of claims, now defunct. This happy time will persist so long as the new State is restrained, which is the function of the Constitution. One would think a Supreme Court Justice, or at least SOMEONE would know it.

If ever I run this town, even before I take revenge on my enemies I will have a statue commissioned. A bronzed Anne Cox-Chambers already man’s the traffic island outside my front door, permanently enjoying a newspaper as only an owner of one could do. Around Underground there are life-size bronzes from the ’30s and 1890s. Naturally we have a smattering of Civil War heroes (or villains), some artsy friezes and a Phoenix both in abstract and figure. There is at least one missing. The subject has not been gone long enough to become historic but I remember and will see her commemorated. She was always in the company of statues when I saw her, usually Herman Talmadge. She stood quite nearly as a statue; an elderly woman, clearly a nifty number from the Mad Men era would stand unmoving in a parka and gloves in the winter, in a sundress with a wet hanky on her head in summer, holding a stack of leaflets in each arm. She didn’t hand them out. She couldn’t have since both hands were full, the half-reams perfectly her cubit. Sometimes they were single sheets and sometimes it would be a stapled pair. Did I mention the rocks? She also had a rock on each pile to act as a paperweight. Around her neck hung a small sandwich board explaining in meticulous print how the private ownership of land was the source of near all of man’s troubles.

It took about three years of seeing this woman at her post to gingerly take one of her pamphlets. She looked at me not at all, you could think she was blind, but when I took the pages and left the rock in its spot like a cheap magic trick she chirped up, “Thank you.” I never saw anyone else ever take one. As I recall the argument was pretty solidly formed as you will often find eccentrics’ rants to be. Who could argue that territorialism is not at the root and branch of nearly every struggle? As usual the easy utopianism doesn’t pass any serious muster. While the indictments of real estate as a concept were just about on target, the solution was a nightmare proposition. Basically the idea was a public trust, perhaps like the National Parks. Owners would get long term leases at sweetheart rates but there could be no inheritance. The use of the land would be tightly controlled, more tightly even than now, we presume. The whole thing would be administered by the county with an elected board. As Cox’s interests made the newspaper so enchanting, I think only someone who had suffered quite badly under the current system could really trust anything so daft. And that is the same aspiration of the branch office of Occupy Atlanta just opened two miles east of the main campus, in the yard of a yellow brick house.

It shows all the hallmarks of The Occupation. Bicycles worth a couple thousand bucks are leaned up against a short, sad, chainlink fence. A dozen or more patchworked signs create a screen behind which a few fuzzy fellows are enjoying a smoke to such a degree that I at first thought they were cooking out. No banks. No landlords. Give BACK the DEED! No chains for gains…. The house in question is nearing foreclosure. It seems to have been halted for PR reasons, which is fine; congratulations to the bank for being accommodating and to the Occupiers for forcing the accommodation but, as with that Dixie Belle’s proposition, it is all for show. Are the Occupiers paying rent? That seems unlikely and even if they were, and at a rate that could cover the house note, how long could that go on? Especially since the “protest” violates residency laws that are enforced pretty vigorously on everyone else. It is likewise with the Occupiers in the park. They sit in violation of a law that is enforced against men down on their luck and trying to grab some sleep in relative shelter. They have no message, like the Occupiers but unlike the Occupiers they do not pretend to. These fellows are told to move along, move along. Head down to Pine Street, the warehouse-size flop which is also where the Occupiers flee on the odd days the cops look cross at them. When they go they are given the top floor and do not mix with the general bum population as the last time they did, a nasty TB outbreak struck the tramps! Oddly, these spokesdudes for la vida en fera natura prove a territorial bunch themselves.

The very concept of real estate is under assault where it has not been abandoned to squatters and easements. It is the eternal struggle between those with land and those without. This, our statue-model and the Occupiers would do away with. All will be held in common and all will be disbursed by common rules. That is genius. Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? The contact-high from believing such a presumption or being around it when it is being believed is a powerful narcotic. The simple fact is that no, this is NOT an original idea. In fact wherever there are property rights of the meagerest sort there is a constant pressure upon them. These are the Have-Nots, or Not-Enoughs. They Want.

Well, get in line, pal. We ALL Want and Adam Smith would tell you that Human Want is infinite. But nothing else is and whatever the moral superiority the commons system might enjoy, it doesn’t create any more territory and if it did, that territory would likewise be the object of dispute. Real estate, the private ownership of land is a slowly constructed layer of debts, laws and customs evolved to mitigate the monkey-grabbing and head-cracking that obtains in nature. The holdings in common are the quickest and surest way to return to that state as with common holdings there is no claim legally held above another so those most able to press their claims through strength, guile, deception or luck find themselves masters of all they can hold. It is a classic of human tragedy, The Tragedy of the Commons.  It repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats simply because the ignorant can recycle it to the credulous as a new idea.

It is the personal ownership of land that is the true innovation over the laws of the jungle which are not too far removed from the law of the commons or the law of the lord. For us it was practically born among the age of Lords and Ladies. Rome had melted from Britain and lawlessness poured in. Arthur’s father, Uther fought off other, less able warlords until he had the largest patch and called himself a King. He claimed all the land he could set foot on, as King’s are wont to do, but some of these holdouts were stubborn and threatened to make the fight cost more than the land was worth. He would leave them, as lesser Kings, so long as they paid up and knelt down. Once there were six or eight of these lesser Kings; palaver being more lucrative than battle, they would band together when one was threatened, understanding that their “rights” began and ended with their ability to assert them. Don’t think this had anything to do with a Common Man. Such a man, if he were not pressed into a private army, would be fortunate to live as a pig and could own only what was not taken from him. But slowly as peace made itself more attractive than strife, this curious notion of title and deed was extended to lesser and lesser Kings until A man’s home is his Castle applied even to the Common Man. Behold the foundation on which all the modern world has been built. This is the only way anyone can accumulate anything one could call a fortune or an estate. Any amount of gold or silver or weapons or clothing, commodities, furniture, victuals or livestock was chattel. Only the land was real estate.

To own land in this sense is to have a right to stand on a cone that extends from the center of the earth through the shape of your property lines and out into infinite space. No one owns property in this sense anymore. No, you do not own your airspace. You cannot forbid a plane or satellite nor charge them for passage. Likewise you probably cannot start drilling for oil in your backyard and if you did bring in a gusher you might well be arrested for stealing the crude someone else has claim to. We’ve surrendered much of the reality in our real estate. These, unlike the rights in the Declaration of Independence, did prove alienable. They have been sold away or abandoned to scavengers with gavels and pricey suits. And that is fine. Having a mineshaft in your garage could impact the other fellows property values, after all, but we must keep the kernel of it. Someone’s real estate gives them rights and privileges unknown elsewhere, however curtailed they have become but if there is no limit to that curtailment, always presented in millimeter-thin slices, then there are no rights nor privileges but a continued tax burden that somehow never stumbles.

When I bought my place, or pledged to buy it with borrowed money, I surrendered a princely sum it will take thirty years to pay, if I ever do. Condos, especially high-rise and exotic, are far more volatile than free-standing homes held outright. Our estate is a bit less real than the next fellows, being subject to a variety of covenants and practical restrictions reflected in the current predicament where units are selling at around half of what they were, and then not briskly. I claim no airspace or mineral rights if only because I would have to bore through someone else’s front-room to get to them and the neighbor’s drain may well back up into mine. But what I do hold, so long as common law real estate exists, is a line to withdraw behind, a platform to stand on that no one can legally remove. That is not to say that they cannot remove it, just that it will be a crime…. for whatever that is worth. What the Holdings in Common people want is to replace this wobbling, uncertain conception with a great simplicity: all will have a landlord and the government shall be he. Whatever good is inherent in real property as a concept will be preserved by electing folks with the proper mindset, most likely our noble selves! The responsibilities and benefits of ownership will be replaced with appeals to political institutions. Real property as a store of wealth? That will be a quaint anachronism but not for long. Those who can, will leverage their claims until property is again owned in all but name by a few influential individuals. They will extract more and more from their unfortunate tenants until they must revolt or die. Warlord will fight warlord until one has a patch large enough to call himself King. Or we could pay our notes to the best of our ability and take our foreclosures if we must. Perhaps then I could have my statues without a ruination of the landscape but either way works for me.

Do you remember back when that jury full of carefully selected idiots let Casey Anthony stroll her baby-murdering caboose out of court, free as a bird last year?  Come on, you remember her, right?  The 20 something tart that had either murdered her own two year old daughter, or helped someone else hide the body after they murdered her, and then went on a 31 day party binge, boozing it up and getting new tats before she was arrested, which caused her to immediately began creating lie after lie in an attempt to avoid paying the penalty for slaughtering her kid so she wouldn’t have to deal with the responsibilities of being a parent?

Immediately after the trial, she dyed her hair, let it down out of that ponytail, changed her name, and is now living wild and free, unrecognizable as the baby killing liar we all saw on TV, and the public’s outrage exploded.  The jury hastily ran to the cameras, gibbering about how “Oh, I didn’t say she was innocent, just that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict her in the 400 items introduced by the prosecution during the trial!” in an effort to stop the harassment emanating from even their friends and family.  Do you remember what the public was told, over and over again, in an attempt to calm everyone down?

“Our justice system is designed to let 1,000 guilty people go free to avoid punishing 1 innocent person!”

Oh, really?

I was thinking about that yesterday as I was turned away from a Wal-Mart pharmacy.  By the time I reached my car in the parking lot, I was pretty steamed.  I, a college educated individual with a good job working as a researcher for a Division 1 University, a nice home, a nice car, custody of my kid, no criminal record (not even a speeding ticket), health insurance, a model citizen, so to speak, had been looked at and talked down to as if I were Casey Anthony for the singular offense of asking some Wal-Mart cashier if I could buy a box of Advil Cold and Sinus!

I’d done up an’ got in-censed, lehmuh tell ya…

See, it’s spring time here where I live.  I know, I know, it’s just the start of February, but we’ve been having mid 50s and 60s for the high temps for the last two or three weeks this year, plenty of sunshine, and the state has even had tornadoes already.  In my book:  Spring has arrived.  Happy days, chirping birds, all that good stuff.  But unfortunately, I was cursed at birth with a sinus cavity which refuses to tolerate a changing season with all the stubbornness of an irate mule, and invariably I wind up with a cold which spawns a week long battle with a clogged head, cough, and sore throat.  It’s hereditary, and it happens every year, afflicting half of my entire family.

So after trying for a couple of days to combat this monstrosity with Musinex and DayQuil, I got tired of being unable to find relief for my worst symptoms with the standard OTC bullcrap I had in my medicine cabinet at home, and I decided it was time to head to the pharmacy to get a box of the good stuff.  I’ve been taking Sudafed or Advil Cold and Sinus since I was a wee tyke, and it has never, not once in 20 plus years of extensive trials, failed to fix me up ASAP.  I pop two of them, and the aches and pains go away due to the ibuprofen, and it’s like there’s a tiny little Moses leading an Exodus inside my head the way the sea of mucus parts and dries up, thanks to the pseudoephedrine.

So after picking the kid up from after school care, we swung in to grab some groceries at Wally World, and I walked over to the pharmacy counter.  See, this box of medicine which I used to be able to select off the shelf is now stored behind the counter, by Federal Law, specifically The Combat Methamphetamine Act of 2005.

Ok, a bit of an inconvenience, sure.  But I could live with it.  See, where I live, meth is apparently the drug of choice.  Arkansas is one of the hottest states for meth use and manufacture, consistently one of the worst in the nation.  When you are walking around inside of our Wal-Mart, you’ll see that we have four races of people represented here in my town: Asiatic, Black, Caucasian, and Hispanic.  But the longer you walk the aisles, you’ll come to realize that there are so many meth addicts that it’s like there’s a 5th race of people living here.  They’re all over the place (and not just because of the spastic twitching), picking at sores and scaring children with their broken, nasty smiles.

The local radio stations (well, station, since the same company runs all three of our local channels from the same building) all play a local news segment every day at noon and three, and in this little broadcast they describe up coming events, special interest stories, and the notable crimes in the region from the day before.  Given that this is a small community without an awful lot going on, the number of crimes committed by meth addicts typically overwhelms all of the other news items combined (which doesn’t take much, maybe three or four items), but so common is the occurrence that the local populace lovingly dubs the segment “The Crackhead Report”.

So, beyond the Federal law, the State of Arkansas goes even further.  Joining several other states, Arkansas now requires a prescription for the purchase of Sudafed, or any other medication containing pseudoephedrine, one of the key ingredients in the manufacture of methamphetamine, as I was so curtly informed yesterday.  I was standing there in line with the kid, and there were three men in front of us.  One of the guys was dressed in a suit, the two between him and me looked as if they’d just got done working a normal blue collar job, and I was dressed in my standard button up and khakis.  Just a group of four normal, everyday Joes.  The first guy walked up and asked the lady for some Sudafed, and she said “I’m going to need a prescription from a doctor.” loudly enough that the rest of us could hear it.  The other three of us immediately stepped up and asked about our alternatives.

“Can I get a box of Advil Cold and Sinus?”, “What about Sudafed PM?”, all of us were told immediately rebuffed in the cold manner which I alluded to earlier, as if we were all some vast criminal conspiracy, out to purchase a heap of drugs so we could make untold millions by illicitly producing home wrecking narcotics…  But the pharmacist would gladly point out some alternatives over on the counters for us(!), as if the four grown men standing in front of her were physically and mentally incapable of finding something else on their own.

I managed to tortuously scratch out as much.  “Ma’am, those placebos are over there for anyone to grab and use specifically because they don’t work.  You’ve got the stuff which does work locked back there, and all four of us know it.  If the Musinex was going to ease my symptoms, it would’ve done so already.”

Damn.  I spun our cart around, and as I was headed toward the grocery section, one of the blue collar guys turned to me and gargled “That’s a real sunovabitch.” through the phlegm in his throat.  “No kidding, amigo.  Now you’ve gotta miss work, and pay for a co-pay on top of the price of the Sudafed.”, I bubbled back to him before he stuck his hands in his pockets, dropped his head and moved off in the general direction of the exit.

You know, I’m a staunch Libertarian.  Compared to me, Ayn Rand was an over-zealous Soviet commissar.  The freedom loving, to-hell-with-the-negative-consequence side of me really, really, really loathes the War on Drugs.  Government exists to protect us from external threat, and to enforce contract law within its borders, not to try to “save” citizens from themselves by preventing them from pursuing too much happiness.  But at the same time, I rarely decry the War on Drugs because another Libertarian virtue is a high respect for the law and the belief that people should be free to benefit or suffer from the consequences of their actions, whatever they may be.  While I do not agree with our existing legislation and judicial stance on drugs, and I deplore the money spent on weaponizing the police state to combat this logically unsupportable “war” on the free market, I have no sympathy for the people who knowingly committed a crime and got caught.  They deserve what’s coming to them.

But this is not a case of the government stepping in between a drug addict and their fix.  Sure, banning one of the key ingredients in its manufacture works, and meth lab busts have fallen, but people are still using meth, so someone is making it somewhere.  Furthermore, if you’re going to start banning the legal stuff which is involved in the manufacture of an illegal product, buildings have been used in the manufacture of meth as well.  Why not ban buildings, or dark places out in the woods where someone MIGHT hide and make their dope? 

I’m not a meth addict, nor have I ever engaged in its manufacture.  This is a case of four working taxpayers being prohibited by the Government from finding relief that was available to them just a few short years ago with no regulation, and when I was denied the ability to purchase Advil Cold and Sinus, there wasn’t a meth user involved in the discussion at all.  All four of us knew what worked, and it wasn’t the garbage the drug companies are putting out on the shelves now.  If that stuff was so great, it’d have bumped pseudoephedrine off the shelves without the regulations.

So as I sit here, sniffling and hacking in agony while I write this missive, I again reflect on the obvious hypocrisy being exhibited by our justice system.  While claiming that it’s better for a child murderer and compulsive liar be allowed to walk the streets without punishment than for a single innocent person to suffer, it’s simultaneously claiming that it’s better that millions of sick, law abiding citizens be denied easy access to relief from the common cold than a small handful of miscreants be given the opportunity to purchase something which might, possibly, may be used to manufacture an illegal drug.  Man, stay out Lady Justice’s way!  That woman is blindfolded and waving a damned sword!

It’s just a snapshot of a larger problem in our country at the start of 2012.  The Government won’t let you buy Sudafed, has banned (but to the best of my knowledge defunded enforcement of said ban) the all American light bulb, is flushing billions down the Green Energy Toilet while trying to make you feel like the Spawn of Satan everytime you pull up to a gas pump or turn on something using coal-generated electricity in your kitchen.  Heck, you can’t take a dump without the Government passing three or four taxes and a hundred regulations governing it, from stress testing on your toilet bowl to regulations on the water pressure required to flush the damned thing.  You know, at some point, someone is going to have to take a real stand.  I’m not talking about winning one simple court case, because the Government is displaying daily it’s belief that the law doesn’t govern the Government and would just ignore rulings against it in a court.

But where is this person going to come from?  Where is my generation’s Edward R. Murrow to our McCarthy/Government analogy, or our Martin Luther King Jr. to our current version of Jim Crow?  I thought the TEA Party was really going to make a difference, but as time moves forward, I’m not so confident that our problems are going to be resolved so easily.  There will eventually have to be a leader.  But who could, or would, make such a stand these days?

I despair, at times.  And cough.  Actually, I’m coughing more than I’m despairing.  This sucks.  Wish I had some Sudafed.

They say it is over. “They” is the Romnoids. But they have been saying it was over before it ever began. Now Newt, bedraggled and forlorn, seems to be in sullen agreement or at least he is not up to energetic resistance, which amounts to agreement. If we needed any more evidence that Newt has a half-life, a shelf-life and an inner-life inconsistent with the rigors of the Presidency, this is it. It seems Newt had begun to believe his own press. Santorum took a much harsher beating but unlike Newt, it was what he expected. Unshocked, he and his 13% will march on. If Newt were an ordinary party loyalist, he would back Mitt immediately hoping for Commerce Secretary to the detriment of the party and the nation. It seems he might be infantile enough though to consider his dignity over his advancement; always the calculation. If Gingrich can demonstrate a weak pulse and continue harrowing Romney it will be the finest service he could ever perform for the nation (and Rick Santorum), not that Newt should gain the office. Romney is the great threat at the moment and the Gingrich Blunderbuss is the only plausible weapon at hand but the powder, while voluminous, has grown damp in the Florida humidity. What if Mitt has succeeded, as of yesterday, to make his nomination a done deal?

Romney has spoken and conducted himself as if he had the one-and-only ticket to the nomination for three years. There is little reason to fault him for his public confidence. It is the habit of every candidate and should be. Of course he had the same confidence in 2008, a fact ill recalled. Those of us who have been dubious of the Governor from Massachusetts have done our best to explain why he is unelectable in a tactical sense and unsupportable for any would-be Constitutionalist but it seems that parochialism and name recognition have (nearly) carried the day. The gunslingers laugh, drink and swap resumes’, the bastards, but they have been right. No need to gaze into a deep, hypothetical future though to divine what this will mean. Mitt has been grand-poobah of the Republican party for years now, Reince Priebus notwithstanding. If you are a Right-leaning officeholder or voter, it’s Willard’s World and you are just living in it.

An eager, early citizen of Willardworld is one Chris Christie, sitting Governor of New Jersey and yes he sits AROUND the State, she being petite and he quite girthy but that is no mark against him. The true black mark he struck across his own record (which is credible for New Jersey but pretty crappy anywhere else) with his reactionary endorsement of Romney, taking up the colors of the regiment tasked to defend the indefensible. We speak of Romneycare, the zygote that twinned off metastatically to give us Obamacare. Christie’s task, which he took to like a meatball sub, was not to rebut reasoned objections to Romney as the father of Obamacare. Oh no! That would require air time and, um, some facts that we just don’t have right now, so instead the dubious Christie expends all his reserve flatulence in bilious, personalized denunciations of any who observe the simple fact that yes, procedurally they are one and the same! How can anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear deny this? But the blind and deaf are always a powerful voting bloc. If the talk shows are anything to go by the grammies and grampops are split between Mitt and Newt, each befuddled at the other but apparently as ignorant of their foe as they are indoctrinated for their own. What being can believe Romney’s adamant contention that he will immediately repeal Obamacare once in office? As the grannies say, “Of course he will, he says it every time he speaks. It is the first thing he says whenever he speaks.” Did everyone forget that it is the Legislature that would do such a thing? So Willard promises what he will have no power to do yet no one calls him on it. One might think the Obama Administration with their box-seats for this spectacle, might make the observation but the limits of the Presidency or indeed the limits on government of any sort are not an issue they would like on anyone’s mind. So Willard walks on unmolested, not from the regretable, forgettable wreckage of a lie/error caught out but rather amplifying and continuing his lie! Why? Because now it has been ratified, if not by the TEA Party proper at least by a majority Republican vote. It is now consensus that Romney is the first foe of Obamacare. From where did this vapid madness leak in? It all depends on what the definition of “repeal” is, don’t you see? As serviceable squish Senator from Minnesota, Norm Coleman (R) put it so well, there will be some tinkering about the edges but no, a Romney Administration will not repeal Obamacare. The proposition is absurd. And so it is. Any such action would be only pro-forma, if even that is actually attempted and there is little evidence that there is the desire, much less the will. Obamacare will become Romneycare although perhaps without the reproductive rules lately so offensive to Catholics (and one would presume, Mormons). The individual mandate? That is going nowhere except to be spray-painted.

Willardworld will have socialized medicine. Dandy! I hope the Romney supporters on Medicare/Medicaid/SSI enjoy that. Given their stated principles of responsibility and limited government they should at least not be surprised at the collapse. What will Willardworld NOT have that we might miss? One prominent excision is of Florida Republican Allen West. You have seen this man who first came to national prominence in uniform having interrogated an Iraqi prisoner by shooting a 9mm past his ear. He has practiced the same vigor in office (and let us stipulate that his actions were NOT illegal and were not found to be illegal) doing (political) drive-bys on the Congressional Black Caucus and Democrats, yes, but nearly as often (and with great accuracy) against the grandees, squishes and vested turncoats of the Republican Party. Could it be any surprise that such a man must go? Republicans rule in Florida generally and we have just had a census, as you recall. That means Redistricting. All House districts are re-drawn by the State Legislatures. Now, it is true that districts move with voters from State to State. New York loses seats and Arizona gains. So if the Florida Republicans are phasing out West’s district, and they are, it must be because they have lost seats or lost safe Republican seats due to a gigantic influx of Democrats, right? Oh, wrongo. Florida is gaining seats yet West is singled out for an attack by gerrymander. So be it, West has proven he is not easily dismayed or diswayed. Already he is making arrangements to run in another district with a retiring Republican incumbent. If anything it seems we have a more fiery West as a result, thankfully, but how can you blame this on Mitt Romney? Heck, he isn’t even from Florida! No, and neither is he from Virginia. Did the Virginia Republicans change their ballot rules spontaneously, excluding all candidates but Romney and Paul, in an instance of immaculate policy conception? No. No. Whether they took their orders from a Romney lieutenant or were acting to gain the great man’s eye and favor the result is the same. It is Mitt’s party and you can cry if you want to but if you vote for him anyway it won’t alter things in the slightest. Romney’s Republicans are not simply non-conservatives. They are actively and maliciously ANTI-conservative. If you do not know this, Romnoids, you don’t know much.

Is there an upside? Always, there is. The great virtue of Willardworld succeeding Obamaworld is continuity. Willard follows Obama like night follows day. Do you scoff? Perhaps you got youtubed into one of the President’s finest moments and a mere moment it proved to be. Obama did a very credible if brief bit of crooning in homage to the Rev Al Green and it was an unscripted, genuine touch of humanity. That it was conceived for partisan persuasion is not too relevant. It was not contrived. What was Romney’s response? Why in bloody hell should he HAVE a response? Yet he did, choosing perhaps the only song he knows (and that not well), Willard forced a crowd of supporters to endure his version of the national anthem. That was a conscious enough absurdity but Romney considers Obama his foil, not his adversary. Like Obama Mitt favors gun control but does not speak of it or openly pursue it. Like Obama, Mitt finds little in the Constitution but a barrier to his own just will. Like Obama, Mitt does not engage either foes or facts. Rather he dismisses them or has surrogates write them off the stage. Like Obama, Mitt has a media guard that serves to cement him and his policies in place. Certainly he enjoys less of that than Obama but it is the POLICIES not the personalities that we should concern ourselves with. Mitt is unquestioned on global warming because global warming is unquestionable. Mitt is babied by the media on his lengthy and adamant pro-choice record not for his sake but to safeguard abortion. Mitt is excused his self-dealing from the government trough, meager as it was relatively, not to save his skin but to prevent the general feeding from being disturbed.  It is unclear if the foregoing really attaches to Mitt the Man as opposed to Romney Inc. It seems likely that Romney again apes Obama in his removal and indeed amazement at the realm of policy. Displaying no ideology or principle, Romney forces us to presume that it is mere ambition driving his march forward. Mitt aspires to be a belated but additional First in our Plague of Firsts exemplified by the First Black President (Bill Clinton). Willard Romney intends to be our First Mormon President, a laughable milestone that again is only a fitting of his feet into the footprints of Obama.

THAT is the world we are living in.

The TEA Party is dead.  The corpse of hope has rigor mortis, and is beginning to produce a funky odor.  I write this as a funeral dirge for the light of the right, a remembrance of what was, and a lament for what should have been.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but the fact remains that the TEA Party is done, and its influence has faded like the last flickers from a guttering candle.

I was one of the original TEA Party supporters.  And I mean seriously original.   I participated in the April 15th, 2009 protest (the only real protest the TEA Party ever made, after that it was all about playing a numbers game with the media, sort of a “see how big our rallies are” kind of movement), driving to Memphis, TN, which at 3.5 hours away was the closest major city to my home where a protest was being held.  I attended TEA Party rallies on several other occasions as well, hitting up Little Rock’s event, and the three TEA Party events held in the small town where I live as well.  I donated money, not a lot, but what was donated was sorely needed for food and gas, to the campaigns of TEA Party nominees during the ’10 election cycle.

I checked my kid out of school early one day so we could attend a TEA Party rally at the State Capital in Little Rock and she could learn, at a young age, what it looked like when We the People raised our voices in a peaceful, lawful manner, objecting not with violence, like the left, but with intelligence, logic, reason, and independent thought.

Such a waste.  She’d have been better served by sitting through the other two hours of US public education.

The only “success” my writings have had here on WFTC (if you think success means more than an intellectual/emotional release for me personally) have been when I made pitches for TEA Party PR and Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit graced me with a mention.

It’s actually hard to write this stuff down, you know?  As I sit here and think about how much hope I had invested in the TEA Party, only to see it all crashing down, in the exact same manner I predicted it would fall apart years ago?

Two years ago, I wrote a piece here on WFTC which I titled “A warning to the TEA Party: Beware Republican talking heads” ( LINK ), and in that piece I said the following:

TEA Party voters better not go crawling back to the Republicans or they’ll be in this exact same boat again in 8 or 12 years. It’s nonsense.

Do you realize that this may be the only time you’ll ever hear these talking heads [Limbaugh, Hannity, Rove, O'Reilly, etc -- MM] discourage competition?

Why don’t the Republican die-hards drop their party and vote 100% TEA Party? Why can’t Hannity vote TEA Party? What’s wrong with that? Why do only the TEA Party voters have to switch? Why can’t the entire Republican Party die off? Why can’t Republicans come back to the fold and vote for real conservatives, instead of real conservatives having to give up their convictions to vote for Republican scumbags?

…

The thought of the Dems keeping their majority in November’s elections is a bogeyman. It’s an idea that is there to scare the living day lights out of you so you’ll go running to the GOP. But that premise is a Sorelian myth. It presents you with a false choice. Elect Republicans or the Democrats win.

The GOP is still trying to govern its former base through the politics of fear. The Republican Revival is already on shaky ground in my book, because if they’re still willing to govern the base the same way they did under Bush, I don’t for a split second believe that their goals have changed either.

Look at that, especially the last two paragraphs, and you’ll understand why I feel so hollowed out.

Romney.  Newt.  It’s now essentially a two man race for the Republican nomination for President in 2012 between a Republican who left the Office of Speaker of the House because of ethics investigations and violations, and the guy who is sooooo bad that the GOP nominated John “The Maverick” McCain over him in 2008…

And they’re being advanced in EXACTLY the way I told you they would be.  Through fear.  Through scare tactics.  By Sorelian myths.

From a transcript of Rush’s show earlier this month, “Is It Lesser Of Two Evils Time” :

RUSH: See, that conflicts with everything that we know. Like Winston Churchill, on the other hand, says, “Never, ever, never, never give up.” Dirty Harry says a man’s got to know when to give up.

CALLER: You know, you gotta know what’s evil in front of you.

RUSH: Well, what you’re saying is, “Okay, we gotta figure out here, at some point, if Romney’s the nominee, there’s nothing we can do about that. What’s the objective?” Beating Obama, right?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: And so there’s no alternative to that, if the only alternative to that ends up being Romney, it’s a no-brainer. That’s what you’re saying?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: And you do it with maybe a… You know, you’ll hold your nose but you’ll still do it?

CALLER: Absolutely. You know, I can’t afford four more years of him. So, you know, anybody that we would have would be far better than Obama.

How did this happen?  Where did the “I’m going to examine every candidate and then vote for the one whom I feel is the best, regardless of party” mentality go?  These days, people are rushing to line up behind Newt or Romney with such indecent haste that they’re possibly risking life and limb in their push to join the throngs.  Now it’s “Republican or Die” again, no matter who they’re running, or what candidate stands for?  Just *snap of the fingers*, like that?

As a devout, Ayn Rand loving, objectivist libertarian, I was excited to see so many of the GOP waking up.  I was ecstatic that there might actually be a GOP nominee whom I could vote for with a clear conscience.  I was such an enthusiastic TEA Party supporter because I finally saw the glimmer of a chance that I could join the rest of the conservative base in voting for someone who might actually win an election and do some good for our country.

Big time kick to the cojones.

The TEA Party was supposed to be sick and tired of “Lesser of two evils time”, and was supposed to be refusing to play that game anymore.

Why/How is it that the vaunted TEA Party, which gave the GOP a historic victory in Nov. of 2010, can’t beat the virtually non-existent RINOs insisting on the retreads, Obamney or the Clintonian Newt Gingrich?  How did this collapse of power and influence happen?

By listening to the “conservative” mainstream media, which is reporting only what the GOP establishment wants it to report, that’s how.  Look at the above quote from Rush.  HE’S EQUATING THE SPIRITUAL LEADER OF WW2 WITH A FREAKING STEREOTYPICAL HOLLYWOOD MAKE BELIEVE CHARACTER TO CONVINCE YOU THAT YOU SHOULD “Hold your nose, but … still do it.”

“Hold yer nose and vote for Romney.  It’s what Clint freakin’ Eastwood would want you to do.”

Well thanks, Rush.  Maybe you could use Chuck Norris to sell Romney next?  “Chuck Norris doesn’t do a push up, he pushes the world down, and he’d hold his nose and vote Romney.”

Hey Rush, would you “hold your nose and vote Ron Paul”?  I don’t think so!  So why should any of us listen to you make demands of us that you youself wouldn’t abide by if the situation was flipped around?  That’s the epitome of an abusive relationship, Rush.

“Hold your nose and vote for _____” is EVERYWHERE today.  Glenn Beck will hold his nose and vote for Romney.  After telling us for YEARS that conservatives can no longer afford to vote like that because it’s what led us to our current condition…

Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity are both holding their noses and voting for Romney.

Even the liberals, who don’t really have a horse in this race, are laughing at how biased Fox News is concerning this primary.  From Rachel Maddow in that link to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show in this one.  They are loving this turn of events because 1) It’s destroying Fox News’s credibility with anyone who doesn’t support Newt or Romney, and 2) Because they know Obama will beat either of these candidates.  Running as “I’m not the other guy” has NEVER been successful, right Mr. Kerry?

And Jon Stewart is 100% correct.  If you didn’t pay attention to our loyal, strong conservative blogosphere, you wouldn’t know that Ron Paul was still in the race.  You wouldn’t know that, in a race consisting of Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, and Ron Paul, Ron Paul is only running second in terms of ”electability” when compared to Obama, and is well within the margin of victory usually noted when someone is running against an incumbent.  No, you’d only hear that this is “A two man race.”  from FoxNews, which has thrown objectivity out the freakin’ window for this primary.

What happened to the TEA Party patriots?  The men and women who, just two years ago, were telling everyone how they’d vote third party and follow their convictions, even if it meant losing a few elections here and there, rather than vote for another John McCain and the same old, stale politics which placed our country’s future on the knife edge?

What happened?

The GOP and the co-opted “conservative media” happened.

It has all been carefully plotted to eliminate any threat to the existing power structure.

Think about the primary system the GOP uses.  Where do they go first?  Iowa, a blue state in 2008 with a population density approaching zero and lots of money in farms and ethanol, which require government subsidies just to exist these days.  Second, it’s off to New Hampshire, in the liberal Northeast.  Jump on the plane and jet to South Carolina, home of Sen. Amnesty Graham, poster boy of the RINOs behind McCain for most of the last ten years, for the third election.  Then it’s off to Florida, which, while a “red state”, is packed full of all the old, retired Republicans from the northeast who moved to warmer weather.

This is, and has been for a long time, all carefully scripted, you realize?  The biggest batch of electoral votes amongst the Red States is called “TEXAS”.  Why doesn’t the Texas primary come early?  Why do we get blue and purple state primaries first, and leave the majority of the conservative base silenced and ignored for so long? 

Enter “The Conservative Media”.  Once you examine how they tune up the base, you’ll realize why the GOP has such a ridiculous primary system.

So the establishment candidate can get a few small, but highly publicized, victories under his belt. 

These insignificant victories in fairly rural purple and blue states will be touted for weeks, if not months, before the bulk of the conservative base gets to vote, and they are used to build the image of inevitability for the hand picked, progressive Republicans like Romney and Newt so that when it comes time to vote in Texas, the average Republican voter thinks they have to “hold their nose and vote for Romney” because he’s the only shot at winning, as the lady said to Rush.  Iowa and New Hampshire combined have like 1/10th of the conservatives in them that you can find in two or three counties in Texas or Oklahoma, but they’re blown up and used to make those voters in Texas and Oklahoma think they’d better vote the way the GOP establishment wants them to vote, or else…

If they held the first primaries in Texas and Oklahoma, why, by God, a real conservative might win a few big fights early on and the liberal Republican candidates wouldn’t stand a chance for the remainder of the primaries…

And that isn’t the only trick, either.  Notice how there aren’t any stump speeches in the GOP primary these days?  How it’s all “debate” driven?

Did you ever wonder why that is?

Because if the GOP tried open air forums, they might actually have gotten real people, saying real things and asking real questions of these horrible pieces of shit whom they’ve decided to present to their base.  Could you imagine a Romney speech in a truly free environment?  It’d look like the Health Care Townhalls from 2009.  Angry, disenfranchised conservative voters, 75% of whom hate Romney and want anyone else at all, would be screaming, swearing, and generally making a scene if he EVER tried to get out and interact with the common Arkansan.

Did you see how much grief the “conservative media” gave Obama over his unscripted Joe the Plumber episode?  Newt Gingrich took one look at that and said “Psha, I don’t think so.  I’ve been supporting the individual mandate for 20 years, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them get clips of me being yelled at by an 85 year old man, in a wheelchair, with oxygen assistance, for telling him he’s just going to have to take a pain pill.  Quick, let’s get the networks to stand us all up on stage and lob us softballs about my extra-martial affairs!  I’ve been nailing other women all over the world, and fielding the resulting irrelevant questions, for decades.  I can handle them.”  Sure, he’s running around complaining that the audience at these debates can’t boo or clap, but by golly, he ain’t holdin’ Town Halls, now is he?

The other thing the conservative media has done has been to eliminate discussion of the TEA Party.  Mr. Reynolds gets prognostication points for calling it when he said the #OWS would stop getting press coverage when it became obvious they were hurting Democrats, but we’ve seen the same thing happen in the conservative media following the 2010 elections.  The TEA Party has been virtually ignored in the media, a big reason why I wrote a couple of months ago that the TEA Party needed to hold another rally while the #OWS nonsense was going on.

People tried telling me that was a bad idea, that the TEA Party didn’t need to have a rally, that they were still around, they just needed to be quiet and focus on winning elections…

Ok.  Fine.  Great.  Now we’ve got a two man race between Romney and Newt, with no TEA Party anywhere to be seen, much less heard from, and all of these people who said “Not a good idea” to a TEA Party rally are lining up behind Romney and Newt.  Stellar.  Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy on the insides, huh?

Where is the TEA Party during these primaries???  Actual votes are being cast RIGHT NOW.  I can write that the TEA Party has died because I now have freakin’ empirical evidence that they are all falling right in behind Candidate More-Of-the-Same-Bullshit.

It’s all so incredibly frustrating.  I want to scream, shout, kick, bite, and claw at the walls.  It’s almost enough to make a red blooded conservative want to run out and beat the first GOP politician he comes across with a stick (most likely the dog catcher around these parts, so I am not really advocating this course of action.  Like Animal in the new Muppets movie:   Seeeellllllfffff ccccooonnnntttrrroolllll) .  I’m fairly certain, outside of another magnanimous gesture from someone with a blog people actually read, that no one will ever see this, but I still need to get it off my chest.  All of that work and effort, and it winds up being useless, hell, worse than useless because prior to the TEA Party, the GOP was done for the next 40 years, but now they’re back, and putting the blinders right back on their base.

The more I think about it all, the more I realize that I have lately been considering taking P.J. O’Rourke’s advice and that I should quit voting.  Might as well.  It looks like there isn’t going to be a single worthy candidate for office again in 2012.  If I go vote and the only options open to me are Obama v. Romney/Newt, Mickey Mouse will just be getting another write in ballot.

Our country is screwed, you know?  That which cannot go on forever won’t, and our country cannot exist like this forever.  We’ve run out of time.

Mitt Romney has suffered serial pantsing through the primaries, some of it self-inflicted. Count the Iowa caucuses as an own-goal. If he hadn’t made his puny “win” by eight votes (against Rick Santorum for cripes!) into some sort of historical landslide then his puny loss by thirty-odd votes and the quick-change dealing involved would not have landed with such a thump. The lash bit especially deep as he also played his genuine and unsurprising win in New Hampshire as the second in a streak! And don’t you know that NOBODY has ever won both Iowa and New Hampshire and NOT won the Republican primaries! This factoid suffers explosive decompression when it is likewise understood that none of those gents ever won the general. But Triumphalism is largely the coin of the primary realm. With momentum any uptrend is rideable all the way to the White House, so Mitt was certainly counseled, that is IF he had to be convinced to take his victory lap and did not, as seemed to happen, leave all salaried employees in the dust. We can forgive Willard his enthusiasm perhaps as he was doing it for Dear Old Dad.

Not much is heard about George Romney though he was as prominent a politician back in the Nixon era as, say Chris Christie is today. He made his own mad dash at the White House, then running as the forward-looking Governor of Michigan and riding the Motor City Model of prosperity into the dawn of a new age! Like our current Romney, he was a liberal Republican to say the least, wildly expanding Michigan’s state government and imposing her first income tax, something previous Governors had attempted and failed. Are these the accomplishments to take to a Republican primary? Then as now, “accomplishment” had a cache’ independent of ideological, practical or ethical considerations. Then as now, George’s record of getting Democrats to vote for his plans was counted as virtuous bipartisanship; as if it took hot tongs to get the Johnson crowd to replicate the New Deal at the State House. Regardless of that good foundation for his campaign, it faltered. The most remembered event was an unforced flub by George. In explaining an about-face on Vietnam that took him from a proud proponent of the fight against communism there to a fiery opponent of it as near-treason, he explained that he had been expertly “brain-washed” on a fact-finding junket he and other mucky-mucks had attended. If it weren’t for the bad history, Mitt might employ this gambit to explain his equally abrupt and equally unsourced about-turn on healthcare but the history persists and it is one area of history Mitt knows with a bitter familiarity. The young man was out on that familiar ritual of the Mormons, the biking tour, when he received a Panglossed note, Don’t worry about your mother and I. ‘tsall for the best…. But George and the family harbored grudges and just like in kung fu movies, in politics it falls to the youngest boy.

Is that what drives Willard Mitt Romney? It is impossible to tell but more than fair to so assert. He demonstrates no great principle he feels called to promote. “Pragmatism” is his claim and like his father he forwards his business acumen, proved by his balances, as his foremost asset. His labors on projects that should be anathema to conservatives or Constitutionalists are promoted as examples of his genius and energy. In other words he follows his father’s path just as closely as one could imagine yet he hopes, we presume, for a far different ending. His one notable deviation is encapsulated in his campaign book, one you may indeed judge by its cover. “No Apology”, it is titled and given the singular I think it is safe to say that he has ONE issue in mind and it is healthcare. He will make no diversion. He will accept no blame. Indeed in his view there is nothing to be blamed FOR! In Massachusetts his program, that he stipulates is clearly Unconstitutional at the federal level, has performed to specs. Heck-fire, it has OVER performed! So he states boldly, repeatedly and without fear of contradiction, not least because he had his book edited to muddy the question. If only Rick Perry had called Mitt’s bluff! But even high-level PR gymnastics cannot alter the basic facts; the most stubborn of which is that Mitt’s former satrapy is trapped in a medical quagmire largely of his devising and YES, Masscare is indeed the philosophical germ from which Obamacare has sprung. Is it this contradiction that has brought Romney down to a wan second in the crucial Sunshine State? Yes, and many others. It is too bad Mitt has taken the vindication of his father’s failure so close to the heart. Claiming he was “brainwashed” by medicine-oriented self-dealers would have been more prudent and plausible than what he has done and is doing, which is to simply declare facts to be falsehoods and arrange political chits in defense of  his most aching weak point. Still this is just the summit of his true problem; vacillation, the one his father took to such an absurdity that the early computer industry developed the soft-key, a shorthand to enter the phrase, “Romney later explained…. ” (shft/ctrl R)

If Romney is plagued by the debts of his father, and we thereby plagued with him, this doesn’t reflect any notable, relative defect. It seems like nearly everyone clambering for high office has some sort of Daddy Issues. Anyone with the temerity to wear a Bush t-shirt from, say, 1998 to the present has heard the patented denunciation; well, he just ran to please his father. And probably he did, in some measure. Certainly he did not run to DISplease his father and let us hope that win, lose or draw, Bush the Elder would not have been displeased at least with W. So it can be admitted that at least in part, the highest fliers compete in search of their fathers’ approval. We can say this equally of Newt and Bill Clinton, both of whom had absent biological fathers but dedicated surrogates. Is it too much to think that they run and speak and strive on the high wires to vindicate fathers they never knew as well as father-figures that they did? John Sidney McCain’s family is a naval institution which is most of why he was also. It seems for little more than his father’s good opinion McCain lay in captivity for years when he could have been released. This may have redounded to the good of the country; it is unclear, but absent paternal loyalties it seems McCain would have been in an American hospital long before he actually was. Reagan’s drunk of a father drove Ronnie to industry, to California and to acting. Did he also drive him to high office? It is Al Gore who is the realbleader in the pack of daddy’s boys. His father had the young Al plow up hilly fields with a mule team at a time when a mule had scarcely been seen outside a Founders’ Parade for decades. And why? So that when he ran for President, ostensibly from Tennessee, he could claim that he knew what it was like to do so; a claim more pertinent in the ’60s when the senior Gore might have run. Failing to win the Presidency by failing to win his base of Tennessee, Gore now inhabits a fantasy world where he is nothing so pedestrian as Chief Magistrate. No, he is Savior of the Earth! How do you like that, dad?

It is quite dismaying but no less true that our “leaders” generally are expiating their personal demons, vendettas, insults, accounts and traumas at least as much as they are serving any recognizable national interest. Not all these accusations are created equal however. The common rap on W even to this day is that he “started” the war in Iraq because of Saddam’s attempt to murder Bush Sr in revenge for Desert Storm. This event of course took place on Clinton’s watch. Did he launch an air assault on Baghdad since he doesn’t know who his daddy is? As for Saddam, his entire career of mayhem could quite well be explained, if not excused, by brutalization at the hands (and other extremeties) of his male relations. And we can go back through our history and ancient history finding again and again that the sins or other faults of the fathers are charged to the sons, mostly with the sons’ collusion. For the most part they never are paid, thankfully, but if the Daddy Issue is relevant it is incumbent on the Incumbent as much as any of the challengers.

What are the glaring Daddy Issues of one Barack Hussein Obama? Since the gentleman has offered not one but TWO autobiographies the field is well-sown. Just on the vital statistics we see some points of interest. For one, the ill-documented marriage of his parents took place long after his quasi-documented birth. There is scant evidence that the toddling Barack ever lived with his mother and father as a family. Obama the Senior was a minor apparatchik in his native Kenya whose benefactor was succeded by assassination, eliminating his civil service seniority. According to the most public of facts, Barack Sr. was a bigamist, a socialist, a drunk, a lecher, an abuser of both wives and children and above all, a highly self-destructive man who killed himself with drunken car crashes one leg at a time. And these facts were never secrets from the public or from the maturing Barack Junior, or Barry as he was known when adopted by Lolo Soetero who enrolled him in a school in Indonesia with a muslim curricullum. Mr Soetero’s history seems unblemished except perhaps that he was susceptible to the charms of Stanley Ann Dunham. Can Lolo or Barack Sr be seen in any of the statements, actions or habits of our Barack? It is considered rude to wonder; racist even but we continue. The youthful Barack had nearly a stable of fathers. His mother’s father Stanley Dunham did most of the paternal rearing. He was a communist and had seen that Stanley Ann Dunham had a red elementary school education. Is that of any relevance? Grandfather had a friend who also pitched in on Barack’s reering. This is the “Frank” described in “Dreams from my Father” as a black paternal stand-in. This is the same fellow who wrote an anonymous autobiography called “Sex Rebel: Black” (which was also salciously subtitled). He describes himself as bi-sexual and we could safely call him try-sexual, in that he would try anything; gender roles notwithstanding. Marshall was “down low” before it was cool but just when he was mentoring a pre-teen Barack Jr. In another startling coincidence Marshall recounts what was plainly a statutory rape of a thirteen year old white girl named Ann at about the time and about under the circumstances that would allow Barack’s mother to fill the role. Shall we include recalcitrant Mommy Issues as we do Daddy Issues? We could, to be fair and thorough but even in the ghettos they hesitate, usually, to bring your mother into it.

I never wanted to write an attack piece. As a satirist with a few TV appearance under my belt, I’ve always avoided the type of person-as-the-joke pseudo-commentary you can hear from smirking amateur comics in LA who say things like, “Hey guys, GLENN BECK! Haha!”

Legitimate commentary deconstructs politicians in order to make a point, rather than relying on shared prejudices to get a snicker. But despite my best attempts, the only real point I can think of to make about Newt Gingrich is that he actually is a joke, and he’s one that a shocking number of Americans don’t get.

This is my attempt to explain it to them.

His opinion is for sale.
Gingrich recently criticized Mitt Romney for his role in the buyout industry, saying that private equity work “is not venture capital.” But two years earlier, he had taken $40,000 to deliver a speech praising the private equity industry.

He told NPR’s Melissa Block that TARP was a “very, very bad idea.” He later voted for it. According to Bloomberg News, one of TARP’s primary beneficiaries, Freddie Mac, paid Gingrich’s consulting firm at least $1.6 million.

Gingrich’s career has been full of flip flops that would make for an interesting Gingrich vs. Gingrich debate made of actual quotes. 2011 Gingrich would claim that he “never favored cap and trade,” then 2007 Gingrich would counter that he’d “strongly support” a package with “mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system.”

He is a hypocrite.

Gingrich’s hypocrisy isn’t limited to flip-flopping when it’s convenient to his campaign. In an October debate, when discussing who should be jailed for the economic crash, he said, “Let’s look at the politicians who created the environment, the politicians who profited from the environment.” It seems this would include himself because of the $1.6 million Freddie Mac paid him.

Does this mean Gingrich thinks he should be jailed? Probably not. He’s used to making critical statements that apply to himself. For example, while on a speaking tour to promote family and religious values, Gingrich asked his ex-wife for an “open marriage,” then, when she refused, a divorce, according to her statement to ABC News.

Considering Gingrich’s personal affronts to what conservatives call the “sanctity of marriage,” which include cheating on his wife, getting a mistress, and getting divorced twice, it’s also difficult to take seriously his opposition to same-sex marriage, which the Christian Post reports that he called “a temporary aberration,” saying, “I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

And around the same time Gingrich was both cheating on his wife and loudly criticising Bill Clinton’s moral character, he also became the first Speaker of the House to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich had lied to the ethics panel, attempting to force the committee to dismiss its complaint, according to the Washington Post.

His excuse for cheating on his wife was that he’s passionate about America.
In an interview with CBN, Gingrich excused his infidelity by saying, “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.”

If this excuse is valid, perhaps we should start to question the level of patriotism among the candidates who haven’t cheated on their wives.

He looks like Dwight from “The Office.”

It’s true.

While this is obviously superficial, it could be important in a race against Obama. According to a study published by the Cambridge University Press, candidates who are rated as more attractive have an enormous advantage. The report refers to findings “that snap judgments by research subjects about candidate appearance—that is, perceptions formed by looking only briefly at images of candidates’ faces—correlate with candidates’ actual performance in real-world elections.”

His pants are on fire!
No one should be surprised that Gingrich, a politician, tends to lie a lot, but he has managed to produce some real gems. Of all his blatant lies documented on PolitiFact, my favorite is when he said, “No federal official at any level is currently allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas.’”

Below are some other gems.

• In New York City, “an entry level janitor gets paid twice as much as an entry level teacher.”
• With modern food stamps, “You get a credit card, and the credit card can be used for anything. We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii. They give food stamps now to millionaires…”
• “We spend less on defense today as % of GDP than at any time since Pearl Harbor.”
• “In fact, buried inside Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus package is anti-Christian legislation that will stop churches from using public schools for meeting on Sundays, as well as Boy Scouts and student Bible study groups.”

So what do we make of this?
I never really understood the “Anybody but X” presidential campaign slogan. Even the worst presidents, such as Jimmy Carter and George Bush, must have been better than someone. Surely, there was always some disingenuous, cheating, manipulative, immature, pathological hypocrite who is worse.

Perhaps that someone is Newt Gingrich.

The New York Times opinion page is chock full of benignant thinkers. It’s a roster of such great intellectual depth that, to be honest, I always feel like I’m missing something every time I read them. The lineup is so impressive that it’s difficult to decide exactly which one of them is the most special, but David Brooks recently made a strong case for himself when he made the following important observation about politics and the government:

Sunshinism is a destructive ideology. Forcing people to financially undress in public is just one of those incursions that repels decent people from running for office.

…

It also destroys people’s faith in government. Have you noticed that as democracy has become more open, cynicism has skyrocketed and the effectiveness of government has gone down the toilet? Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has the best observation on this — that parts of government should be hidden for the same reason middle-aged people should wear clothes.

This is a genuinely fascinating insight. The government is what keeps you safe. It makes important decisions for you. It helps people. If there is no faith in the institutions of government, then fear and chaos will spread.

The politicians that we elect run that government. If we don’t have faith in our leaders, then we cannot have faith in the government itself. There is no serious person who wants to live in a world in which we don’t have faith in our leaders to lead us. We will not follow them, if we do not trust them. And, as Mr. Brooks so eloquently points out, as people learn more about their leaders, the less likely they are to place their faith in the government.

It is the brave politician that puts himself up for election in this destructive climate of openness.

This is something that another important modern thinker, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, recently discussed in a post on the CNN website. The New York Times opinion page is arguably the most essential assemblage of thinkers of the modern era, but Mr. Blitzer makes a strong case for inclusion in that group, with his own examination of the tribulations faced by the political class that is trying desperately to lead us:

I know it will probably sound weird, but I admire these politicians who put themselves out there before the American public knowing full well that all their warts will be exposed big time.

Most of them already have lots of money. They could easily coast at this point in their lives and sit back and relax.

…

I’ve seen them in action, and it’s tough. They get up early in the morning and go to sleep late at night. They have to deliver the same stump speech over and over and over again, and then answer an endless amount of often annoying questions at town hall meetings, at diners and from reporters such as me.

As Mr. Blitzer points out, these politicians could easily go on their merry way, without trying to run the government that does so much for us. Instead, they are making personal sacrifices on our behalf. In exchange for this selflessness, they are met with long nights, repetitive speaking engagements, and “annoying questions” from the people they want to lead. It’s difficult to imagine anything more difficult.

As if to provide an example of the very intrusiveness that so many in our political class find inconvenient, at last Thursday night’s presidential debate one of Mr. Blitzer’s CNN colleagues, John King, asked presidential candidate Newt Gingrich a question about some prurient allegations leveled against him  by his ex-wife. Mr. Gingrich responded with lines as eloquent as any ever written by either Mr. Brooks or Mr. Blitzer:

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. And I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

Mr. Gingrich is willing to put in the long days, giving the same speeches over and over again, and answering annoying questions. He is working hard to combat the cynicism that is crippling our country. And his reward? A question about whether or not he might in the past have wanted to have an “open marriage.”

People like John King are ruining this country. People like John King are making this country ungovernable.

This is the same attitude that has opened up the current president for so much cynical criticism. It is fashionable for some people to point out that candidate for president Obama was opposed to wars in the Middle East, but that now he seems to relish them. It’s also fashionable to point out that before he was president, Obama opposed certain elements of the PATRIOT ACT, but as president, signed its extension. To these people, personal growth is not only not a positive quality for our leaders, but it is actually a negative quality, to be criticized. Clearly, since candidate Obama became president Obama he has come to realize the important necessity of drone-bombing those Muslims into submission, and allowing investigators to write their own search warrants all in the name of protecting the askers of “annoying questions.”

It’s as if we’re trying to force decent people away from a life of leadership. Demanding to know ever more personal things about their lives, requiring that they never change their minds… These are absurd requirements that will ultimately punish the country by driving men like Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich away from leadership positions.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine living in a world in which decisions made by politicians like Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama did not directly impact your life? Can you imagine living in a world that was denied the benefit of the leadership of these two incorruptible paragons of virtue? These men, and so many others like them have worked hard to make their mark on the world; it’s selfish of us to deny them the opportunity.

As I write these powerful and emotional words, South Carolina is holding its Republican primary. Some recent polls have shown Newt Gingrich leading the other candidates, despite the venal attacks on his character by the likes of John King. This is welcome news. At the urging of powerful political thinkers like Sarah Palin and Rick Perry, the voters in South Carolina are rejecting the politics of personal destruction. They are rejecting the “incursions” that “repel decent people from running for office.” They are poised to deliver a powerful rebuke to cynicism, and a resounding “stay the course” to our political class, by awarding a victory to Newt Gingrich.