.
The e-mail below from RON PAUL and his CAMPAIGN FOR LIBERTY was sent to me on September 25th.
[http://www.campaignforliberty.com/]
As I write this, the Dow Jones is down, Jones – like by 777 points; the NASDAQ is also down like Jones – nearly 200 points.
Knowing that the lying, egg-suckin', chicken-stealing, gutter trash Socialists in Washington and the lying scum mainstream Wall Street investment media will try to spin this major downturn as being the result of Congress (for once doing something RIGHT and…) not approving the Bailout plan, I’ve decided to post this letter from Ron Paul.
Don’t be fooled AGAIN, you Americonned citizen - recognize the truth THIS TIME. Ron Paul has routinely been portrayed by the mainstream media and mainstream politicians as a screwball, and that ALONE should tell you something: they attack what they fear, and what they fear is The Truth. Here’s The Patriot Paul with The Truth:
Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary.
The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?
Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty,
Ron Paul
Now that you’re pointed in the right direction, make damn sure you also learn what Ron Paul had to say about The Economy and The Iraq War by reading this EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT article from early 2006. He foretold all that we are experiencing!
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html
Afterwards, you really ought to buy, read, and come to understand THIS BOOK, so that the Elite can't take us for a ride again. This is perhaps the single most important political book I've ever read:
[Link:] "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by Griffin
How long are we going to let the lying, unethical, immoral money managers on Wall Street and their pathetic little lap dogs in Washington D.C. treat us like they OWN us?
WAKE UP!
You must KNOW The Truth
BEFORE The Truth can make you free!
[John 8:32]
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Bullwinkle McCain: "WATCH ME PULL A RABBIT OUT OF MY HAT!"
.
Well, hot dog! Chuck Baldwin of The Constitution Party hit the nail fairly squarely on the head. His brief article, “CAN TWO WALK TOGETHER WITHOUT AGREEMENT?” – based on the Amos 3:3 Biblical verse - really goes to the heart of the Sarah Palin selection as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
Mr. Baldwin and I might not see entirely eye-to-eye when it comes to whether or not we believe that Palin is a true and thorough conservative of the limited government, strictly Constitutional, purely patriotic variety, but I don’t find a whole lot to argue with in his assessment. I will say, however, that I believe a “real” conservative (a la Ron Paul) would not want his or her name and reputation sullied by appearing on the same ticket with John McNeocon. (And in an oblique manner, Baldwin even illustrates this point in his article by mentioning the fact that Ron Paul stated he would have been forced to turn down any invitation to run with McNeocon.)
Had I been previously considering casting my vote for McCain (not in a million years! not if you stick a million needles in my eye!), the sheer transparency of his pandering to women generally and more specifically to disgruntled Nurse Hellary Ratched voters by selecting Palin would have turned me off big time. (Sorry, John, I’m not one to fall for the ol’ banana in the tail pipe!) This man is PURE POLITICIAN, while I’m looking for a LEADER and a STATESMAN to occupy the White House.
Mr. Baldwin speculates that:
“The best thing that can happen to Sarah Palin is for John McCain to lose the November election. This would allow her to go into the 2012 elections as perhaps the Republican Presidential frontrunner. If McCain wins in November, and Palin is forced to serve at the pleasure of this globalist insider for four years, she will be forever ruined as a genuine constitutional conservative.”
Now, I can scarcely imagine that Palin would ever be the frontrunner in a future election; she’s getting her 15 minutes of international fame now, strictly for political expediency: put male parts on Palin and you wouldn’t know any more about her today than you did two months ago. Change her gender and she’d be hunting moose in Alaska this afternoon. You know it and I know it! Her selection by McNeocon was, however, a good move from a strictly political point of view: there’s a sucker born every minute and some of ‘em vote. But has Bullwinkle McCain truly pulled a rabbit out of his… uhm… hat? He’s thrown women a bone and it certainly won’t hurt his chances, but is it enough to walk away from what looked to be a brutal beating? I have deep doubts.
And as far as 2012 elections are concerned… color me skeptical – I’m not certain that our country will survive the next four years, regardless of whether it’s McNeocon or B.O. in The Whore House. I believe we’ve reached the beginning of the end.
But hey, enough of my yakking -- I don’t want you reading what I have to say; I only sent out the memo and called this meeting so you could see what Chuck Baldwin of THE CONSTITUTION PARTY has to say. Here’s the link, boys an’ girls:
http://www.constitutionparty.com/news.php?aid=770
Yakkingly Yours . . .
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Well, hot dog! Chuck Baldwin of The Constitution Party hit the nail fairly squarely on the head. His brief article, “CAN TWO WALK TOGETHER WITHOUT AGREEMENT?” – based on the Amos 3:3 Biblical verse - really goes to the heart of the Sarah Palin selection as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
Mr. Baldwin and I might not see entirely eye-to-eye when it comes to whether or not we believe that Palin is a true and thorough conservative of the limited government, strictly Constitutional, purely patriotic variety, but I don’t find a whole lot to argue with in his assessment. I will say, however, that I believe a “real” conservative (a la Ron Paul) would not want his or her name and reputation sullied by appearing on the same ticket with John McNeocon. (And in an oblique manner, Baldwin even illustrates this point in his article by mentioning the fact that Ron Paul stated he would have been forced to turn down any invitation to run with McNeocon.)
Had I been previously considering casting my vote for McCain (not in a million years! not if you stick a million needles in my eye!), the sheer transparency of his pandering to women generally and more specifically to disgruntled Nurse Hellary Ratched voters by selecting Palin would have turned me off big time. (Sorry, John, I’m not one to fall for the ol’ banana in the tail pipe!) This man is PURE POLITICIAN, while I’m looking for a LEADER and a STATESMAN to occupy the White House.
Mr. Baldwin speculates that:
“The best thing that can happen to Sarah Palin is for John McCain to lose the November election. This would allow her to go into the 2012 elections as perhaps the Republican Presidential frontrunner. If McCain wins in November, and Palin is forced to serve at the pleasure of this globalist insider for four years, she will be forever ruined as a genuine constitutional conservative.”
Now, I can scarcely imagine that Palin would ever be the frontrunner in a future election; she’s getting her 15 minutes of international fame now, strictly for political expediency: put male parts on Palin and you wouldn’t know any more about her today than you did two months ago. Change her gender and she’d be hunting moose in Alaska this afternoon. You know it and I know it! Her selection by McNeocon was, however, a good move from a strictly political point of view: there’s a sucker born every minute and some of ‘em vote. But has Bullwinkle McCain truly pulled a rabbit out of his… uhm… hat? He’s thrown women a bone and it certainly won’t hurt his chances, but is it enough to walk away from what looked to be a brutal beating? I have deep doubts.
And as far as 2012 elections are concerned… color me skeptical – I’m not certain that our country will survive the next four years, regardless of whether it’s McNeocon or B.O. in The Whore House. I believe we’ve reached the beginning of the end.
But hey, enough of my yakking -- I don’t want you reading what I have to say; I only sent out the memo and called this meeting so you could see what Chuck Baldwin of THE CONSTITUTION PARTY has to say. Here’s the link, boys an’ girls:
http://www.constitutionparty.com/news.php?aid=770
Yakkingly Yours . . .
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
THERE'S A LITTLE BALLERINA IN ALL OF US . . .
[From the STMcC Archive: 2007, January 14th]
PRODUCT: Carolina 12” Steel-Toed Engineer Boots (Made in U.S.A.)
GRADE: A -
THERE’S A LITTLE BALLERINA IN ALL OF US . . . .
but when you plop these bad boy boots onto the coffee table, crack open your tenth Budweiser, and bellow for your little woman in the next room to keep the chips and dip coming, your Sunday NFL buddies – including that Chicago Bears fan to your right – will never suspect that this applies to you as well.
You know, throughout history, all the coolest people wore boots. Pirates wore them. So did cowboys, miners, and World War I soldiers (man, them doughboys was tough!) Nowadays, motorcycle gangs wear them. John Wayne wore boots. So did Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, and Nancy Sinatra. In fact, some people have been so enamored of boots that they named themselves after them. A few examples are: the original “Nature Boy”, Gypsy Boots; saxmaster, Boots Randolph; and funkmeister, Bootsy Collins. Yeah, when you’re in boots, you’re in good company. But ballerinas NEVER wear boots, and that’s exactly why you should!
These CAROLINA 12” engineer boots come in sturdy black leather (black, it’s the ultimate antiballerina color), and they contain an internal steel-toed covering which means that you’ll never again lose a game of Kick-The-Can to those neighborhood kids; and next Earth Day, when you kick that Greenpeacenik living next door to you in the can, he’ll really get your point. Maybe the best part about these Carolina boots is that they are made in America. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find footwear made in this country? I once wore out three pairs of foreign shoes trying to find one pair of shoes made in the U.S.A.
I’ve been wearing boots for most of my adult life, but I’ll admit that when I switched to these Carolinas, the first couple of days, my dogs were really barking. But after I gave them a day off for loud behavior, they’ve been quiet ever since. Now, until the dye dies, you may find that the tops of these boots leave a black ring around your calves. You can either wear higher socks, or just imagine that the rings are tribal bands tattooed around your lower legs. (Do like I did, and pretend that you’re tattooed and therefore in with “the in crowd” for the first time since “The Summer Of Love.”)
I actually prefer the cowboy boot style to the engineer design, but until I can locate a good American-made cowboy boot with a durable, oil resistant polyurethane outsole, I’ll stick with these cool Carolinas. I was so happy to find these boots and I dig them so much that I feel like breaking out into a pirouette. . . .
“Hey, watch it, fella! Can’t ya see I’m dancin’ here?”
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
PRODUCT: Carolina 12” Steel-Toed Engineer Boots (Made in U.S.A.)
GRADE: A -
THERE’S A LITTLE BALLERINA IN ALL OF US . . . .
but when you plop these bad boy boots onto the coffee table, crack open your tenth Budweiser, and bellow for your little woman in the next room to keep the chips and dip coming, your Sunday NFL buddies – including that Chicago Bears fan to your right – will never suspect that this applies to you as well.
You know, throughout history, all the coolest people wore boots. Pirates wore them. So did cowboys, miners, and World War I soldiers (man, them doughboys was tough!) Nowadays, motorcycle gangs wear them. John Wayne wore boots. So did Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, and Nancy Sinatra. In fact, some people have been so enamored of boots that they named themselves after them. A few examples are: the original “Nature Boy”, Gypsy Boots; saxmaster, Boots Randolph; and funkmeister, Bootsy Collins. Yeah, when you’re in boots, you’re in good company. But ballerinas NEVER wear boots, and that’s exactly why you should!
These CAROLINA 12” engineer boots come in sturdy black leather (black, it’s the ultimate antiballerina color), and they contain an internal steel-toed covering which means that you’ll never again lose a game of Kick-The-Can to those neighborhood kids; and next Earth Day, when you kick that Greenpeacenik living next door to you in the can, he’ll really get your point. Maybe the best part about these Carolina boots is that they are made in America. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find footwear made in this country? I once wore out three pairs of foreign shoes trying to find one pair of shoes made in the U.S.A.
I’ve been wearing boots for most of my adult life, but I’ll admit that when I switched to these Carolinas, the first couple of days, my dogs were really barking. But after I gave them a day off for loud behavior, they’ve been quiet ever since. Now, until the dye dies, you may find that the tops of these boots leave a black ring around your calves. You can either wear higher socks, or just imagine that the rings are tribal bands tattooed around your lower legs. (Do like I did, and pretend that you’re tattooed and therefore in with “the in crowd” for the first time since “The Summer Of Love.”)
I actually prefer the cowboy boot style to the engineer design, but until I can locate a good American-made cowboy boot with a durable, oil resistant polyurethane outsole, I’ll stick with these cool Carolinas. I was so happy to find these boots and I dig them so much that I feel like breaking out into a pirouette. . . .
“Hey, watch it, fella! Can’t ya see I’m dancin’ here?”
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
SET THE PRESIDENTIAL "WAYBAC MACHINE" TO 1885
.
Speaking of the presidency (which I was just doing below in my August 14th post entitled “IT’S SIX OF OBAMA, HALF A DOZEN OF McCAIN”), I’ve decided to retain this theme for at least one more installment here.
Just the other day, I pulled out an old back issue of The New American magazine (May 26, 1997; Vol. 13, No. 11) and read the interesting column on page 28 under the heading of “Ranking Presidents.” Here’s what TNA printed:
The New York Times Magazine for December 15, 1996 reported the results of a poll of modern historians who were asked to rank our presidents. Writing in the Free Market newsletter for March 1997, Robert Higgs, research director for the Independent Institute and editor of the Independent Review, notes that “all but one of the presidents ranked as Great or Near Great had an intimate association with war, either in office or by reputation before taking office.” In contrast, “of the eleven presidents ranked as Below Average or Failure, all but one (Nixon) managed to keep the nation at peace during their terms in office…”
Higgs believes that the best President during the past century may have been Grover Cleveland, who served from 1893-’97. Higgs comments: “He kept the country at peace. He respected the Constitution, acknowledging that the national government has only a limited mission to perform and shaping his policies accordingly. He fought to lower tariffs, preserved the gold standard in its time of crisis, and restored order forcibly when hoodlums disturbed the peace on a wide front during the great railroad strike of 1894.”
George Washington also ranks high with Higgs (as he did with the historians), in part because he “prescribed the sensible foreign policy, later slandered as ‘isolationism,’ that served our nation well for more than a century.” Of the presidents since Cleveland, Higgs ranks Calvin Coolidge highest, noting, “He sponsored sharp tax cuts and greatly reduced the national debt.”
Higgs reserves the other end of the spectrum for “Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson,” whom he believes belong at the bottom “for their statist economic policies as well as their supremely catastrophic war policies.” Scandal and corruption are reprehensible to be sure, and have tainted most administrations to some degree, but such factors “pale by comparison to the damage presidential policy decisions have wreaked.”
The Constitution, Higgs writes, suffered damage during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration “that none of his successors has repaired and most have made worse. Certainly since 1932 – and, one might argue, since 1896 – no President has been true to his oath of office.”
Higgs recalls that the “people who ratified the original Constitution never intended the Presidency to be a powerful office spawning ‘great men,’ ” since the “Presidency was intended to be a largely ceremonial position whose occupant would confine himself to enforcing federal laws.” But over time, “abruptly during Lincoln’s Presidency and progressively during the twentieth century, presidents seized more and more power.”
Higgs concludes with the observation that “American liberty will never be reestablished so long as elites and masses alike look to the President to perform supernatural feats and therefore tolerate his virtually unlimited exercise of power. Until we can restore limited, constitutional government in this country, God save us from great presidents.” (Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, AL. 36849) -- Robert W. Lee
I’m sure that Mayberry’s barber, Floyd Lawson, would have been pleased to learn that Higgs had relatively positive things to say about Floyd’s favorite President, Calvin Coolidge.
Here are a couple of other interesting facts about President Grover Cleveland that went unmentioned in the TNA article:
Cleveland is notable for having been the only President in U.S. history to have served two terms in office nonconsecutively: he was both our 22nd and 24th President, serving from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897. Interestingly, Cleveland was also the only President to marry while in office – he was sworn in as a bachelor (i.e., a very smart man!) in 1885, but married his 21-year old bride a year later.
And did you know that the Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after the famous homer-hitting baseball player Babe Ruth, but was actually named after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth, who unfortunately passed away in her early teens? I learned that sweet fact last May 15th from the 2008 “Fact Or Crap Calendar.”
[*Thanks again, Aard!]
Unlike Barber Floyd’s choice, Calvin Coolidge is not my favorite President. My own favorite is Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson. Although he was certainly a flawed man in some significant ways, and his administration made some egregious errors, I love Jackson for the monumentally ferocious and extremely important stand he took against America’s central bank. For that alone, every American owed Jackson a great debt of gratitude. It’s too bad that We, the American People, weren’t intelligent enough to honor Jackson’s tremendous victory by ensuring that a central bank was never installed in this country again. In the Federal Reserve System, we have exactly the very disease that “Old Hickory” fought so hard to destroy and heal our country from.
.
To put in my six cents (what with inflation an’ all) in regards to the worst President of all-time, without hesitation, I bestow that dubious honor on Woodrow Wilson. This country has never recovered and never will recover from the disastrous long-term (i.e., “permanent”) effects of “The Wilson Wreckage.” Picking up right where Wilson left off, I reserve the number two spot on my Bad Presidents list for FDR (“Frankly, Destructive Revolution”). After that, it’s anybody’s guess where Carter, Clinton and “W” fit in, but they unquestionably occupy high positions on this low list.
OK, so maybe we really haven’t had a decent president in over one hundred years. That doesn’t mean that our NEXT “Fearless Leader” (there’s another Rocky & Bullwinkle reference for ya) won’t adhere to the principles of our Founding Fathers. There’s no reason for us to be pessimistic and automatically dismiss the idea that Barack Obama or John McCain will reinstitute Constitutional principles like smaller federal government, sound economic structure, noninterventionist foreign policy and a respect for states’ rights and personal liberty. There’s every reason to be optimistic about the possibility of turning this country around and reversing our downward social, moral and economic trajectory. We can improve things, I just know we can. I’ve got it, kids! Let’s put on a show! (Oh, wait, that’s all this 2008 election process is, isn’t it?)
Ya know, all we really need is for “B.O.” or “John McNeocon” to take their oath of office seriously (i.e., to really mean it when they swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic); all we really need is for our future president to eschew his egopolitical leanings in favor of Constitutional Republican statesman-like qualities, and all will be well. If B.O. or McNeocon have less elitist proclivities than we suspect [Cough!-Cough!] and possess more honesty and genuine interest in The American Way than we believe, then we kids are going to be alright.
Yeah, and if dogs wallowed in troughs they’d be pigs. And if pigs had wings they’d be flies. And if flies could vote they’d be U.S. citizens. And if U.S. citizens voted for Obama or McCain they’d be dirty dogs. And if dirty dogs wallowed in troughs . . . Awww, it’s a vicious cycle. Let’s just admit it: we’re screwed like Steven Spielberg in the deep waters of divorce court versus Amy “Jaws” Irving. No matter what, our next president will - at the very least - cost us an arm and a leg.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
[Mo’ Presidential Yak below…]
.
Speaking of the presidency (which I was just doing below in my August 14th post entitled “IT’S SIX OF OBAMA, HALF A DOZEN OF McCAIN”), I’ve decided to retain this theme for at least one more installment here.
Just the other day, I pulled out an old back issue of The New American magazine (May 26, 1997; Vol. 13, No. 11) and read the interesting column on page 28 under the heading of “Ranking Presidents.” Here’s what TNA printed:
The New York Times Magazine for December 15, 1996 reported the results of a poll of modern historians who were asked to rank our presidents. Writing in the Free Market newsletter for March 1997, Robert Higgs, research director for the Independent Institute and editor of the Independent Review, notes that “all but one of the presidents ranked as Great or Near Great had an intimate association with war, either in office or by reputation before taking office.” In contrast, “of the eleven presidents ranked as Below Average or Failure, all but one (Nixon) managed to keep the nation at peace during their terms in office…”
Higgs believes that the best President during the past century may have been Grover Cleveland, who served from 1893-’97. Higgs comments: “He kept the country at peace. He respected the Constitution, acknowledging that the national government has only a limited mission to perform and shaping his policies accordingly. He fought to lower tariffs, preserved the gold standard in its time of crisis, and restored order forcibly when hoodlums disturbed the peace on a wide front during the great railroad strike of 1894.”
George Washington also ranks high with Higgs (as he did with the historians), in part because he “prescribed the sensible foreign policy, later slandered as ‘isolationism,’ that served our nation well for more than a century.” Of the presidents since Cleveland, Higgs ranks Calvin Coolidge highest, noting, “He sponsored sharp tax cuts and greatly reduced the national debt.”
Higgs reserves the other end of the spectrum for “Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson,” whom he believes belong at the bottom “for their statist economic policies as well as their supremely catastrophic war policies.” Scandal and corruption are reprehensible to be sure, and have tainted most administrations to some degree, but such factors “pale by comparison to the damage presidential policy decisions have wreaked.”
The Constitution, Higgs writes, suffered damage during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Administration “that none of his successors has repaired and most have made worse. Certainly since 1932 – and, one might argue, since 1896 – no President has been true to his oath of office.”
Higgs recalls that the “people who ratified the original Constitution never intended the Presidency to be a powerful office spawning ‘great men,’ ” since the “Presidency was intended to be a largely ceremonial position whose occupant would confine himself to enforcing federal laws.” But over time, “abruptly during Lincoln’s Presidency and progressively during the twentieth century, presidents seized more and more power.”
Higgs concludes with the observation that “American liberty will never be reestablished so long as elites and masses alike look to the President to perform supernatural feats and therefore tolerate his virtually unlimited exercise of power. Until we can restore limited, constitutional government in this country, God save us from great presidents.” (Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, AL. 36849) -- Robert W. Lee
I’m sure that Mayberry’s barber, Floyd Lawson, would have been pleased to learn that Higgs had relatively positive things to say about Floyd’s favorite President, Calvin Coolidge.
Here are a couple of other interesting facts about President Grover Cleveland that went unmentioned in the TNA article:
Cleveland is notable for having been the only President in U.S. history to have served two terms in office nonconsecutively: he was both our 22nd and 24th President, serving from 1885 to 1889, and again from 1893 to 1897. Interestingly, Cleveland was also the only President to marry while in office – he was sworn in as a bachelor (i.e., a very smart man!) in 1885, but married his 21-year old bride a year later.
And did you know that the Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after the famous homer-hitting baseball player Babe Ruth, but was actually named after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth, who unfortunately passed away in her early teens? I learned that sweet fact last May 15th from the 2008 “Fact Or Crap Calendar.”
[*Thanks again, Aard!]
Unlike Barber Floyd’s choice, Calvin Coolidge is not my favorite President. My own favorite is Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson. Although he was certainly a flawed man in some significant ways, and his administration made some egregious errors, I love Jackson for the monumentally ferocious and extremely important stand he took against America’s central bank. For that alone, every American owed Jackson a great debt of gratitude. It’s too bad that We, the American People, weren’t intelligent enough to honor Jackson’s tremendous victory by ensuring that a central bank was never installed in this country again. In the Federal Reserve System, we have exactly the very disease that “Old Hickory” fought so hard to destroy and heal our country from.
.
To put in my six cents (what with inflation an’ all) in regards to the worst President of all-time, without hesitation, I bestow that dubious honor on Woodrow Wilson. This country has never recovered and never will recover from the disastrous long-term (i.e., “permanent”) effects of “The Wilson Wreckage.” Picking up right where Wilson left off, I reserve the number two spot on my Bad Presidents list for FDR (“Frankly, Destructive Revolution”). After that, it’s anybody’s guess where Carter, Clinton and “W” fit in, but they unquestionably occupy high positions on this low list.
OK, so maybe we really haven’t had a decent president in over one hundred years. That doesn’t mean that our NEXT “Fearless Leader” (there’s another Rocky & Bullwinkle reference for ya) won’t adhere to the principles of our Founding Fathers. There’s no reason for us to be pessimistic and automatically dismiss the idea that Barack Obama or John McCain will reinstitute Constitutional principles like smaller federal government, sound economic structure, noninterventionist foreign policy and a respect for states’ rights and personal liberty. There’s every reason to be optimistic about the possibility of turning this country around and reversing our downward social, moral and economic trajectory. We can improve things, I just know we can. I’ve got it, kids! Let’s put on a show! (Oh, wait, that’s all this 2008 election process is, isn’t it?)
Ya know, all we really need is for “B.O.” or “John McNeocon” to take their oath of office seriously (i.e., to really mean it when they swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic); all we really need is for our future president to eschew his egopolitical leanings in favor of Constitutional Republican statesman-like qualities, and all will be well. If B.O. or McNeocon have less elitist proclivities than we suspect [Cough!-Cough!] and possess more honesty and genuine interest in The American Way than we believe, then we kids are going to be alright.
Yeah, and if dogs wallowed in troughs they’d be pigs. And if pigs had wings they’d be flies. And if flies could vote they’d be U.S. citizens. And if U.S. citizens voted for Obama or McCain they’d be dirty dogs. And if dirty dogs wallowed in troughs . . . Awww, it’s a vicious cycle. Let’s just admit it: we’re screwed like Steven Spielberg in the deep waters of divorce court versus Amy “Jaws” Irving. No matter what, our next president will - at the very least - cost us an arm and a leg.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
[Mo’ Presidential Yak below…]
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Thursday, August 14, 2008
IT'S SIX OF OBAMA, HALF A DOZEN OF McCAIN
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It’s just so dispiriting when I reflect on the fact that for the first time in quite awhile, the American People actually had a genuine opportunity to elect a man to the office of president who would have represented REAL “Change” and who would have attempted to make meaningful reforms in our seriously corrupted un-Constitutional form of government, but the voters let this golden opportunity slip away like a pickpocket at Oktoberfest. The man, the patriot, the doctor was “in” – Doctor RON PAUL – the moment was there – NOW! – all we lacked was the intelligence to “seize the day.” (And… uhm… well, when I say “we”, you know I don’t really mean “me”, don’t you? You know I mean “you”, right?)
Does anyone even recall that the United States Constitution proclaims itself to be “the supreme law of the land”? I have a great T-shirt that I bought via mail order and have worn for many years. It reads:
U. S. CONSTITUTION *
*Void where prohibited by law
The American People had a chance to nominate and then elect a candidate, an actual doctor, who had clearly diagnosed America’s ills (multiple forms of un-Constitutional collectivism), and who knew how to treat the diseased body (return to small, Constitutional government and free enterprise Capitalism – concepts that we haven’t even been within shouting distance of since prior to 1913), but for the six hundred and sixty-sixth trillionth and one half time, the American People were hoodwinked by the mainstream media, and instead of voting for authentic and much needed change, the Americans will once again go with the status quo: they will elect either Barack “Change-Rn’t-Really-Us” Obama or John “Old Man, Old Ways” McCain. Unless the unexpected happens, Obama will be our next president, but either way, we can expect a further slide into Orwellian Big Brother Socialism and our Brave New World. (“Brave New Nineteen Eighty-Four” y’all. Otherwise known as “2008 And Beyond.”)
Oh, boy howdy, what choices we have: you can have your brother’s cake and eat it too, with the radical high tax Socialism of “Mr. Change”, or you can vote for Neoconservative George W. McCain and get your Big Government Socialism shoved down your throat all the while you’re being lied to and told that it actually represents “smaller government Conservatism.” But if you’re no smarter than Republicans have shown themselves to be since long before the Ronald Reagan era, you won’t know the difference anyhow, so just swallow the socialistic s##t ‘n’ smile.
Yeah, the po’ American People have grown weary of Neocon Republicanism, so they’re going to vote “Change” this year and give the United States something that more closely resembles… uh… well, William Clintonism. Contemplating the 2008 presidential election and the response of the Americonned People, it brings to mind my most frequently quoted Bible verse: "As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." (Proverbs 26:11). Please, Sir, may I have another serving of that “Change” that we’ve become so familiar with? Sure, it tastes terrible, but it’s the only flavor I can even imagine anymore.
The non-fool who has been living here in the U.S. for the last 25 years or so, would have noticed by now that it makes no difference whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat occupying the White House because either way, American Life continues to deteriorate. George Wallace once remarked that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the candidates offered by the Republican and Democrat parties, and he was, and remains, right about that. What we have here is a classic case of Dumb And Dumber. I’ll leave it to you to determine which is which. (Actually, the Dumb-O-Crats are dumber than the Repugnantcans but the difference is so inconsequential as to hardly be worth mentioning. There’s not a dollar’s worth of difference in their intelligence – which is really about a dime when factoring in the inflation since Wallace’s 15 minutes of time in the sun.)
In the cover story “Apples To Oranges?” of the July 21st issue of The New American magazine, writer Charles Scaliger accurately says in comparing the proposed policies of Obama to McCain that the presidential contenders have “been winnowed down to two polished posers who offer the American public, yet again, not a choice but an echo.” And I’ll add that even a few of the seeming differences are just a matter of “telling the necessary lies” in order to appease the targeted constituency. For example, those folks who really believe that Obama will recall the troops from Iraq are setting themselves up for a major disappointment: if he ever truly does pull them out of Iraq it will only be to establish them somewhere else in the Middle East. Whether you elect Obama or McCain, the soldiers are not coming home anytime soon, so just get used to the idea!
The most important but least understood point that Scaliger made in his article is the fact that since at least the 1930s, both major political parties and party candidates have been controlled by a semi-secret organization of (now) over 4,000 Elite Establishment Insiders known as the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR). [If you think this is nonsense, click the link at the bottom of this Blog Bit.] The CFR was founded by a man who stated in print that he basically believed in “Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx.” Scaliger tells us that of the 13 members of Obama’s Senior Working Group on National Security, 8 of them are CFR members, while one is a former member. “Mr. Change” also has CFR advisors on national finance and economics. As for John McCain, not only is McCain himself a CFR member, but he has at least 12 CFR members advising him. But here’s the real kicker: One of Obama’s foreign policy CFR advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski was not only Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor, but he worked in a similar capacity for JOHN McCAIN during McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign!
That is such a remarkably telling fact that I am going to repeat it for the benefit of my Dumb-O-Crat readers who traditionally excel more in emotional idealism than they do in realism and logic:
One of Obama’s foreign policy CFR advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski was not only Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor, but he worked in a similar capacity for JOHN McCAIN during McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign!
OK, now ask yourself, how much “Change” do you REALLY think you can expect by electing Barack Obama to the presidency? You’re being swindled again, boys and girls! It’s the same old story, the same old song and dance with all The Usual Suspects! Yeah, “Change” my a##! The candidates are employing all the usual advisors, but they are telling you to expect big Changes. Boy, do they think you’re stupid! (Are you?)
As if that wasn’t enough, it has been reported (and is almost assuredly true) that Obama was given a place at the table at the last Bilderberger meeting. In case you’re unaware, the Bilderbergers are another powerful international cabal of Elites very concerned about the well-being of you, the little guy in America….. WRONG!
If all of this is news to you, then you need to admit that you are simply an uneducated voter destined to vote for what you guess to be “the lesser of two evils.” However, maybe you should consider that given but two choices, even monkeys could pick the lesser of two evils 50% of the time, and regardless of whether or not we discount the ballots with hanging chads.
The American People like to promote the idea that they support the underdog, but this is mostly a lie; the American People, more than anything, love a “winner.” You disagree? See if you can count the number of new hats, jerseys, and bumper stickers that will suddenly manifest in celebration of the team that wins the next World Series, Super Bowl and NBA Championship. If every person who said that they’d like to have voted for Ron Paul but couldn’t because they thought he had no chance of winning, had in fact voted for him regardless, he might very well have made the Republican race quite interesting. Paul did extraordinarily well (“frighteningly well” to the Establishment Elites) in the preprimary straw polls, but when it came time to cast real votes, Americans chose to side with “pure politicians” instead, so long as they were convinced that their vote had a reasonably good chance of making a victor of their “lesser evil”, and making a winner of themselves by association in the process.
Meanwhile, I had reregistered from Independent to Repugnantcan solely in order to be allowed to vote for Ron Paul in the Arizona primary. (I have since reverted to an Independent, and will vote for Dr. Paul a second time in November’s general election by writing his name on my ballot; I refuse to vote for “evil”, lesser evil or otherwise – I value my vote much too highly to “waste” it like that. You want MY vote? You have to be worthy of MY vote.)
A friend of mine recently said in an e-mail that he figured he agreed with my theological positions 97.995% of the time. I responded: But that 97.995% is just a "rough estimate", right? Well, that's not bad. That's about the rate in which I agree with Ron Paul's positions.
About two months ago, I read Doctor Paul’s bestselling April 2008 book “THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO” (don’t leave for the voting booth without it!) and I was pleasantly impressed by how well he – in just 170 small pages - was able to explain to a wide audience his positions on many important political issues. (In my opinion, it was a campaign blunder that this book wasn’t published much earlier.) Now I am going to post several excerpts from Ron Paul’s book “THE REVOLUTION” to illustrate what sort of AUTHENTIC CHANGES the American People could have hoped for if they had been smart enough to nominate and then elect The Good Doctor to the presidency:
Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us “change,” and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, “change” always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.
Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that’s the one option Americans are never permitted to hear.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page ix]
With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multitrillion-dollar promises of “free” goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in – this is not a misprint – 130 countries around the world. … Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion. … Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page x]
Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive wars against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this social policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken away by an income tax or a national sales tax? The shared assumptions behind these questions, on the other hand, are never cast in doubt, or even raised. And anyone who wants to ask different questions or who suggests that the questions as framed exclude attractive, humane alternatives, is ipso facto excluded from mainstream discussion.
And so every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 1]
The war in Iraq was one of the most ill-considered, poorly planned, and just plain unnecessary military conflicts in American history, and I opposed it from the beginning. But the beginning I am speaking of was not 2002 or 2003. As early as 1997 and 1998, shortly after my return to Congress after a dozen years back in my medical practice, I spoke out against the actions of the Clinton administration, which I believed was moving us once again toward war with Iraq. I believe the genesis of our later policy was being set at that time. Many of the same voices who then demanded that the Clinton administration attack Iraq later demanded that the Bush administration attack Iraq, exploiting the tragedy of September 11 to bring about their long-standing desire to see an American invasion of that country.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 21]
I oppose all foreign aid on principle… Foreign aid is not only immoral, since it involves the forced transfer of wealth, but it is also counterproductive, as a ceaseless stream of scholarship continues to show. Foreign aid has been a disaster in Africa, delaying sound economic reforms and encouraging wastefulness and statism. … Now, while free trade should be embraced, foreign aid should be absolutely rejected. Constitutional, moral, and practical arguments compel such a view. Constitutional authorization for such programs is at best dubious. Morally, I cannot justify the violent seizure of property from Americans in order to redistribute that property to a foreign government – and usually one that is responsible for the appalling material condition of its people. Surely we can agree that Americans ought not to be doing forced labor on behalf of other regimes, and that is exactly what foreign aid is.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Pages 34 & 99]
We have had troops in Korea for over five and a half decades. We have had troops in Europe and Japan for about as long. How many years is enough? An American presence in these places was supposed to be temporary, persisting only during the military emergencies that were cited as justification for bringing them there. Milton Friedman was right: there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” government program.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 37]
Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue. But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own. A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 39]
(NOTE: I personally would argue that very frequently, creating international chaos and domestic impoverishment is EXACTLY the goal of our government’s operations. A long story which I have briefly addressed elsewhere. ~STMcC)
According to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not delegated to the federal government by the states (in Article 1, Section 8) and not prohibited to the states in the Constitution (in Article 1, Section 10) are reserved to the states or to the people.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 44]
One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn’t there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was. …
If we can be so callous as to refer to a growing child in a mother’s womb as a parasite, I fear for our country’s future all the more. …
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that that is an excellent argument for world government – for how can we allow individual COUNTRIES to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yet the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Pages 59-61]
(NOTE: Like Dr. Paul, I am strongly Pro-Life, yet I do not feel that his position on this issue goes far enough. However, I do suspect he is basing his view upon the word “achievable” and I respect that. ~STMcC)
If our government were scrupulously faithful to the Constitution,we would not need to be especially concerned when a person who represents a philosophy different from our own takes political office. Our Constitution delegates relatively few tasks to the federal government.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 66]
Economic freedom is based on a simple moral rule: everyone has a right to his or her life and property, and no one has the right to deprive anyone of these things. To some extent, everyone accepts this principle. For instance, anyone going to his neighbor’s home and taking his money at gunpoint, regardless of all the wonderful, selfless things he promised to do with it, would be promptly arrested as a thief. But for some reason it is is considered morally acceptatble when government does that very thing. We have allowed government to operate according to its own set of moral rules. …
What if we stopped doing things we would consider morally outrageous if done by private individuals but that we consider perfectly all right when carried out by government in the name of “public policy”?
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 69 & 70]
Some Americans appear to believe that there would be no arts in America were it not for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an institution created in 1965. They cannot imagine things being done any other way, even though they WERE done another way throughout our country’s existence, and throughout most of mankind’s history. … NEA funds go not necessarily to the best artists, but to people who happen to be good at filling out government grant applications. I have my doubts that the same people populate both categories.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 75]
But if we want more economc freedom and a healthy and robust economy, serious inroads need to be made into federal spending. Otherwise, tax cuts will simply lead to more borrowing, more inflation, and the continued decline of the dollar. As I write, we are paying about $1.4 billion every day just for the interest on the national debt. Because our government refuses to live within its means, every single day we spend $1.4 billion and receive absolutely nothing in return.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 81]
Central economic planning has been as discredited as any idea can possibly be. But even though we point to our devotion to the free market, at the same time we centrally plan our monetary system, the very heart of the economy. Americans must reject the notion that one man, whether Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, or any other chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, can know what the proper money supply and interest rates ought to be. Only the market can determine that. Americans must learn this lesson if we want to avoid continuous and deeper recessions and to get the economy growing in a healthy and sustainable fashion.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 147]
What other policy for sheltering Americans from the collapse of the dollar is being advanced? Is there any, apart from comfortable delusions that the Federal Reserve, which is itself responsible for our financial mess, can be trusted to put everything right? For one thing, how can we be expected to place so much trust in a Federal Reserve System we’re not even allowed to audit? And even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him (no mattter who he is), what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 155]
A federal Department of Education, for example, is an insult to the American people, who are more than capable of running their own schools without being looted to support a national education bureaucracy. We would get by just fine without it, as indeed Americans did for most of the twentieth century, a period when – by just coincidence? – the population was far better educated than it is now. In fact, given the Department of Education’s sorry record, if I truly opposed learning and knowledge I would propose tripling its budget.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 162]
We also need to begin to restore monetary freedom, which means that Americans should be free, if they wish, to engage in transactions and contracts denominated in gold and silver. It is essential that Americans be able to protect themselves in this way against any coming monetary disaster that would leave them holding valueless dollar bills. No one in politics or the media even talks about this issue, so you know it must be important.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 162]
You realize, of course, any book that manages to mention Wile E. Coyote in a chapter dedicated to an examination of economics is a book YOU HAVE GOT TO READ, right? Many more succinctly stated and plainly illustrated important political/social considerations are awaiting the person who picks up a copy of Doctor Ron Paul’s “THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO.”
Unfortunately, however, Ron Paul will not be president of the United States, and regardless of which of the two S.O.Bamas get elected, the Black one or the White one, our next president will swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and then not only will he turn right around and uphold all of our current un-Constitutional, liberty-usurping Federal programs, but over the next four years, he will contribute to putting even more of them on the books! Oh, Johnny B. No Goode, and Barack B. Worse. Or vice versa. Whatever.
We may not know just yet which of these two major political party candidates will win the presidential election in November, but one thing, however, is certain: The more things O’Change, the more they’ll stay the McSame.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Related Links:
Ron Paul on the Economy & Iraq War ("Must-Read!") :
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html
Comparing Obama’s & McCain’s proposed policies:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/8603
Apples To Oranges?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/166-apples-to-oranges
More about the Council On Foreign Relations:
http://xtremelyun-pcandunrepentant.blogspot.com/2008/06/stop-being-useful-idiot.html
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It’s just so dispiriting when I reflect on the fact that for the first time in quite awhile, the American People actually had a genuine opportunity to elect a man to the office of president who would have represented REAL “Change” and who would have attempted to make meaningful reforms in our seriously corrupted un-Constitutional form of government, but the voters let this golden opportunity slip away like a pickpocket at Oktoberfest. The man, the patriot, the doctor was “in” – Doctor RON PAUL – the moment was there – NOW! – all we lacked was the intelligence to “seize the day.” (And… uhm… well, when I say “we”, you know I don’t really mean “me”, don’t you? You know I mean “you”, right?)
Does anyone even recall that the United States Constitution proclaims itself to be “the supreme law of the land”? I have a great T-shirt that I bought via mail order and have worn for many years. It reads:
U. S. CONSTITUTION *
*Void where prohibited by law
The American People had a chance to nominate and then elect a candidate, an actual doctor, who had clearly diagnosed America’s ills (multiple forms of un-Constitutional collectivism), and who knew how to treat the diseased body (return to small, Constitutional government and free enterprise Capitalism – concepts that we haven’t even been within shouting distance of since prior to 1913), but for the six hundred and sixty-sixth trillionth and one half time, the American People were hoodwinked by the mainstream media, and instead of voting for authentic and much needed change, the Americans will once again go with the status quo: they will elect either Barack “Change-Rn’t-Really-Us” Obama or John “Old Man, Old Ways” McCain. Unless the unexpected happens, Obama will be our next president, but either way, we can expect a further slide into Orwellian Big Brother Socialism and our Brave New World. (“Brave New Nineteen Eighty-Four” y’all. Otherwise known as “2008 And Beyond.”)
Oh, boy howdy, what choices we have: you can have your brother’s cake and eat it too, with the radical high tax Socialism of “Mr. Change”, or you can vote for Neoconservative George W. McCain and get your Big Government Socialism shoved down your throat all the while you’re being lied to and told that it actually represents “smaller government Conservatism.” But if you’re no smarter than Republicans have shown themselves to be since long before the Ronald Reagan era, you won’t know the difference anyhow, so just swallow the socialistic s##t ‘n’ smile.
Yeah, the po’ American People have grown weary of Neocon Republicanism, so they’re going to vote “Change” this year and give the United States something that more closely resembles… uh… well, William Clintonism. Contemplating the 2008 presidential election and the response of the Americonned People, it brings to mind my most frequently quoted Bible verse: "As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." (Proverbs 26:11). Please, Sir, may I have another serving of that “Change” that we’ve become so familiar with? Sure, it tastes terrible, but it’s the only flavor I can even imagine anymore.
The non-fool who has been living here in the U.S. for the last 25 years or so, would have noticed by now that it makes no difference whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat occupying the White House because either way, American Life continues to deteriorate. George Wallace once remarked that there’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the candidates offered by the Republican and Democrat parties, and he was, and remains, right about that. What we have here is a classic case of Dumb And Dumber. I’ll leave it to you to determine which is which. (Actually, the Dumb-O-Crats are dumber than the Repugnantcans but the difference is so inconsequential as to hardly be worth mentioning. There’s not a dollar’s worth of difference in their intelligence – which is really about a dime when factoring in the inflation since Wallace’s 15 minutes of time in the sun.)
In the cover story “Apples To Oranges?” of the July 21st issue of The New American magazine, writer Charles Scaliger accurately says in comparing the proposed policies of Obama to McCain that the presidential contenders have “been winnowed down to two polished posers who offer the American public, yet again, not a choice but an echo.” And I’ll add that even a few of the seeming differences are just a matter of “telling the necessary lies” in order to appease the targeted constituency. For example, those folks who really believe that Obama will recall the troops from Iraq are setting themselves up for a major disappointment: if he ever truly does pull them out of Iraq it will only be to establish them somewhere else in the Middle East. Whether you elect Obama or McCain, the soldiers are not coming home anytime soon, so just get used to the idea!
The most important but least understood point that Scaliger made in his article is the fact that since at least the 1930s, both major political parties and party candidates have been controlled by a semi-secret organization of (now) over 4,000 Elite Establishment Insiders known as the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR). [If you think this is nonsense, click the link at the bottom of this Blog Bit.] The CFR was founded by a man who stated in print that he basically believed in “Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx.” Scaliger tells us that of the 13 members of Obama’s Senior Working Group on National Security, 8 of them are CFR members, while one is a former member. “Mr. Change” also has CFR advisors on national finance and economics. As for John McCain, not only is McCain himself a CFR member, but he has at least 12 CFR members advising him. But here’s the real kicker: One of Obama’s foreign policy CFR advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski was not only Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor, but he worked in a similar capacity for JOHN McCAIN during McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign!
That is such a remarkably telling fact that I am going to repeat it for the benefit of my Dumb-O-Crat readers who traditionally excel more in emotional idealism than they do in realism and logic:
One of Obama’s foreign policy CFR advisors is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski was not only Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy advisor, but he worked in a similar capacity for JOHN McCAIN during McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign!
OK, now ask yourself, how much “Change” do you REALLY think you can expect by electing Barack Obama to the presidency? You’re being swindled again, boys and girls! It’s the same old story, the same old song and dance with all The Usual Suspects! Yeah, “Change” my a##! The candidates are employing all the usual advisors, but they are telling you to expect big Changes. Boy, do they think you’re stupid! (Are you?)
As if that wasn’t enough, it has been reported (and is almost assuredly true) that Obama was given a place at the table at the last Bilderberger meeting. In case you’re unaware, the Bilderbergers are another powerful international cabal of Elites very concerned about the well-being of you, the little guy in America….. WRONG!
If all of this is news to you, then you need to admit that you are simply an uneducated voter destined to vote for what you guess to be “the lesser of two evils.” However, maybe you should consider that given but two choices, even monkeys could pick the lesser of two evils 50% of the time, and regardless of whether or not we discount the ballots with hanging chads.
The American People like to promote the idea that they support the underdog, but this is mostly a lie; the American People, more than anything, love a “winner.” You disagree? See if you can count the number of new hats, jerseys, and bumper stickers that will suddenly manifest in celebration of the team that wins the next World Series, Super Bowl and NBA Championship. If every person who said that they’d like to have voted for Ron Paul but couldn’t because they thought he had no chance of winning, had in fact voted for him regardless, he might very well have made the Republican race quite interesting. Paul did extraordinarily well (“frighteningly well” to the Establishment Elites) in the preprimary straw polls, but when it came time to cast real votes, Americans chose to side with “pure politicians” instead, so long as they were convinced that their vote had a reasonably good chance of making a victor of their “lesser evil”, and making a winner of themselves by association in the process.
Meanwhile, I had reregistered from Independent to Repugnantcan solely in order to be allowed to vote for Ron Paul in the Arizona primary. (I have since reverted to an Independent, and will vote for Dr. Paul a second time in November’s general election by writing his name on my ballot; I refuse to vote for “evil”, lesser evil or otherwise – I value my vote much too highly to “waste” it like that. You want MY vote? You have to be worthy of MY vote.)
A friend of mine recently said in an e-mail that he figured he agreed with my theological positions 97.995% of the time. I responded: But that 97.995% is just a "rough estimate", right? Well, that's not bad. That's about the rate in which I agree with Ron Paul's positions.
About two months ago, I read Doctor Paul’s bestselling April 2008 book “THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO” (don’t leave for the voting booth without it!) and I was pleasantly impressed by how well he – in just 170 small pages - was able to explain to a wide audience his positions on many important political issues. (In my opinion, it was a campaign blunder that this book wasn’t published much earlier.) Now I am going to post several excerpts from Ron Paul’s book “THE REVOLUTION” to illustrate what sort of AUTHENTIC CHANGES the American People could have hoped for if they had been smart enough to nominate and then elect The Good Doctor to the presidency:
Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us “change,” and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, “change” always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.
Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that’s the one option Americans are never permitted to hear.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page ix]
With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multitrillion-dollar promises of “free” goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in – this is not a misprint – 130 countries around the world. … Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion. … Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page x]
Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive wars against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this social policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken away by an income tax or a national sales tax? The shared assumptions behind these questions, on the other hand, are never cast in doubt, or even raised. And anyone who wants to ask different questions or who suggests that the questions as framed exclude attractive, humane alternatives, is ipso facto excluded from mainstream discussion.
And so every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 1]
The war in Iraq was one of the most ill-considered, poorly planned, and just plain unnecessary military conflicts in American history, and I opposed it from the beginning. But the beginning I am speaking of was not 2002 or 2003. As early as 1997 and 1998, shortly after my return to Congress after a dozen years back in my medical practice, I spoke out against the actions of the Clinton administration, which I believed was moving us once again toward war with Iraq. I believe the genesis of our later policy was being set at that time. Many of the same voices who then demanded that the Clinton administration attack Iraq later demanded that the Bush administration attack Iraq, exploiting the tragedy of September 11 to bring about their long-standing desire to see an American invasion of that country.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 21]
I oppose all foreign aid on principle… Foreign aid is not only immoral, since it involves the forced transfer of wealth, but it is also counterproductive, as a ceaseless stream of scholarship continues to show. Foreign aid has been a disaster in Africa, delaying sound economic reforms and encouraging wastefulness and statism. … Now, while free trade should be embraced, foreign aid should be absolutely rejected. Constitutional, moral, and practical arguments compel such a view. Constitutional authorization for such programs is at best dubious. Morally, I cannot justify the violent seizure of property from Americans in order to redistribute that property to a foreign government – and usually one that is responsible for the appalling material condition of its people. Surely we can agree that Americans ought not to be doing forced labor on behalf of other regimes, and that is exactly what foreign aid is.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Pages 34 & 99]
We have had troops in Korea for over five and a half decades. We have had troops in Europe and Japan for about as long. How many years is enough? An American presence in these places was supposed to be temporary, persisting only during the military emergencies that were cited as justification for bringing them there. Milton Friedman was right: there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” government program.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 37]
Americans have the right to defend themselves against attack; that is not at issue. But that is very different from launching a preemptive war against a country that had not attacked us and could not attack us, that lacked a navy and an air force, and whose military budget was a fraction of a percent of our own. A policy of overthrowing or destabilizing every regime our government dislikes is no strategy at all, unless our goal is international chaos and domestic impoverishment.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 39]
(NOTE: I personally would argue that very frequently, creating international chaos and domestic impoverishment is EXACTLY the goal of our government’s operations. A long story which I have briefly addressed elsewhere. ~STMcC)
According to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not delegated to the federal government by the states (in Article 1, Section 8) and not prohibited to the states in the Constitution (in Article 1, Section 10) are reserved to the states or to the people.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 44]
One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn’t there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was. …
If we can be so callous as to refer to a growing child in a mother’s womb as a parasite, I fear for our country’s future all the more. …
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that that is an excellent argument for world government – for how can we allow individual COUNTRIES to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yet the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Pages 59-61]
(NOTE: Like Dr. Paul, I am strongly Pro-Life, yet I do not feel that his position on this issue goes far enough. However, I do suspect he is basing his view upon the word “achievable” and I respect that. ~STMcC)
If our government were scrupulously faithful to the Constitution,we would not need to be especially concerned when a person who represents a philosophy different from our own takes political office. Our Constitution delegates relatively few tasks to the federal government.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 66]
Economic freedom is based on a simple moral rule: everyone has a right to his or her life and property, and no one has the right to deprive anyone of these things. To some extent, everyone accepts this principle. For instance, anyone going to his neighbor’s home and taking his money at gunpoint, regardless of all the wonderful, selfless things he promised to do with it, would be promptly arrested as a thief. But for some reason it is is considered morally acceptatble when government does that very thing. We have allowed government to operate according to its own set of moral rules. …
What if we stopped doing things we would consider morally outrageous if done by private individuals but that we consider perfectly all right when carried out by government in the name of “public policy”?
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 69 & 70]
Some Americans appear to believe that there would be no arts in America were it not for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an institution created in 1965. They cannot imagine things being done any other way, even though they WERE done another way throughout our country’s existence, and throughout most of mankind’s history. … NEA funds go not necessarily to the best artists, but to people who happen to be good at filling out government grant applications. I have my doubts that the same people populate both categories.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 75]
But if we want more economc freedom and a healthy and robust economy, serious inroads need to be made into federal spending. Otherwise, tax cuts will simply lead to more borrowing, more inflation, and the continued decline of the dollar. As I write, we are paying about $1.4 billion every day just for the interest on the national debt. Because our government refuses to live within its means, every single day we spend $1.4 billion and receive absolutely nothing in return.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 81]
Central economic planning has been as discredited as any idea can possibly be. But even though we point to our devotion to the free market, at the same time we centrally plan our monetary system, the very heart of the economy. Americans must reject the notion that one man, whether Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, or any other chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, can know what the proper money supply and interest rates ought to be. Only the market can determine that. Americans must learn this lesson if we want to avoid continuous and deeper recessions and to get the economy growing in a healthy and sustainable fashion.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 147]
What other policy for sheltering Americans from the collapse of the dollar is being advanced? Is there any, apart from comfortable delusions that the Federal Reserve, which is itself responsible for our financial mess, can be trusted to put everything right? For one thing, how can we be expected to place so much trust in a Federal Reserve System we’re not even allowed to audit? And even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him (no mattter who he is), what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 155]
A federal Department of Education, for example, is an insult to the American people, who are more than capable of running their own schools without being looted to support a national education bureaucracy. We would get by just fine without it, as indeed Americans did for most of the twentieth century, a period when – by just coincidence? – the population was far better educated than it is now. In fact, given the Department of Education’s sorry record, if I truly opposed learning and knowledge I would propose tripling its budget.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 162]
We also need to begin to restore monetary freedom, which means that Americans should be free, if they wish, to engage in transactions and contracts denominated in gold and silver. It is essential that Americans be able to protect themselves in this way against any coming monetary disaster that would leave them holding valueless dollar bills. No one in politics or the media even talks about this issue, so you know it must be important.
[-Ron Paul’s “The Revolution: A Manifesto”; Page 162]
You realize, of course, any book that manages to mention Wile E. Coyote in a chapter dedicated to an examination of economics is a book YOU HAVE GOT TO READ, right? Many more succinctly stated and plainly illustrated important political/social considerations are awaiting the person who picks up a copy of Doctor Ron Paul’s “THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO.”
Unfortunately, however, Ron Paul will not be president of the United States, and regardless of which of the two S.O.Bamas get elected, the Black one or the White one, our next president will swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and then not only will he turn right around and uphold all of our current un-Constitutional, liberty-usurping Federal programs, but over the next four years, he will contribute to putting even more of them on the books! Oh, Johnny B. No Goode, and Barack B. Worse. Or vice versa. Whatever.
We may not know just yet which of these two major political party candidates will win the presidential election in November, but one thing, however, is certain: The more things O’Change, the more they’ll stay the McSame.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Related Links:
Ron Paul on the Economy & Iraq War ("Must-Read!") :
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.html
Comparing Obama’s & McCain’s proposed policies:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/node/8603
Apples To Oranges?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/166-apples-to-oranges
More about the Council On Foreign Relations:
http://xtremelyun-pcandunrepentant.blogspot.com/2008/06/stop-being-useful-idiot.html
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Monday, August 4, 2008
KEITH HERNANDEZ AND THE WATCHDOGS OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
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[From the STMcC archive; 2006, April.]
The Heat Index is a feature frequently found on page two of The Arizona Republic’s sports section. (Yes, THAT “Arizona Republic”: Phoenix’s major daily newspaper often referred to as “The Arizona Repugnant” or – my favorite – “The Daily Disappointment.”)
Very recently, while cleaning out an old Word File, I came across a letter I had written to the editor of The Daily Disappointment’s sports section. Although I have had a few of my letters previously printed in The Los Angeles Times and in our very own Daily Disappointment, in this instance, however, those liberal, politically correct weenies posing as men at the newspaper declined to print what I had submitted. I was about to delete this old composition from my computer file when it suddenly hit me that it might make a good entry in my XTREMELY UN-P.C. AND UNREPENTANT Blog.
The Keith Hernandez in question is indeed the same former all-star first baseman from the New York Mets and the same Keith Hernandez who, in 1992, appeared in an episode of Seinfeld in which he asked Jerry to help him move out of his apartment. So, without further ado, here is my unpublished letter to the editor of The Daily Disappointment’s sports section:
Dear Editor ~
This is in response to the article titled "EARTH TO KEITH: IT’S 2006, FOOL" which appeared in The Heat Index on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006.
During a recent New York Mets/San Diego Padres game, Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez questioned why a female was in the Padres dugout. Hernandez thought this was inappropriate, and though it was later revealed that Kelly Calabrese was employed by the team as a massage therapist, Hernandez publicly said women "don't belong in the dugout."
The Mets organization reprimanded the broadcaster for his comments, which it had a right to do since he is hired to represent the team. But The Heat Index couldn't resist printing that Hernandez is a "fool" and an "idiot" for holding that opinion. This is America after all, and no place for personal opinions - particularly opinions so politically incorrect.
I think The Arizona Republic should see to it that such horrific and injurious displays of rebellious individual thought are squelched from now on. I believe that The Heat Index should be renamed “The Speech Police” and each week they could print all of the ideas and opinions that the American people are allowed to hold and express, and if we all conform to their sage reforms, then The Speech Police should feel no need to resort to name-calling in the future.
Let me point out, however, that likely a large number of people, afraid to suffer the penalty for transgressing political correctness, silently agree with Keith Hernandez. I can state unequivocally that if my Mother - who worked for several years in the 1960s for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels organizations - was with us still, she would say, "Good for you, Keith!"
Kelly Calabrese, the deeply offended massage therapist, later lamented that Hernandez had not only discredited her as a person, but discredited women. Will someone please inform that woman in the Padres dugout that “there's no crying in baseball!”
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
[From the STMcC archive; 2006, April.]
The Heat Index is a feature frequently found on page two of The Arizona Republic’s sports section. (Yes, THAT “Arizona Republic”: Phoenix’s major daily newspaper often referred to as “The Arizona Repugnant” or – my favorite – “The Daily Disappointment.”)
Very recently, while cleaning out an old Word File, I came across a letter I had written to the editor of The Daily Disappointment’s sports section. Although I have had a few of my letters previously printed in The Los Angeles Times and in our very own Daily Disappointment, in this instance, however, those liberal, politically correct weenies posing as men at the newspaper declined to print what I had submitted. I was about to delete this old composition from my computer file when it suddenly hit me that it might make a good entry in my XTREMELY UN-P.C. AND UNREPENTANT Blog.
The Keith Hernandez in question is indeed the same former all-star first baseman from the New York Mets and the same Keith Hernandez who, in 1992, appeared in an episode of Seinfeld in which he asked Jerry to help him move out of his apartment. So, without further ado, here is my unpublished letter to the editor of The Daily Disappointment’s sports section:
Dear Editor ~
This is in response to the article titled "EARTH TO KEITH: IT’S 2006, FOOL" which appeared in The Heat Index on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006.
During a recent New York Mets/San Diego Padres game, Mets broadcaster Keith Hernandez questioned why a female was in the Padres dugout. Hernandez thought this was inappropriate, and though it was later revealed that Kelly Calabrese was employed by the team as a massage therapist, Hernandez publicly said women "don't belong in the dugout."
The Mets organization reprimanded the broadcaster for his comments, which it had a right to do since he is hired to represent the team. But The Heat Index couldn't resist printing that Hernandez is a "fool" and an "idiot" for holding that opinion. This is America after all, and no place for personal opinions - particularly opinions so politically incorrect.
I think The Arizona Republic should see to it that such horrific and injurious displays of rebellious individual thought are squelched from now on. I believe that The Heat Index should be renamed “The Speech Police” and each week they could print all of the ideas and opinions that the American people are allowed to hold and express, and if we all conform to their sage reforms, then The Speech Police should feel no need to resort to name-calling in the future.
Let me point out, however, that likely a large number of people, afraid to suffer the penalty for transgressing political correctness, silently agree with Keith Hernandez. I can state unequivocally that if my Mother - who worked for several years in the 1960s for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the California Angels organizations - was with us still, she would say, "Good for you, Keith!"
Kelly Calabrese, the deeply offended massage therapist, later lamented that Hernandez had not only discredited her as a person, but discredited women. Will someone please inform that woman in the Padres dugout that “there's no crying in baseball!”
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Monday, July 14, 2008
ODE TO MAN'S BEST FRIEND
[From the STMcC archive: 2005, September 24]
Book: "I AM PUPPY, HEAR ME YAP: The Ages Of Dog" by Valerie Shaff and Roy Blount; 2000
Grade: A
You can keep your new, gold Lexus;
Fancy cars just ain't my cup of tea.
Don't care about computer games;
These things don't appeal at all to me.
Some folks need the latest gadgets,
And have their homes filled with high-tech toys:
iPods and digital cameras,
Whatever makes electronic noise.
Now they've even got a cell phone
They can use to take a photograph,
But "He kept up with the Joneses"
Won't be written as my epitaph.
Because I know that Palm Pilots,
And expensive name brand tennis shoes,
Silk shirts and laptop computers,
Will never save a man from The Blues.
If happiness is what you seek,
It's really a simple equation:
Jettison computerized junk;
Get a Lab, Shepherd, or Dalmatian!
While some people dabble in fish,
Others try turtles, hamsters or mice.
Trust me and go with the canine -
You'll find yourself in Pet Paradise!
The Woman weeps watching Chick Flicks,
While late at night she cuddles her cat.
Reaching for tissues and chocolate,
She winds up dehydrated and fat.
But Men have the best idea
For getting their emotions to mend:
In the yard they'll romp 'n' rassle,
And play some Fetch with a "Man's Best Friend."
But suppose your yard is too small,
And constant barking makes your head ache.
I know how you can have your dog
Without yapping that keeps you awake.
Buy 'I AM PUPPY, HEAR ME YAP'
For you are bound to smile and to laugh.
The witty verse is by Roy Blount;
The great photos by Valerie Shaff.
All types of dogs will be found here;
Some noble, some filthy, some cleaner;
"The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly"
And one even looks like a wiener!
I've been so grateful for this book;
It makes owning a dog such a breeze!
There's no feeding and no walking,
And I don't miss a house full of fleas.
Happily there are no drawbacks,
But there's one thing the book can't replace:
When I have come home after work,
This publication can't lick my face.
Still, choosing it over a dog -
The decision for me wasn't hard;
I enjoy canine company
Without stepping in poop in my yard.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
Book: "I AM PUPPY, HEAR ME YAP: The Ages Of Dog" by Valerie Shaff and Roy Blount; 2000
Grade: A
You can keep your new, gold Lexus;
Fancy cars just ain't my cup of tea.
Don't care about computer games;
These things don't appeal at all to me.
Some folks need the latest gadgets,
And have their homes filled with high-tech toys:
iPods and digital cameras,
Whatever makes electronic noise.
Now they've even got a cell phone
They can use to take a photograph,
But "He kept up with the Joneses"
Won't be written as my epitaph.
Because I know that Palm Pilots,
And expensive name brand tennis shoes,
Silk shirts and laptop computers,
Will never save a man from The Blues.
If happiness is what you seek,
It's really a simple equation:
Jettison computerized junk;
Get a Lab, Shepherd, or Dalmatian!
While some people dabble in fish,
Others try turtles, hamsters or mice.
Trust me and go with the canine -
You'll find yourself in Pet Paradise!
The Woman weeps watching Chick Flicks,
While late at night she cuddles her cat.
Reaching for tissues and chocolate,
She winds up dehydrated and fat.
But Men have the best idea
For getting their emotions to mend:
In the yard they'll romp 'n' rassle,
And play some Fetch with a "Man's Best Friend."
But suppose your yard is too small,
And constant barking makes your head ache.
I know how you can have your dog
Without yapping that keeps you awake.
Buy 'I AM PUPPY, HEAR ME YAP'
For you are bound to smile and to laugh.
The witty verse is by Roy Blount;
The great photos by Valerie Shaff.
All types of dogs will be found here;
Some noble, some filthy, some cleaner;
"The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly"
And one even looks like a wiener!
I've been so grateful for this book;
It makes owning a dog such a breeze!
There's no feeding and no walking,
And I don't miss a house full of fleas.
Happily there are no drawbacks,
But there's one thing the book can't replace:
When I have come home after work,
This publication can't lick my face.
Still, choosing it over a dog -
The decision for me wasn't hard;
I enjoy canine company
Without stepping in poop in my yard.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
BEST TRANSLATION OF GOD'S BESTSELLER!
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[From the STMcC archive: 2004, August 8]
*My grading scale is typical A through F, but with the very highest mark being an R, which is the equivalent of an A++. Why an R? Heck if I know. My Pa used to tell me that in high school he had a drafting teacher whose highest grade was an R. Pa never did learn what the R stood for, nor - sadly - did he ever achieve one.
Book: “HOLY BIBLE From The Ancient Eastern Text” translated from the Aramaic by George M. Lamsa; 1933
Grade: R
.
.
Let me quickly dispense with the negative aspects of this Bible first: The words of Christ are not printed in red; the personal pronouns for God and Jesus are not capitalized; there is no center-column referencing; and quotation marks are not employed. What this version needs is an overhaul by a good editor, and to be made available in a durable leather-bound and/or hardcover edition.
In his book, "NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN," Dr. George Lamsa states, “Not a word of the Scriptures was originally written in Greek...the Scriptures were written in Aramaic.” I believe that he is correct and that those Christian apologists and ministers scrutinizing the nuances of Greek words for deeper understanding would be better served investigating the subtle meaning of Aramaic words and the cloaked truth behind Aramaic idioms.
The Aramaic word for “camel” is written identically to the word for “rope.” When the original scrolls were being transferred into Greek, an error occurred due to the translator's limitations. Matthew 19:24 is commonly translated as, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” This is an obvious “non sequitur”, whereas the Aramaic manuscripts read “rope" instead of “camel." Rope, of course, is much more in keeping with the imagery of a needle, and is probably what Jesus said, and what was originally recorded.
Similarly, Matthew 7:3 says, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” And yet, in Lamsa's version the word “splinter” appears in place of “speck.” The organic relationship between a splinter and a plank (or beam) is obvious while speck is more nebulous. Again, Lamsa's translation remains true to the imagery being conveyed.
The ninth chapter of Daniel contains the amazing Old Testament prophecy concerning the surprisingly sudden death of the long-awaited Messiah and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. A portion of verse 26 in other Biblical translations states, “The end of it shall be with a flood.” The most well written and spiritually mature approach to The Tribulation and the events of the Revelation that I am aware of is David Haggith's, “END-TIME PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE.” But even the ordinarily clear-minded Mr. Haggith had trouble correlating this passage with known history. “Blood covered the land like a flood,” he overreaches. It comes as no surprise then that the Aramaic manuscripts do not make mention of any unknown flood. Lamsa's translation accurately reads, “And the end thereof shall be a mass exile.” (Note: Is it mere coincidence that a mass exile could also be poetically described as “a sea of people” and a sea of people might further be described as a “flood”? Understand that I’m only speculating here on how the original “mass exile” might have later been translated into the Greek as an historically inaccurate “flood.”)
Although there is much more evidence, these three examples alone should be sufficient to encourage most serious Bible students to consider the possibility that Lamsa's translation from the ancient Aramaic may offer us the most trustworthy rendering of Scripture.
Finally, I'd like to elaborate on the comment of brother Ram Munjal from his good 2004, Jan. 21st Amazon.com review:
All Bibles, other than Lamsa's version, tell us that from the Cross, Jesus (quoting Psalm 22:1) cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (See Matthew 27:46) This verse has undoubtedly disturbed people for centuries, and no wonder - it is extremely unlikely that Jesus ever felt utterly abandoned by God while He was hanging on the Cross. The Messiah had been promised His Father's abiding Presence! Nothing happened to Jesus that He was not mentally prepared for. He told His disciples in advance what to expect: He would be mocked, spat upon, beaten, and killed, but that three days later He would rise again. (Mark 10:34) He also said to them, “You will be scattered...and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because The Father is with Me.” (John 16:32) Was Jesus mistaken? Or is the translation inaccurate?
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”) correctly appears in the Aramaic manuscripts as, “Eli, Eli, lemana shabakthani” (“My God, My God, for this I was spared [this was my destiny.]”) Indeed! At different times mobs had attempted to kill Jesus, but He was always SPARED because it was His Will and His DESTINY to take mankind's sins to the Cross to be washed clean in His Blood. The Aramaic phrases are so similar that it is easy to understand how the mistake was made, but the meanings are worlds apart, and Lamsa's version is much more consistent with the Mission of The Christ. Trying to correlate the mistranslation, Christian theologians have been forced to create a flimsy dogma (Jesus being separated from God while descending into hell) in order to cover for this improbable utterance from our Lord while He was suffering on the Cross. Lamsa resolves this dilemma in a far more satisfactory manner. Furthermore, according to the Aramaic Scriptures, Psalm 22:1 doesn't read, “Why have You forsaken Me?” in the first place, but rather, “Why has thou let Me to live?”
.
There are plenty more sound arguments to support Lamsa's contention that the New Testament first appeared in the Aramaic language. You may wish to get a copy of his "IDIOMS IN THE BIBLE EXPLAINED AND A KEY TO THE ORIGINAL GOSPELS" and/or "NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN." (Available from the Noohra Foundation - an organization I strongly disagree with on certain crucial issues.)
When in doubt, George Lamsa's translation is the one I always side with. An added bonus is that this Bible is large and heavy, and should you ever find it necessary to really whack somebody upside the head with The Word Of God, this version is sure to make quite an impression!
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
.
[From the STMcC archive: 2004, August 8]
*My grading scale is typical A through F, but with the very highest mark being an R, which is the equivalent of an A++. Why an R? Heck if I know. My Pa used to tell me that in high school he had a drafting teacher whose highest grade was an R. Pa never did learn what the R stood for, nor - sadly - did he ever achieve one.
Book: “HOLY BIBLE From The Ancient Eastern Text” translated from the Aramaic by George M. Lamsa; 1933
Grade: R
.
.
Let me quickly dispense with the negative aspects of this Bible first: The words of Christ are not printed in red; the personal pronouns for God and Jesus are not capitalized; there is no center-column referencing; and quotation marks are not employed. What this version needs is an overhaul by a good editor, and to be made available in a durable leather-bound and/or hardcover edition.
In his book, "NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN," Dr. George Lamsa states, “Not a word of the Scriptures was originally written in Greek...the Scriptures were written in Aramaic.” I believe that he is correct and that those Christian apologists and ministers scrutinizing the nuances of Greek words for deeper understanding would be better served investigating the subtle meaning of Aramaic words and the cloaked truth behind Aramaic idioms.
The Aramaic word for “camel” is written identically to the word for “rope.” When the original scrolls were being transferred into Greek, an error occurred due to the translator's limitations. Matthew 19:24 is commonly translated as, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.” This is an obvious “non sequitur”, whereas the Aramaic manuscripts read “rope" instead of “camel." Rope, of course, is much more in keeping with the imagery of a needle, and is probably what Jesus said, and what was originally recorded.
Similarly, Matthew 7:3 says, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?” And yet, in Lamsa's version the word “splinter” appears in place of “speck.” The organic relationship between a splinter and a plank (or beam) is obvious while speck is more nebulous. Again, Lamsa's translation remains true to the imagery being conveyed.
The ninth chapter of Daniel contains the amazing Old Testament prophecy concerning the surprisingly sudden death of the long-awaited Messiah and the subsequent destruction of Jerusalem. A portion of verse 26 in other Biblical translations states, “The end of it shall be with a flood.” The most well written and spiritually mature approach to The Tribulation and the events of the Revelation that I am aware of is David Haggith's, “END-TIME PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE.” But even the ordinarily clear-minded Mr. Haggith had trouble correlating this passage with known history. “Blood covered the land like a flood,” he overreaches. It comes as no surprise then that the Aramaic manuscripts do not make mention of any unknown flood. Lamsa's translation accurately reads, “And the end thereof shall be a mass exile.” (Note: Is it mere coincidence that a mass exile could also be poetically described as “a sea of people” and a sea of people might further be described as a “flood”? Understand that I’m only speculating here on how the original “mass exile” might have later been translated into the Greek as an historically inaccurate “flood.”)
Although there is much more evidence, these three examples alone should be sufficient to encourage most serious Bible students to consider the possibility that Lamsa's translation from the ancient Aramaic may offer us the most trustworthy rendering of Scripture.
Finally, I'd like to elaborate on the comment of brother Ram Munjal from his good 2004, Jan. 21st Amazon.com review:
All Bibles, other than Lamsa's version, tell us that from the Cross, Jesus (quoting Psalm 22:1) cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (See Matthew 27:46) This verse has undoubtedly disturbed people for centuries, and no wonder - it is extremely unlikely that Jesus ever felt utterly abandoned by God while He was hanging on the Cross. The Messiah had been promised His Father's abiding Presence! Nothing happened to Jesus that He was not mentally prepared for. He told His disciples in advance what to expect: He would be mocked, spat upon, beaten, and killed, but that three days later He would rise again. (Mark 10:34) He also said to them, “You will be scattered...and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because The Father is with Me.” (John 16:32) Was Jesus mistaken? Or is the translation inaccurate?
“Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”) correctly appears in the Aramaic manuscripts as, “Eli, Eli, lemana shabakthani” (“My God, My God, for this I was spared [this was my destiny.]”) Indeed! At different times mobs had attempted to kill Jesus, but He was always SPARED because it was His Will and His DESTINY to take mankind's sins to the Cross to be washed clean in His Blood. The Aramaic phrases are so similar that it is easy to understand how the mistake was made, but the meanings are worlds apart, and Lamsa's version is much more consistent with the Mission of The Christ. Trying to correlate the mistranslation, Christian theologians have been forced to create a flimsy dogma (Jesus being separated from God while descending into hell) in order to cover for this improbable utterance from our Lord while He was suffering on the Cross. Lamsa resolves this dilemma in a far more satisfactory manner. Furthermore, according to the Aramaic Scriptures, Psalm 22:1 doesn't read, “Why have You forsaken Me?” in the first place, but rather, “Why has thou let Me to live?”
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There are plenty more sound arguments to support Lamsa's contention that the New Testament first appeared in the Aramaic language. You may wish to get a copy of his "IDIOMS IN THE BIBLE EXPLAINED AND A KEY TO THE ORIGINAL GOSPELS" and/or "NEW TESTAMENT ORIGIN." (Available from the Noohra Foundation - an organization I strongly disagree with on certain crucial issues.)
When in doubt, George Lamsa's translation is the one I always side with. An added bonus is that this Bible is large and heavy, and should you ever find it necessary to really whack somebody upside the head with The Word Of God, this version is sure to make quite an impression!
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Tuesday, July 8, 2008
EVERY COWBOY NEEDS A HORSE!
[From the STMcC archive: 2006, Sept. 15th]
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*My grading scale is typical A through F, but with the very highest mark being an R, which is the equivalent of an A++. Why an R? Heck if I know. My Pa used to tell me that in high school he had a drafting teacher whose highest grade was an R. Pa never did learn what the R stood for, nor - sadly - did he ever achieve one.
Bicycle: Huffy "GOOD VIBRATIONS" Cruiser model
Grade: R
Where would Roy Rogers have been without Trigger? Where would The Lone Ranger have been without Silver? And Pecos Bill without Widowmaker, or Doc Holliday without Big Nose Kate? The indisputable fact is that every cowboy needs a horse to ride. And what with the price of gasoline and oats these days, is it any surprise that many of us urban cowboys have shifted to the two-wheeled variety of equine transportation?
The other day –- just on a whim -- I did an Amazon.com search to see if anything would come up when I entered in the name and style of my deeply beloved bicycle, THE HUFFY “GOOD VIBRATIONS” model cruiser. How exuberantly surprised I was to find myself staring at a photograph of my lovely, faithful “steed.” It’s still being made. Hooray! “Classic” cruisers are still in and I’m still astride mine (even if the “fenders” are long gone.)
Let me tell you about my bike: I bought my Huffy “GOOD VIBRATIONS” cruiser at Pep Boys in downtown Santa Monica, California, circa 1980, and brought it with me when I moved to Phoenix many years later. I’ve probably logged over 144,000 miles on mine. I used to pedal it every day before work on the beach bike path for exercise and for just the pure joy of it. My favorite ride took me from underneath the Santa Monica pier, through the human carnival of Venice Beach, around the boat slips of Marina Del Rey, and along the sand through El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, to the outskirts of Torrance, and then back again. Or to put it more succinctly: My favorite ride was Heaven on Earth!
And note: With the barest minimum of maintenance, I’m still riding on “GOOD VIBRATIONS.” Yeah, uh-huh, that’s right. About 26 years after buying my bike, it and I are still the best of friends; I’m still planting my “cushions” on its seat and still pedaling along the Phoenix canals, to the horse track, or to the grocery store, or to work. Now, how many years have you been driving your car? Think you’ll get 26 years out of it? Will you get 26 years out of your job? How ‘bout your marriage? Yeah, what I’m saying is that “GOOD VIBRATIONS” last and last…
But I had a real scare recently. The bearings in the doohickey that connects to the thingamajig had gotten wrecked and the handlebars were loose in the whatchamacallit. (Rode it that way for over a year anyway.) Finally took it in to a bike shop and “Homeboy” tells me to throw my best friend into a dumpster. “Homeboy” says it can’t be repaired. According to “Homeboy” the bike was basically junk when brand new; and that the fork could break on me at any moment and put me in the hospital.
*My grading scale is typical A through F, but with the very highest mark being an R, which is the equivalent of an A++. Why an R? Heck if I know. My Pa used to tell me that in high school he had a drafting teacher whose highest grade was an R. Pa never did learn what the R stood for, nor - sadly - did he ever achieve one.
Bicycle: Huffy "GOOD VIBRATIONS" Cruiser model
Grade: R
Where would Roy Rogers have been without Trigger? Where would The Lone Ranger have been without Silver? And Pecos Bill without Widowmaker, or Doc Holliday without Big Nose Kate? The indisputable fact is that every cowboy needs a horse to ride. And what with the price of gasoline and oats these days, is it any surprise that many of us urban cowboys have shifted to the two-wheeled variety of equine transportation?
The other day –- just on a whim -- I did an Amazon.com search to see if anything would come up when I entered in the name and style of my deeply beloved bicycle, THE HUFFY “GOOD VIBRATIONS” model cruiser. How exuberantly surprised I was to find myself staring at a photograph of my lovely, faithful “steed.” It’s still being made. Hooray! “Classic” cruisers are still in and I’m still astride mine (even if the “fenders” are long gone.)
Let me tell you about my bike: I bought my Huffy “GOOD VIBRATIONS” cruiser at Pep Boys in downtown Santa Monica, California, circa 1980, and brought it with me when I moved to Phoenix many years later. I’ve probably logged over 144,000 miles on mine. I used to pedal it every day before work on the beach bike path for exercise and for just the pure joy of it. My favorite ride took me from underneath the Santa Monica pier, through the human carnival of Venice Beach, around the boat slips of Marina Del Rey, and along the sand through El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, to the outskirts of Torrance, and then back again. Or to put it more succinctly: My favorite ride was Heaven on Earth!
And note: With the barest minimum of maintenance, I’m still riding on “GOOD VIBRATIONS.” Yeah, uh-huh, that’s right. About 26 years after buying my bike, it and I are still the best of friends; I’m still planting my “cushions” on its seat and still pedaling along the Phoenix canals, to the horse track, or to the grocery store, or to work. Now, how many years have you been driving your car? Think you’ll get 26 years out of it? Will you get 26 years out of your job? How ‘bout your marriage? Yeah, what I’m saying is that “GOOD VIBRATIONS” last and last…
But I had a real scare recently. The bearings in the doohickey that connects to the thingamajig had gotten wrecked and the handlebars were loose in the whatchamacallit. (Rode it that way for over a year anyway.) Finally took it in to a bike shop and “Homeboy” tells me to throw my best friend into a dumpster. “Homeboy” says it can’t be repaired. According to “Homeboy” the bike was basically junk when brand new; and that the fork could break on me at any moment and put me in the hospital.
.
Well, certain that “GOOD VIBRATIONS” could never hurt me, I put my buddy in the bed of my truck and drove it from Phoenix, Airheadzona, to Santa Monica, California, for one last beach bike path ride. I figured that if it broke on me during the ride, I’d just leave it on the beach to R.I.P. (Rust In Pieces).
Well, we made it from the Santa Monica pier to Torrance and back, just like the good ol’ days! The other riders could hear us comin’ up on ‘em because “GOOD VIBRATIONS” was loudly going “SQUEEEK – KREEEK – RATTLE – GROAN! / SQUEEEK – KREEEK – RATTLE – GROAN!” Other bikers probably thought he was crying in pain, but I recognized those sounds for what they really were: Singing! Joyful singing!
Back home, GFM (Good Friend Melanie) suggested that I take “GOOD VIBRATIONS” to see the nice, old gentleman who owns ROADRUNNER BIKE CENTER in Glendale, AZ. Two weeks later and my wallet only $34.59 lighter, “GOOD VIBRATIONS” is as good as new and ready to hit the canals again as soon as the weather cools down! (Why that dirty dog at the first bike shop! I think “Homeboy” just wanted to sell me some newfangled, multi-geared “horse.”)
Only one thing concerns me: My bike is clearly labeled “HUFFY – MADE IN U.S.A.” But are “GOOD VIBRATIONS” still made here? Or are they now produced in China? I urge you to investigate before buying because “GOOD AMERICANS” don’t financially support Communist countries that utilize slave labor, threaten their neighbors, imprison the religious, and force abortions on their women. Right? Right?!
Sometimes only poetry can express a cowboy’s love for his “horse.”
O my Bike, O my Horse
I've ridden twenty-six years
You have carried me through
Times of joy and times of tears
We’ve traveled city streets
And journeyed along the strand
I rarely gave you oil
You never bitched ‘bout the sand
Leaving California
You never said, “This is bad!”
You never once complained
(Though I kinda wish you had)
You never bucked me off
Never trampled on my hide
Never had a headache
When I said I’d like to ride
You are my “Black Beauty”
You are truly my best friend
I’ll shout it from rooftops
Though others I might offend
Because of you alone
I have known excitations
And more than The Beach Boys
You give me Good Vibrations
I feel so close to you
You are almost like my kin
Throw you in a dumpster?
No, I’ll throw that “Homeboy” in!
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
Well, we made it from the Santa Monica pier to Torrance and back, just like the good ol’ days! The other riders could hear us comin’ up on ‘em because “GOOD VIBRATIONS” was loudly going “SQUEEEK – KREEEK – RATTLE – GROAN! / SQUEEEK – KREEEK – RATTLE – GROAN!” Other bikers probably thought he was crying in pain, but I recognized those sounds for what they really were: Singing! Joyful singing!
Back home, GFM (Good Friend Melanie) suggested that I take “GOOD VIBRATIONS” to see the nice, old gentleman who owns ROADRUNNER BIKE CENTER in Glendale, AZ. Two weeks later and my wallet only $34.59 lighter, “GOOD VIBRATIONS” is as good as new and ready to hit the canals again as soon as the weather cools down! (Why that dirty dog at the first bike shop! I think “Homeboy” just wanted to sell me some newfangled, multi-geared “horse.”)
Only one thing concerns me: My bike is clearly labeled “HUFFY – MADE IN U.S.A.” But are “GOOD VIBRATIONS” still made here? Or are they now produced in China? I urge you to investigate before buying because “GOOD AMERICANS” don’t financially support Communist countries that utilize slave labor, threaten their neighbors, imprison the religious, and force abortions on their women. Right? Right?!
Sometimes only poetry can express a cowboy’s love for his “horse.”
O my Bike, O my Horse
I've ridden twenty-six years
You have carried me through
Times of joy and times of tears
We’ve traveled city streets
And journeyed along the strand
I rarely gave you oil
You never bitched ‘bout the sand
Leaving California
You never said, “This is bad!”
You never once complained
(Though I kinda wish you had)
You never bucked me off
Never trampled on my hide
Never had a headache
When I said I’d like to ride
You are my “Black Beauty”
You are truly my best friend
I’ll shout it from rooftops
Though others I might offend
Because of you alone
I have known excitations
And more than The Beach Boys
You give me Good Vibrations
I feel so close to you
You are almost like my kin
Throw you in a dumpster?
No, I’ll throw that “Homeboy” in!
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Monday, July 7, 2008
AMAZON: JUST ANOTHER WAY TO SAY "BIG BITCH" [Part 1 Of 3]
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A number of friends and acquaintances have asked me how I came to be banned from Amazon.com. I’m afraid I really don’t have a good answer because evidently I was passed out at the time. Well, it wasn’t so much that I was passed out, as knocked out – my life partner, Jack Daniels, and I, got into a lover’s quarrel, and he’s awfully strong, ya know! Where does one go to report spousal abuse? He really oughtn’t to treat me that way.
OK, seriously, I am now – for the first time ever – going to tell the whole truth (and nothing but the truth), so help me Jack. But before relating how things came to an end, let me first briefly tell you how it all got started (*cue the harp music) . . .
Once upon a time (in early May of 2004), I discovered Amazon.com. I’m not sure how I wound up there or if I had even heard of the website before, but I was immediately drawn to the concept of just ordinary people writing product reviews. I surfed around for a few days, just enjoying reading what others had to say about various books and movies, etc. It never really entered into my mind that I might eventually write reviews myself until the day I looked up the intensely interesting book “IN SEARCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD” by Robert Cornuke (I would learn much later that Cornuke had actually been my Brother-In-Law’s high school football coach).
I had read Cornuke’s exciting and intriguing book several years earlier, and I was disappointed to find that up to that point, no one had yet written what I considered to be a really on-target review for Amazon.com. To make matters worse, some of the reviewers had posted what appeared to me to be intentionally or unintentionally misleading reviews of the book. I decided it was up to me to do that book justice, and so on 2004, May 6, I submitted my first review to Amazon.com.
As time went on, I wrote a few more reviews for the website. Early on, I adopted the personal policy that I would not write a review for a product unless I had something new to say about it, or I had a very novel way of saying what had already been said; I couldn’t understand why people felt the need to restate over and over again, in review after review, the same pedestrian (and often boneheaded) observations: “Led Zep II ROCKS!!!”; “Julia Roberts is so pretty in Pretty Woman”; “If you hate the N.E.A. then you must hate children! YOU SUCK!!!” Due to my own chosen reviewing policy, I tended to review more forgotten or overlooked items than popular products.
After I had written perhaps 4 reviews for Amazon, one day I discovered a review written by a woman named Lanker on April 5, 2002, for the Tom Waits album “NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER.” (A title inspired by the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks," by the way.) She had titled her review “In The Oldest Bar In Nevada...", and I thought it was (and still think it is) one of the very best reviews ever composed for Amazon.com. She related some personal experiences in her review which, for me, gave it a quality of human relevance.
Several days later, I happened to stumble on a review written by a bloke named Martusheff for the Nazareth album “HAIR OF THE DOG". In his review, he told the story about how he first heard the recording as a little kid while riding with his uncle in the man’s hot rod. He asked his uncle what that sound was and the man replied, “An electric guitar.” And that was the start of this boy’s love of Rock ‘N’ Roll.
I came to realize that the reviews I seemed to be most attracted to at Amazon.com were those written in a highly individualized way, in which the writer related some personal details about himself or herself which gave the review a human element; these weren’t just a cold, hard recitation of facts about some product, but a real live person’s view of it. With Lanker and Martusheff, I liked the idea that I could see standing behind their reviews, genuine human beings with honest-to-goodness real world experiences which somehow related to the products they were reviewing and which they included in their reviews.
It was at this point, with a few Amazon reviews already under my belt, that I made the conscious decision to incorporate some information about my own personality and life experiences into most of my future reviews. I wanted the reader to come away with the idea that this review was written by a REAL PERSON who has experienced some life; that I wasn’t just some computer program-like reviewer – I was actually living, thinking, feeling, and drinking (the alcohol haze of my ancient youth became a long-running joke throughout the years of my life as a reviewer at Amazon). If memory serves me, the first review I posted utilizing my new style was for the movie “THE BLACK STALLION” – one of my favorite films.
As I often found myself weaving little personal stories into my product reviews, the reviews added up and so did the feedback. While some readers at Amazon mistook my anecdotes as egotistic ramblings (never realizing that this story-review approach was in fact a deliberately selected style for reviewing based upon my own preferences learned from other reviewers), it seems that my contributions to the website were generally well received, as I acquired a fairly impressive number of “Helpful Votes” and climbed in Amazon’s reviewer rankings – much higher than I could have ever anticipated climbing, and higher, in fact, than I really desired to climb. My goal had never been to become a top ranked reviewer; it was simply to turn others on to good products they might have missed, and to warn them away from bad “stuffs” they might be tempted to purchase. (Actually, my REAL goal was to direct people to God, but that’s a story for another day.)
Anyway, on April 28, 2008, I suddenly discovered that Amazon.com had responded to a single, random complaint by a Liberal who didn’t like my politically incorrect views. This anonymous Liberal filed an electronic complaint against the latest installment of my Amazon Blog. (The Blog installment in question, which caused all the fuss, I have recreated here: read my entry entitled “EDJUCATION-R-US: We B Edjucatin’ U. [Issue #1: Polatics & Soshial Studies]” which I posted here on Monday, June 23, 2008).
This person might have chosen to try to engage me in debate in the public “Comments” section of my Amazon Blog, but undoubtedly recognizing that he or she would have a tiger by the tail in a genuine, objective debate with me, chose the cowardly path instead, and sought to have my Blog and Comments deleted by Amazon.com. And Amazon was only too happy to immediately respond to the complaint by removing my Blog and former Comments, and by canceling my ability to post Comments in the future. This really ought not to surprise anyone, because this is a typical tactic of Liberals in general: when they can’t defeat an authentic conservative (of which there are very few left) in a fair and objective debate – despite all of their frequent cries against censorship – they will often attempt to have their opponent’s "politically incorrect" voice silenced. I call this an aspect of the “Help Me, Big Brother” Syndrome which, unfortunately, so many Liberals suffer from.
If you are interested in reading the e-mail exchanges that took place between myself and Amazon.com representatives as I attempted to get the website to reverse the ban against me, then please read on. As one reads Parts 2 and 3 of this Blog installment, the story will unravel itself and become clear. In other words, if you want to know THE TRUTH about Amazon.com vs. Stephen T. McCarthy, you are now one-third of the way there. The dirt begins flying in Part Two below . . .
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
[Continued Below...]
Link: Amazon: Just Another Way To Say "Big Bitch" - Part 2
.
A number of friends and acquaintances have asked me how I came to be banned from Amazon.com. I’m afraid I really don’t have a good answer because evidently I was passed out at the time. Well, it wasn’t so much that I was passed out, as knocked out – my life partner, Jack Daniels, and I, got into a lover’s quarrel, and he’s awfully strong, ya know! Where does one go to report spousal abuse? He really oughtn’t to treat me that way.
OK, seriously, I am now – for the first time ever – going to tell the whole truth (and nothing but the truth), so help me Jack. But before relating how things came to an end, let me first briefly tell you how it all got started (*cue the harp music) . . .
Once upon a time (in early May of 2004), I discovered Amazon.com. I’m not sure how I wound up there or if I had even heard of the website before, but I was immediately drawn to the concept of just ordinary people writing product reviews. I surfed around for a few days, just enjoying reading what others had to say about various books and movies, etc. It never really entered into my mind that I might eventually write reviews myself until the day I looked up the intensely interesting book “IN SEARCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD” by Robert Cornuke (I would learn much later that Cornuke had actually been my Brother-In-Law’s high school football coach).
I had read Cornuke’s exciting and intriguing book several years earlier, and I was disappointed to find that up to that point, no one had yet written what I considered to be a really on-target review for Amazon.com. To make matters worse, some of the reviewers had posted what appeared to me to be intentionally or unintentionally misleading reviews of the book. I decided it was up to me to do that book justice, and so on 2004, May 6, I submitted my first review to Amazon.com.
As time went on, I wrote a few more reviews for the website. Early on, I adopted the personal policy that I would not write a review for a product unless I had something new to say about it, or I had a very novel way of saying what had already been said; I couldn’t understand why people felt the need to restate over and over again, in review after review, the same pedestrian (and often boneheaded) observations: “Led Zep II ROCKS!!!”; “Julia Roberts is so pretty in Pretty Woman”; “If you hate the N.E.A. then you must hate children! YOU SUCK!!!” Due to my own chosen reviewing policy, I tended to review more forgotten or overlooked items than popular products.
After I had written perhaps 4 reviews for Amazon, one day I discovered a review written by a woman named Lanker on April 5, 2002, for the Tom Waits album “NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER.” (A title inspired by the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks," by the way.) She had titled her review “In The Oldest Bar In Nevada...", and I thought it was (and still think it is) one of the very best reviews ever composed for Amazon.com. She related some personal experiences in her review which, for me, gave it a quality of human relevance.
Several days later, I happened to stumble on a review written by a bloke named Martusheff for the Nazareth album “HAIR OF THE DOG". In his review, he told the story about how he first heard the recording as a little kid while riding with his uncle in the man’s hot rod. He asked his uncle what that sound was and the man replied, “An electric guitar.” And that was the start of this boy’s love of Rock ‘N’ Roll.
I came to realize that the reviews I seemed to be most attracted to at Amazon.com were those written in a highly individualized way, in which the writer related some personal details about himself or herself which gave the review a human element; these weren’t just a cold, hard recitation of facts about some product, but a real live person’s view of it. With Lanker and Martusheff, I liked the idea that I could see standing behind their reviews, genuine human beings with honest-to-goodness real world experiences which somehow related to the products they were reviewing and which they included in their reviews.
It was at this point, with a few Amazon reviews already under my belt, that I made the conscious decision to incorporate some information about my own personality and life experiences into most of my future reviews. I wanted the reader to come away with the idea that this review was written by a REAL PERSON who has experienced some life; that I wasn’t just some computer program-like reviewer – I was actually living, thinking, feeling, and drinking (the alcohol haze of my ancient youth became a long-running joke throughout the years of my life as a reviewer at Amazon). If memory serves me, the first review I posted utilizing my new style was for the movie “THE BLACK STALLION” – one of my favorite films.
As I often found myself weaving little personal stories into my product reviews, the reviews added up and so did the feedback. While some readers at Amazon mistook my anecdotes as egotistic ramblings (never realizing that this story-review approach was in fact a deliberately selected style for reviewing based upon my own preferences learned from other reviewers), it seems that my contributions to the website were generally well received, as I acquired a fairly impressive number of “Helpful Votes” and climbed in Amazon’s reviewer rankings – much higher than I could have ever anticipated climbing, and higher, in fact, than I really desired to climb. My goal had never been to become a top ranked reviewer; it was simply to turn others on to good products they might have missed, and to warn them away from bad “stuffs” they might be tempted to purchase. (Actually, my REAL goal was to direct people to God, but that’s a story for another day.)
Anyway, on April 28, 2008, I suddenly discovered that Amazon.com had responded to a single, random complaint by a Liberal who didn’t like my politically incorrect views. This anonymous Liberal filed an electronic complaint against the latest installment of my Amazon Blog. (The Blog installment in question, which caused all the fuss, I have recreated here: read my entry entitled “EDJUCATION-R-US: We B Edjucatin’ U. [Issue #1: Polatics & Soshial Studies]” which I posted here on Monday, June 23, 2008).
This person might have chosen to try to engage me in debate in the public “Comments” section of my Amazon Blog, but undoubtedly recognizing that he or she would have a tiger by the tail in a genuine, objective debate with me, chose the cowardly path instead, and sought to have my Blog and Comments deleted by Amazon.com. And Amazon was only too happy to immediately respond to the complaint by removing my Blog and former Comments, and by canceling my ability to post Comments in the future. This really ought not to surprise anyone, because this is a typical tactic of Liberals in general: when they can’t defeat an authentic conservative (of which there are very few left) in a fair and objective debate – despite all of their frequent cries against censorship – they will often attempt to have their opponent’s "politically incorrect" voice silenced. I call this an aspect of the “Help Me, Big Brother” Syndrome which, unfortunately, so many Liberals suffer from.
If you are interested in reading the e-mail exchanges that took place between myself and Amazon.com representatives as I attempted to get the website to reverse the ban against me, then please read on. As one reads Parts 2 and 3 of this Blog installment, the story will unravel itself and become clear. In other words, if you want to know THE TRUTH about Amazon.com vs. Stephen T. McCarthy, you are now one-third of the way there. The dirt begins flying in Part Two below . . .
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
[Continued Below...]
Link: Amazon: Just Another Way To Say "Big Bitch" - Part 2
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