If there was ever a time for guerrilla-war political tactics, they will begin on November Third.

And if there was ever a time for Republicans to pull their heads out of the (sand), it is today, October 12th.

The problem with being so tightly wound around the concentric circles in Washington of political consultants, poll-takers, bundlers and the like, is that they tend to make candidates take their eyes away from the central issue of a campaign, and away from what is actually animating voters to head to the voting booth.

I hate to tell the candidates this, but the lazily generic term “the Economy” is not what is animating voters. Saying this is rather like a cancer patient saying they are upset with the post-nasal drip caused by the chemotherapy. There are specific, knowable things that are causing America and Americans to rise up in a condition that can only be described as “Pre Revolutionary”. It is not “the Economy”.

It is the fact that the Federal Regulatory and Taxing Leviathan have quite obviouly imperiled the economy is what Americans are upset about. Clearly, whatever state we find our economy in, certainly we can all agree now that this isn’t a garden-variety recession. This is something new, something quite beyond the normal ebb and flow of the business cycle, and most Americans now recognize this.

Why aren’t there any new houses being built? Why are there so many “For Rent” signs in the strip malls? Why are there so many seemingly brand-new Convenience Stores and drug stores and home imporvement stores out of business, with weed-choked parking lots? Why are there 41 million Americans on Food Stamps? Why is the government constantly fudging the employment numbers? Why are all the roads torn up with the stupid signs saying what a magnificent thing it is, when it’s the same old road contractors doing the work that we’ve seen for ages? Why are there so many beat-up, rusty used cars on the road? Why do the forclosure sections of the newspapers go on for volumes? Why is a gallon of gas back over $3? Why can I not suddenly insure my kids when I was able to last year, and they are still as healthy as ever? Why have the receivables at my business gone up 40%? Why does the flippin’ government care what kind of lightbulb I want, or how I should sneeze, or how many gallons of water I use when I flush the damned toilet?

This is the stuff that animates people, and it can all be put, more or less, under the rubric of “The Economy”. But, “the Economy” isn’t why people have been organizing at Tea Parties, canvassing their neighbors, queuing up for Republican committee slots. We’ve been doing all this stuff, we conservatives and Republicans, to stunt the growth, the size, the influence and the scope of the Federal Government. And we are deadly, deadly serious.

When we say we want the Health Care Bill repealed, damnit, we want it gone– torn to a million pieces and dumped in a nearby swamp; don’t say you’ll “replace” it with more federal dictates, just because that’s what the consultants tell you to say. REPEAL it! When we say we want to purchase whatever the hell kind of lightbulbs we want, damnit, get rid of the stupid regulations against incandescents. When we say we want the bailouts defunded and overturned, and reparations made to the taxpayers to make them whole, damnit, DO it! When we say we don’t want any more radical Marxists on the Supreme Court, you folks had better be willing to go balls-to-the-walls to prevent it. When we say we want Obama stopped in his tracks, we mean it to a fare-thee-well. STOP him!

Shut Washington down, if you have to. America supports you, believe me, without regard to what the pantywaist consultants tell you. And don’t take advice about this from Newt, either.

Even if it means, Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor, sitting in the back of Obama’s Air Force One and shutting the hell up.

If there is one think I’ve noticed out in the culture that really seems to have reached its apogee in the Era of Obama is the bleak, minor-chord, heavy-waltz, steel-gray, ersatz character of pop music.

Camilla Paglia had a jaw-dropping and bullseye-accurate profile of Steffani Germanotta (aka “Lady Gaga”) that brushed up against this phenomenon. Evidently, consuming music has become an activity which requires muscling through, in order to appreciate the angst, the sublimity. Songs are not to be enjoyed, but rather, endured.

Like everything else in the Era of Obama, the pop music has a palpable sense of counterfeit sophistication. Just like the “gourmet” chocolate that some idiot laced with jalbenro peppers, or the bone-dry $90 bottle of thin Merlot that we’re all supposed to love, the music is either painful to listen to because of its discordance, vulgar, or jarring in its production value. That, and the breathless, monotonation of the singing.

Unless, of course, you are listening to “country” music, which has become almost unlistenable in the last ten years (-it having devolved into just another soundscan category with hard-driving rock ‘n roll power chords and banal lyrics), in which case most all of the songs seem to be crafted by some computer program in which word play, extermely cheap sentimentality and booze seem to be the input data.

And I won’t even go into hip-hop.

I am not sure what is driving this, but I remember a certain soulessness creaping into pop music as we got into the heavy Carter years (-think “Escape”, the Pina Colda Song by Rupert Holmes), or any of the interchangeable BeeGees songs of the late 1970′s. The same thing is happening now, in a sense.

This got me to thinking again: What ever happened to “happy” songs? And I’m not talking about novelty songs like “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, or “The Streak”, but up-tempo, happy-themed songs that burst into the mainstream because, well, it’s a good thing to be happy?

I put together a list of just plain old, happy songs. Nothing particularly deep here. But, as for myself, I would wager that just about anybody could put these on their MP3, and they could feel at least, well, happy when one or more of them played. Some will scoff, saying “Eeew. Sugary Bubblegum”. But, that’s the point. What’s wrong with being happy, and enjoying it? In spite of the hard, grueling work ahead in the next month-and-a-half, we are still blessed beyond our deserving, and we should rejoice in these blessings even in the midst of the toil. Especially in our music. I’m sure there are ten thousand others I’ve missed, but, feel free to pass along any suggestions…

15 JUST PLAIN HAPPY SONGS…

The Rain, The Park and Other Things -The Cowsills, 1967

Still The One  -Orleans, 1974

The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy) -Simon & Garfunkle, 1968

Walking on Sunshine -Katrina and the Waves, 1985

Top of the World -The Carpenters, 1972

More Today than Yesterday -The Spiral Staircase, 1969

I Feel Fine -The Beatles, 1964

Timber, I’m Falling in Love -Patty Lovless, 1990

I Got You, Babe -Sonny & Cher, 1966

New York, New York -(performed by) Frank Sinatra, 1978

Heatwave -(performed by) Linda Rondstadt, 1975

Your Smiling Face -James Taylor, 1975

Come Monday -Jimmy Buffet, 1974

Another You -The Seekers, 1965

Walk On Faith -Mike Reid, 1993

An actual piece of electronic lint I found balled up in a corner of my in-box:

Dear MoveOn member,

HUGE news: President Obama just appointed populist hero Elizabeth Warren to establish and lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau!!

This is the boldest step Obama’s taken so far to rein in the big Wall Street banks. And it’s a major victory for grassroots progressives who rallied for Warren.

The banks fought to keep her out of this job—and now that she has it, they’ll do whatever they can to keep her from exercising her full authority. That’s why we need to get the word out—to make sure she has the grassroots support she needs to aggressively police Wall Street.

So we made a video of Warren’s greatest hits from her appearances on the “Daily Show” and a list of five cool facts about her. Check them out at the link below and send them to all your friends:

So, this bit of repartee got me hooked. I was dying to know what the “cool” things were that about Mz. Warren. So, I read on, until I got to her number Five Cool Thing:

5. She may have actual superpowers. She once calmed a crowd at an NBA game with her encyclopedic basketball knowledge. She explained the financial meltdown so clearly to Jon Stewart that he said it made him “want to make out with” her. And there’s a viral cowboy rap video about her.

So, this is how the Left reacts to the whirling dervishes in their midst. Let’s “make out” with our Local Faculty Lounge Marxist while she discusses basketball minutiae to a “cowboy rap” song.  Boy, if Obama hadn’t appointed her in his dictatorial, authoritarian way, I would have!

If you are trying to track down a definition of “University Elitist Faculty Lounge Marxist”, just saunter over to your Unabridged Websters, and therein, you will find a picture of this lady, in all of her make-outable glory.

I remain in stunned, mouth-dropping amazement that the Marxist Left in this nation continues to get away with the canard that the Republican Party is somehow the party of the Fat Cat Wall Street Types. The likes of John Edwards and Chelsea Clinton can bring home the bacon by the wheelbarrow-load from the multinational hedge-fund operators, and still prattle on about the po’ folk. These Eurotrash-wannabes  contributed 3-to-1 to Obama over McCain in 2008, and yet, somehow, the Republicans continue to be tarred as the iconographic  caricature of Mr. Moneybags from the Monopoly Game.

But, hey! At least we can all swoon in our pants over our new Czarina for Higher Moral Purpose, Basketball Statistics and Ironfisted Financial Despotism.

PS – Don’t ask how I got on the MoveOn.Org blast e-mail list. You don’t want to know, and it had something to do with David Brooks, and hanging a picture of Monica Lewisnki on my wall.

Symbolism is an amazing thing.

For all anyone on this planet knows, I purchased a copy of the Koran (Q’uran??) yesterday at Borders, took it home, and set fire to it on the hibachi. But, because no one other than God knows whether this is the truth or not, the symbolism is lost, and is thus, worthless.

It is worthwhile to ponder, though, how much symbolism has flowed into Pastor Terry Jones act of social defiance, or ignorance, or fill-in-the-blank-depending-on-your-point-of-view. We think the hyperbole is distasteful; But, I offer the following as a bit of contrast for–, well, contrast.

-Suppose the Koran burning was being held at the Chicago Art Institute as a bit of “Performance Art”? And further, suppose the “Performance” was underwritten by the National Endowment for the Arts?

-Suppose the pastor, instead of burning a Koran, set fire to a flag of Taliban-era Afghanistan? Or Iran?

-Suppose the pastor installed an Art Assemblage where he required people to walk across a flag of Israel to view a graffiti-defiled portrait of Benjamin Netanyahu.

-Suppose the pastor took a plastic replica of Mohammed (if one exists), and submerged it in a flask of his own urine, and took a picture of it, entitled, “Piss Mohammed”.

-And, finally, suppose, at the last moment on the morning of September 11th, Pastor Terry took out a copy of the New Testament, and set fire to IT.

Do we think for one moment that the hue and cry for religious tolerance and freedom from our friends on the Left would be the same, or do you think we’d hear absolutely nothing at all?

“The White men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservaton, until, at last, there had sprung into existence a Great Ku Klux Klan, a veritiable empire of the South, to protect the southern country”.

-Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, Democrat.

The vast ocean of bigotry is sailed mostly by Liberal Democrats; Always has been, always will be. One of Wilson’s first acts as President was to fire the African Americans that Republican President William Howard Taft had hired into the federal civil service.

“What more does that little nigger preacher want?”

-Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States, Democrat; said in reference to a request from Martin Luther King, during a 1967 open housing march.

LBJ, like his mentor Franklin Roosevelt, was a classic, Democrat racist (–remember who interred Americans of Japanese decent during World War Two?). Vile, hate-filled, bigotry like the loathsome crud quoted above  seeths from the left. In some instances, it is a bold, declarative hate. In others, this venom expresses itself in more subtle ways:

“He is a light-skinned African American… with no Negro Dialect, unless he wants to have one”

-Harry Reid, 24th United States Senate Majority Leader, Democrat; said of President Barack Obama

What, exactly, IS a “Negro Dialect”, Mr. Reid? Can you perform one for us?

One could go on and on, like a reading of the Greats of the Democrat Pantheon: Orville Faubus, the racist segregationist Democrat Governor of Arkansas; Ross Barnett, another Democrat Governor that refused to integrate that states learning institutions, Byron De Le Beckwith, Democrat Lt. Governor candidate who murdered the incredibly brave Medgar Evers. Edwin Walker, George Wallace, Richard Russell (the man for whom the “Richard Russell House Office Building” is named, and the author of the “Southern Manifesto”), Wilbur Mills, Hale Boggs, Sam Ervin (Chairman of the Senate Select Committe on Watergate), and so on and on. Hate-filled, vile racists all.

In pop culture, the attempt has been made to refashion these men as backwoods rednecks, but they weren’t: Most of them were the heart and soul of the leftist, elite Democrat Party, and, in the case of Mills, Ervin, Robert Byrd, and Bull Connor, remained so right up until the early 1980′s. And their elitism would be welcomed today by their party. Which is why the Left’s self-incriminating and hysterical cries of “racism” toward the American Conservative say more about them, than about these conservatives.

The elitist left has always been racist. (This is in contrast to the elitist right, which has had a more condescending and Christian-spiced paternalistic view of class and race). In fact, a convincing argument can be made that racism and bigotry are foundational timbers OF the elitist left. Andrew Jackson was a blistering racist, viewing the Indian Nations of the south, particuarly the Seminoles of Florida to be a sub-human species (-to this day, some Indian Casinos will not accept as payment a Jackson $20 bill). The entire pre-civil war South was peopled and governed by a Gentry Class not unlike today’s hyper-urban elites that viewed vast swaths of those engaged in pursuits of “hand work” to be genetically inferior.

An entire leftist-humanist science was born out of this elitist, anti-God, racial hatred, in an attempt to give a scientific patina to the irrational hatred of people in the lower educational or economic strata. It was called by some “Eugenics”, or Racial Science. Many of the leading elite universities had “racial science” courses, including Princeton, MIT and the University of Berlin (In a sense, it was the “environmental science” of its day). Typically, these humanist, elite “racial scientists” made byzantine studies of the human skull, and of the length of certain bones, sinews, and so forth, to argue the inferiority of blacks, and Jews and Slovaks or other out-of-favor groups. Much of this “science” was also a weird amalgamation of Darwinian natural selection and and atheistic rebellion against a triune God, and would likely still be around in the world of the intellectualoid, if World War Two hadn’t arrived as the ultimate destination of class-and racial bigotry.

The largest expression of this classist bigotry and hatred is manifested in Marxism, which views the beautiful tapestry or kaleidoscope of humanity, in all of its constantly metamorphosing, incredibly rich and varied texture, as an ever-oozing ectoplasm of a few “classes” that must be manipulated and formed. In Marxism, there is no such thing as a sovereign human being, endowed by a creator, only a proletariat (class) to be exploited by the bourgeoisie (class). And this, in its simplest definition, is why the left is so attracted to the likes of Marx, and why, to this day, they feel most comfortable subdividing by class, and race, and educational attainment, and economic success; it is simple, elemental bigotry.

This is, by the way, why the Left verbally vomit such hatred and bigotry toward Sarah Palin in specific, and middle-American Christians, in general. They see them as genetically inferior, and can be easily detected with their superior Class Detectors by the “smell” (again, Harry Reid) of the polyester they wear, the “up-do’s” in their hair, the late-model Pontiacs they drive, and the diplomas on the wall from non-Ivy League schools they’ve attended. Once again, the judgement by the Left is upon the EXTERNALS (like measuring the slope of the forehead), rather on the substance, the God-inspired individuality, of the real, breathing, loving, person.

THIS is the real, seething hate-filled bigotry in America today. And every last scintilla of it comes from the Left. Never be cowed by their zealous screeching about race or class. They, as history (both contemporaneous and past) proves, are the hate-filled bigots.

The only cure? Prayer.

In his recent tabulation on the Senatorial election “Balance of Power” matrix, Scott Rasmussen counts the odious “Independent” Charlie Crist as a “Democrat”. Must be when he gave Obama the big ol’ smoocheroo in 2009, the Governor must have picked up the pathogen.

Methinks Marco ought to make some hay over this.

So far this year, according to my Google Calander, I’ve taken 8 vacation days. I also have the recollection of a day of (inadvertent) absence to take care of some personal stuff relating to my car. And, I also spent two days visiting my parents in Tennessee–, but I combined this trip with some business travel on the way back here to Michigan. That’s a total of, what, eleven days?

President Obama, (according to the news accounts du-jour), on the other hand, has racked up the following:

… he appears to take more holidays than his predecessors, they have usually been very short. His five this year will total just 20 days*

Now, President Obama has been in office for 576 days.

In stark contrast, I (-like a gigantically huge majority of folks in the private sector), have owned and been running my business for 6,344 days (-that is, over 17 years) . Additionally, most at-will hires are lucky to have a 14-day paid vacation after 728 days (or, again, two years).

If this man, Barack Obama, was in my employ (which he would not be because I would have been unable to obtain his college transcripts), he would be ineligible for ANY time off yet, let alone 20 days.

If the folks up at the White House want to have some clue as to why their man is seen as remote, disconnected, elite and unconcerned withe welfare of the vast roiling sea of Americans, they may want to consider this little vignette.

*The emphasis is mine, to point out how such drivel is written these days.

In a nod to Rod Serling…

Submitted for your approval: Sometime before the end of Summer, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele calls an Urgent National Convention to officially unveil The Contract With America 2010.

This document would be simple, one that covers the basics should the Republicans retake the House or Senate: Congressmen shall be required to read bills they vote on, Congress will vote to repeal Obamacare (and keep voting to Repeal until either Obama signs it, or there’s a new President), all bills submitted will have a written rejoinder that points to their specific constitutionality, and so on. Maybe ten Articles or Points in all.

The Articles, the Points, in this new Contract would be short and sweet–, easy to animate on the large Jumbo-Trons at the Staples Center, or wherever they can find to hold this Urgent Convention.

And each Point or Article on the new Contract would be introduced by a leading Republican. Imagine a wholly unified Republican Party coming together to introduce this document, in front of six or eight thousand glorious, frenzied Republican stalwarts from around the country, cheering every word:

…New Jersey Governor Christie gives a barnstormer introducing the article about government living within its’ means, Jan Brewer gives a fiery speech about the part of the Contract that addresses sealing the boarder. Bobby Jindahl winds ‘em up with a brilliant oration about domestic oil drilling. Paul Ryan brings down the house with a breezy explanation about future fiscal policy. Newt Gingrich gives a funny oration about the parts of the Contract that will change the Rules of the House of Representatives, and Sarah Palin closes with an awe-inspiring defense of smaller government, moral courage, and American greatness.

These are some quick examples; Others will occur to you at whiles…

Now, the broadcast networks would give this about forty-five seconds on the evening news during the Lifestyle segment of the broadcast, and they would smirk oh-so-professorially at the end;  but Fox would give such a gathering a huge audience, and the Internetsters would have a jubilee.

And finally, imagine Michael Steele gaveling the convention open, and Sarah Palin standing in front of the tumultuous thunder of the closing festivities. And what that would say about the Republicans being the party of Creativity, Passion, Spirit, and a Love of this Nation, and our Liberties– and how we were all going to go out after and fight like hell to take the government back from the very brink.

Not to mention what it might do for fundraising…

I think my dad, a World War Two combat veteran who came back injured from the Battle of San Pietro, was a fairly typical Democrat voter at Mid-Century: “The Republicans were always the party of the Rich Bankers, and the Democrats were the party of the working-class,” was, more or less, how he put it. But, by the time I became politically cognizant in the 1970′s, he had long since changed course, and settled into old-fart Archie Bunker caveman conservatism– or, so he seemed to me– in contrast to my hippie older brothers, who were wailing Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young albums at full-blast out their windows, when Dad was driving up to the house in his Buick Estate Wagon.

(Ah, as Oliver Wendall Holmes once said, “Youth is wasted on the young”…)

It wasn’t until many years later that I finally asked him (after I had crossed the Great Divide myself, and joined the Archie Bunker Brigade, most likely because I had been exposed to Harpers Magazine during that brief interlude where Louis Lapham was conservative, and had taken the magazine to the right), “Dad,” I queried, “Why did you become a Republican?”

“Kennedy,” he said, which was interesting, because, like Dad, Kennedy was a Roman Catholic. “I saw Jack Kennedy flying all over the country in his Dad’s jet, winning elections with his family fortune, and I thought, ‘How can the Democrats be the advocate for the poor when they are all so rich? Roosevelt, Soapy Williams (then Governor of Michigan, who was the heir to the Mennen and Williams soap fortune), Kennedy– all of them richer than hell. So, I thought, they must feel guilty about it because they all were inheriting family fortunes, and want to take everyone else’s money in taxes to make up for their guilt.’ ” Dad was a signpainter. He did fairly well out of it, but he worked like the dickens to raise his four boys, and the government always got their cut, of course. And then he hit on the nub of it: “Plus, most of the bureaucrats are Democrats, and I pay their salaries”.

Like many in his taciturn generation, Dad has always been a man of few words. But, I don’t think there has ever been a more succinct definition of the Democrats. And, it was a bit of self-reflection that led him to this conclusion.

And, now we have no better illustration than the Heritage Foundation’s recent examination of public-sector salaries vis-a-vis private sector pay ($121,000 yearly for the former, and $62,000 for the latter). As the kerfuffle in Bell, California so brilliantly models (where lowly municipal department heads were earning grotesque six-figure salaries), the Governing Classes are the new Robber Barons. Dad was right. The Democrats are the Party of Government.

Can you personally think of a single democrat voter who actually votes for democrats out of principal (whatever those principles might be)? Or is their husband a Bond Consultant who works for the local bank selling government debt instruments? Or is the wife a school bus driver? Or, is his brother a magnificently wealthy trial attorney, or an office worker at the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles? Maybe the sister is a tenured public school teacher, or the kids are in research at Cal-Berkley. Maybe his wife is a unionized Firefighter/EMT, or an attorney for the local zoning commission. Maybe their family have been on Food Stamps for forty years, or the husband is a therapist in the medical department over at the university. Maybe the wife is a fourth-generation public defender, the son a third generation Department of Public Works employee. ..

You get the picture. “All the bureaucrats are Democrats, and I pay their salaries”. Yep. So lets stop calling them “public sector employees”. Let’s call them the Fat Cat Bureaucrats. Or, better yet, “Bureaufats”.

-They’re gonna build a Mosque at Ground Zero. Despite the fact that that a mile-wide cordon is maintained off the debris field of the Titanic (-it is, after all, a hollowed gravesite), and despite the fact that there are dozens of American cemeteries scattered around the globe where the highest level of secure installation of the honored dead is observed, the fact that 2,605 absolutely innocent Americans were ruthlessly murdered at the World Trade Center and the place where they perished is hallowed ground, the Federal Governing Elites are utterly unmoved by their deaths, and are going to build a mosque at the site.

-They’re gonna let homosexuals and lesbians marry in California, despite the fact that 7 million Californians voted to outlaw the procedure. Despite the fact that President Obama himself declared the federal Defense of Marriage act a silly intrusion into “States Rights” issue, the Federal Governing Elites have decided to hell with states rights, and have now imposed their will on the nation.

-Despite the fact that 70 percent of those living along the Gulf Coast have opined that they want the oil patch re-opened, the Federals Governing Elites are still keeping these oil resources off limits.

-Despite the fact that 65 percent of Americans want creches to be allowed on government property, prayer in schools, and the Pledge of Allegiance recited before class begins, the Federal Governing Elites continue to shove God from the public square, and moral training away from students.

-Despite the fact that over 60 percent of Americans want Obamacare repealed, and 80 percent do not want a national system of socialized medicine, the Federal Governing Elites are moving full steam ahead, implementing a byzantine system of health-care delivery that even the Government Accountability Office cannot estimate the number of boards, committees and bureaucrats which will be required to administer it. Despite the fact that over 80 percent of Americans remain happy with their current health-care insurances and providers, the Federal Governing Elites are busy dismantling this framework with all due speed and intensity.

-Despite the fact that 70 percent of the nation, and 85 percent of Arizonans, support the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Federal Governing Elites refuse to enforce them, and have taken Arizona to court to restrain that state from their own efforts to enforce these laws.

-Despite the fact that almost 80 percent of Missourians voted to outlaw the individual health-insurance mandate, the Federal Governing Elites have said this vote has no effect on how they will proceed.

-Despite the fact that 75 percent of Americans do not find “global warming” to be of concern, especially one that requires federal legislation, the Federal Governing Elites are elbowing their way forward to implement a ridiculously expensive carbon tax.

-Despite the fact that, according to Rasmussen Reports, 65 percent of Americans understand that the best way to stimulate the economy is to reduce taxes, the Federal Governing Elites refuse to cut taxes, and are instead empaneling a commission to recommend a Value Added Tax.

And finally, despite the fact that this is supposed to be a free, democratic representative republic, and that our citizens regularly trudge out to the polls, election after election, year after year, decade after decade, and voice their opinions, we continue to get higher taxes, bigger deficits, detestable social policy, schools that are manifest failures, and a government that torments and abuses us. Our votes mean nothing when the Federal Governing Elites can just decide what it decides, and implement it anyway.

A question: Just how much longer are we gonna let them poke our cage with their fat fingers before we get seriously pissed off?