Tuesday, 28 November, 2006
POLICE SHOOTING UNARMED SUSPECTS
Well, the police have recently bagged an 88 or 92
year old lady and a young unarmed man on the eve of his wedding day (at least
his bachelor party was over).
There's always more to the story, of course, but
if our police were not so hyped on military fire power, "shock and awe
tactics," and the doctrine of "overwhelming force," quite a
lot of unnecessary bloodshed might be avoided.
And, naturally, scared police officers are
dangerous, and apt to over-react to any threatening situation particularly
when they're already frustrated and have been subjected to too many Rambo and
Terminator movies. They are all the more dangerous when they think they have the
G.O.D.* given right to use
forced entry and overwhelming force to shock and awe and
subdue suspects in their own homes and apartments.
In other words, what were once called "peace
officers" are being groomed and trained to look like super Ninjas and act like
commandos and to feel
that military-like force ought to used
when they go calling on suspected bad guys.
Often the "bad guys" are thought to be
guilty of such petty things as growing and selling such things as marijuana
something that ought to be considered little more serious than marketing
unhealthy fast foods, or promoting such "sports" as bungee jumping.
Ironically, our armed forces are increasingly
being deployed to bring liberty and peace to foreign countries using all the
deadly military means
at their disposal. In Iraq, they've gone from invading crusaders, to nation
builders, to democracy makers, to Ramboized "peacemakers" between
warring religious factions.
In other words, our peace officers are becoming
warriors, and our warriors are becoming peace officers both using the same
shock and awe tactics.
Of course, the term "peace officer" is
seldom used these days with regard to the civil authorities. "Law
enforcement officers" is more like it. In a society where almost everything
is tending to be against some law, "police state" becomes a more and
more appropriate term for the "land of the free and home of the
brave."
With law enforcement militarizing, Ramboizing,
and even ninja-izing,
what would you expect? What would you expect with our present combined
entertainment media and terror culture? SWAT "narc" raids on "live TV" are
considered great entertainment, and the public seems to lap it up. The
"good guys" (regardless of their language), are getting the bad
guys live for TV viewers.
The police unavoidably get the feeling that they are really doing a
dangerous but great and necessary public service, complete with possible "real TV" movie star
status. They always film their heroics these days in hopes their footage will
make the major media and make them look good.
It is a dangerous job, and sometimes an all too
thankless job. And with so many things against the law, it's becoming a bigger
job all the time. But police are sometimes considered a public menace rather
than public servants.
Pridger heard the other day that one in every thirty-two
Americans is officially some sort of a criminal either in jail, prison, or
on probation. Many of the rest of us just haven't been captured yet.
With the nation becoming more and more paranoid
over drugs and terrorists (officially so, with plenty of promotional and
monetary input from Washington's Department of Homeland Security), things are
likely to get worse. The phenomena
of police shootings of innocent people is becoming more and more common. It goes
with the territory in these dangerous times.
But we aren't only paranoid about drugs and
terrorists, there's a host of other things, from drinking and driving to drivers who fail
to buckle up.
It's war, you know and it's a jungle out
there. And there is always
collateral damage in war. And in war, if you aren't under the official command
structure, you have no rights at all. The hapless homeowner has no rights when
the psyched up militarized SWAT team arrives. If it happens to be the wrong
address, or the result of a hateful neighbor's prank, a few tragedies are bound
to happen.
When a loudmouthed group of violent strangers come crashing through the door in the
middle of the night, what are you supposed to do?
Well, here's what. Cow in some corner with
your hands up or lay down on your stomach in the middle of the room with
your hands behind your head that's what. That's what's expected of you. And hope that whoever it is
breaking in will be nice when they get in that they will prove to be
"peace officers" rather than rowdy imposters, a gang of thugs, or real
ninjas.
Remember the horror stories of the Nazis and the Gestapo?
"First they came for the Jews...", etc.? Remember how it is said that
the people feared the "knock on the door"? Yes, in National Socialist
Germany, the police (including the Gestapo), knocked, and waited for somebody to
answer the door. The Gestapo was a polite organization compared to our modern
American drug warriors.
Knocking gives suspects time to flush the
evidence down the toilet. Better to risk killing any number of people
than to risk loosing the evidence. And they want to get in there in a hurry
before the homeowner (or criminal suspects), have a chance to arm themselves.
The police are careful not to tip the occupants off in
advance, of course. They don't announce themselves by screaming "POLICE!" until they are in the act to
crashing through the door. (Murderous thugs and assassins can yell
"POLICE!" too, you know) And, in twenty-first century American fashion, their
language isn't really what one might expect of "good guys" or respectful public servants.
It's war and it's here. First, they are
coming for the suspected drug dealers. Later they may come for the suspected
racists, anti-Semites, and "patriots."
Now here's Pridger's advice to homeowners in the
event of a forced break in by a large and loud group in the middle of the night.
Forget about defending yourself, your loved ones, and your property. Don't try
to escape through the back window the place is probably surrounded, and
escapees are fair game for lethal force.
Chances are
good that it's only our selfless public servants at work making America safe for
democracy anyway. There will be too many of them to defend against, and they
have the law on their side along with some pretty impressive firepower. By all means, cooperate! Cow before the authorities.
It's expected of you.
If it turns out that they are a bunch of
murderous thugs or assassins, that's just tough luck.
What about the Fourth Amendment of the
Constitution, you ask? Well, we had a Constitution once, but the government no longer uses
it literally. In a war, you have to understand that the niceties of such things as
constitutions don't apply.
What about the right of self-defense? Well, of
course, you still have that nobody can take that away from you. But
attempting to defend yourself is certain to get you killed if the attackers
happen to be the good guys. And, legal self-defense or not (if you prevail, and kill the
assailants), you'll probably be arrested and locked up, and the judge will
likely do his damnedest to convince the jury to convict you for at least something.
John Q. Pridger
*G.O.D. (Government Omnipotent and Deified)
KRAMER'S OUTBURST
Comedian Michael Richards really lost his cool.
Some "African-American" hecklers apparently got to him. And,
obviously, he had a lot of pent up anger and frustration and he vented it on
stage in front of an audience and rolling cameras.
Now, of course, he's contrite and trying his best
to make amends. He's "not a racist" he says, but a rage just came up, got
the best of him, and temporarily took control. Temporary insanity.
This should tell us something about ourselves and
our society. Pridger suspects that Richards isn't all that unique. There's a lot
of pent up anger and frustration out there after forty years of watching the
culture perverted and freedom of expression and association suppressed. Many
white people, because of the repressive agencies of political correctness, are
literal time bombs ticking away, waiting for the spark that will set them off.
On certain levels, for the last forty years
blacks have been the only ones to enjoy freedom of expression, and our common
decency laws were overturned, at least to a significant degree, on their behalf
or at least to further better race relations (getting both whites and blacks
to speak the same language).
Blacks can
rap just about anything they want to rap. Obscenity in entertainment has become fashionable and
popular. Two reasons: (1) it appeals to the great "lower common
denominator," and (2), because it has been so aggressively marketed by
media companies. African Americans can call each other the "N" word with impunity, and they can call
whites anything they like
under protection of their former "persecution" and continuing
"victim" status. When they are unhappy, they explode easily. They
yell, lash out violently, riot, burn, and cause mayhem. A single small incident can set
them off.
It flames up and dies down, usually at great material costs. And it is passed
off as the understandable consequences of past discrimination and slavery.
Over the same period, whites have been cowed and
suppressed by their own government institutions and the "do-good"
legions of academic and media
political correctness police. Many whites have even adopted the rap and hip-hop culture
in order to be able to be more like blacks, and thus fit into the culture of
freedom. But it's a false freedom and one with far reaching negative social
consequences.
Unfortunately, there are many whites just like
Richards. They do their best to play the game according to the new rules, but
under the veneer of meekness and docility there is a dangerous burning rage. The
scary thing is that whites are just as capable of rioting and mayhem as blacks, but their
propensities for extracting "justice" (in its several contexts), have long
been suppressed.
The established remedy, of course, has been more suppression of expression,
self-censure and self-censorship, and self-control on the part of whites along
with more
restrictive pressures exerted by the purveyors
of political correctness not to mention hate crime laws and de facto thought
crime restrictions.
But there is no safety valve. Sometimes an
individual like Richards explodes under the pressure, and he is almost
universally condemned and chastised. He grovels, apologizes profusely, and
retires into quiet repentance. Richards will probably reemerge after a period of
counseling and community service in the Black community or Africa. He'll return
to the stage and make self-depredating jokes about the episode, and how he was
cured.
The same pressures exist in the broader white
society. Heaven forbid the time when it should burst forth in large numbers in
all its pent up rage.
This is why we need to have microchips embedded
in all people, just as we need them in every cow, horse, and chicken. The chips
for people, of course, must have a stun capability. This will solve the problem
of making arrests and the overuse of force on the part of police. All the cop
has to do to subdue the suspect is to press a button on his police remote.
John Q. Pridger
THE TABOO "N" WORD
The "seven dirty words" may still be
excluded from daytime broadcast television and radio, but they have become
standard "adult language" in Hollywood productions and thus
increasingly popular currency throughout society. There's no longer any stigma
attached to them except among a dwindling and endangered minority that continues
to cling to traditional standards of common decency in language. But the
"N" word, and all terms that have come to be considered racial slurs,
are being vigorously suppressed as if those words were somehow responsible for
all the social evil that has ever occurred in this world.
Decent and respectful people have usually used
the "N" word about as sparingly as they use the famous "sever
dirty words." Nonetheless, there was a time, especially in the South, when
the "N" word was considered a respectable synonym, or simple slang,
for the word "Negro." While it was probably never considered a
particularly endearing term, it was not always meant as a slur by any means.
The "N" word was simply another word
for Negro, and it was once used rather widely by both the British and Americans, not
only for African Negroes, but for all non-white races. There is something about
the word that rolls off the tongue much more easily than the word Negro, which
has sort of a formal sound. The "N" word was informal, and in time
it's meaning came to take on all the negative connotations whites perceived in
all non-white races but most especially in Negroes.
Negro is an "N" word too, and both
words come from the same root which simply means "Black." African
Americans seem to prefer being called "Blacks" over being called
"Negroes." And finally, the more formal sounding term,
"African-American" has come to be the preferred designation for
Americans of African decent.
As in all things, we seem to go to extremes with
touchy-feely things like racial slurs and racial sensitivities. We
make altogether too much of such things when they occur as if the word is
greater than the deed. What kind of a society are we getting when it becomes
more socially acceptable (if not downright respectable), to call anybody
a "M----- F-----" than for an
angry white person to call an offensive African American a "n-----"?
If a Black comedian calls the audience a bunch of
"honky M@#%#F$^ &#* %@$*^@#$$%'s"
(and if it's a Black audience, he can add the "N" word), and it's
quite alright. It's not only okay, it's considered wonderfully cute and funny!
And woe unto any whites who would presume to heckle a Black comedian in any way!
There's only one exception. If the Black has made a rude comment about Jews,
it's not only okay to heckle him, he will probably also be taken to task in the
print media.
If Michael Richards had called the hecklers a
bunch of #$%^&*#%@$% (as long as he hadn't implied race), he'd probably have
come off smelling like a rose (rotten though it might have been). But since he
used the "N" word, he's required to grovel in sustained
self-recrimination and endless apologies, and be the butt of endless criticism
and social condemnation. The only honorable, totally redeeming, remedy would
probably be suicide. Failing that, a hefty donation to the NAACP or the AIDs
sufferers of Africa might buy him a moral reprieve.
And the very fact that this is the case is one of
the reasons people like
Richards sometimes explode in the first place (whether he realizes it or not), and why we
sit on a social powder keg.
John Q. Pridger
Monday, 20 November, 2006
THE LIBERTY DOLLAR
Since Pridger has devoted several posts
commenting on monetary affairs and expressing a strong preference to government
fiat money over banker credit/debt fiat money, i.e., non-backed
"greenbacks" (U.S. Treasury Notes), over Federal Reserve Notes
it's high time to make mention of a noble on-going experiment in
"private" gold and silver backed money as an alternative to both.
There have been, and are, several private money
projects in the United States over the past few decades, such as "Ithaca
Hours" and the "Liberty Dollar" seems, to be the the most
promising concept.
The Ithaca Hour currency (http://ithacahours.org)
has experienced a respectable degree of success as a "local currency"
around Ithaca, New York, and elsewhere. It's roughly based on the "man
hour" of labor. There is is lot of merit to the Ithaca Hours concept as a
local exchange currency. Check out their web site to learn more about it.
The Liberty Dollar (http://www.libertydollar.org)
is a totally different animal, since it is both silver and/or gold backed, and
engineered for national use. As Paul Harvey said on his radio commentary:
What's new? The Liberty Dollar! Fed Ex competes with the Post Office. So now there's the Liberty Dollar competing with the greenbacks printed by your government. The Liberty Dollar is backed by gold and silver. Yes, there's a competitive currency right here in the United States. In five years it has become the second most popular currency in America.
The Liberty Dollar seems to have the potential of
drawing a broad following because it is not only designed to serve as a
circulating currency (when accepted by merchants), but a non-inflationary store
of wealth. In other words, you can save the too and the the paper is always
redeemable in gold or silver, since they are actually "warehouse
receipts" for actual metal and the coins are gold and
silver.
Though not United States "legal
tender," since they are composed of gold and silver (or at least warehouse
receipt for those metals), Liberty Dollars are
very arguably much more "constitutional" than what officially passes
for money today. The Constitution itself doesn't have a whole lot to say about money.
But what it does say is that "Congress shall have the power... To borrow
money on the credit of the United States... To coin Money, regulate the Value
thereof, and foreign Coin..." (Article 1, Section 8, [B] & [E]), And,
"No State shall... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but
gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts..." (Article 1, Section
10 [A]).
The fact that the Constitution forbids the States
to make anything but gold and silver Coin a tender in payment of debts, the
correct assumption is that only gold and silver are considered "money"
so far as the Constitution is concerned.
Liberty Dollars are a good idea. And if you
really want to "save" money, there's nothing better than a silver and
gold based currency. But we still need an official national currency, issued interest free by the
treasury, that serves as an honest exchange medium nation-wide. Competing
currencies, like Liberty Dollars, however, can provide a working alternative and
help keep national currency honest.
We can't (or shouldn't), go back to a national
(or global) gold standard for three main reasons. (1) There isn't enough of it
to maintain a fixed standard in a growing economy. (2) The richest gold mines
are presently owned by "others, elsewhere," and (3), the big bankers
would continue to be in a position to
gain control over a lot more than their rightful share of it, and thus would
resume their historical stranglehold on economic matters.
Gold would, of course, continue to have a
significant role to play in transactions between nations, and in personal
savings as a hedge against inflation, but not as the basis for the domestic
"national" circulating currency the volume of which would have to
be scientifically founded on factors of population numbers, production, and
consumption, rather than available gold supplies.
John Q. Pridger
Wednesday, 15 November, 2006
PRESIDENT BUSH TO VISIT VIETNAM
One wonders what Bush's reaction would be if a
Vietnamese official had the crust to touch good naturedly on the subject of the
Iraq War. Envision a dapper, self-assured Vietnamese official looking our president
straight in the eye, smiling condescendingly, and asking, "Didn't you
people learn anything from your experience over here?"
Meanwhile, Pridger is reminded of his friend, Joe
Smoler, predicting that the U.S. would probably pack up and leave Iraq about the
time the 5,000th American war casualty is approached. If we get out at that
point it will at least mean we've learned something. It's better to get out with
5,000 casualties than with ten times that number.
Not only will it save American lives, but it
probably many Iraqi lives as well, even if they continue to go at it with each
other tooth and nail.
In any case, we've already fixed Iraq about as
much as Saddam deserved. Let the Iraqis do the rest at their own expense. It's
time to declare victory and get our troops home where they belong. The Iraqis
will never forgive us no matter what we do, so we might just as well cut and run
now.
John Q. Pridger
SPEAKING OF CASUALTIES AND "FIXING"
IRAQ...
As Saddam Hussein moves toward possible execution
for the killing of 148 Shiites in 1982, the estimate of Iraqis killed as the
direct result of our good intentions runs as high as 665,000! In other words:
Score: Saddam 148; Bush 655,000
Of course, these are extreme numbers,
intentionally weighted to make President Bush look bad. Saddam killed many more
than 148 Iraqis during his long reign most of them political enemies or war
casualties on Iraqi soil. This doesn't count Iraqi soldiers who died fighting in
Iran, of course a war in which we supported him. And most of the others he
killed within his own country were "enemies of the state" (what might
be considered a combination of "illegal combatants" and "collateral damage" in defense of the state, i.e.,
enemies of the Hussein regime).
By the same token, "we Americans" have
probably caused the death of fewer than 655,000 Iraqis and most of them have
"merely" been unintended collateral damage. How can you blame
a Commander-in-Chief for collateral damage during a war?
Even so, it's still an unfair comparison. Bush
hasn't caused the death of a single American on American soil, either
intentionally or unintentionally (as far as we know). All the killing and dying
of both Americans and Iraqis has been in Iraq (and, of course, quite a few
Afghanis and Americans have died in Afghanistan).
Still, it's highly significant that an American
president should be responsible for the deaths of any foreigners at all in their
own far off lands, absent an attack or some other serious provocation.
America has become "one mean son of a
bitch" at least that how a great deal of the world looks at us. Look
what we can do without even a declaration of war! Just think how bad it will be
if we ever really go to war.
The 9/11/2001 attack on the Pentagon and World
Trade Center were quite a provocation, of course. But neither Iraq nor the nation
of Afghanistan were responsible for that. That bloody business was solely the
alleged doing of a rag-tag band of Islamic terrorists.
True, the Taliban government of Afghanistan had
been providing sanctuary and material support for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. But both
Al Qaeda and the Taliban government had been the result of our previous
far-sighted good intentions in that God forsaken nation. We helped the Afghani freedom fighters expel that
mean old Russian occupation force. We helped install the Taliban and trained, armed, and
empowered Osama bin Laden in the process.
There has been a long train of good intentions
that turned right around and bit us in the seat of the pants,
going back many presidential administrations. Some have had such monstrous
negative unintended consequences that one would think our leadership would have
learned something somewhere along the way.
Not yet. We're still pursuing the same sort of
"good works" strategies that have caused many of our problems. For
example, we've issued de facto ultimatums to Iran and North Korea with regard to
their nuclear ambitions. We provided moral backing and cover for Israel's bloody
and destructive incursion into Lebanon all in the name of peace, of course.
The last big war that we won was World War II. In
that war we learned that the way to win is to go at it with all we've got and
not only destroy the enemy's armed forces, and all their toys, but effect as much
collateral damage on the civilian population as possible to totally
demoralize and vanquish
the enemy.
We didn't do that in Iraq. Despite all the
collateral damage thus far, we've left far too many Iraqis alive. So many, in fact,
that not only are some of them still killing our nation-builders and peace
keepers, but many more are pursuing civil war on the side as our troops continue
to fight to deliver an impossible democracy.
You can't deliver democracy to a nation like Iraq
without first demolishing everything that is now standing in its way. It'll be
tougher in Iraq than it was in Japan and Germany, which were nations of
disciplined people (people who were as disciplined in defeat as they were in
war). It might be necessary to take out as much as a third of the population
Iraq to break them. After all, this is an Arab nation full
of mutually hostile sects and tribes. The Infidel can do no good in such nations without paying a high
price or taking a terrible toll. Naturally, if we purport to be Christians, "taking out anybody"
is a violation of our most fundamental religious teachings.
Saddam was able to do the job of ruling Iraq on the cheap. Iraq
wasn't a democracy, of course, but it was a somewhat unified nation. He only had
to kill a few thousand to bring the nation under one government. And it didn't
cost us very much money either nor did it cost a single American life. We
can't operate the way he did. To succeed, we'd have to go whole hog and totally squash all
potential opposition to American-style democracy.
On the other hand, why would we want to take
Saddam's job away from him and try to reinvent Iraq in the first place? After
all, we'd already chased him out of Kuwait and roundly chastised him for his impertinence.
Wouldn't it be much better to extent the olive
branch to all nations and spend our time and energy just reinventing America as
a peace-loving nation dedicated to constitutional government,
justice, and human rights the "Truth, justice, and American way"
that used to be the national goal?
That's impossible, of course. The Democrats are
as unlikely to think of it than the Republicans did.
Matthias Chang, an ethnic Chinese Christian, and
author of Future Fastforward, The Zionist Anglo-American Empire Meltdown,
is hardly a Islamic extremist. As a one-time political secretary to a former
Malaysian Prime Minister, he is in a unique position to convey just how the Third
World and Islam now view America and our New World Order.
In spite of his dim view of America's present
wars and foreign policy, Chang states that "America is not the enemy."
If fact, he writes more like an American patriot than a former Malaysian
government dignitary, advising that we return to the national principles set
down so wonderfully in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and
follow the advice or our wise founders.
America, in fact, is still the world's greatest
hope if we could only kick a few bad habits that threaten to foreclose on
the last vestiges of that hope.
John Q. Pridger
DETROIT ON THE ROPES
The Big Three American automakers are in a state
of crises. The nation's one time largest and most profitable manufacturing
companies are losing billions annually. None of them are seeking a bailout, of course. Their executives know
that the solution is to become more competitive in the international
marketplace. That means getting rid of as many American workers and production
facilities as possible in favor of offshore production. That's the way it's
done, and they're beginning to realize that it's better to join the exodus than
pretend there is an alternate solution.
The main alternative solution would have to come
from government. It would be in the form of protecting the American market on
behalf of both American workers and American manufacturers. But the American
government doesn't do that any more. The American market has been gifted to the
world, and Americans simply have to adjust to that reality no matter what the
ultimate fallout entails.
Protecting the American marketplace, as the
owner/operator proprietorship it should be would be "protectionist."
Protectionism is condemned as "isolationist" and the next thing to
rabid nationalism. To protect our own would be to resume caveman mentality we
had prior to becoming the world's greatest debtor nation.
Minding our own store
on behalf of the American people? Why that would be to forgo the profit
potential of such things as developing the Chinese market, the Latin American
market, and the overall world market. It would prevent so-called
"American" capital from profiting obscenely from global wage
differentials producing in the cheapest labor markets and selling in the
highest consumer markets.
Another alternative solution for the Big Three
might be to re-invent automobiles that are a little more consumer friendly a
modern version of the Model-T, Model-A, or original Volkswagen bug. Something
small enough and cheap enough that the financially strapped masses could not
resist. Unfortunately, if such a car does enter the marketplace, it will come
from China, Japan, or Korea rather than Detroit or anywhere else in the
de-industrializing land of Henry Ford.
Actually there are several such vehicles already
on the market, but they are designed and marketed as golf carts and high end recreational toys
for children and well heeled mechanized sportsmen. They are banned from the nation's
highways, which are designed for breakneck speeds and high priced luxury.
John Q. Pridger
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
Pridger sees the Interstate Highway System as
providing an excellent, publicly owned, roadbed infrastructure of a future mass transit and freight rail
system, with shoulder "side-ways" (along with secondary highways and
roads), providing passage for bicycle and ultra-light motorized vehicular
travel.
He foresees the discovery that (in the absence of
significant industrial air pollution), jet air traffic is the real main source
of destruction of the ozone layer and the primary cause of manmade global
warming, and a time when speed of travel (except, perhaps, teleportation), is no
longer a god.
Well, just some thoughts.
THE TOBACCO WAR
As we all know, along with the war on poverty,
drugs, terror, and numerous other things, we have an ongoing war on the tobacco
industry in this country. The tobacco war is being conducted in the name of
public health, and to be against it in any way is to be either callous and
uncaring (or downright dim witted), if not hooked on cigarettes.
Pridger has never been fond of cigarettes. If
every cigarette in the world simply disappeared, Pridger wouldn't miss them in
the least. But
he's always been fond of his pipe and its second hand smoke.
Naturally, since just
about everything tends to be carried extremes in this country, being exposed to
second hand tobacco smoke is now supposed to be even more deadly than inhaling
pure concentrated tar, nicotine, and paper fumes deeply into one's lungs.
If second hand smoke is as deadly as they say,
Pridger is destined to be a dead man some day. His father (who also smoked a
pipe and breathed second hand smoke), is already a dead man but the smoke
didn't kill him until he was 92 years old, and he never knew what killed him.
Smoke free environments are supposed to save
millions from the devastating effects of secondhand smoke. Maybe this is true.
Only time will tell. But Pridger continues to suspect, and predict, that those who are denied
the torments of dying of exposure to secondhand smoke will continue to enjoy the
torments of dying of exposure to multitudes of other pollutants in the air we
breath, the water we drink, and the foods we are obliged to eat.
And, of course, if tobacco smoke is really the
killer that it's cracked up to be, the relative health care costs of large
numbers of people dying relatively young of tobacco smoke are nothing compared
to health care costs caused by people living to a ripe old age with the array of
other sicknesses debilitations that inevitably gravitate to the aged and infirm.
But this isn't really what Pridger wanted to talk
about. It's another aspect of the tobacco war Pridger is aiming at something
he predicted several years back.
With the big American tobacco companies paying
out billions in the big tobacco settlement, running anti-smoking adds,
downsizing their tobacco investments and liabilities, and tobacco farmers being
put out to pasture, cigarettes are becoming a major import!
What brought this to Pridger's attention at this
particular time was a visit from a cigarette smoking neighbor and his
girlfriend.
"That's some long cigarette you're smoking there," Pridger
commented. "What brand is that?"
The brand name didn't lodge in the entangled
brambles of Pridger's brain it was unfamiliar but the country of origin
did. India! And about that time Pridger noticed that the neighbor's girlfriend
had another brand of cigarettes out on the table in front of her. They were from
the Philippines!
"It seems like most of the cheaper brands of
cigarettes on the market today are made overseas," Pridger's friend said,
"And they're pretty good too!"
So the world's largest tobacco growing nation and
cigarette producer is now a big cigarette importer. How ironic! And the trend
will undoubtedly continue until we depend on India for cigarettes like we depend
on it for doctors, computer programmers, and other outsourced knowledge works
as we increasingly depend on others elsewhere for just about everything that
makes American life-style possible these days.
Cigarette smoking may not be all that healthful,
but who would have guessed that America, the very nation that introduced tobacco
to the rest of the world (and went the extra mile to get it hooked), would
become dependent on others elsewhere to provide it with smokes?
With most of the old line American cigarette
companies diversified into food processing and packaging, it seems the next generation of
tobacco related cancer sufferers are going to die of foreign imports. Maybe the
next big round of tobacco litigation will target Third World tobacco farmers and
cigarette producers, and we can start putting the rest of the world out of
business like we've put millions of American producers out of business.
This is just another wonder of free trade, the
New World Order, and a nation hell bent on national economic suicide at any cost
using any excuse.
John Q. Pridger
Wednesday, 8 November, 2006
THE DAY AFTER
Well, as Al Franken pointed out in a recent
Midwest Values PAC (http://midwestvaluespac.org)
mailing referring to what Republicans said of their 1994 "Contract with
America" (to "restore accountability to Congress" and "end
its cycle of scandal and disgrace"), "If we break the Contract, throw
us out."
The Republicans blew it, and blew it big time, and they deserved every
Democratic victory. They not only broke their Contract,
they literally shredded it, and plunged us into a theretofore undreamed of
fiscal abyss, not to mention a Vietnam-like war quagmire. It's somewhat amazing that it's taken over a decade to return the
House to Democratic control.
The Democrats want a new direction in the Iraq
War. We'll see how they influence events. The resignation of Bush's Secretary of
Defense is a good indication that some changes are about to take place.
The only thing that saved the Republicans in the
2002 election was the residual hope that they still stood for "traditional
American values" and even "Christian values," in spite of all the
war and killing. And there was a lingering hope that "Bush was right about
Iraq after all" that it could be construed as a just, Christian, war
after all.
Unfortunately, too many of Bush's
"evangelical Christian" backers thought of the Iraq war as a holy
Crusade. And they considered four more years of Bush tolerable if there
continued to be hope that Armageddon might yet be successfully provoked in the
near term.
As far as Pridger is concerned, the sooner we can cut and run the better.
We've done more than our due there. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, thousands
of American troops and civilian contractors have been killed, with tens of
thousands wounded, and the
Iraqis have their democratically elected government. What more could we possibly
accomplish?
Saddam Hussein has been convicted and sentenced
to death for a small fraction as much as we've accomplished in a few short
years. That should be our queue to pack up and leave the Iraqi people to suffer
the consequences of all our good intentions. Not even a protracted and bloody
civil war would do as much damage as we've already done. And staying the course
and finishing the job would merely accomplish more of the same.
The Democrats may not have
any real vision for America's future, and they may not stand for any particular
values, but at least the party is not dominated by eye for an eye, tooth for a
tooth Armageddon seekers.
We might get higher taxes, and the New
World Order will undoubtedly remain on track, but hopefully Armageddon can be
postponed.
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, 7 November, 2006
TO VOTE OR NOT TO VOTE - THAT IS THE QUESTION
Today is the day designated to "vote the
rascals out," and many will dutifully troop off to the polls to do their
duty. Some of the rascals will lose their offices. Some won't. And some new
rascals will be voted in. And we, as a nation, will undoubtedly continue to
careen down the wrong track, toward national disintegration, economic disaster,
and chaos.
Pridger might go to the polls, but his wife would
insist on going too if for no other reason that canceling out his vote.
Since Mr. and Mrs. Pridger cancel out each other's vote, and gas prices are
still pretty high (and the polls are twenty miles away!), it's unlikely that
Pridger will make the journey. As in years past, he'll leave the decisions to
more qualified voters.
Elections in Pridger's neck of the woods used to
be held in the local township. Votes were in the form of paper ballots that were
dropped into a cardboard box. But as we got more sophisticated, and needed more
expensive voting paraphernalia, voting activity was finally consolidated like
the schools were some forty years before.
It was somewhat ironic that the first time
Pridger actually got out to vote was the very last time it was possible to vote
without traveling twenty miles to town. Pridger has always been disinclined to
vote. Voting is for those who have a stake, or at least a preference, in the
available candidates something Pridger has never managed to have.
Pridger, being a globe-trotter and perennial
outsider and contrarian, has never felt himself qualified to vote in national,
state, or even local, elections. He has always felt that if he did vote, he'd be
like a foreigner coming in to the polls to cast a vote for unknown entities with
unknown qualifications and agendas. Even at the local level, the candidates for
office are usually totally unknown to him. Best to let the people who actually
know them make the judgment as to who wins office.
At the local level, a single vote might determine
the outcome of an election. Candidates often win by a margin of two or three
votes. Quite often the election hinges on who has the most voting relatives or
personal friends. In most cases, Pridger feels unqualified and disinclined to
weigh in with an important vote that might decide an election.
The exception came when a neighbor ran for local
office several years ago. The neighbor came to Pridger's house and asked for his vote, and Pridger
couldn't refuse. In a weak moment, he promised to vote for her. So that was the
year Pridger traveled a mile down to the voting place and voted. He voted for
the candidate he'd promised to vote for, even though he didn't have the
slightest idea whether she was more or less qualified than her opponent.
As for all the other candidates for local office
on that occasion,
Pridger tried to vote as responsibly and scientifically as possible under the
circumstances. If the name sounded familiar, or at least didn't seem too
foreign, he'd cast
his vote for that candidate. If the names were equally pleasing, he'd revert to
a reversed alphabetical preference, favoring x, y, z over a, b, c.
Pridger favored x, y, z because he felt if
anybody else used this technique, they'd probably favor a, b, c and all else
being equal, Pridger prefers to vote for the underdog.
On the state and federal level, Pridger employed
a combination of the "vote the rascals out" and "third
party vote" criteria as his guide merely making sure that he did not vote
for an incumbent. Independents and Libertarians got his vote. Unfortunately, Pridger had no idea whether any of the
incumbents (other than perhaps the president), had been doing a good job and
deserved to be reelected.
Needless to say, Pridger didn't feel particularly
proud of having participated in the election except that his "one"
chosen candidate did happen to win. Still, the ice was broken. Pridger had voted
for the first time in his life, and he thought he might do it again. After all,
the voting place was only a mile away.
But things change. The next election required a twenty mile
drive in order to vote, and Pridger didn't figure his vote was important enough
to go so far to cast. So Pridger has since carefully refrained from promising to
vote for anybody.
Things have nonetheless become a little easier.
Local candidates who come around asking for votes and handing out electioneering gifts, such as ballpoint pens and note pads with the candidates name on them, also come armed with
"absentee ballot" forms, just in case a voter doesn't want to go all
the way to town to vote. Thus, Pridger has the option of staying home and
casting an absentee ballot, as if he were serving in far off Iraq or Afghanistan.
There are those who criticize Pridger for
spending a lot of time critiquing the government while failing to "do his part his sacred duty in the
democratic process." They commonly say that those who don't vote have no right to
complain about poor government. Pridger understands these sentiments completely,
and takes the criticism right on
the chin where it belongs. After all, they're right in a way. But in another way they are
wrong.
It might even be said that the non-voter at least does no
harm. And to Pridger, the right not to vote is just as important as the right to
vote. And even if he had done all of his homework, and gone out dutifully to the
polls and voted for all the candidates that had the most convincing campaign
what you see and hear (and what you think you vote for), is often not what you get.
Pridger has been observing the democratic process
in this country for almost half a century, and he has seen much more mis-representation
in the halls of Congress and the various State Houses than representation. Yet
all the politicians call themselves representatives of and for the people. In
aggregate, however, they are consistently mis-representatives. And it seems than
none of them know what it is to balance a budget.
And if our congressmen and senators have really been
"representatives," how in the
world could we have managed to get into the multiplicity of messes we're in to
today?
Of course, many continue to say, "Mess! What
mess? We've never had it so good! And look at the wonderful things we're doing
to bring democracy to Iraq and the rest of the world! Saddam has even been
sentenced to death! How's that for wonderful?" Pridger rests his case.
These things would have happened whether or not
Pridger, or a million like him, had cast his vote.
Where is it written that it is the duty of
unqualified persons to get out and vote? And where is it written that people who
consider themselves unqualified to vote are also unqualified to observe and
comment on the results of over two hundred years of the democratic processes?
Nobody has a duty to vote unless he is qualified to vote. Yet probably 95% of the voting public is no more qualified
than Pridger, and a goodly number of them are probably even less qualified than
he.
Is the nation any better off for encouraging unqualified voters to get out
and vote?
True, it would be better if everybody made the effort to become
a qualified voter i.e., both know the "real" issues, and the
candidates' positions on them (if any). One of the problems we face today is
that politicians seldom discuss the most serious issues confronting the nation.
For example, with the national debt increasing at the rate of $2.5 billion per
day, you'd think somebody would figure out that a "debt money system"
is not a good idea. But nobody mentions that.
Every once in a while somebody will mention
"fiscal responsibility" or "balancing the budget," but never
monetary reform. And monetary reform is the only way to address the root cause
of the problem. The Democrats still think the problem can be solved with higher
taxes. Republicans still think it can be solved by lowering taxes and
warfare.
But what, really, is a qualified voter in a democracy with
the universal franchise and a failed educational system? Education is the key to
both voter qualification and quality candidates for office thus we get a dearth
of quality candidates and not many more qualified voters.
Most voters that deem themselves qualified, of
course, are going to vote what seems to be "best for them" rather than
for the nation, and this is the problem with popular democracy. A couple hundred
years ago, English historian, Alexander Tytler, aptly wrote:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent
form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote
themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public
treasury with the result that democracy collapses over a loose fiscal
policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship."
On the eve of the American Civil War, Thomas
Babington Macaulay (another English historian), expressed another opinion
concerning America:
"Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize
the reins of government with a strong hand; or your republic will be as
fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the Twentieth century as the
Roman Empire was in the Fifth with this difference... that your Huns and
Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own
institutions."
Speaking of Huns and Vandals...
ILLEGAL ALIEN PROBLEMS
Another of those interesting emails was forwarded
to Pridger's inbox lately. This one is a reminder of another era, when we still
knew how to address the problem of illegal immigration:
> PRESIDENTS HOOVER & EISENHOWER DEPORTED MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS SO
AMERICANS COULD WORK!
>
> Here is something to pass around. I did not know of this until it was
> pointed out to me. Back during the great depression, President Herbert
> Hoover ordered the deportation of all illegal aliens in order to make
> the jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.
> And then again in 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower deported 1.3
> million Mexican nationals (called operation "Wetback") in order that
> returning American WWII and Korean veterans had a better chance at
> jobs. It took 2 years, but they deported them. If they could deport the
> illegal's back then, they can sure do it today!! If you have doubts
> about the veracity of this information, just type Operation Wetback
> into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.
>
> Reminder: Don't forget to pay your taxes..... 12 million illegal
> aliens are depending on you!
Pridger did a little search and offers this link
as starting point for further reading:
http://www.vdare.com/mann/operation_wetback.htm
The author of the email offered the opinion that,
"If they could deport the illegals back then, they can sure do it
today!!"
Maybe not. Today we live in
a different world, and a different nation, than that of 1954. Circa 1954 this nation was still ruled by
and for the majority race i.e., the descendents of the races that founded,
settled, and developed, the nation. A lot of water has passed under the bridge
since then not the least of which has been the willful de-Anglification of the
national social and political culture.
Civil Rights, and a determined effort at
national multi-cultural diversity, while undermining the majority culture, have
intervened. Under pressure from a liberal political establishment (deeply
influenced by leftist academics and communist sleepers), our nation officially
turned it back on its own "racial identity," changing its immigration
laws and quotas to facilitate diversity aimed at changing the racial
makeup and complexion of the nation.
The Civil Rights era was much more than just a
period of eliminating racial injustice and discrimination. It was a period
during which the nation was fundamentally reinvented and redefined a period
that literally overturned the the national culture, totally discounting
Anglo-American culture and its "dead white man" antecedents.
Middle class values were attacked and eventually
left in ruins. In the words of no less luminary than
William Jefferson Clinton's mentor, professor Carroll Quigley (not specifically
commenting on "Civil Rights" but on the effects of many social changes
taking place at the time among the nation's youth):
"Its chief characteristic is the rejection
of parental values... In many ways this new culture is like that of the
African tribes: its tastes in music and the dance, its emphasis on sex...
"This Africanization of American society
is gradually spreading with the passing years to higher age levels in our
culture and is having profound and damaging effects on the transfer of
middle-class values to the rising generation." (Tragedy and Hope,
published in 1966)
Naturally, the generation of youth that was
taking on the characteristics of African tribes, circa 1966 and before, are the
very ones in positions of political leadership today. Professor Quigley's former
student and protιgι, Bill Clinton, actually became president. Now we have
George Bush II, as Commander-in-Chief.
The Africanization of the white middle-class
continues to this day, of course. With it has come the notion that
pre-Africanized American culture was a pre-historic, dead, era typified by Jim
Crow, lynching, and other human rights abuses.
In 1954, however, an "Operation
Wetback" was still possible. Today, not only is such an operation
politically impossible, the very term "Wetback" attached to any
official policy would literally be impossible. It would be taken as a racial
slur. And the very idea that "Americans" are somehow more deserving of
jobs (in the U.S.), than Mexicans of any variety, would be loudly condemned as
hateful racism.
Huge ethnic voting blocks have since materialized
and metastasized, and they have effectively paralyzed our political system,
locking it onto a culturally self-destructive path at least as far as the decedents
of the "founding" and "traditional majority" is concerned.
Today the fact that 12 million illegal aliens are
depending on American taxpayers, scares the pants and skirts of of our
politicians. They know those 12 million illegal aliens have at least ten times
as many voting friends, relatives, and supporters! And you can bet that each one of them
considers himself imminently qualified to march to the polls and vote against
any representative who would advocate harsh deportation measures for illegal
aliens.
The reconquista is succeeding because long
ago, in the name of Civil Rights and "simple social justice," our government,
largely through the good offices of the Supreme Court and federalized National
Guards, bullied the duly constituted majority into relinquishing its Constitutional
right to majority rule! And there is no democratic way to get it back because
the quality of the general electorate has been subjected to, and has succumbed to,
forty years of combined inferior education, increasing multi-culturalism, and politically correct social
engineering!
Now the process has gone far beyond just the
social culture. The change has overtaken the economic culture as well what
would we do without Mexican laborers, Indian doctors, and Pakistani motel
owners? And what would we do without foreign nations to produce just about
everything we now use and need?
John Q. Pridger
ILLINOIS FARM BUREAU "FARM WEEK" SNIPPET
(Nov. 6, 2006)
"...Of the two million farmers left in the
U.S., only about 400,000 are good enough to make farming profitable. To the
rest, farming is a 'lifestyle'."
Two million farmers in a nation of 300 million
people, means our national food supply depends on only 0.667% of our population.
And we particularly depend on the profitable 20% of that number less than
0.133% of the population to produce our national food supply.
Though we're still an overfed nation, these
figures should sound some serious alarm bells. When 99.9% percent of the people
in a nation of three hundred million have to depend on the other 0.1% to feed
them, that 99.9% should begin to feel slightly insecure, and start doing some contingency
planning.
The reason such a minuscule number of people can
feed such a huge nation is "modern technological efficiency and intensive
chemical fertilization" backed up by an intricate, highly petroleum
dependent, farm to market transportation network.
It's a wondrous and amazing thing, of course.
But what would happen if all systems sputtered and broke down? You may think
such a breakdown highly unlikely and hardly worth worrying about. But the fact
remains that we have no national food insurance policy. In the unlikely event of
a serious economic collapse, and a breakdown of the nation's agricultural
machine and transportation system, a lot of people are are likely to find out
what hunger is all about.
In reality, such a high degree of dependence on
so few warm hands makes no sense. It makes even less sense than our increasing,
and totally unnecessary, dependence on "others elsewhere" to provide
us with clothing and consumer goods our coveted American life style require.
Literally all balance and fail-safe mechanisms
have been methodically removed from the American economic landscape thanks
to farm and economic policies hatched by our trusty mis-representatives in
Washington (at the behest of behind the scenes planners), over the last half a century and more.
John Q. Pridger
Monday, 6 November, 2006
vs.
The New
