TOPICAL GUIDE TO AMERICAN POLITICS 

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10/19/07  Rush Limbaugh, Harry Reid, and the 2 million dollar letter.  On this one, Rush is right.  Reid's letter, also signed by 40 other Democrat Senators, was an arrogant abuse of power in an attempt to browbeat a private citizen regarding his 1st Amendment rights; indeed his very livelihood.  Only a foretaste of what we could generally expect if the Dems prevail in 2008.  Rush's auction of the Reid letter on eBay was brilliantly executed on several levels. No doubt the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation will put the proceeds to good use.  Meanwhile, may the 41 signatories of this letter all hang their heads in shame, suck alum, and look forward to the attention of their constituents in the next election.  Good job, Rush.   JES

10/01/07   Alleged GOP "conservatives" cave in and vote with the Democrats on a 5 year $35 billion increase in spending for SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), which shouldn't even exist in the first place (Read the 10th Amendment.).  Apparently the only option left available for the reform of our government will be actual bankruptcy.  The national GOP can expect no help from me.  JES

08/28/07  Regarding Alberto Gonzales.   So he resigns, and I'm not so sure the timing was an accident.  What we have here is a political incompetent; a fact widely recognized.  What we have here is a victim of the Peter Principle, which says that there is a tendency for people to rise in an organization to their own level of incompetency, set up by a President who has repeatedly demonstrated his inclination to promote loyal friends over qualified candidates, e.g. Harriet Miers,  et. al.  Unfortunately, in the matter of Alberto Gonzales, the matter had gotten out of hand, with Senator Upchuck Chucky Schumer and his fellow Democrats frothing at the mouth about the forced departure of 8 U.S. attorneys, who by law simply serve at the President's pleasure.  The issue of the 8 attorneys has been politically fabricated out of whole cloth, and everyone in Washington DC, and a complicit Leftwing mainstream press, knows it.  The real game is to find any way possible to dismantle the Bush Administration, and the focus on Gonzales has been to achieve his resignation so as to set up an approval of a replacement on condition of the appointment of a new Special Persecutor.  The Democrat target is not Gonzales, or the reasons for the firing of the 8 attorneys; never has been.  The real target is Bush, his Administration, the GOP, and any chance at all of a Republican presidential win in 2008.  Anybody with a lick of political sense knows all this.

Now it so happens that the ultimate outcome of all this political pushing and shoving remains to be determined.  I would point out that the administration has options to undercut the Democrat strategy.

1).  Nominate a new Attorney General who is actually qualified for the job; perhaps tough at this stage of the presidential cycle and given the hostile political climate that clearly threatens a nominee's name and career.

2.)  With or without a nominee, stall off until the end of the year, and then make a recess appointment of a "care-taker" to get to the end of the President's term.

3.)  Some combination of the above, all designed to not be forced to swallow a Special Persecutor.

With some adroit political management of the situation, the entire Democrat plan could come to be viewed by the voters as reaching too far, and the real source of the divisiveness that has paralyzed Washington.  And so it goes.  JES

06/29/07  Yesterday, in the Senate, the great McCain/ Kennedy/ Bush Amnesty "compromise" plan of 2007 for illegal wetbacks and terrorists of various heritages came to a halt.  Finally.  Mr. President, now go and enforce the law.  Shut down the circus on the border.  And I want to see some employers go straight to jail.  You have the tools to do this, and have had all along.  Now just go do it and quit protecting your corporate, Democrat and RINO friends.  JES, American Nationalist Conservative.

06/20/07  The President gets one right with his veto of legislation attempting to authorize tax payer support of embryonic stem cell research.  The President, and all Conservatives, support adult stem cell research, where all the progress is being made.  Embryonic stem cell research, which is legal if privately funded, technically is going nowhere, hence the starvation of private funding, hence the attempted raid on the public treasury.  However, there is a larger issue at work here.  Supporters of embryonic stem cell research know full well that it is a technical bust; their real agenda is promotion of the idea that human embryos are not human so as to bolster their real agenda of abortion rights.  That this is what the discussion is really all about is not arguable.  JES

06/18/07  At the behest of the President, and likely unknown pressures on the congressional "leadership", the grand scam immigration amnesty package is reappearing for reconsideration by the Senate.  The tenacity of this effort to instantly legalize millions of illegals raises the suspicions of the Mountain Observer as to what exactly the pro passage forces may be trying to cover up.  We need to take a harder look at the money trail.  Aside from struggling house contractors, spinach growers and grass cutters, who is it, really, that has such a huge stake in all the cheap labor?  Why is it that the Social Security Administration and the Homeland Security Administration can't, or will not, talk to each other?  What is the depth of big corporate America's role in this controversy?  The Mountain Observer does not approve of fueling wacko conspiracy theories, however, neither was he born yesterday.  Something in this whole matter just does not smell right, or add up.  We need to keep digging, wherever it leads, however insisting on verifiable and documentable facts.   Selling out the country is a serious matter.  JES

06/18/07   Now I understand that Senator Trent Lott considers talk radio to be the problem.  Of course he has this exactly backwards: it is the multiple Senator Lotts in the Senate (and the House) who are the problem, And yes, we of the new alternative media, through whom real citizens (the People) can actually speak, will have to deal with that, and in particular, Senator Lott.  Frankly, I have never been a fan of Senator Lott, and was not among those who enthusiastically attempted his rescue after the birthday party fiasco.  You can look me up on that.  JES

06/11/07   Mr. President, enforce the current law, and no amnesty.  JES

06/11/07  Regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales ,who I, I believe, I have not mentioned since the Harriet Miers fiasco.  (The president has always been tempted to offer up Gonzales as a court candidate).  I have always regarded the man as a fly weight, and in Washington only as a consequence of old Texas loyalties.  I have complained repeatedly from the beginning of the Bush 43 presidency that the biggest problem with George W. Bush has been, and is, that he is a nice guy; not really a qualification for the job of President.   A sub-text to this complaint is that Bush has repeatedly allowed personal loyalties to trump competence, and this has cost him, and the country, dearly, on several occasions.  So it came to pass that these Presidential habits led to the elevation of Alberto Gonzales to the office of Attorney General of the United States.  Predictably, for this observer, it has become apparent to those close to the scene that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not up to the challenge of his office.  Now the President has a problem.  The Gonzales tiger has got the President by the tail, and the President can't let go.  The liberal (Democrat) establishment, seething with rage against the President, sees the political opportunity to possibly bring the President down by finding any way possible to ditch Gonzales and then demanding a special persecutor as a condition of Congressional approval of Gonzales' successor.   The legal outcome of any such persecution, guaranteed to be highly political, is not the priority; tying up the Administration in knots, with the possible added utility of forcing our surrender in Iraq, is the real political objective of this matter.  Democrats really don't give a damn about the 8 fired attorneys.  They see the perfect opportunity to go straight at the President; to hell with the American national interest in conducting the War against IslamicFascism for which they prescribe defeat anyway.  So it is that the President, irrespective of the incompetency of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is forced to stick by his man, and Conservatives just need to stand by and swallow hard.  What's best for the country has come to this.  JES

06/08/07   Finally, thankfully, the inside brokered deal in Congress over amnesty for illegal immigrants falls apart in the Senate.  We have just witnessed Congress at its worst.  In the opinion of this observer, passage of this legislative monstrosity would have been fatal to the continued existence of the nation.  George W. Bush, you are now on your own.  In the course of this process, you have stabbed us, your own base, in the back.  This came as no surprise; we have watched this storm approaching for a long time.  I do not doubt your honesty and sincerity, and never have.  Your recognition of the threat of the international threat against the West after 09/11, and your decision to preemptively target Afghanistan and Iraq as you did were absolutely correct.  However, in the execution department you are an absolute bumbler, both foreign and domestic.  I am too disgusted at the moment to write the list here now, and in any event I would just be repeating myself anyway.   This matter of your ideas about border security and amnesty for illegal aliens however, just pushes everything over the top.   General David Petraeus, who is now running the show, carry on.  I look forward to your forthcoming report  in September.   For Iraq, it will be determinative.  It is ironic that your boss in the White House, by his own actions and operational decisions, has done as much to undermine the War on IslamicFascism in several ways as all the Democrats and RINOs in Congress, and those Americans who elected them.  This observer fears that another 09/11 event, perhaps nuclear, will be necessary to get folk's heads on straight.  JES   

05/30/07   Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush has had an repeatedly bad habit of throwing his own political base under the bus.  (The "where else can they go" theory coming from the political middle.)   However, yesterday, on the subject of border and immigration policy, the president crossed a bridge too far.  Go to GEO. W. BUSH - IMMIGRATION 05-29-07   He has now become the Texas Democrat I predicted he would shortly after last Falls election.  I repeat some of what I said at the time:

            11/09/06  If you think that President Bush will protect what is left of the tattered GOP with the veto, think again.  In  the last six years he has used the veto pen one time, correctly vetoing a measure that would have funded embryonic stem cell research.   More to the point, he let pass train loads of bills generated by a so-called Republican Congress that were entirely out of line with Conservative principles.  The Mountain Observer has been more than tolerant of both a wartime President and the GOP in the face of outrageous Left Wing political assault.  However, that same Left Wing is now in charge of Congress, not necessarily because the American people are now all Deaniacs (Ask Joe Lieberman), but because the President and the GOP betrayed the base that elected them.  In the same election that swept Democrats into control of both houses of Congress (frequently by razor thin margins), the same voters in 8 out of 9 states voted to declare that marriage means a man and a woman, and in Michigan that affirmative action has no place in higher education.  Political bases really do not like being mis-lead by their political representatives.  Now as for President Bush, forget the veto pen.  Throwing Donald Rumsfeld under the bus, watch him morph into a Texas Democrat.  And watch the GOP tear itself apart between big government Libertarians and small government values voters as the GOP swings Left.  Time for an American Conservative Party.  As for Democrats and Liberals, this was no victory.  They are now faced with the problem of feeding their fish with zero substance.  Sand castles on a wet beach.  Great comedy if the international security consequences weren't so serious.  Oh, yes, and 1.5 million abortions a year.  JES

OK, I was wrong about the veto (he has recently forced the hand of Democrats in Congress on the subject of funds for the military in Iraq, thankfully, and hopefully to come on a couple of pending right to life issues).  However, on the border, and spending, he has been, and will remain, useless.  The GOP split is hard; the issue is much bigger than George W. Bush (Sen. John Kyle R-AZ, among others, are now in much trouble).  It is a split between actual Conservatives and the Libertarians  who have infested themselves into the party over the last 30 years.  It is a split between the heartland and the coastals.  It is a split between rural and urban, all of which has been discussed many times previously by the Mountain Observer.  As for the President, it is one thing to be principled, and not poll driven.  It is another matter to be politically stupid, especially when, as a matter of principle, you are simply wrong and have low approval ratings going in.  Mr. President, you chose the wrong hill to die on; you are history.  Senator Fred Thompson, where are you?  Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES  

05/01/07  The President vetoes the war spending authorization which was constructed by Democrats with a hard schedule to surrender in Iraq (read War on Terror).  An unacceptable policy choice, a stab in the back of the American military and a signal to the world of an American lack of resolve to confront IslamicFascism.  If Democrats truly wish to open up the floodgates of hell, they should simply defund the war now, without stretching timelines.  In fact they are cowards and appeasers, unable to round up enough simpleton GOP collaborators to over-ride a veto.  It is a pathetic sight to behold.  Stay tuned.  Meanwhile, General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

04/24/07   So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-CA, using his official position, instructs President Bush, General David Petraeus, and the Nation that the war in Iraq (in the shriveled brains of the Left something apparently separate from IslamicFascism) has been lost and that the "surge" is not working.   Now the fact of the matter is that, at least since 1992, major elected Democrat officials have almost routinely engaged in what  Originalist Americans describe as treason.  In the present circumstances we are actually at war, and properly so, against evil forces whose clearly and credibly stated purpose is to destroy us.  In the opinion of the Mountain Observer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid D-CA is a traitor, and ought to be dealt with accordingly according to the law, as originally understood, forthwith.  The Mountain Observer is absolutely beside himself with anger.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES

04/01/07  April Fools Day.  Regarding the funding of the war, schedules for bringing the troops home, and as many unrelated ear marks as Congress can tack on.  We hope the President means it when he promises a veto.  This is one of those key moments in history when an entire culture teeters on the precipice of suicide or salvation, literally.  We are on the edge of a major confrontation with Iran, either which way.  It occurres to the Mountain Observer, as it has to Newt Gingrich, that Iran's only gasoline refinery is a very inviting target as the price we might expect of Iran for their continued meddling in Iraq, Lebanon and beyond.  This is, no doubt, a contingency option at a certain point.  Newt suggests following up with a naval blockade to shut down gasoline imports, this too an obvious contingency option.  However, sooner or later, we must end Iranian sophistry about a nuclear program for peaceful purposes.

As Margaret Thatcher  advised the President's father, "It's no time to go wobbly, George".  What is truly disturbing is that the Bush clan seems to need this sort of advice and council  from time to time.   General David Petraeus: carry on.  JES

03/25/07  Politicians alleging themselves to be Catholic while voting in support of pro-abortion measures, need to be reminded that even Pontius Pilot, washing his hands of Jesus Christ after finding Him not guilty, never had the nerve to take Communion.   We know you fellows are heavily distracted by personal political interests of the moment, but you really need to think this over.  Going toward 2008, who are you?    JES

03/24/07  Again the Chinese are wooing the Russians for Siberian oil.  Russian and Chinese foot dragging in the United Nations on really tough trade sanctions against Iran are running up against a wall as Iran's complicity in sabotaging Iraq become more widely exposed.  The pieces of the puzzle are as follows: The American "surge" in Iraq is showing signs of results, and in Congress, Democrats are stumbling in their efforts to sabotage the war effort.  The renewed credibility of American determination suggests the real possibility of a collision with Iran, not only over the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons ambition, buy also over Iranian hegemonic ambition in Iraq and the entire gulf state region.  The United States has pushed very hard in the Security Counsel for some really tough economic sanctions against Iran, and both the Russians and the Chinese have stood in the way.  Russia historically has had an interest in trade access to the south, many times frustrated.  The Chinese are rather desperate for oil to power their exploding economy; they have very little of their own.  While the Mountain Observer is generally skeptical concerning the effectiveness of trade sanctions and boycotts, in this situation with Iran the fact of the matter is that they are very vulnerable to some real damage if a genuine and tough boycott was applied and enforced.  Even so, boycotts have a limited lifespan of effectiveness; witness the post Gulf War experience with the boycott against Saddam's Iraq.   The appeal to our side (Democrats excluding themselves) to a tough boycott against Iran is that it might have sufficient short term effectiveness to force an internal political correction to the power of the mullahs and the policy ambitions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against many of his scared neighbors.  The Iranian economy today is on shaky legs, and ordinary Iranians are politically very restless. The Mountain Observer remains skeptical that all this diplomatic maneuvering will produce effective results, but at the same time recognizes the political need to run the trapline.  And I would suggest that both the Russians and the Chinese recognize that we are closing in on the end of that trapline, even if American Democrats don't.  If the Russians and the Chinese don't begin to cooperate more closely with the American efforts to utilize the boycott route, then the United States is really left with no options whatsoever but to confront the Iranians directly militarily, with negative implications both for the supply of Chinese oil and a spectrum of Russian (Putin) national priorities.  Thanks to Mitch McConnell, we may yet be able to stall off the desire of Democrats to run and hide under a pillow.  JES

03/13/07   On shutting down Liberals, Democrats and the entire Progressive agenda.  In addition to an enhanced repeal of the 16th Amendment (Go to Mission Statement), next on the list should be the unqualified repeal of the 1965 Higher Education Act and all subsequent attachments.   Watch the rats run for cover.  JES

03/13/07  The fatal flaw in the ideology of modern Liberalism is the complete absence of a central unifying political theory or principles around which they can all unite.  The closest they can come is that all problems are to be solved through and by the government, which also can provide the funds to do so at the point of a gun.  The central unifying political theory ends there; questions as to what the problems are, and what the solutions might be, fragment in thousands of directions according to the interests and agendas of specific constituencies and individuals.  In the absence of any actual central unifying political theory or principles, action is accomplished by the creation of a case by case consensus based on the raw political power of the coalition of the moment, always subject to change.

So it is that the Democrat majorities in both House of Congress are flailing away on the issue of Iraq.  The consequences, what ever specifically evolves, cannot be a positive for American national interests.  Should you be puzzling over how Liberals feel (they don't generally think), reflect upon this.  General David Petraeus: carry on.  JES

02/17/07  Pretending that only their favored constituents notice, a Democrat House of Representatives, joined by a handful of gutless Republicans, pass a "nonbinding" resolution against the "surge" of troop deployments to Iraq.  However, of course, the resolution is binding in the sense that our enemies are watching and taking inspiration, and those in Iraq, and the Middle East generally, who have supported us learn again that American resolve is not to be trusted.  So as a sequel to the outcome of the November elections, the American people, through their elected representatives, have virtually guaranteed defeat in Iraq, invited expanded terrorism directly upon us, propelled re-examination of the foreign policies of others worldwide premised on non-existent American resolve, and virtually guaranteed a world war, point future, with Iran as the flash point.  The Senate is likely to add to the disaster later today.  If belief that the President is so in error as to justify undercutting the troops, then the principled response should have been to defund the enterprise and get out now, but the cowards on the Left want no responsibility for the consequences militarily, politically, or morally.  What else could one expect of those who are intellectually and morally bankrupt.  As the refugees begin to stream, and the deaths and tortures accelerate, we on the Right will remember where responsibility really lies.  The fact of the matter is, and always has been, that the original decision to invade was correct, and in spite of the considerable government bungling that has occurred since, the enterprise was, and still is, winnable.  But this will not happen: Americans have become self-serving cowards.  Our real problem is not Shiites and Sunnis.  It is Iran, and it is the moral corruption of America.  Drunk with the personal chase for dollars and personal comfort, an obvious consequence of decades of immersion in Material Secularism, Americans, as this is written, are consumed with the intrigue of the death of a 39 year old bimbo who herself was a statement for everything wrong with our culture.  The values that informed the American Founding seem to have slid beneath the surface, and our entire political and social culture is complicit.   The only point in continuing the website is that at some point, a future generation will be rocked by reality, and begin to re-think the disgusting performance of their parents that caused the mess.  The process of correction will not be pretty. 

It is possible to make the case that our problem is that the French affliction, after centuries, has finally overwhelmed us.  I quote Jean Jacques Rousseau, arguably the father of all that has gone wrong in the western world since:  "Let us begin by setting aside all the facts, because they do not affect the question".  And so it has gone since.   JES

11/19/06  House Republicans elect a new leadership that does not inspire the confidence of Conservatives.  Senate Republicans re-install Trent Lott, R-MS as minority whip.   My problem with the Hon. Mr. Lott, nominal conservative, was always his tendency, in the past, of cozying up to Liberals.  But they say he knows how to count votes.  We shall see.  Meanwhile, the new minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY could potentially turn out to be a bright light.   JES

11/19/06  Gen. John Abizaid,  top U.S. commander in the Middle East, has a little chat with the Senate Armed Services Committee, basically explaining that, in his professional opinion, both the President and his ex-boss Donald Rumsfeld have been right all along with "staying the course".  Under the current political circumstances in Washington, he had every opportunity to pull the plug on his political bosses.   He did not, clearly rejecting the cut and run appeasement arguments of the mob about to take over Congress in January.  One must decide if the General is speaking as a politician, or as a professional soldier, or is he just stupid as John Francois Kerry, the French looking guy, ex-pretender to the office des le roi des Etats Unis, who also served in Vietnam, would seem to have concluded.  The Mountain Observer, without a doubt, prefers the council of the professional soldier.  Remember this incident point future when, at some point in the opinion of this observer, the Republic finally collapses under the weight of the mob, and soldiers will need to step in.   JES

11/08/06  History will come to record that yesterday the worldwide IslamicFascist agenda scored a huge victory in its war with the west.  Osama bin Laden was right: America cut and ran,  Such is the objective reality of the situation, forthcoming denials of reality notwithstanding.  The consequences will take decades to repair the damage, if, indeed, that will ever be possible at all.

As for the Democrats, the mob will demand a revolution, and the professional politicians, having overfed the fish, will be unable to deliver.  The problem with their rhetoric in opposition is that it has been totally lacking in substance, for years.  Socialism does not work, and neither will a policy of "cut and run", however disguised.  Terrorists will see it for exactly what it is: retreat and surrender, making inevitable another 09/11 event(s).  Today our country is in a world of hurt, and apparently most do not even recognize this.  As reality unfolds, expect the Dems to start fighting among themselves in a more public way.  The handy target, and excuse, will continue to be George W. Bush, sufficiently so that an alert GOP might be able to capitalize on voter weariness of this overworked point before November 2008.  However I would bet against such GOP capability.  The party is feckless and as intellectually broken as the Democrats are mentally ill.  Among other things, what we have just witnessed is the death of Compassionate Conservatism, a silly idea from the beginning.  The party, and George W. Bush, ran away from their own base; betraying us with huge spending, walking away from small government, surrendering on certain social issues, e.g. affirmative action, and failing to take borders seriously be they with Mexico or Iran and Syria.  The war in Iraq, never successfully portrayed as at the heart of the worldwide war against IslamicFascism that it certainly is, has been crippled from the beginning with too much pandering to an international audience most of whom are not our friends.  The President has allowed his policies to be subverted by Vladimir Putin, Kofi Annan, Hu Jintao, Teddy The Swimmer, "Pinch" Sulzberger, Susan Estrogen, and Vicente Fox (This, of course, the short list).

What many do not seem to realize is that the Lord cannot be voted out of office, however much some try.  JES

10/23/06  Regarding recently rising U.S. casualties in Iraq: while there are several possible reasons for this development, however the Mountain Observer dismisses the largely convenient explanation of Rahmadon.  There is no doubt in my mind that what is going on here is IslamicFascist participation in the American elections, with seeming success.  Clear-eyed objective observers should have little difficulty in gauging IslamicFascist preferences.  We pray that American voters are as astute.  JES

10/04/06   Truly the silly season is upon us, and Rush gets it wrong.  Contrary to what Rush has said in the last day or two, Tony Blankley of the Washington Times did not call for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, but for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert from his speakership position.  The presence of Dennis Hastert in the House of Representatives is the proper concern of the voters of his district in Illinois, and no one has suggested otherwise.  Again, the Mountain Observer endorses this view.

The House Speaker is responsible for the overall management of how the House conducts business, and for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to now claim that he had limited knowledge of what was going on regarding the Pages and Rep. Mark Foley describes the Speaker either as short sighted, or a dolt, maybe both.  Once upon a time there was this thing called HONOR, in which the resignation of the leader of an institution was assumed proper consequent to institutional failure, which is what we have here.  I am an economic conservative, a defense conservative, a cultural conservative and a values conservative, which is to say that I am a Conservative.  Those of a genuinely Conservative persuasion are fed up with being pandered to for votes every two years, and then being immediately tossed aside the day after election by partial conservatives frequently more accurately described as Libertarians.   Now it so happens that the behavior(s) of Mr. Mark Foley are totally unacceptable to much of the "base" we all know is essential to Republican victories, but so to is Jack Abramoff, bridges to nowhere, unnecessary compromises with a fickle Senate and on and on it goes.   What is missing is the production of more actually Conservative results, buggering boys not to be included.  Since 1994, the House Republicans have gotten very sloppy about themselves.

Now, Mr. Limbaugh, in the opinion of the Mountain Observer you need not fear that Conservatives will stay away from the poles this Fall, a point on which we appear to agree.   The key issue before the voters is the War on IslamicFacism and the border.  So it is that the best way to re-assure and build on the strength of values is to support them, not run away.  The strength on our side is so strong on the security issue, we can well afford to expose our values to the test.  This is not a small matter.  At the end of the day, without the values, there will be no Conservative accomplishment of any kind.  In January, it will be time to elect a new Republican Speaker, preferably not one from the suburbs of Chicago.  Why, Rush, are you so afraid of us ?   If you agree that the turnout this Fall will be in our favor, than what can possibly be the problem with some intra-party discipline ?   If we are both wrong about the outcome of the election, then I also agree with you that the key issue will have been the border.

As for Democrats stoking the pot on matters Foley and Hastert, again we agree; let them overplay their hand and also explain their actions.   I believe the voters can sort through all this, apparently better than you do.   JES

10/03/06  The Mountain Observer endorses the call by the Washington Times for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert from his speakership position.   His dissembling over the events surrounding the Mark Foley affair, in the opinion of the Mountain Observer, are only the most recent of a series of matters that do not describe a serious leader, and certainly never one to be mistaken as a Conservative.  Later.   JES

09/28/06  The difficulty with a Senate almost evenly divided along partisan lines, in the more subtle sense of Liberal v. Conservative, is the power of individual Senators, drunk with self-importance, to disrupt what is in the interest of the polity, especially dangerous in times of war.  Dressed in apparently principled, but frequently self-serving rhetoric, and perhaps even believing it themselves, certain Senators seem not to be able to resist the temptation to stand on the tracks of history.  So it is that a Senate, forced by a similarly puffed up Supreme Court decision to extend beyond recognition Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, is charged with the duty of fabricating a band-aid fix to the Court's transgression.  Enter John McCain, and two wannabes, offering specious arguments irrelevant and counter-productive to the issue at hand.  The issue at hand is the ability of American intelligence operatives to question and obtain information from captured terrorists without themselves being subject to prosecution by either the so-called International Court or Senator Dick Durbin and friends.

Finally, after weeks of political grandstanding, and an explanation by the President that in the face of an unsatisfactory product from Congress the relevant programs would grind to a halt, the Senate caves, having been thrown a couple of fish to ease the hurt.  Operations at Guantanamo will continue in a fashion already much too comfortable for the guests.  JES

07/19/06  The President does the right thing and vetoes the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, just passed by Congress, concerning federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.  Anybody who has followed this discussion over a stretch of time knows that this has not so much to do with science but rather with the funding of scientists and the pursuit of the principle that life does not start at conception.   There are far more scientifically promising avenues open for stem cell research which can only lead to the conclusion that those who insist on focusing on an embryo, however it is engineered, really have a more distant political agenda.  If you want to pursue the medical promises of stem cells, the science shows you need not invade human embryos, artificial or otherwise.  If you insist on doing this, then you are up to something else altogether.   Those in Congress who supported this bill either are smart enough to understand this, and are either cowards or cheap panderers, or are so stupid that they are unworthy of their office.   In contrast, the President, you know that stupid cowboy from Texas,  stood up and said "NO".  God bless cowboys.  JES 

06/21/06  Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-IL, wisely calls for "more hearings" on immigration reform legislation, putting the brakes on a traveling train wreck.  Effectively, an election cycle will be inserted into "the process" of reform.   We would have preferred passage of the House version, but the dangers lurked in the inevitable compromises with the Senate, a non-starter.  Amnesty is amnesty however you slice the cake.  Current law, submarined for decades by special interests, is entirely adequate, were it to be enforced until proper reforms can be worked out.  We do not need new law that is designed to be subverted as it is sold as a solution.  What we need is enforcement, and existing law will be just fine until we can beef up the border and cause a political attitude adjustment on the issue of illegals.  Forget the crap about Ellis Island; that's irrelevant and an insult to honest immigrants.   The order of the day is national security, conservation of the culture, respect for the law, and a single legal American economic system.  Go pick your own strawberries.  JES

06/17/06   Senator John Franchurian Candidate 2008 Kerry, D-MA, the French looking guy who served in Vietnam, puts forth a resolution to set a hard deadline for withdrawal of our forces from Iraq.  Even Left Wing icons Hillary Rodham  and USA Today can see the error of the idea as strategy against an enemy they are reluctant to admit even exists.  However, in a stunningly rare moment of lucidity, the Senate defeats the Kerry proposal 93-6.  Republicans in the House, go one step further, luring Democrats into a need to vote, and go on record, on a non-binding resolution, up or down, on the "War on Terror", including Iraq, walking away with a 256-153 result in support, including 42 Democrats faced with tough election races this Fall.  What Democrats on the Upper West Side, and New York Times chairman “Pinch” Arthur Sulzberger Jr. fail to understand is that in most of the country politicians need to face real voters.  JES

05/26/06  House Conservatives, it's high noon at the OK Corral.  If you can't fix this mess in conference, then you must kill the whole thing.  You will be slandered and cursed by the East Coast GOP, Liberals, the President and the MLP, but you will be loved by America.  If you cannot stop this, the face of the nation will be changed for decades, and this struggle for the soul of the country will disintegrate into something very nasty.  Stand up, or it will be all over for you this Fall.

11/10/05   Regarding my comments 11/09/05 concerning the need for a new Special prosecutor on intelligence leaks.  Perhaps his attention should be focused on Congress itself, and the consequences of acts of sabotage against the relevant Agencies and Departments, harboring their own fifth column provocateurs.  JES

11/10/05   In a great burst of populist nonsense and hypocrisy, the DC politicians pile on the oil industry's "excess profits".  This is supposed to be a a free market economy.  Gross distortions of the free market in the energy sector have been imposed by the politicians themselves for decades, with consequent vulnerability to shortages, high prices and dependence on foreign sources.  We do not need new laws and restrictions.  We need to repeal old laws and restrictions.  But that would not play well to the crowd, would it.  Those of you who do not understand this are economic illiterates.   JES

10/20/05  Manufacturers of all kinds, and defenders of private property rights, won a huge victory in Congress with the passage of legislation protecting the firearms industry from lawsuits brought by victims of the mis-use of their products by third parties.  The passage of this legislation adds major muscle to a more comprehensive effort by Conservatives to affect tort reform, and to re-construct the principle of actual personal responsibility as opposed to anybody in sight with deep pockets.

The immediate purpose of the legislation greatly strengthens the 2^nd Amendment rights of American citizens, law enforcement, and our national security apparatus, from politically inspired mis-use of the civil justice system by those who would otherwise seize any opportunity to tie up a legal industry in knots. The real purpose of gun opponents has been bankruptcy of the industry, another Liberal attempt to gain through Court procedures what they could not accomplish in Congress.  Their strategy was not a legal victory they knew they could not, in the end, win.  Their strategy was to drown the firearms industry with the legal costs of defense against outrageous claims.  Thank you, and congratulations to, the National Rifle Association, the nation’s only real civil rights organization.    JES

10/15/05  Tom Delay is the victim of legal problems that it would appear he does not deserve.  As a consequence, under House Rules, he has stepped down from his post of Majority Leader.  However, another very disturbing thing has happened in the wake of his legal problems, and Katrina, with his announced opinion that there is no room in the budget to cut spending.   Something must be wrong here, because this is not the Tom Delay I thought I knew.   This is on the order of Edward Muske crying in New Hampshire.   With his new spending statements Tom Delay is now political toast among his Conservative colleagues insofar as a return to any position of leadership.  Perhaps the right guy for the job is Mike Pence of Indiana.  The Mountain Observer has no time or patience with House rules or traditions that might stand in the way of considering this young man.  Mike Pence, an articulate and determined spending hawk, I think, is the right guy for the job.     http://mikepence.house.gov/    JES

06/03/05  The Senate continues to flail around under the mismanagement of Republicans and the intellectual and moral corruption of Liberals.  Congress as a whole is a broken institution, responsibility falling back to the voters themselves who nearly always deserve what they vote for.  Argued elsewhere on this website, many times, the long history of charter drift by US courts is traceable back to Congressional management failure.  As also with issues of fiscal irresponsibility, the people's representatives are failing their Constitutional responsibilities as the polis collapses gradually into havoc.  The healing must start at the bottom.  In America, it can.   JES

05/29/06 Illegal immigration amnesty Senate passage of S. 2611       Those who last week voted for and against.

YEAs ---62
Akaka (D-HI)     Baucus (D-MT)     Bayh (D-IN)     Bennett (R-UT)     Biden (D-DE)     Bingaman (D-NM)     Boxer (D-CA)     Brownback (R-KS)
Cantwell (D-WA)     Carper (D-DE)   Chafee (R-RI)     Clinton (D-NY)     Coleman (R-MN)     Collins (R-ME)      Conrad (D-ND)     Craig (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)     DeWine (R-OH)     Dodd (D-CT)     Domenici (R-NM)     Durbin (D-IL)     Feingold (D-WI)     Feinstein (D-CA)     Frist (R-TN)         Graham (R-SC)     Gregg (R-NH)     Hagel (R-NE)     Harkin (D-IA)     Inouye (D-HI)     Jeffords (I-VT)     Johnson (D-SD)     Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)     Kohl (D-WI)     Landrieu (D-LA)     Lautenberg (D-NJ)     Leahy (D-VT)     Levin (D-MI)     Lieberman (D-CT)     Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)     Martinez (R-FL)     McCain (R-AZ)     McConnell (R-KY)     Menendez (D-NJ)     Mikulski (D-MD)     Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)     Nelson (D-FL)     Obama (D-IL)     Pryor (D-AR)     Reed (D-RI)     Reid (D-NV)     Sarbanes (D-MD)     Schumer (D-NY)
Smith (R-OR)     Snowe (R-ME)     Specter (R-PA)     Stevens (R-AK)     Voinovich (R-OH)     Warner (R-VA)     Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---36
Alexander (R-TN)     Allard (R-CO)     Allen (R-VA)     Bond (R-MO)     Bunning (R-KY)     Burns (R-MT)     Burr (R-NC)     Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)     Coburn (R-OK)     Cochran (R-MS)     Cornyn (R-TX)     Crapo (R-ID)     DeMint (R-SC)     Dole (R-NC)     Dorgan (D-ND)
Ensign (R-NV)     Enzi (R-WY)     Grassley (R-IA)     Hatch (R-UT)     Hutchison (R-TX)     Inhofe (R-OK)     Isakson (R-GA)     Kyl (R-AZ)     Lott (R-MS)     Nelson (D-NE)     Roberts (R-KS)     Santorum (R-PA)     Sessions (R-AL)     Shelby (R-AL)     Stabenow (D-MI)     Sununu (R-NH)     Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)     Thune (R-SD)     Vitter (R-LA)                                Source www.alipac.us

05/11/05  The Mountain Observer needs to extend recognition of the fact that of all the radio talk show hosts out there, (and the Mountain Observer is able to, and does, monitor dozens) Rush Limbaugh remains the most effective, articulate and intellectually collected one on the air, compared to anyone else.  This is not to say he is always articulate and intellectually collected; it is to say that within the genre, he is the best.  I make this point because his communicative skills may very well make the difference in a battle being played out in the Senate.  This week, Rush is spending a lot of time not talking to you and me, but directly to a handful of Senators much in need of being out-gassed of personal ego.

This week, in the Senate, the political tensions of the not-so-submerged American Civil War II are focused like a laser on the matter of the "Constitutional option" (as Conservatives see it), or "nuclear option" (as Liberals see and report it).  At issue, to cut to the chase, and given the political balance in the Senate between those of Conservative vs. Liberal inclination, is the issue of whether or not to allow the full Senate an opportunity to vote up or down on the President's nominees for federal judges.  The outcome of this fracas is likely to have consequences in the balance of political power in Washington DC for years to come, which is the cause of the contentiousness.   Both sides are heavily invested.  JES

05/11/05  The fate of John Bolton stands as a primary test of wills in the same conflict.  There is much at stake.   JES

04/29/05  The House of Representatives revives some rules for the Ethics Committee, calling on Democrats to lay their cards on the table concerning Tom DeLay.   DeLay welcomes this action, to clear his name.  Perhaps Democrats have mis-calculated, assuming they could continue to use this issue to belabor DeLay.  The mis-calculation here, by Democrats, however, is that they have now opened the door into their own faces, and Republicans, sick and tired of all the faux political posturing, can now be expected to use the revived rules to go after a long list of Democrats who have real problems.  It is good for a change, to see the GOP stop trying to be good guys and to begin to fight back; long overdue.  Let's hope they follow through and chase down the Democrat hypocrisy, just in time for 2006.  Democrats can now fear what they said they wished for.  JES

04/25/05  On the subject of Social Security reform, in addition to the aforementioned problem with RINO's (04/20/05 below), the fact of the matter is that the President has this bad habit of coming out of the gate strong, on any issue, only to concede and fall back prematurely.  As a consequence, political supporters, willing to risk their own political capital, find themselves chopped off at the knees.  All of this combines to produce a mentality of defeatism among a majority with absurd non-results.  So it is that the President may have fatally undercut his own efforts when he equivocated ("everything's on the table") on the issue of raising the payroll tax cap above $90,000.  Aside from the fact that he initially said specifically that this detail was not an issue "on the table", to now equivocate on the matter is to raise the specter of his father's famous pledge about not raising taxes, and then allowing it to happen.  Yes, Mr. President, a tax increase is a tax increase, just as amnesty is amnesty, and 2 plus 2 is 4.  Neither your friends, or enemies, are fooled by any of this.  JES

04/20/05  At this point it appears that the President's efforts to sell his Social Security reform package has run into some strong headwinds.   Predictably, it is the Republican RINO's, mainly in the Senate, who are proving unhelpful, not out of principle, but rather out of the usual absence of political courage and leadership.   As has been the case all along in his foreign policy leadership in Europe and the Middle East, the President's basic proposals in behalf of saving Social Security from itself have been absolutely correct, particularly with respect to the privatization options for younger workers.  Absent these reforms, the Social Security system, and perhaps the Republic itself, are headed directly at a brick wall at high speed.  As for Medicare and Medicaid, largely "free" federal dollars in hands of state politicians, it may be already too late.  Mr. President, carry on, we applaud your necessary courage.  It has been referred to before as the loneliness of command.  JES

03/24/05   Congress, and successive Administrations, continue to wish away the problems surrounding the flight of manufacturing to overseas economies, often hostile toward our own interests.   Often stated in these letters, much of it has to do with wrongheaded tax policy, unnecessary regulatory interference, and Federal spending programs run amok.    Looking to the Federal Reserve and Alan Greenspan to fix with monetary maneuvers, what is, in fact, a basically fiscal (over spending) problem is rapidly wearing out as a political explanation for our balance of payments problem.  An integrated and comprehensive analysis of all these issues is long overdue, as is hard corrective action.  Actual risk taking leadership on these matters is in short supply.   Talk is cheap, and the GOP needs to wake up.    JES

MO 05 01   We have more to be concerned about with the Chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee of Arlen Specter.  The Mountain Observer considers him to be a snake in the grass.  What we need in the federal court system is a lot less stare decisis (the Arlen Specter principle that precedent decisions are to be followed by the courts), and a lot more stare reversal (the Sohmer principle that a lot of unconstitutional mistakes need to be fixed).  JES

MO 05 01  On the domestic front President Bush is leading off with exactly the right "flagship" issue with his proposals on Social Security reform.  He has caught Democrats at a weak point politically on an issue that has traumatized Republicans for decades, and his planning and strategy is perfect, dragging along federal spending and tort reform in the wake of what is really all the same decades old problem of Liberal Statist extortion.  If you don't "get it", I'll be happy to sit down with you and explain it all; it may take some time.  Until recently, I must confess that I never considered the possibility that all the first term spending might have been a deliberate "set up".  I still need to be convinced that that was the deliberate and calculated intention, but at this point, it certainly could function as a fulcrum.  Democrats, you complain about the deficit, you hypocrites who are primarily responsible for this Federal monstrosity that has been erected over the last 70 years.  Now your political golden goose Social Security, Ponzi scheme and fraud that it has always been, will either blow up in the face of your children, or be re-formatted by Conservatives toward a privatized path of individual self empowerment.  The cost of conversion, in competition with all the other Federal domestic spending baggage, will force us all to make choices, a situation not invented by George Bush, but to date buried by the public relations of politicians invested in the appeal of playing Santa Clause.  The problem will not be resolved by stalling tax cuts; more tax cuts are called for.  Government funding problems are the consequence of over-spending on misguided and un-Constitutional adventures in social and economic engineering, and the purchase of votes.    With the Generals standing behind me, and Congress dismissed, I could fix the deficit problem in 10 minutes; George W. Bush is necessarily more subtle, which is why he is President and I am not, and boy has he set you up.  You may politically defeat his effort, I am not making predictions.   There are too many soft headed Republicans running around loose.  One cannot fully appreciate the depth of the ideological struggle behind the public debate on social security reform, so full of code directed at perceived higher priorities.  It is a life and death struggle, not intended as a pun, second only to the keystone issue of abortion.

Remember this: if what the President proposes for social security fails to materialize, it will be only a matter of time before you come face-to-face with somebody like myself, and you will remember George W. Bush fondly, and with sorrow that he did not prevail.   JES

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