TOPICAL GUIDE TO AMERICAN POLITICS 

 CONSERVATIVE DISCONTENT             

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10/31/07  The presidential election 2008.  Perhaps it is time to review where I think we are at.   JES

Democrat Party:

Hillary Rodham, aka Nurse Ratchet, will be their nominee.  As totally unhinged as the party is, I cannot imagine anyone else in the party to be seriously considered.  If the country has to endure considering a marxist, she is the smartest.  I didn't say she was smart.

Republican Party:

Rudy Giuliani.  Unacceptable to the Mountain Observer.  I think there is an East Coast Elite Cabal, so to speak, that is pushing his candidacy very hard. engaging in a war against the real Republican base.  He is pro abortion, pro militant gay, anti gun, and not what I would consider a good model family man.  His credentials on the issue of fighting an international war against IslamicFascism have been way over hyped.  He happened to be mayor of New York City on 09/11/01, had, and has a big New York mouth.  He had a history as a very aggressive prosecutor who stumbled into doing some good things in that capacity in addition to things that were questionable.  I question whether he can ever reconcile himself with either the Catholic Church (his alleged choice of faith), the NRA, or the American heartland when they really get to know him.  A very bad idea.  Actually, the right slot for Rudy is to head up the Homeland Security Agency, with close supervision.

Fred Thompson.   I think this is the right guy if we can get Jeri to wake him up and make him mad.  Seriously, Fred is the right guy, which is to say that of the whole bunch he has the best overall conservative credentials.  Those of you who find Fred  lacking in one regard or another show me another candidate who does not have greater problems overall.  Don't think you can.  Evangelicals, wake up.

Mitt Romney.   Anybody who can get elected governor of Massachusetts and the turn around and sell himself as a conservative has got to be a phony.  Too slick to sit down and have a beer with.

John McCain.   Sorry John, but you are not a reliable conservative player.  You have always been on the wrong side of the border issue, and that's just for starters.  You might make a good Secretary of Defense.

Mike Huckabee.  Too quick to cut deals with Democrats on taxes.   He's from Arkansas.

The rest.  Non players, except that I would like to see Duncan Hunter as Fred's VP.

Note on Ron Paul:  His is a Libertarian, neither a Republican or a conservative.  Doesn't belong in the Republican race.

10/04/07  "Phony soldiers" and Rush Limbaugh.   The dustup has nothing to do with Rush Limbaugh.  It has to do with the intentions of Democrat pretenders to power with regard to the 1st Amendment.  Look what moral relativism, political correctness and the whole concept of "hate speech hath wrought?  I repeat here, exactly, what I wrote in the launch off document to what became this website 11/20/2000:

The Statist mindset has, for about 35 years now, promoted the concept of "hate crimes".  The problem with the idea of "hate crimes" is that a prosecutorial investigation of one's thoughts is required.  I would suggest that this is dangerous stuff.   Does one "hate" women because of a belief that life begins at conception?  Does one "hate" gays because of a belief that the practice is dysfunctional?  Does a white person "hate" a black person because of a belief that the excuse of slavery has gotten in the way of  resolution?  Is "hate", whatever that means, by and of itself, a crime?  Is a murder victim less dead because he was not killed by a "hateful" person?   All of this is madness.   Or are we really trying to describe thoughts and perspectives that are simply out of tune with the fashions of the Liberal Statist  Elite?  Notice that the same folks who condemn "hateful" speech are the same folks who defend the Hollywood porno mills under the guise of the First Amendment.

The legal regulation of thought is the most distinctive feature of a Statist regime.  About 30 years ago we saw a major breach of the Constitution with the initial passage of property seizure laws, all directed, we were assured, against "organized crime".  We now see where that has gone.  RICO is everywhere.   Now the fashion de Jour is "hate crime" legislation. Notice that it is the same judicial system that tolerates this stuff that created the right, out of thin air, of women to murder their offspring, and to furthermore do so without the consent of the father. The legal system has become politicized and a function of the Statist agenda.   I submit that "hate" crimes are political crimes masquerading as criminal law.

In America we have a First Amendment to our Constitution under which, presumably, a citizen's right to think and speak is protected.  If one acts on certain thoughts in some way that is a violation of the traditional criminal code then the action should be the issue, not the thought alleged to be behind it.  To start prosecuting thoughts is to disassemble America and guarantee a breakdown of the system.  The prosecution of thought is the end of dialog and the promotion of the Gulag, with "appropriate psychological re-education".  When will the camps appear? John Rocker, watch out!  Sadly, this process, known as "political correctness", is already well underway.   Much of the Press, the Fifth branch of government (after the regulatory empire), has become complicit, and our system of education at all levels debased, thanks to 110 years of John Dewey.  All of this is being accomplished in an atmosphere of hostility toward a humble consideration of a Divine Creator and a Superior Intelligence and Authority, i.e. God.  This is not a coincidence or irrelevant.  No doubt my thoughts here are evidence that could be used against me; I am no doubt under suspicion of being me.   This is the real reason for the Second Amendment and the real reason why Statists are working so hard against it. 

Check out the entirety of what I wrote.  The context was the fight over the Florida votes, at the time, unresolved.  Go to 11/20/00   JES

10/04/07  The President properly vetoes the attempted 5 year $35 billion increase in spending for SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program).   This pre-election year trojan horse for universal socialized medicine had nothing to do with either "the children", or "the poor".  This precursor to universal Stalinist medicine was actually Nurse Ratchet, aka Hillary Rodham, running around loose, and says everything you need to know about those who supported it, Democrat and "Republican".  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

09/26/07   In Farsi, the suffix  "jad" translates as "filthy under shorts".  Mahmoud  etc., aka Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the IslamicFascist republic of Iran, aka Persia, finally departs the Liberal intellectual and moral cesspool of Columbia University, the United Nations, and New York.  We have just witnessed, on full display, the legacy of decades of the full intellectual and moral corruption of American education.  Chunks of this nation are adrift, which is why I am on this mountain top.  Few know it, but I have an ancient link to the institution of Columbia University, and New York.  God willing, may they all rot in hell.

General David Petraeus, carry on.  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

07/25/07   There is a lot I could be saying that I am not.  I am getting tired of repeating the same old points.  The fundamental political problem in this country today is that Americans, a majority it appears, are lost in a sea of denial concerning the determination and ability of an IslamicFascist enemy to destroy us, and how central our policies and decisions concerning Iraq are, and always have been, to this matter.  At the heart of the matter is the Cartesian doctrine of the destruction of objective reality in favor of intellectual and moral relativism.  It is a long story, the exposure of which is central to the purpose of this website, however I confess to exploring a different format.  We shall see.   Meanwhile, the "Surge" in Iraq is succeeding, brilliantly.  Again, General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

07/25/07   Is George W. Bush a Conservative?  Hell no, and Conservatives have known it for some time.  He is what this political analyst calls center-right.  The Left pejoratively calls him a cowboy; I wish, non-pejoratively, that it were true.  He makes great speeches and then walks away from his own words.  This has happened repeatedly throughout his term in office.  The Mountain Observer would have always preferred Dick Cheney in the driver's seat, with a couple of advisors from Halliburton on the White House staff, and a spinal expert over at the Surgeon Generals' Office to administer to the American people.   General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

07/04/07  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation UNDER GOD, with liberty and justice for all.  JES.

The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies  In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. --That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high Seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and Independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Does anyone remember?  JES

06/20/07  It is time for the President to set aside all the excuses and to act immediately to pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.  I regard it as his constitutional responsibility to do so.   The issue was the man's memory before a grand jury, adjudged criminally defective by a dumbed down jury and another out-of-control special persecutor, one Patrick Fitzgerald, empowered in the first place by another spineless Bush DOJ fish farmer.  This sort of persecution is the legal cousin of "hate crime" law logic, which is to say, an investigation of ones brain.  We were supposed to have defeated this kind of thinking with the end of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  In considering special persecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's behavior in this matter, I am struck by the parallels of legal and moral arrogance with one Durham County District Persecutor Mike Nifong of Duke University Lacrosse scandal fame.  TV and the present day legal system are wreaking the nation.   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   

06/04/07   On what's wrong with the "compromise" immigration proposals currently being debated in Congress, go to http://www.heritage.org/Research/Immigration/misc/index.cfm#research for an examination of the details.  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  

05/25/07   The President finally gets funds for the Pentagon from Congress that will keep the War on IslamicFascism going through September.   Then it will start all over again.  The fact that there is even the need for a debate about the fundamental policy of this support of the troops, and the fundamental polices of pre-emptive action against IslamicFascist terrorism is self destructive, corrosive and subversive to the interests of this country and free peoples everywhere, and continues to raise questions about the motives of those who so insist.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES 

05/24/07  On immigration: I've said it all before.  Go to TOPICAL GUIDE AMERICAN POLITICS IMMIGRATION.  Democrats want cheap votes.  Republicans want cheap labor.  So nothing gets done and the problem festers.  It's been this way for decades.  Now, driven by security concerns and original problems grown too hot to any longer deguise, politicians are in full panic mode; their primary individual priorities, as they imagine them to be, to head for the tall grass.  What has not changed is any real intent to fix the problem, which is to say, enforce current laws.  The current proposed legislation is a traveling train wreak, akin to throwing more gasoline on the fire.  Under the current highly charged political moment, the best result would be no new legislation at all.  Whatever happens, or doesn't happen, at this point, we know one thing for sure: The Republican Party is a bunch of old fools being led around by the nose by Ted Kennedy.  Again, here's what needs to happen:

a). Secure the border, which is to say: lock it down with a 2000 mile electric fence or its functional equivalent.  Authorize Border Patrol personnel to shoot to kill, with immunity from prosecution, smugglers, "coyotes", drug runners or anyone who looks like they might be, and authorize "hot pursuit" into Mexico if that's what it takes. 

b). Put any American employer in jail who hires an illegal immigrant.  Period.

Trust me.  The swamp will be emptied in a hurry.  Then we can sit down and talk about immigration reform.  JES

05/20/07  During World War II, George Orwell is quoted as observing that "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve the possibility of victory.  The chief activity among left-wing writers is a rather pettifogging criticism which turns into a kind of dismay when England wins a victory, because this always falsifies their predictions." 

The Left will never change.  Today, with nuclear weapons falling into the hands of IslamicFascists determined to destroy us and who, at once, thrill to the prospect of 72 virgins in heaven, American Conservatives have a problem with the Leftists among us.  Existentially, most are Democrats.  It must also be said that none of this is helped by a GOP President caving into the current nonsense of "immigration reform", recognized by the rest of us as amnesty that is already provoking a mad rush for our southern border.  Our world is going nuts.  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 according to the law, as originally understood, forthwith.  The Mountain Observer is absolutely beside himself with anger.  General David Petraeus, carry on.  JES

04/18/07  I am not ignoring what happened 2 days ago at the University of Virginia in Blacksburg.  I am waiting for the facts to be sorted out.  One thing is clear.  Virginia needs a serious concealed weapons carry law.  Another point is also coming into focus.  True evil had taken hold of the South Korean killer, and too many people on campus knew it and did nothing about it.  There appears to have been no positive action or support, demanded or offered, of or to, an individual in obvious trouble. JES

04/14/07  I think full disclosure requires that I report that as of yesterday I have re-registered from "unaffiliated" (independent) to the Republican Party.  When I left the Republican fold in 1995, I was angry.  Yesterday I signed up again because now I am really angry.  After a very long debate with myself, I came to decide that with the time I have left and the much collapsed state of the GOP, it would be a better to use of my time to scream at them from the inside rather than from the outside.  I am under no illusions.  However, fair warning to Republicans around me: put on a hard hat because if you aren't Conservative I will be coming straight at you. JES

04/14/07  Regarding the firings of Dom Imus.   Dom Imus is of the Left, no friend of the Mountain Observer.  However, the  Imus' firings were not because of his politics, but rather his race.  He was, after all, fired by those imbedded in the culture of Liberalism that he shares.   Even White Liberal guys who interfere with the Liberal Elite agenda of sucking up to Black Victimology will be tossed overboard, especially if the situation also presents the possibility of setting up talk radio in general for a renewal of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine".  Now that same Liberal culture has a problem; they picked off Imus at the same time that they have elevated the much more noxious Al Sharpton of Tawana Brawley fame to the post of moral arbitrator of American values.  So it goes with moral relativism.  Black rappers have free reign, and the double standards between Black and White continue to expand and corrode what some of us remember as America.  The hypocrisy of the Liberal Elite Left Wing Mainstream Media stands totally exposed.  This is not to defend Dom Imus; he should have been fired long ago.  However, long before that, the noxious Al Sharpton and the entire "hip-hop/ rapper" culture should have been called out by a more responsible journalism.  In the postmodern Kulturesmog of current American culture, the simple concept of Right and Wrong, good for previous generations, has been buried and long forgotten.   May they all go straight to Hell.   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

03/28/07  On Dinesh D'Souza.  The man has written a lot of good stuff, however in the opinion of the Mountain Observer, he can, on occasion, go off in strange directions.   For example, since the 2006 elections, he, along with other east coast based "Conservatives", have shown too much enthusiasm for embracing potential candidates for the 2008 presidential run who themselves are not really Conservative, but who seem eager to mis-represent themselves in this regard.  They are typical Republican hacks, not Conservatives.   Sorry, Dinesh, but Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney are not Conservative.  Let us not redefine the word.  Now on election day it is quite possible that the best the American people can consider is another Republican hack, but meanwhile, let's not misappropriate the term Conservative.  Is it possible that you, yourself, actually fall into this category, along, perhaps, with much of the National Review crowd?   Now the most disturbing effort on your part so far has to do with this strange analysis that the American Left is somehow in conscious and direct cahoots with the IslamicFascists of the world against western liberal (in the originalist sense) democracy.   Surely the Mountain Observer has made very plain that IslamicFascism feeds on Western cultural decay, and that within the West, Conservatives are as much equally at "war" with Secular Materialism as we really are at war  with IslamicFascism.  But to consider that IslamicFascists and Western Material Secularists, including the American Left, are in common coordinated cahoots against western liberal (in the originalist sense) democracy smacks of a conspiracy theory worthy of Howard Dean.  The reality of the situation is that these two human subspecies are running off in opposite directions from each other, equally a threat to what's left of western liberal (in the originalist sense) democracy and Judeo Christian culture.  We are challenged on two fronts, and while certainly there is an "Axis of Evil" aka IslamicFascism, it does not include the Western Left.  What we have with the Western Left are secularists so self consumed and marinated in marxism that they long ago simply melted into self hating useful idiots, with the French, as usual, leading the way.   So let's not go kooky; leave that to the Left, which these days is supremely practiced in the arts of delusion.  Dinesh, perhaps in certain respects I misunderstand what you are trying to say, but my trouble is that I fear not.  As for who genuine  Conservatives should be pushing for President in 2008, it's early, however, among the electable, I think Fred Thompson may be the right guy.  Why aren't national "conservative" figures picking up on this?   JES

03/11/07  It's been awhile since I've made any comments about the economy.  Officially, and by traditional yardsticks, the economy looks strong and the Federal Reserve remains concerned about inflation.  However, again I need to go back to an old concern of the Mountain Observer: overspending of dollars that do not exist (fiat paper and electronic "money") in both the public and private sectors.  Here on this mountain top we have long predicted that sooner or later this would all blow up in our faces.  When the so-called dot com bubble burst at the end of the 90's, as I predicted it would, a lot of folks got smacked down hard, only to follow again with a new wave of speculation in various real estate markets.  It is my sense that this house of cards may soon tumble too, with consequences far more devastating.  I need to find the time to write on this in more detail.  JES

03/10/07   Should Scooter Libby be pardoned?  Of course, and I would think that before the end of Bush's presidency that will have happened, if the court system itself has not already corrected the carnage of what can only be described as a political show trial.  In recent years, out of control prosecutors, and prosecutions, have become all too fashionable.  As for Dick Cheney, in a more sensible time he would be our next President, and ought to be.  That, of course, is not in the cards.  America, it seems, is too awash in self hatred, white guilt and narcistic self loathing to think sensibly about much of anything these days.  The future price in blood and treasure will be enormous.  I pray for my grandsons.  JES 

02/21/07  Comments concerning the 2008 Presidential elections.  What's wrong with Rudy. Go to 2008, an expanded vision.  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

02/07/07  Three years too late, Lt. General David Petraeus replaces General George Casey as the top U.S. military commander in Iraq.  The significance of this is that Lt. General Petraeus wrote the U.S. military manual on counterinsurgency.   He represents a group within the military that has long pushed for a reorientation away from more traditional Army thinking focused on large formations consistent with European Cold War planning.  He has been handed a tough job at this point, and his biggest problem are matters over which he has little control: American public attitudes, an Army starved of sufficient size and strategic focus, not readily corrected as rapidly as may be necessary, and an Iraqi population that has perhaps lost faith in an American ability to establish credible security.  There is no doubt that from May 2003 forward the post war planning and execution was seriously flawed, and that issue comes to rest directly at the feet of President Bush; the failures falling across the responsibilities of several departments and agencies.  Within the bounds of respect for an Administration conducting a war, the Mountain Observer has raised questions all along.  Now the fact of the matter is that General Petraeus might succeed in his mission, and the entire American military establishment has the right to expect the support and respect of all Americans in accomplishing a victory in what history will come to recognize as a critical turning point in western resistance to IslamicFascism.  A failure to succeed will be devastating, in terms of both blood and treasure, for years to come.  It would seem that too many Americans do not yet comprehend the true nature of IslamicFascism, and what we are really up against.  JES

01/22/07  For the purpose of documentation, go to BUSH 43 2ND TERM NOTES-SPEECHES to find the President's 2007 State of the Union speech.  All predictably political, as these speeches typically are.  With the government deeply divided, the safest result would be that nothing will happen.  JES

01/22/07  I have not had much to say lately because, frankly, there is not much going on that makes any sense.  The race is on to destroy the Bush presidency, an extra constitutional impeachment, if you will, a peculiar activity at a time of international peril.   Of course, the President's enemies don't see it that way; they are more traumatized by Judeo-Christian religiosity than IslamicFascism which they don't take seriously.   Western Liberal Secularists suffer from moral blindness because, contrary to what they believe of themselves, they have no moral foundation.  Theirs is a self-serving materialist perspective founded on quicksand.   Our country, and western civilization, are in a lot of trouble.  JES 

12/25/06   Merry Christmas. It is now clear that we are in an age when the intent of this greeting must be specified.  So it is that I would call your attention to Mosaic Law which specifically forbids the worship of false gods and idols, in heaven, on earth, or in hell.  Repeat: forbids, not suggests.  So there it is.   Merry Christmas: the celebration of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Nothing more.  Nothing Less.  So Merry Christmas to those of you who have not high jacked the holiday for your own purposes, but who can honestly respect the Christian purpose of the day.   As for those who have other designs, perhaps the time has come for some deep reflection.   JES

12/07/06  Pearl Harbor Day.  Ask young people you know if they know what it was all about, or where, or when.   Perhaps I am optimistic.   Do you, yourself, know the answer to these questions?   JES

12/03/06  The idea of negotiations with Iran and Syria is absolutely the dumbest idea I can imagine.   Anyone who even thinks such a move could be constructive is a mental case in need of immediate institutionalization.  All the wrong moves have started; the destruction commenced on 11/07, and will prove to be virtually irreversible.  Democrats did not win this election; Republicans, and Americans, lost it.  The Mountain Observer will continue in its task of charting the way things ought to be, recognizing the fact that the United States has begun its long decent straight into hell.  JES

11/19/06  At a time of genuine international peril for the United States, the priorities of the mob are focused on Sony's new PlayStation 3.  You see, we have certain cultural problems.   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  The President installs Sen. Mel Martinez, R-FL, author of the infamous Senate Hagel-Martinez immigration amnesty bill which passed the Senate last May by a vote of 62-36, as the new general Chairman of the Republican National Committee.  Great news for those who wish to woo Mexican First type Hispanics.  Not so good for Conservatives, including American First type Hispanics, intent on the rule of law, the security of our borders and culture and the general integrity, and honor, of the traditional naturalization process.  This is a step in the direction of the bust up of the GOP as we know it.   JES

11/15/06  Within the orbit of Iraqi politics it has grown increasingly apparent that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is the weak link in the chain, and in a sensible world, should be removed.   Meanwhile, the so-called Baker- Iraq Study Group, an euphemism for How Best to Surrender Without Telling Anybody Group, emboldened by a voter decision to cut and run, like most committees, flounders around in its attempt to substitute defeat for victory.  What none of this motley bunch seems to realize is that we had the jihadists right where we wanted them: over there, not over here.  The war in Iraq had been more successful than originally anticipated in drawing IslamicFascists physically to a central point where they could have been dealt with in a terminal fashion.  But no, we have inverted victory into defeat, as will become apparent in the years ahead.  The likes of Osama bin Laden, and John Francois Kerry, the French looking guy, ex-pretender to the office des le roi des Etats Unis, who also served in Vietnam, seem to have prevailed.  Americans, be proud of yourselves.  What an absolute mess.   JES

11/13/06  "Ordinary Folks", aka "Joe Six pack", aka "Reagan Conservatives" and the economy.   Before the recent election the Mountain Observer listened to, and saw, much chin pulling and speculation as to why so many people failed to recognize what a tremendous economic recovery had occurred over the course of the last 5 years.  Economic ignorance born of the state of American education, etc, etc?  This is no doubt part of the answer, however a deeper examination is called for.  Just perhaps "Ordinary Folks" are forced to confront a perspective in their very ordinary lives that the typical, perhaps mildly elitist, commentator of Libertarian apologia does not personally confront and chooses to ignore.

Let's try to look at the matter from the perspective of our "Joe Six pack", and for the sake of discussion, let us stipulate that our guy is fully aware of all the current glowing numbers.  Somehow, he suspects there is something missing in the analysis.  Those core rate inflation numbers are great, but they do not include food and fuel, which includes how he heats his house.  Now as it happens, these are items of great priority to "Joe Six pack", as is the cost of medical care for his kids and his aging parents.  To top it off, he senses that however good his current job may be, there is an increasing threat to his job, and/or what he gets paid, from computers and immigrants, legal and illegal.  The boss keeps talking about the need to "increase productivity"; translation: "Joe, you may be history".  Finally, there is at least a dim awareness that the nation has a balance of payments problem, production is going overseas, fuel is increasingly coming from overseas.  He is not likely to understand the intricacies of international finance and the banking system, but there is this lurking suspicion that somehow he is getting ripped off.  He might even be aware of the fact that since 1913 the national debt has grown from zero to 6.17 trillion dollars while at the same time the 1913 dollar is now worth 4 cents.  He might also be aware of the fact that since passage of the 16th Amendment, politicians and lawyers have stolen both his wallet and much of his freedom, both political parties in collaboration.

Now there is a difference between stupidity and ignorance, and I would suggest to you that to just toss off our Reagan Conservative Joe Six pack as stupid is not only wrong, but an act of political suicide.  To begin with, he is instinctually conservative.  Secondly, he is decidedly not stupid.  As for ignorance, we all own that one, but ignorance can be fixed.     I would suggest that it is the task of Conservatives who are serious about the future of conservative principles that it is absolutely necessary to address each of Reagan Conservative Joe Six pack's concerns with substantively solid (not political) answers and a program of action.  Time has come to break some dishes.  Platitudes and condescension are out; seriousness is called for.  The simple fact of the matter is that the GOP is absolutely out to lunch, and Conservatives, in and out of the GOP, need to go to work. There are a lot of Americans looking for some serious leadership, currently the most unfilled job since Ronald Reagan.   JES

11/11/06  The results of the election on Tuesday leave Conservatives more free to discuss in public certain matters that have festered below the surface out of principled loyalty to a war time President.  To be sure, George W. Bush is still the President, and a war time President at that, and we will be quik to defend him against opposition attempts to suggest otherwise.  However, in the current political context, Conservatives no longer need to carry around the baggage of a pending election in defending the corruption of Conservative principles.  Its is a fact that we are at war with IslamicFascism, and without knowing it, have been for years.  09/11 was not the beginning, but it woke us (some of us, at least) up.  George W. Bush, to his great credit, recognized much of the overall scope of the problem, and responded, when previous Presidents had not.  He has correct in identifying Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the Axis of Evil, and his decision to go in after Saddam Hussein was correct.   It was in the implementation that mistakes were made. 

There are two characteristics of the President's management style that became relevant.  First, he is not a detail guy; he is inclined to depend on the organization under him.  He turns them loose within the constraints of basic policy direction, and is fiercely loyal to them, and expects that loyalty to be respected in return.  Secondly, those on his team, perhaps harboring concerns about certain consequences of policy instruction, including conflicts of substance among elements of the organization as a consequence of the policy instruction, may have sometimes gotten stuck by his inattention to detail.  There is a fine line between bringing the boss a bad message and disloyalty, and the President is known to be very sensitive to disloyalty.  Aside from personal instincts in this regard, he has been properly sensitive to the great abuse of executive privilege that has occurred in recent years going back to Watergate days, and has been determined to check further erosion.  The cancer of leftist subversion within the bureaucracy and the press has not made that easy.  So it is that it has not always been easy for true friends to pull the President aside and say "you know, Sir, I think you might be wrong about this or that, and may I suggest another way". 

Now of course I am very much the outsider, and this is strictly educated guessing on my part.  However right now the GOP needs a new party chairman, and whoever is chosen has be able to stand up and say to the President that, on certain issues, the party may need to disagree with the President if it is realize any chance whatsoever in 2008.  The issue of immigration policy comes to mind.  Do not expect this to happen.   JES

11/11/06  Veterans day, a sobering thought 4 days after voters on Tuesday, confronted with the choice of totally loony Democrat control of Congress, and largely incompetent nominal Republican control of Congress, chose the former.  The President is now in the position of making the political choice of swallowing his own cocktail of compassionate conservatism, or recognizing the need to actually become a Conservative.  I would predict that he will not only choose the former, but perhaps himself become more openly a defacto democrat.  What is at hand is a mis-reading of what actually happened on Tuesday.  What happened was that Democrats won by running "conservative " sounding candidates, and Republicans lost swamped by a national and congressional GOP cut loose from its Conservative moorings.  Tuesday, excepting those urban islands of knee-jerk Liberalism, too many actually conservative voters jumped from the frying pan into the fire.  Now the question is whether the GOP nationally, will continue to move Left, or straighten up and fly Right?  Preliminary indications are not encouraging, leaving voters with the accelerating dilemma of facing a choice at the poles of a party of the extreme Left and a "more moderate" party of the left.  In an age when the dominate media and academic institutions of the nation are firmly in the control of the extreme Left, real Conservatives have a problem.  It is additionally very relevant to recognize that Christianity is loosing its grip, on several levels.  But again, what many do not seem to realize is that the Lord cannot be voted out of office, however much some try.  JES 

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 in to 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

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

10/07/06  How much longer are we going to allow Iran and the United Nations to run our foreign policy before we lower the boom ?  JES

10/06/06  I am a registered Independent.  I left the Republican Party in 1995, disgusted with Republican congressional abandonment of the Contract With America.  From that point on it seemed to me that what the Republican Party, too prone to cave to the Left, needed most, was observation and commentary from the Right.  It was from this perspective that the Mountain Observer was launched in November 2000.  Now this perspective is pertinent to the current political situation, fueled to a flash point by the Foley/Hastert fiasco.  I am not a single issue Conservative (see 10/04 below).  That includes values and culture, upon which the rest is nested.  As for Mark Foley, a very sick man, he is gone from Congress, and may those who love him come to his personal assistance.  Revelations of the apparent insincerity of some of the text messaging notwithstanding, Foley resigned, recognizing personal error on his part.  House Speaker Dennis Hastert, however, does not appear publicly to recognize his own failure, as House Speaker, in coddling a Congressional institutional climate of inattentive moral turpitude.    Perhaps this comes with residence near Chicago, however, in any event, in January, Hastert must go.   My wing of the Conservative base (you don't need to be registered Republican to vote for the right people) is fired up by the political subterfuge of Democrats in this, and many other previous matters.   We are also fired up by a Republican establishment that cannot take itself seriously.  Contrary to the apparent dreams of Democrats, we will not go off and hide in a corner on election day.  We are more determined than ever to take over the carcass of the Republican Party, and invite the northeastern country club types to wash dishes.  So it is Denny Hastert, that you and those like you are in trouble.  As for Democrats, this country is too precious to allow you to put your hands on the levers of government.  Go bash gays, and continue to abort your future voters.  When Conservatives someday finally get control, Liberals of all types are welcome to leave.  God bless America.   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

09/15/06  Under the rules of the system, the economy is as strong today as it has ever been.  I can testify to that through my direct daily observations on the road as a trucker.   I am busier than hell.  The highways and rail lines are loaded with freight, only problem being that much of it is in intermodal containers that stack up after being unloaded for lack of export freight.  This country has a balance of payments problem, a lack of savings problem, a Federal tax code that is out of control and nobody understands, and a congressional budget management process that is out of control with only "insider" fingers in the honey pot.  It has been a major premise of this website from the beginning that the introduction of the Federal income tax was the hugest political error of the 20th Century.  (See Mission Statement).  Also notice the charts below.   The Laffer Curve works, however, without spending disciple, Republicans are as bad as Democrats.  Neither party is addressing fundamental problems.   Time for a Conservative alternative?   JES

09/15/06  Copied down from www.libertydollar.org/ . Check out this website and follow the unfolding legal tussle with the Department of Justice, outcome TBD.  Tea Party time?  You decide.   JES

The national debt has climbed to alarming levels since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Source: U.S. Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt As a result, the Federal Reserve Note (US dollar) has lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Source: U.S. Dept, of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI

09/09/06  I am in a bad mood, apparently like many other American Conservatives.  Monday will be the 5th anniversary of the most outrageous attack yet on American soil by IslamicFascists, for which, it seems, half the nation appears to blame President George W. Bush.  The President himself does not seem to understand the problem on our borders, and particularly, the definition of the word "amnesty".   Neither does the President understand the actual NEED, if our society is ultimately to survive, to not just cut back on spending, but to slash the total debt and cut the actual size of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT in half (a rhetorical recommendation to make the point).  The Republican Party in general has gone soft and sloppy with political success in recent years as the Democrat Party seems to have completely lost its senses, disqualifying it from any claim to responsible opposition or potential leadership.  Traditional American culture and values are under attack from every direction, and the only vestiges of honor and leadership are to be found exclusively in the American military establishment.  So on November 4th we must first choose whether or not to enter the election booth at all, to come away feeling morally soiled by the necessary compromises, or voting for the lesser of several evils as a duty to those who have died in defense of the American idea, rapidly deteriorating.   As always, I will vote, go home, and puke.   Thankfully, I have an avenue of salvation.  His name is Jesus Christ.  He comes highly recommended.  JES

08/17/06  It's time for both the United States and Israel to either put up or shut up about their own futures and very existence.  Both countries need to get serious about their own borders.   Both have legitimate claims to the right of self defense, however, if you are going to properly act on that right, and kill people in the process, you have a moral obligation to follow through to victory and end the charade.  We are destroying ourselves with political correctness.  Politicians lose wars.  Soldiers win wars.  It is not inconceivable that we will someday be pushed to the point of needing to defer to the soldiers in both politics and war.  America wake up.   JES

08/15/06  Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Israeli Cabinet surrender to the United nations and Hezbollah in a shocking display of incompetence that Israel will surely pay a heavy price in blood for at a future date.  It is a major victory for Hezbollah; that is a simple fact.  About this, I am speechless.  JES

08/13/06  It has become impossible to not be straightforward about the fundamentally religious nature of World War IV.   It has not been helpful to have bobbed, ducked and weaved about this issue.  What we have on our hands is a three way struggle between Judeo-Christianity, Western Secularism and Islam.  Islam claims to find its roots with Abraham, however any commonality with Judeo-Christianity ends right there.  We do not believe in, or worship, the same God.

Western Secularism, as we know it, aka Liberalism, is one of the many products of the Age of Enlightenment, aka the Corrosion of the Church of Rome, itself evolved from the Church of Peter.  As Sunni and Shia tussle with one another within the world of Islam, so it is that the Church of Western Secularism and Judeo-Christian Believers tussle with one another throughout the world.  For those interested in my more focused thoughts on these matters, go to PERSONAL NOTES-08/13/06

08/10/06  The pending Lieberman race as an Independent, subsequent to the revelations of terrorist threats against international air travel, takes on an accelerated meaning in defining which side of the great political divide you are on.  The political polarization of America has reached new highs.  Your candidate for Devil Incarnate: George W. Bush or the IslamicFascist terrorists?  Dissemblers run for the tall grass, invoking the "wisdom" of moral and intellectual relativism as a dodge to duck the clarity of right v. wrong.  It is evil to whack off the heads of people with whom you disagree, and it is a measure of the age in which we live that it is necessary to point this out.   Those still willing to claim that current unfolding events are all George W. Bush's fault (and there are thousands of "Americans" who so subscribe) are living in a parallel universe to this writer.   Each of our election cycles tightens the knot further.  Will America break and capitulate, or will the character and wisdom of the Founders re-emerge?   Time is getting short.   JES

07/31/06  It is with a mixture of rage and sadness that I read about the mis-adventures of Mel Gibson, most particularly the anti-Semitic remarks made in a drunken rage.  He has done damage to himself from which he can never recover in this life.  It is a matter that can be reconciled only between himself and his Maker.  In this world, he has taken himself out of the discussion.   No explanations or excuses will suffice.  We wish him well with the Lord.   JES

07/22/06  Conservatism v. Liberalism.  God v. Self.  American liberty, won and defended at the cost of so much  American blood and treasure, not informed by an acceptance of the Western foundation of Judeo-Christian thought and belief, is but an empty can to be kicked down the street.  Failure to understand and respect this reality in the face of an IslamicFascist challenge will be fatal.  Our understanding of the Crusades must be put in a more truthful perspective.  Seemingly abandoned by EuroArabia, America and Israel are on their own.   JES

07/19/06  People who are jumping on Israel as "over reacting"  are either uniformed or just plain nuts.  Israel hasn't come close yet to deploying the force it could, and perhaps should.  Cease fires are no different than pushing a "pause" button on your VCR player, affording an opportunity for the animals to rest and re-arm.  Nothing is acceptable short of the destruction of Hezbollah.  Do not even talk to the Mountain Observer about the United Nations, international club of crooks and thugs.  And yes, Pat Buchanan, you are displaying your historic prejudice against Israel again, with unclear purpose.  Perhaps you should re-register as a Democrat and go sit at the table of John Murtha.

Folks, during the 1930's, there were those who said of the Nazis that "first they went after the Jews, but it did not affect me.  Then they went after the Catholics, but if did not affect me.  Then they went after the Protestants, and the Liberals  and people of color, but it did not affect me.  Finally they came after me, and it was too late."  America, you really need to wake up.  JES

07/04/06  North Korea launches its Taepodong-2  missile, which fails after 36 miles, as we launch a space shuttle, praying it holds together.  There will be those who will say that the failure of the Taepodong-2  missile proves any concern is not warranted, and those who will say upon the safe return of the shuttle that NASA's got everything under control.  The Marines have a term for these kinds of situations: SNAFU.  You, of course, can fill in the blanks.  JES

06/28/06    It is past due time to unload a train load of lumber squarely onto New York Times chairman “Pinch” Arthur Sulzberger Jr's pea sized brain.   It seems that the job always falls to Vice President Dick Cheney to load the logs.  We have witnessed, too often, the New York Times going way beyond what is defensible under the first Amendment, and venturing rather deep into the area of facilitating treasonable leakage by a Liberal "shadow government" (Well put, Rush) within the D.C. bureaucracy.  The Mountain Observer has been making this point for years.  What is stunning, even allowing for the ancient bias of The Times, is the brazen disregard for the security interests of the nation, and the lives of so many on the front lines of the fight against international terrorism.  Public revelation of details concerning a covert program designed to follow financial trails in the international banking/financial system is totally inconsistent with our current national security needs.  As an American citizen, I have no need to know those details; the government does.  As an American citizen, I expect the government to be doing it's job in pursuing those who are a threat to this nation, and I recognize and respect the need for aggressive government covert activity to this end.  We have several problems here, beginning with the leaks themselves by rogue government sources, surely both illegal and treasonable.  Then we have, at a minimum, a lack of discretion on the part of The Times, following legitimate pleas by government officials for restraint in publication.  The Times cannot plead ignorance as to the sensitivity of the matter.   What we have here is a deliberate act of political sabotage at the clear expense of national security interests.  A prosecutorial investigation is compelled which must pursue the question of reporter sources, not good for the First Amendment, but necessary for national security.  An Executive bureaucracy deliberately working at fundamental cross purposes to the direction of the President presents us with a Constitutional challenge that cannot be lightly dismissed.  Freedom of speech has limits, and so should traitorous behavior.  JES

05/25/06  So it is that the Republican Party has finally come the Great Divide, the Divide, that is, between its two fundamental constituencies: business oriented libertarians, and social / culturally oriented conservatives.  The Mountain Observer has, for years, identified with both, but at points of conflict deferring to the social / culturally oriented conservative analysis as to what constitutes true Conservatism.   I have loudly objected to libertarian attempts (too frequently successful) to highjack the conservative label for their own "free market" agenda.  Mountain Observer letters are littered with this discussion, and a quik summary can be had by going to POLITICS 101 .   What is the point?   The point is the very real and practical disagreement among Republicans in the Senate over how to handle the various issues poised by current immigration / illegal immigration laws, policies and defacto activities.  The most acute point of separation has to do with the issue of "amnesty", what is and isn't "amnesty" and, in any event, what to do about millions of illegals ("wetbacks") running around loose.  The Mainstream Liberal Press, which has a politically vested interest in adding obfuscation on top of obfuscation, is not much help to the "ordinary" citizen trying to understand the subtleties of the discussion.   However "ordinary" Americans have two things in their corner: The internet and common sense.  As I have pointed out recently elsewhere on the same subject, "If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is a duck".   So it is with "amnesty", and an overwhelming percentage of the American people will never buy what Republican Senators, President Bush, Nebraska meat packing interests and California tulip pluckers are trying to push upon us.  JES

05/25/06  The truth is that many Conservatives have been nervous about George W. Bush from the beginning, including the Mountain Observer, as a review of the very first M O letter will document.  Throughout this presidency we have been on a rollercoaster ride; at our heights with the President's general response to terrorism after 09/11, and support of our national defense establishment, and at our lowest on issues relating to spending and the growth of government.  Lurking in the background has always been the irritant of the President's dismissive attitude toward Mexican border issues, and his relationship with Vicente Fox.  For reasons of national security, most Conservatives have often held their fire, not wishing to subvert the matter of national defense and the "War on Terror" by inadvertently giving aid and comfort to Liberal Democrats.  However, the discussion has always been running in the background, subtly understood by those with a well developed Conservative nose.  Most of us were inclined to hold our noses, at least through the 2006 elections, but now it is too late.  The border issue has blown up in the context of various other serious mis-steps by the President, and the GOP in general.  The implications for the 2006 elections are serious, although the impact is not obvious.  However, events on the ground have forced a rapid rearrangement of priorities for Conservatives, and George W. Bush and the GOP are in a lot of trouble.  The disconnect between Washington DC and the Heartland has never been wider in recent years, and the fundamental problem is that George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan.  The Conservative movement is clearly leaderless, the GOP is clueless, and Democrats are just plain nuts and a danger to the Republic.  2006 is going to be a very rough year; the cat's out of the bag.   JES

05/18/06  ANN COULTER for President

05/17/06   Getting more into the details of what the Administration has in mind for the National Guard on the border, the insincerity of the effort becomes more apparent.  Rotating units on their annual 2 week obligation in and out of the border theater is about the most inefficient, and expensive, plan I can imagine.  It reflects a desperation for ideas and a rapid cobbling of resources under pressure for the appearance of action in response to a decades old problem ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike.  What exactly is the National Guard supposed to do, realistically?  First, Republicans, and the Administration, need to come to grips with reality about the true nature of this problem.  So long Vicente Fox, ADM and Nebraska meat packing interests.  Welcome, American law, even as it exists today, and some concern about our national security.  Drop the obsession with the issue of attempting to resolve the legal status of those illegally present now, aka amnesty. They are illegal, and any political gymnastics will be seen for its own phoniness, and only serve to draw more over, as after 1986.   First, let's get control of the border, and a sincere effort to do so will require a lot of new fencing, and armed personal with orders to shoot when shot at.  Nothing short of this is serious.  JES 

05/17/06   SECURE THE BORDER FIRST    

05/16/06  The President's speech on immigration last night did not disappoint because we expected nothing new going in.   Clearly the President has been dragged to the table by events not of his choosing.  Conservatives must rely on Conservatives in the House of Representatives to hang tough.  A comprehensive solution to this overall problem is neither possible, nor wise, at this time.  The number one priority is securing the border, whether with fences, technology and/or increased deployment of personnel.  The second priority is to enforce even existing laws against hiring illegal immigrants and send a few a these employers to jail.  Following serious enforcement of border and hiring violations, a better understanding of the next steps required will emerge.  Hard action on real problems is necessary now, not cosmetic fixes framed on emotion and political opportunism.  The biggest problem I saw with the President's speech, and the legislation being debated in the Senate, is a lack of seriousness about achieving actual results.   Same old problem: Republicans like cheap labor and Democrats like cheap votes.  The law, and national security, seem to be of secondary concern.  That's a lot for serious Conservatives to overcome.  JES

05/15/06  On the subject of the current illegal immigration debate, you are encouraged to visit a new web page on this website.   Go to THE USCCB ON IMMIGRATION          

04/05/06  Michael Savage has been recognized by many Conservatives for a long time as a public embarrassment, for whatever he thinks he is, he is not a conservative, big C or small.  He is a loose cannon who never grew up.   Nothing better illustrates the point than his recent tirades against the Catholic Church concerning our national interests at the border and with Mexico.  What is most disturbing is the he has a market of listeners at all.   JES

04/05/06  In his decision to stand down from office Tom Delay has proven himself a true statesman be behalf of the Conservative cause.  I take him at his word supported by the Justice Department, and Jack Abramoff himself, that he is scandal free as regards that particular matter.   I have been critical of Delay for stating late last year that there was no further room to squeeze the federal budget, a notion patently absurd.   However, in context, I can imagine a brain addled condition caused by personal political and legal distractions and pressures in Houston.  Today he is right, that the top priority is the decisive defeat to the same Leftist forces that have been so focused on himself.  Tom has been a very aggressive and effective Conservative ally in Congress, which has been the source of Leftist irritation with him.  Today Conservatives need to rally around and continue to support Tom out of thanks for what he has done right, and for his selfless personal sacrifices in behalf of the Conservative cause.  Principled Conservatives do not run away from our own wounded on the field of battle.  Thank you Tom.  JES

03/26/06  The far American Left has slipped into such a level of sociopathic insanity over George W. Bush that it is dividing the Democratic Party between the true believers in the Secular vision of moral and intellectual relativism, and those who really know better, at least in terms of their own re-electability.   In American politics it has long been apparent that such a point of reckoning would eventually come to pass, however difficult it is for the conservative mind set to comprehend in the first place.  It is on this basis that an exercised debate over the impeachability of the President will ensue.  There is evidence that the American Heartland is much more alert to the subtleties of this debate, and its implications, than was the case in 1992 and 1996.  Who would have ever guessed that the day would come when apparently large chucks of the Democratic political machine would behave as kamikazes against our national founding principles?   JES

03/13/06  We have been highly critical of much of President Bush's Conservative starved domestic agenda, save the tax cuts, however he has recently proposed a real winner in the health care arena.  This has to do with his proposed further development of Health Savings Accounts (HSA's.   Tax free.  Restore the direct relationship between patient and doctor.  Puts people back in charge.  Breaks down barriers to shopping insurance across state lines.  More flexibility in the employer / employee relationship on health benefits, including portability of policies, and much more.  I could have written this one.  These are real free market moves that eventually bring down costs.  The one key item that is missing is Tort Reform, as in pulling the plug on law suit abuse.   JES

02/15/06  Yesterday the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's office of inspector general each released audits, each still a work in progress, that attempt to document enormous waste and irresponsibility in the management and distribution of tax payer resources intended to support the recovery effort.  Go to Katrina for more details.  JES

2/10/06  Have you noticed that lately the political Left has made little of the issue of the federal budget deficit, that for the moment isn't?  Perhaps that is because the Treasury Department has reported that in January the government ran a surplus in collections of $20.99 billion, proving once again that Art Laffer was right when he scratched that curve on the back of a napkin.   Tax cuts work.  What will not happen next is the real problem.  a). Congress will again go limp on cutting spending.  b). Nobody will consider using that January surplus to draw down the debt.  The excuse will be that, overall, in the months immediately ahead, budgets deficits are still projected, which is true.  But who will take a bet with me that this one month's $20.99 billion surplus will actually be smoothed into the existing spending stream?  No, they will find a way to spend it above and beyond.

Now I will tell you that today, my 66th birthday, I am in a bad mood.   I have been advised by one Fred Barnes that as a small government (traditional) Conservative I am obsolete, and that I need to get with the program.  Well, Mr. Barnes, if you are right that the new wave is big government, big spending "conservatism" under the guidance and wisdom of George W. Bush, then I am off the bus, and you guys are on your own.  The irony of conservatism in America, from the beginning, is that conservative values have always been about defending the founding values which were, in context, essentially revolutionary.  The lessons of Edmond Burke included the counsel of accommodation, as opposed to stiff necked European continental resistance to change that lead to no necks in revolutionary France.  The question then becomes one of where to draw the line.  As an American, I do so with the Founding Values, recognizing the arbitrary nature of this in broader historical context.  I have made my point elsewhere about the income tax.  But I guess I need to point out to Mr. Barnes and his neo-con friends that to present George W. Bush's spending proclivities as Hamiltonian is nuts.  None of the Founders would have endorsed an income tax, and Hamilton specifically endorsed tariffs as a tool to advance American national interests.  (Don't raise that worn out foil of Smoot-Hawley because that is not what I am talking about.  The discussion begins in 1776, not 1932.)

If the mechanics of the Laffer curve have any downside, it would be that big spenders are provided with an ongoing excuse for their corrosive habit.   As with drugs or alcohol uncontrolled, it will only be a matter of time before the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.  JES

02/04/06  House Republicans pick Rep. John A. Boehner R-OH as the new House Majority Leader, succeeding Tom DeLay.  We shall see what happens.  The Mountain Observer is very skeptical of this GOP bunch, too frequently hiding under the bed sheets, scared of Democrats.  What a pitiful sight it has been this past year.  There is work to do: making a whole series of tax cuts permanent, starting to pay attention generally to their oversight responsibilities, securing our borders without the President's amnesty proposals, cutting corporate welfare programs which includes serious real cuts in federal spending, etc., etc.   Let's just ignore Democrats and get on with the work at hand.   JES

01/25/06  With all the good economic news, I hate to sound a negative note, however, the Mountain Observer remains troubled by Federal Reserve rules that allow, and seem to encourage, the re-financing of mortgages as a way to clear up holiday debt spending.  It seems to us this is merely throwing gasoline on a firestorm of real estate valuation appreciation that will be ultimately unsustainable.  Sort of goes with the get rich quick mentality of casino gambling and government lotteries that has befogged our culture.   So we have a Congress that will not stop spending, a "Conservative President who will not use his veto power, both, who will not control our borders or address balance of payment issues, and a Federal Reserve that allows refinancing of holiday debt with low interest mortgages.  All of this from a GOVERNMENT that has trained generations of Americans that GOVERNMENT knows best and is your protection of last resort.  Am I alone in sensing a problem here?   JES  

01/24/06  Broader segments of the Conservative press are now saying what I have been saying for a long time.  The problem with Bush's poll numbers are largely a reflection of problems he has had with his own base.  He keeps running away from his base, and it is costly to him.  When he comes back, all too briefly and infrequently, his numbers go up.  "Moderation" is at odds with leadership, of which he is capable.  One would think that after 5 years, he would catch on, and tell Brent Scowcroft, and Vicente Fox, to go fishing.  Yesterday, in Kansas, he did well.  He was himself.   JES

01/18/06  Frankly, the Mountain Observer has really not been impressed with the Republican leadership in either the House or the Senate since 2001.  Too much kiss-ass with Democrats, and not enough hard knuckled political business.  Especially after 2004, the excuses got tired.  Now along comes opportunity, in the House, in the person of John Shadegg, R-AZ.  We are scheduled to find out on February 2nd whether or not the Republican caucus is serious about starting over with itself.  There are lot of us out here who are just plain fed up with the DC culture and business as usual, Democrat or Republican.  I have been tearing up and throwing out "surveys" for years.   It's all just plain stupid.   You people know what we expect: GO DO IT.  JES

12/17/05   A lot of fellow Conservatives seem to be piling on the band wagon for Senator George Allen R-VA for President in 2008.  I do not share their enthusiasm; I have been watching this develop for some time now, and something here seems to be missing.   I can't quite put my finger on it.  There is more to this job than playing football.  I would like to know more about Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina.   We shall see. JES

11/24/05   In the wake (pun intended) of Katrina, and reflecting back to the history of the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I think the time is right to re-consider the whole proposition of responding to homeland threats with clouds of bureaucracy.   Aside from the imbedded corrections to border agency organization, long overdue, the rest of it was nuts.  The problem was never a lack of federal resources.  The problem was one of responsiveness and coordination, and additional bureaucratic empires are counterproductive to that end.  Dissolve the DHS, and if we must have a FEMA, we must end it's role as a political candy store.  Return most of the captured pieces of DHS to where they came from, retaining the border agency restructuring.  Create a sub-cabinet position reportable directly to the President, with the authority to order and direct all other agencies of the federal government, or appropriate parts thereof, to respond as directed, to homeland emergencies as declared by the President.  By law, on an ongoing day-to-day basis, this post should be restricted to a staff of 5, including the club wielder, who should be a United States Marine TDY, located in the White House.   How is this different from what we have now?   Leaner, faster, cheaper, non-political, accountable, and disciplined.  Of course, this will not happen because it makes too much sense.  JES

11/22/05  The very fact that the Administration, Conservatives in general, and this website, have been forced to defend the truthfulness and intentions of the Administration's pre-war assessments, prerequisite to the on the "War on Terror", is itself corrosive to the effort.  It hurts us to be forced to do so, and will never forget or forgive those who have forced the discussion in the midst of war.  To those of you deployed, and who are actually witnessing our progress while being stabbed in the back by the Left, be advised that you have a further assignment.  When you return stateside and eventually return to civilian life, we need all the help we can get at purging the body politic of shaky politicians, "cut and run" fakers, and outright traitors.  You are especially qualified to this end.  Meanwhile, we will continue to make the case for the unconditional surrender of  Iraqi insurgents, foreign terrorists, and our domestic Left.  Go to DISSEMBLERS.   JES

11/11/05  For more detailed comment and information on the 2005 elections (11/08/05) go to 2005.  Discuss it further? e-mail me.  JES

11/09/05  Election returns today are being hoisted about by some as a big defeat for Conservatives, Republicans, Bush and Rove.  This is complete balderdash.   I've hauled in a lot of data and will follow up with some detailed comments shortly, not to worry.  Steady as she goes.  JES

11/06/05  With the passage of Referendum C, Colorado voters have been snookered into believing that this does not set up the ultimate dismembering of the Tabor Amendment, death by a thousand cuts.  The Mountain Observer lays the blame on this development squarely on the shoulders of Colorado Republican Governor Bill Owens, who had a perfect opportunity to follow a different path.  The gutlessness of the Republican Party continues to astound.   JES

10/21/05  Regarding the Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court.   I am now convinced that this time Ann Coulter has it right.  Hard evidence has emerged that Ms. Miers flirted with support for affirmative action as correct social policy, another Alberto R. Gonzales on the loose.  It’s time for the White House to start over, and begin by listening to its outside political base.  Now it needs that base to save itself.   I am getting sick and tired of advancing nominees first qualified by the political correctness of their victimhood status.  This is supposed to be a Conservative Administration.  On domestic matters it is not.  Mr. President, just what the hell is wrong with you?  I must be blunt.  Conservatives are less interested in “saving your Presidency” than we are in advancing Conservatism, and you are forcing our hand at making choices.  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

10/12/05  What seems to be unfolding in the battle over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is a contest within the Republican Party.  The struggle by Conservatives to wrest control of the Party away from Liberal Republicans, aka RINOs, or coastal country club types, has been ongoing since 1964, with gradual accumulating success, a long story.  It has nothing to do with Harriet Miers.  It has to do with the application of the raw political power of a Conservative Heartland to prevail over the comfortable Coastal hypocrisy of a polite discomfort with the Left.  The Mountain Observer has previously referred to George W. Bush as “tending Conservative”, which is to say that on certain issues he has it right, and on others he is too quick too sell out, either out of conviction, or expediency.  It is largely over the question of conviction, or expediency that has always tended to make Conservatives nervous about the Bush family.  George W Bush is no Ronald Reagan.  Conservatives have generally supported him because neither is he Jimmy Carter, OJ Billyboy, John Kerry or Hillary Rodham, regarding issues of national security.   So it is that the civil war for control of the Republican Party machinery has bubbled just below the surface, over the years, with occasional eruptions.  In this protracted political war, Conservatives have won some battles and lost some battles, but in the long haul, Conservatives are winning, within the Republican Party, and with the American people.

So in the matter of Harriet Miers, it appears that a broad consensus of Conservatives have determined the need, and the political ability, to face down the President on the issue of her nomination.  (Conservatives have lost patience on a list of issues.)   Conservatives would prefer to take on the “gang of 14”, and all congressional Liberals, with a more judicially experienced and hardened Conservative, and the Mountain Observer certainly agrees and supports this effort.   From this perspective, Conservatives view themselves as representing most Americans concerning the shape of the Court to come.  At stake is the political set up going into 2006 and 2008, with George W. not a candidate.  It is High Noon at the DC Corral.   The Mountain Observer can make no predictions, at this time, about how this dust up over the Miers nomination will resolve itself specifically, but I do agree that Conservatives are correct in aggressively laying down their markers looking forward.  In the strategic sense, Conservatives will win, what ever happens, and Liberals in both Parties, and the Press, will lose.  JES

10/04/05  Yesterday, the President nominated Harriet Miers of Dallas, TX, to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.   I don’t know quite what to make of this.  Perhaps, in the President’s judgment, he cannot trust Senate Republicans at this time to carry the political freight of approval in the Judiciary Committee of a well advertised Conservative.  It’s called the McCain factor.  This does not mean that Harriet Miers is not a Conservative.  It means that no one knows.   Even if one is to accept the premise that the President thinks so, there remains the question of her qualifications to execute a Conservative perspective on the Bench, which is to say that the role of judges is to rule on the law, not create it.   Now if one voted for the President, that vote implies trust in his judgment.  The difficulty here is that from a Conservative perspective his judgment has sometimes lapsed on domestic issues.  You see, it is the one major criticism of the President by the Mountain Observer is that he tends too often to be a nice guy.  So it is that he let Ted Kennedy write his education bill, he coddles OJ Billyboy, tolerates Congressional largess and is unwilling to confront his friend Vicente Fox.   So it is that Conservatives have never fully trusted him on domestic issues.  This nomination may cause a long simmering back room dispute to surface to public awareness.  On the political Right this is a frustration that will continue until there is a clear Senate majority of 60 dependable votes.   So who is Harriet Miers?  Has the ghost of Justice David H. Souter scared the President straight, or has the ghost of Newt Gingrich scared him silly?  Or has he made a brilliant move?  As of the moment, nobody knows.   JES

06/30/05  As Mexican police nail 2 Iraqis attempting illegal entry across our southern border, and China instructs us not to interfere with their negotiations to buy a major American oil firm, the link between our trade policies and our national security is further underscored.  Mexican police did not act out of altruism; the message of popular American impatience is beginning to soak in.  The Chinese do not yet recognize popular American impatience, and we need to fix that.  My friends, Walmart, and the America shopper, are not the problem.  Trade policies that are managed by Elites in Washington that steer the general economic climate is where the problems lay, and where the fixes must occur.  It is not in our interest to shut down international trade.  It is in our interest to discipline a level playing field, including the security of our own borders, and our own energy resources.  With China especially, the hour is getting late.   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

04/22/05  Actually, the battle over the nomination of John Bolton for the post of ambassador to the United Nations, has not so much to do with Mr. Bolton as it has to do with a rather vast semi-submerged bureaucratic guerilla war going on in Washington DC.  The knives are out among those who continue to prefer a tilt toward international collectivism, and those who would prefer to pull back to a more traditionally oriented nationalism, and American national interest.  In his second term, the President has clearly made a series of appointments oriented toward American national interests, with the curious exception of matters Mexican.   The elevation of Marine General Peter Pace to the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is consistent with the traditional direction.  JES

03/31/05  Terri's gone; go to  FMOWEB 140-006 TERRI SCHINDLER AND THE REPUBLIC

03/30/05  Terri Schindler alert; go to  FMOWEB 140-006 TERRI SCHINDLER AND THE REPUBLIC  

03/29/05   In the Judeo-Christian understanding of truth, adultery is a serious offence, and with reason.   With no evidence that Terri Schindler Schiavo) was ever unfaithful to her "husband", and with her passing, her obligations discharged, sensibility suggests that henceforth we will know her as  Terri Schindler.    I would suggest that an understanding of what has happened here is not possible without a recognition of the fact that Michael Schiavo had an affair going on alongside the headlined events, including children out of wedlock (little bastards).   My point is not salacious, but rather has to do with motives, and an understanding of the timeline of events, including the possibility of physical spousal abuse.

Perhaps I have missed something, or somehow have it wrong, but to quote myself from 03/13/05, "------  I suspect that Michael Schiavo's greatest fear in life is the possibility that Terri might not only continue to live, but that she might also recover sufficiently to tell her side of the story.  I think those who wonder at his refusal to entertain huge bribes for his release of Terri are naive in their understanding of this whole case."---- .            www.terrisfight.org        www.LifeNews.com 

This is not a case that is about to go away; there is the matter of government response, and responsibility.  To further quote myself from 03/13/05, "-------I also think there may be constitutional grounds for Jeb Bush, as Governor, to step in and  physically remove Terri from the jurisdiction of the court if, at the end, that is the only option left.  That gets into another matter discussed elsewhere on this website, and perhaps weighs on Jeb's fitness for higher office.   You see, the Mountain Observer does not accept the proposition that any Court necessarily has the final say.   It goes back to 1803.    Stay tuned. "----------.

So many issues have been opened for discussion, with implications relevant to the future of the country.    So it is that I am opening a new web page to deal with the entire matter. 

Go to   FMOWEB 140-006 TERRI SCHINDLER AND THE REPUBLIC                                            JES

03/27/05   Notice that in the matter of Terri Schiavo, most Democrats, prominently including Hillary Rodham, have run for the tall grass, neither to be seen or heard from.   Situational ethics and moral relativism on display in full flower.   You see, leadership and political opportunism don't mix.   It is Easter, perhaps not without coincidence.   The Pope is demonstrating dignity with his situation, as did the Lord,  a lesson to which we should pay attention.  We beg the Lord His mercy, and forgiveness, for Terri, the Pope, and for ourselves, as our Government casually murders an innocent and defenseless citizen.   JES

03/24/05   So it has come to pass that on this date the US Courts have thrown down the gauntlet with respect to their relationship with the Congress and the President, and incidentally ordering the death of Terri Schiavo in the process.  The recent Schiavo legislation, passed by Congress and signed by the President, did not require or demand a specific result in the Schiavo case, but rather directed a review of matters of due process, with good cause, and incidentally implied the need to stabilize Schiavo's medical condition until such time as a proper review had been completed.  There were, and are, compelling reasons for such a review, no doubt to be conducted now by private sector investigators.

There is not a general awareness yet of the historical significance of what is going on here.   There are those who have thought my rhetoric in the Mission Statement for this website was a "bit over the top".    Go read it again.   The Mountain Observer has been right on target for years.  I care not a wit about congratulations; I care about thoughtful Americans starting to get really thoughtful.  I would suggest to you that this country is hurtling headlong toward a major rendezvous with destiny.  The ghosts of 1803, and the Federal income tax, are hurtling straight at you.  JES

03/22/05   The Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta is now complicit in the Court ordered murder of Terri Schiavo.   I do not expect the Supreme Court to touch it .   Years of accumulated due process problems appear to be concluding with a defeat for American jurisprudence.    However, in the Catholic understanding of these matters, Terri  still wins, and her "husband", marital vows long since broken, will need to someday report in to Higher Authority.   Meanwhile, the US Congress has lots of work to do.   Stay tuned.    www.terrisfight.org        www.LifeNews.com 

03/13/05   Returning to Terri Schiavo.   There are those who wonder about Michael Schiavo and his stubborn refusal to surrender legal jurisdiction of his wife to her parents.   Some have speculated that he is engaged in a principled defense of what he considers  Terri's  wish to not live under such circumstances, shared only between the two of them, without documentation.  Perhaps, but I think a preponderance of hard evidence points in another direction.  I suspect that Michael Schiavo's greatest fear in life is the possibility that Terri might not only continue to live, but that she might also recover sufficiently to tell her side of the story.  I think those who wonder at his refusal to entertain huge bribes for his release of Terri are naive in their understanding of this whole case.  The court battle continues in Terri Schiavo's battle for life.  We watch intently to see if there is a judge in Florida willing to order her murder.  I also think there may be constitutional grounds for Jeb Bush, as Governor, to step in and  physically remove Terri from the jurisdiction of the court if, at the end, that is the only option left.  That gets into another matter discussed elsewhere on this website, and perhaps weighs on Jeb's fitness for higher office.   You see, the Mountain Observer does not accept the proposition that any Court necessarily has the final say.   It goes back to 1803.    Stay tuned.    www.terrisfight.org        www.LifeNews.com      JES

03/10/05  The proposed Law of the Sea treaty.  Mr. President, Sir, don't go there.  It is worse than Kyoto.  JES

MO 05 01  The court battle continues in Terri Schiavo's battle for life.  We watch intently to see if there is a judge in Florida willing to order her murder.  Stay tuned.    www.terrisfight.org        www.LifeNews.com  JES

11/30/04  Listening to a different talk show out of Chicago this morning, the subject revolved around the question of inaction by school administrators, and boards of education, in instances of bullying students effectively terrifying other students.  I'm sure that parents and students frequently have legitimate complaints.  What was entirely missed, however, in this radio discussion, was the fact that the real problem is that the teachers, administrators and board members themselves are afraid of the same thug students, and terrified of the legal shields that have been erected to protect them.  School thuggery and gang behavior is only going to continue to get worse until the legal trends of the last few years are reversed, and discipline re-allowed in the schools.  Meanwhile, bring on the vouchers.  JES

MO 04 07   I approach my next point with great caution because an enormous amount of damage has already occurred in the dialog about the correctness of our policies in Iraq.  My point has to do with so-called Paleo-Conservatives in general, and Patrick J. Buchanan in particular.  I don't think that the discussion can be fully understood without recognizing the this particular slice of the political spectrum is directly rooted to the America Firsters of the 1930's.  America First/Paleo-Conservatives distinguish themselves from the broader Conservative movement with an ongoing insistence on hard core and absolute isolationism, or perhaps more precisely, non-intervention, in foreign affairs.  It has been the conventional wisdom for many that the utility of this perspective assumed instant room temperature on the morning of December 7th, 1941.  It is quite evident that that is not the case.  Now the fact of the matter is that as the American Nationalist Conservative that I consider myself to be, I have a great deal of intellectual sympathy for this perspective, and any careful reading of the Mountain Observer over the past several months documents that fact.  My problem with the Paleo position is that it has hardened into total rigidity at the expense legitimate national security concerns that must be addressed by any responsible Commander-in-Chief in the modern world.  Yes, over the years the nation has mistakenly allowed itself to become too dependant on foreign sources of energy, and this needs to be corrected.  But the fact is that modern economies function on oil, and oil is a legitimate and fungible international commodity.  It is also a fact that Israel legitimately and properly exists, and has every right to defend itself against those who would destroy it.  It is furthermore a fact that the United States, and in my opinion the entire western world, has a stake and responsibility to ensure the ability of Israel to defend itself and survive in the face of those who would destroy her.  However, more is at stake than oil and Israel.  The whole of western culture is under assault by an Islamic Fascist cancer that has been mutating for years.  The source of this cancer is not oil or Israel, but an Islamic ideological rejection of western freedom, American, in particular.   They simply hate us for existing, which is a challenge to their world view.  God is innocent; this is a matter among mankind.  We did not provoke this, and this would continue to be true even if Israel was to disappear, but perceived weakness on our part certainly invites depredation and in the modern age, technology makes us vulnerable.  We have a choice.  We can stand by and wait to be hit first, or we can proceed preemptively to lance the infection.  As a Conservative, with nationalist concerns, I prefer the latter course of action, without apologies to others who have their own interests and agendas.  To stand by and await attacks is not only suicide, but it is also complicity with Evil.  So it is that we come to the issue of the hated Neocons.  I do not intend here to get into the origins or background of the species, other than to point out, Pat, that they represent a perspective that sheds a somewhat different light on the matter.   We all know they are very Wilsonian, bright eyed and bushy tailed about democracy in every corner of the earth,  not a particularly conservative line of reasoning, and not always consistent with American interests.  In the Middle East, however, there is a catch.  Just as in the 20th Century we found ourselves compelled to defend ourselves against statist Fascism (I know in the 1930's you didn't want to do it, and you've been mad at FDR on this point, and Churchill ever since), so it is today that we find ourselves challenged by Fascism in a new format.  We are confronted by stateless Islamic terrorists, but there is a catch, and that is that they cannot function without state sponsorship (fish out of water).  Hence, the Axis of Evil, a list too short.  Israel has been forced to confront this same phenomena since its inception, and the cycle of violence has been un-ending.  The problem is that one cannot reason or negotiate with terrorists; in self defense, they must be killed.  At the same time, there would seem to be peacefully inclined portions of the Muslim/Persian world that might be neutralized by different tactics.  This remains to be seen, although the election results in Afghanistan, however flawed, are encouraging.  The outcome in Iraq remains to be seen.  My point to my Paleo friends is, a). we cannot hide anymore, protected by two oceans, b). the types of people who will fly planes into buildings must be dealt with, c). sponsoring states of terrorism (yes, Iraq has been a sponsoring state) must be dealt with, and d). western notions of democracy might just put a dent in the mindset.  You cannot arbitrarily foreclose any options.  What is really disturbing to me, Pat, is that if George W. Bush should lose this election, then it would seem to me that you must share some direct responsibility.  Certainly you must realize that a far Left American government, which is what we would get, will eventually invite real disaster.   You have been flirting with Michael Moore, and encouraging absurd conspiracy theories, which is bazaar, and which has caused permanent damage irrespective of the outcome of this election.  That fact is simply not constructive, or in my opinion Conservative.  I am not interested in spreading democracy for the sake of democracy, an idea with problems of its own.  I am receptive to using the proven tools of western (read American) thought as utilities in the protection of our national security interests, and at times that may include the notion that ballots are better than shredders, and female voters are better than Uday and Qusay Saddam in guiding a resolution of Iraqi torments.  Not all of these initiatives may work, but, then again, one might be surprised.  In any event, the entire region will never be the same again, which at the very least is the basic idea.  Finally, I would stipulate that there is a moral component in all of this that, as a Catholic, I am compelled to observe.  Inaction or temporizing and failure to take account can be a form of complicity with Evil; there is debate within the Church itself on this matter.   God Bless George W. Bush.

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