It’s always amusing when you see a little karma come back and bite someone in the backside who richly deserves it.  Sitting across from Mary and Donald all day doesn’t just mean listening to their constant yelling about how greedy, intolerant, racist and stupid conservatives and Republicans are, it often means also listening to how stupid Mary thinks everyone is.  The word stupid really must be her favorite, usually preceded or followed by an expletive, and always shouted, I must hear it at least 20 times a day.  But Mary has one other “endearing” habit: she always parks in the handicap space, closest to the door of the building.  We work in a pretty old building, and the parking lot is fenced-in.  The handicap space in the lot is marked, but the lines are faded, and we have nobody who works in the office who is actually handicapped, or has a sticker for their car, so Mary has been treating this as her own personal parking space for as long as I’ve been there.

Well, last week, the inevitable finally happened.  Another person who works in the building came in from the parking lot a little after lunch, and alerted Mary to the presence of a parking ticket on her car.  She immediately went outside to check, came back in, and had a meltdown.

Who do those F#@%ing A%%Ho&#$ think they are!  I am NOT PAYING THIS!  They can KISS MY A%%!  They can’t come in here, this is PRIVATE PROPERTY!  That’s not a REAL handicapped space!  They should be out catching rapists and murderers, not wasting their time trying to give out ILLEGAL parking tickets on PRIVATE PROPERTY!  What STUPID A%%Ho&#$!!!

Yep, it took her a bit, but she finally worked-in her favorite word.  She carried-on like this for a good ten minutes, and finally finished-up by announcing that she was going to go out and cover-up the handicapped sign posted in her parking space.  Sure enough, by the end of the day, there was a heavy plastic bag secured over the sign with a plastic cable tie.  You see where this is going, don’t you?

Today code enforcement visited the building today to cite the owners for covering the sign designating the handicapped space.  It looks like poor Mary is now going to have to hunt for a parking space like the rest of us tomorrow morning.

As most people with a driver’s license know, handicap parking spaces must be provided in any public or private non-residential parking lot.  It’s actually a federal requirement, outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Parking in a handicap space without a sticker always carries a painful fine, too, which is another thing most of us know, at least most of us who aren’t excessively absorbed with the perceived mental deficiencies of others!

It’s always satisfying seeing someone who deserves it getting smacked with the karma stick.  It’s just too bad Mary probably won’t learn anything from it.

Political prognosticators are a lot like Iowa and New Hampshire in that it’s only every four years that people pay them any attention.  Something you can always count on is that at some point they’ll stop gazing into crystal balls and reading tea leaves long enough to remind us that the taller presidential candidate tends to win elections and that the candidate with the longer name has an even better track record.  Occasionally, such notable exceptions as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush break the rules, but it’s pretty rare.

While studying up on the subject, I discovered that Barack Obama isn’t 6’4”, as I had assumed, but only 6’1”.  That led me to wonder if one of the prerequisites to being invited to join his administration was to be short so that he can always appear to tower over advisors and cabinet members.  I mean, 6-1 is certainly above average, but nobody that height would invariably be the tallest person in a group, unless the Small People of America was holding its annual convention.

Just for the record, Mitt Romney is 6’2, while Newt Gingrich is 6 feet even, although his weight makes him appear shorter.  Both have longer last names than Obama; make of that what you will.

Speaking of the GOP contenders reminds me that if Timothy McVeigh hadn’t existed, Ron Paul would have had to invent him.  I mean, has there ever been an occasion when sane people have been discussing the existential danger of Islamic extremists when Rep. Paul hasn’t felt it necessary to climb aboard his portable soap box and remind us that native-born terrorist McVeigh was not a Muslim?  Apparently at some time in the distant past, someone told the congressman that he had come up with an excellent reason not to take the fight to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranian mullahs, but someone should tell Mr. Paul that it’s not quite the argument clincher he seems to think it is.

Thanks to the GOP debates, people once again are talking about illegal aliens.  One of the sillier things they’re saying is that we should inaugurate a guest workers program.  With millions of unemployed Americans, do we really need to import workers?  Of course, like everybody else, I have always heard about those jobs that Americans won’t do.  I just don’t know what jobs they are.  Would those be in hospitals, hotels, restaurants and the construction industry?  Funny, but I seem to recall Americans doing that sort of thing.

Or perhaps they’re referring to jobs involved with agriculture.  If so, I’m confused.  It seems to me that with 12 to 15 million illegal aliens already here, we’d have sufficient numbers to pick the damn crops.  Heck, if farmers paid a decent wage — and with all that expensive machinery and expensive acreage, you’d think they could somehow manage to swing it — I suspect they’d have to beat off able-bodied workers with a stick.

Finally, to show the depths to which America has fallen, radio talk show host Michael Medved recently disclosed that the two most popular names for newborns these days are Jacob and Isabella.  I happen to think that both names are rather nice.  The only problem is that the reason for their popularity is that they happen to be the names of the two main characters in the “Twilight” movie series devoted to vampires.

I suppose we should all be grateful that an earlier generation had more sense than that, or today a lot of us running around would be named Vampira or Dracula.

Part of the reason that people enjoy watching sporting events is because the outcome is clear cut.  One team wins, another loses.  Outcomes aren’t usually so black and white in any other area of life.  That being said, my problem with sporting events is that far too often team defeats are laid at the feet of a single individual.

For instance, in 1991, with the score 20-19 in favor of the New York Giants, Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood missed a game-ending 47-yard field goal in Super Bowl XXV.  Buffalo fans haven’t forgiven him to this day.  God only knows when Baltimore Ravens fans will forgive Billy Cundiff for missing a 32-yard attempt in the recent AFC playoff or San Francisco fans will cut Kyle Williams some slack for fumbling the ball during the NFC playoffs in the 49er loss to those same Giants.

For most Americans, December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 are dates that will live on in infamy.  But for Chicago Cubs fans, a third date is October 14, 2003.  That was the day when, with the Cubs leading the Florida Marlins 3-0, just five outs away from advancing to the World Series for the first time in 58 years, Steve Bartman, a fan in the stands inadvertently got between outfielder Moises Alou and a foul ball.  By the time the smoke cleared, the Marlins scored eight runs in the eighth inning and 26-year-old Bartman was a marked man.

Back in 1951, Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca gave up the three-run homer to Bobby Thomson of the NY Giants, costing the Dodgers their shot at the World Series.  It later turned out that the Giants had a spy tucked away in the scoreboard with a pair of binoculars who signaled the manager Leo Durocher, who in turn signaled Thomson what pitch to expect.  Of course Thomson still had to hit “the shot heard ‘round the world,” as it came to be known.  But Brooklyn fans didn’t know about Durocher’s shenanigans at the time, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if they did.  Sports fans don’t want excuses, except, of course, when it comes to their own fumbles, errors and mistakes.

In the same way that certain moments can taint a career, others can be magnified all out of proportion in the other direction.  I am thinking of the moment during the South Carolina debate when Newt Gingrich used John King’s question about his first marriage to paint himself as the moral avenger.  Because snippets of Marianne Gingrich’s ABC interview had been all over radio and television that day, everyone knew the question was coming.  To his credit, Mr. King asked it first in order to get it out of the way, but it was the manner in which Gingrich employed verbal jujitsu to make himself out to be the victim of an unjustified attack that reversed the entire momentum of the campaign.

But I contend that Newt’s response had less to do with the reversal than the standing ovation it received from the folks in the auditorium.  It was the thunderous applause that touched off the Pavlovian reaction in the voters at home.  After all, what did his predictable slap down of the moderator, something he’d been doing regularly since the first debate, have to do with his electability or his qualifications to be president?

That is why my favorite debate was the one moderated by NBC’s Brian Williams.  Before the first question was asked, Mr. Williams told the audience to hold their applause, thus providing the four contenders with more time in which to respond.  As a result, it’s my opinion that all four men, including Rep. Paul, had the opportunity to make their strongest case yet to the electorate.

Recently, my friend Bernie Goldberg reported on a 2008 Pew Poll that indicated that it isn’t just conservatives who recognize that the elite media is filled with left-wingers.  In the post-election poll, 62% of Democrats acknowledged that the media had been in the tank for candidate Obama.  Of course every conservative is well aware of media bias, but I had assumed that most Democrats regarded themselves and their lap dogs in the fourth estate as middle of the road moderates and regarded the rest of us as being way out on the right shoulder of the road, along with the weeds and road kill.

Speaking of Obama, a friend send me a definition of “ineptocracy,” a made-up word that is deftly defined as “a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society the least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”  It would be a challenge to do a neater job of summing up the Obama administration in 50 words or less.

Finally, lest anyone conclude that just because he isn’t my first or second choice, I would not vote for Newt Gingrich if he were to garner the GOP nomination, let me assure one and all that I will vote for any Republican running against Obama, and that includes Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley.

Granted, there are a number of things that I don’t like about Mr. Gingrich, but the main one is that I think he would have a tougher time defeating Obama than either Romney or Santorum.  I also think that all the talk about the way Newt would manhandle the ex-community organizer in a debate is a whole lot of hooey.  In the aftermath of those events, Democrats inevitably think their guy wins, Republicans think our guy wins, and independents, whose votes unfortunately determine the election, are busy watching “The Kardashians” or alphabetizing their canned goods.

For my part, I think Gingrich’s strengths would be wasted in the White House. Being quick-thinking and verbally adroit can certainly come in handy, but they happen to be skills I possess and I know only too well that I shouldn’t be allowed to come within a mile of the Oval Office.

With his short fuse and excess baggage, Newt Gingrich really isn’t cut out to be the president of the United States.

Instead, if he came to me for vocational guidance, I’d tell him to host a radio talk show or go be a judge on “American Idol”.

..and How he can Win.

For those of you who slept-in this morning, something very big happened last night in the race for the Republican nomination.  Rick Santorum swept all three contests yesterday, and not by small margins.  Most shockingly, he decisively took Colorado, where Romney was expected to coast to an easy victory.  And Santorum won despite being decisively out-spent and out-organized in all three states.

His Inevitableness took a very big hit last night.  Romney has had a very difficult time selling himself to conservatives in general, and last night’s Santorum win made it clear, a large part of the Republican Party simply does not want him.  The fact that Romney has not been able to generate any consistent momentum, that he has been unable to get the Party generally behind him, has been the only consistent theme throughout this campaign.  And for a candidate whose only real salable attribute is his supposed electability, the fact that he’s not even electable within his own party calls his viability as a candidate into question.

If Santorum is going to hold-onto this momentum, he still has a lot of obstacles to overcome.  So far, he has escaped the sort of sliming Romney’s people have been focusing on Newt, but starting today, that is going to change.  Santorum is also way behind in money and organization, and will need to catch-up fast.  And he is not without his flaws.  Santorum has been principally a social-conservative candidate, and as the nominee, he will inevitably attract attention to social issues as opposed to the economy.  He will need to become very good at focusing-on and addressing economic issues, as he will be attacked from both the left and the right on this.  But in my opinion, the best thing he can do right now is what Gingrich could have done, but failed to do.  Santorum needs to articulate a strong, conservative message.  He is the last, viable candidate with the credibility to communicate this message.

Much breath and ink is spent on the political right looking for, or lamenting the lack of “the Next Reagan.”  Santorum is not, and should not be mistaken for another Ronald Reagan, but he can take a page out of Ronnie’s playbook.  Think “Morning in America.”  He needs to start today painting a picture for all of us of what America can be again.  We live in a country that is exhausted and demoralized.  To a greater extent now than at any other time in my life, there is doubt about our country, our future, and whether our best days really are behind us.  Conservatives believe in Morning in America, and if there is any lesson at all in yesterday’s sweep by Santorum, it’s that there is a hunger to hear that message again.  Santorum is the last guy who can credibly deliver it, and if he does, not only can he beat Romney for the nomination, he will trounce Obama in November.

I love pithiness, and I think you will find none better than this paragraph by Erick Erickson over at Red State:

The Republican Party is putting itself in the hands of the economy. With Mitt Romney as the nominee, we will be forced to hope for a deteriorating economy because, while I will vote for him and think he is vastly better than Barack Obama, the fact is he has made no case for himself against Barack Obama except that he can do a better job on the economy. And let’s be clear — no Republican should hope or appear to be hoping for a deteriorating economy. It’s just that with no other justification for his election other than electability based on the ability to fix the economy, if the economy fixes itself, suddenly there is no justification for Mitt Romney’s electability.

Erick is Right.  After months of voraciously eating our own, this is where we are headed.  This should be a great year for us.  Against all expectations after his strong win in 2008, Obama is a very weak and unpopular president, and a very vulnerable candidate.  Certainly no incumbent president has been so readily beatable since Jimmy Carter, and Obama may be even more vulnerable that he was.  Yet despite this, the establishment wing of the Republican Party has steadily argued us into the proposition that the only “electable” candidate is Romney, a candidate who himself is unable to articulate a single reason why we should vote for him.  In a year when we should be running on our ideas and our principles, a year when the incumbent is the personification of why our ideas and principles are superior, the establishment insists we must run another retread of Bob Dole and John McCain.

All in all, 2011 provided us with some pretty good news.  For one thing, our military took care of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, God got rid of Kim Jong-Il and, for good measure, Barney Frank finally got around to announcing his retirement.

It was to be expected that Jimmy Carter, who insisted on paying his last respects to the otherwise unlamented Yasser Arafat, was probably the only person in the civilized world demented enough to send his sincere condolences to North Korea on the passing of its longtime dictator, the aforementioned Kim Jong-Il.  So it is that although Carter’s claim to the title of Worst President of the United States has been usurped by Barack Obama, Mr. Peanut retains clear title to being the Worst Ex-President of the United States.

Speaking of titles, I had been unaware until reading his obituary that among Kim Jong-Il’s own honorifics were Best Leader Who Realized Human Wisdom; Master of Literature, Arts and Architecture; Humankind’s Greatest Musical Genius: World’s Greatest Writer; and, contrary to Al Gore’s opinion, Greatest Man Who Ever Lived.

One of the titles I fully expected to see, but didn’t, was Greatest Golfer in the Universe.  After all, even the likes of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Arnold Palmer, could only fantasize about shooting a round of 38 that included 11 holes-in-one.  Although I have no reason on earth to doubt the North Korean news agency that reported such a miraculous round of golf, I have always wondered why Jong-Il required 27 shots to complete those other seven holes.  I can only imagine that those damn little windmills threw him off his game.

An odd coincidence is that I believe 38 is the same score that Obama once reported bowling, a score that justifiably earned him the title of World’s Biggest Wienie.

Speaking of the man who is destined to take his place with the likes of James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Jimmy Carter, as America’s most inept one-term presidents, Obama has been accused of picking winners and losers in the business world by subsidizing the winners with our tax dollars.  Furthermore, cynics claim that he selects them solely on the basis of the owners’ financial contributions to his re-election campaign.  Pshaw!  Even someone as openly partisan as I am can see how unjust that is.  If that charge had any merit at all, Solyndra, as well as several other green energy concerns handpicked by this administration would be flourishing.  So where, I ask on Obama’s behalf, are all these alleged winners?  Instead, I say that Obama has exhibited the exact same questionable instincts when picking winners in the world of commerce that he’s shown in picking cabinet members, friends and religious mentors.

Finally, in all the squabbling between Republican presidential contenders, I have yet to hear anyone utter the unfortunate truth about Arabs and Muslims.  For all the joyous blather that greeted the so-called Arab spring, the world has had no reason to rejoice over the results in Egypt, Libya or Syria.  For their part, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, continue to be the same cesspools they were before America sacrificed blood and treasure in the hope of protecting one group of medieval terrorists from another.

In Saudi Arabia, one of our alleged allies in that part of the world, school textbooks continue to promote the official Islamic bilge that women are “weak and irresponsible,” that homosexuals “should be killed,” and that “the hour of judgment will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.”

In the meantime, any Christian unfortunate enough to find himself in the Middle East is fair game for jihadists.

But all the while, we Americans are trained to parrot the lie, so often repeated by George Bush and Barack Obama, that Islam is a religion of peace and that America’s Muslims — in spite of Major Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood, the campaign to erect a victory mosque at Ground Zero, and the Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, who, along with their friends and relatives in Gaza, celebrated on 9/11 — are every bit as benign and patriotic as the folks in the Tea Party movement.

Until we get a president who is willing to acknowledge that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalists; that Muslims played absolutely no role in the creation of the United States; that they are dedicated to a worldwide caliphate, whose primary goal would be the extermination of Jews and Christians; and that in any war waged between one Muslim sect and another, our place should be on the sidelines, cheering them on; we will continue being drawn into one bloody and ultimately futile enterprise after another.

Recently, a reader wrote to ask me why anyone would spend a million dollars to become a member of Congress, a job that pays less than $200,000 a year.  I explained that there were several reasons.  One, they seek fame.  Celebrity is a major goal for a large number of people, and not just kids who are dying to switch places with rock stars and fashion models

Two, they want to oversee fiefdoms that would have been the envy of English royals.  You often see the likes of Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner striding down congressional corridors, dozens of attendants in their wake.  They don’t have anywhere in particular to rush off to, they just enjoy leading parades.  Too bad they can’t twirl a baton.

Three, the cost doesn’t really concern them because they’re usually spending other people’s money when they run for office.  Come to think of it, that’s really all they do once they get elected.  Four, thanks to insider trading, grateful lobbyists and big fat pensions, they will leave office — if they ever do — far wealthier than when they arrived.

Finally, five, they just want to do good.  Whenever possible, I like to end with a joke.

If I had my way, being a congressman would be a part-time job, and it would be conducted using modern technology, conference calls and the like.  The main reason they convene in Washington, D.C., is for the convenience of lobbyists.  Think of it as one-stop shopping.

In his recent book, “After America,” Mark Steyn observed that America has been busy exporting its unskilled jobs while, at the same time, through encouraging invasion by illegal aliens, importing unskilled workers.  As a result, America is being bled to death providing schooling, health care, food stamps and prisons, for millions of non-citizens.  And those who balk at providing the uninvited with all these goodies are labeled racists.  Then, to compound the problem, we have a Republican candidate for president talk about amnesty for those who have been here for 25 years.  Or it might be 20 years, or maybe only five years.  Or perhaps it will be a week and a half by the time President Gingrich gets around to dictating a piece of legislation.

Between the influx of illiterates and our sub-standard public schools, it seems that the collective IQ of America is declining at an alarming rate, perhaps as much as a point a year.  Still, when I first heard that half of high school seniors couldn’t identify George Washington, I was shocked.  Then, after a moment or two, I was shocked that I’d been shocked.  After all, one merely had to see the teachers in Wisconsin using phony medical excuses in order to play hooky from the classroom and riot over their pensions to understand why I and others hold the teachers unions in such contempt.  If you recall, the hypocrites in Madison even had the gall to carry signs suggesting they were doing it for the kids.  I suppose if drug dealers belonged to a union, they could carry those same placards.

Speaking of hypocrites, who else but Obama, after spending the better part of the year vacationing, golfing and appearing at fund-raisers, could even think of waging his re-election campaign against a do-nothing Congress?

Back in 2008, when Obama said he’d never, in 20 years of church attendance, ever heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright say anything offensive, we naturally assumed he was lying.  After all, by that time we had seen the obscene videos of Wright’s ranting against America, against the white race and against the Jews in Israel.

But, after Obama’s first three years in the White House, I think we may have leapt to the wrong conclusion.  I suspect now that he wasn’t lying.  After all, when a person is in complete agreement with a psychotic racist like Rev. Wright, there’s no reason he’d find those demonic sermons the least bit offensive.  Wright, I’m afraid, was merely giving voice to what Obama, in his heart, already believed.

It works the same way when liberals listen to left-wing bilge spewed by the likes of Bill Maher, Joy Behar, Rachel Maddow, Alan Colmes and Ed Schultz.

On the other hand, if these lunkheads weren’t gainfully employed in the media, they would probably be dues-paying members of some teachers union, devoting their time to turning your kids into George Soros’ brand of hand puppets.

image source

Where was this Rick Santorum six, or even three months ago?  If the guy we saw in the last couple of debates had shown up back when this race was revving-up, he might be running away with it right now.

While the media and the anti-Newt Republicans are busy parsing Gingrich’s mediocre performance tonight, and opining on how much of a boost this will give Romney, I think Daniel Horowitz writing at Red State tells the real story in Romney’s Big Healthcare Lie.  While everyone else was apparently distracted by the Mitt/Newt drama, Santorum absolutely clobbered Romney on his signature achievement during his short stint as governor of Massachusetts.    And when Romney tried to defend his plan, as he has each and every time he’s been challenged on it, Santorum drew him in a little deeper before springing his trap.  Rattling-off the facts and figures of how Romneycare had distorted the market, driven up costs, and pushed a record number of people into just paying the cheaper state fine for not carrying insurance, he laid waste to Romney’s defense, and left him looking stunned.

The pundits are busy wondering how much of a boost Romney is going to get from his newly discovered aggressive debating style, but if Florida voters were watching, I think both Newt and Mitt will see their poll numbers drop, while Santorum gets a boost.  We’ll see how big a boost this Tuesday.  As for Mitt and Romneycare, I think he has a big problem.

Margaret Thatcher had once said, “The problem with socialism is that, at some point, you run out of other people’s money.” She was referring to the deliberate attempt by a centralized socialist government to confiscate by various means and redistribute wealth they viewed as unfairly earned at the expense of the masses.

Communism abolished classes and the workers were paid for their needs not for the work they performed – “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This brings to mind the motto Romanian workers adopted under communism in order to survive: “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.”

There is no such thing as “equal” or “shared” (“communis” means “shared” in Latin) in communism. There is equal misery, equal suffering, equal mistreatment, and equal poverty. We shared constant shortages of food, rationing of necessities, water, energy, and heat.

Marx said, the proletariat does all the work. It is only fitting that they share the wealth. What wealth? The one that the Communist Party elites confiscated by force from its citizens after they were thrown in jail for being “bourgeois?”

Karl Marx, “the original hippie,” was negligent with his own family and “detested manual labor, preferring to dream up ideas about mooching from others and spreading their wealth around.” A report written in1852 by a Prussian police agent described a man who rarely washed, combed, or changed his linens, idle for days on end, an intellectual Bohemian. (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty)

“There is not one clean and solid piece of furniture to be found in the whole apartment: everything is broken, tattered and torn…in one word everything is topsy turvy…. When you enter Marx’s room, smoke and tobacco fumes make your eyes water so badly, that you think for a moment that you are groping about in a cave…. Everything is dirty and covered with dust. It is positively dangerous to sit down. One chair has three legs. On another chair, which happens to be whole, the children are playing at cooking.” (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty, 64, quoting Eugene Kamenka, The Portable Karl Marx, 41-42)

Marx cherished his philosophical ideas more than his responsibilities to his family because he relied on wealthy patrons such as Friedrich Engels, communist sponsors, and inheritances to care for his family. He died a pauper. (Michael Savage, Trickle Up Poverty, 65)

The failed socialist experiment at Jamestown, Virginia, taught us that, when people worked the land together, some were lazy and did much less work, while others, who worked harder, resented the slackers. The whole commune nearly starved to death. The following year, land was divided again to each family, and the settlement thrived and had extra food to trade for other needs.

Marxism does not work because greed and jealousy exist. Not everyone is so altruistic that he/she is willing to work extremely hard for the good of everyone.

Capitalism does work because of self-interest. One individual’s hard work to achieve self-interest enables Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” (the price system) to push everyone else to greater economic achievement. Waiting on the dole and the spreading of wealth is the death of initiative, respect, dignity, honor in a good-day’s work, and the desire to improve one’s standing in society.

Self-interest also breeds charity. Communist elites were never charitable except to themselves. People living under communism were not charitable to strangers. They performed volunteer activities involuntarily under the forced directions of communist rulers.

The population in communism hoarded food, enabled black markets to thrive, and engaged in bartering stolen goods or raw materials from work in order to survive. They tended to steal even public items that were fastened or nailed down if they could be sold for recycling.

There was no private property in communism because it created unfair competition. However, if a citizen was part of the ruling regime elites, he/she could own as much private property as they wished or as fast as they could steal it from the hapless proletariat and from the common means of production.

In the socialist and communist “utopia” I experienced, the proletariat was given free health care, education, and transportation. In reality, we had to pay for transportation and anything else at subsidized prices. Health care so dismal and constant shortages due to rationing created a huge black market. Medical care was pathetically inadequate and life had no value. People were killed by malpractice with no accountability since everybody worked for the ruling communist regime for meager wages and the omnipotent government could not be sued. Doctors, nurses, teachers, and engineers were told where to live, where to practice their trade, and how much they could earn.

Modern socialists in Europe advocate and run bankrupt welfare states with a nanny mentality of cradle to grave entitlements. Exceptionalism is punished, “global citizens” are shaped by socialist schools, and “groupthink” is rewarded. Most inventions of the modern world were the result of individual creativity and exceptional talent of one individual not of groups “brainstorming.”

Communist China did not start to make economic progress until the centralized bureaucracy lessened its stronghold on the population and allowed individual creativity and entrepreneurship to thrive. People were forced to do everything in society against their will.

Norman Matoon Thomas (Nov. 20,1884 – December 19, 1968), a leading American socialist and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America, explained best the status of socialism in the U.S.:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.” He continued, “I no longer need to run as a Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” It appears that they have reached that goal.

Why would French or Greek citizens work hard if the government cannot fire them? Those who lack a work ethic and are lazy should be fired. Why would welfare Americans find work when they are encouraged to stay home and receive undeserved checks from the taxes of hard-working Americans? Socialism is forced on America by an ever-increasing federal bureaucracy.

Marxism, named after Karl Marx (1818-1883), is a mixture of philosophy, social history, economics, and “social justice” propaganda: Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism, and Marxist Economics.

For Marx, philosopher Georg Hegel’s dialectic – the contradiction between subject and object – was a “reflection of the actual contradiction between workers and employers under capitalism.” Modern man is alienated from his true nature because he has no tie to the product of his labor for which he earns a wage, Marx said.

Based on the history of class struggle, Marx believes that competition for resources divides society into “mutually antagonistic classes.” Poor workers “could be inflamed to believe that the capitalist system would always be disadvantageous to them.”

Das Kapital (Capital) promoted the idea that the “bourgeoisie” made profits by exploiting the “proletariat.” Workers were “exploited” when the value of goods produced exceeded the wages paid, thus creating “surplus value.”

Agitating class envy, Marx claimed that bourgeois competition forced them to exploit workers more. When they refused to exploit more, the capitalist would be forced into bankruptcy or bought out by someone who would continue the exploitation. Low wages would persist, the proletariat would rebel and would replace capitalism with socialism/communism. Marx imagined a “complete mechanization of production, so that any man could do any job.”

Marx acknowledges, “Capitalism is the most powerful mode of production available.” Yet abolition of private property is the crux of the theory of communism.

Marx and Engels introduced the “dictatorship of the proletariat” which was used by Lenin and Stalin to defend their totalitarian rule.

Marx believed that abolishing private ownership of the means of production by force and dictates, the proletariat would crush the resistance of the bourgeoisie. Lenin envisioned a dictatorship by a minority party, not by a democratically chosen majority.

Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto ,“exploitation and class warfare will destroy the national barriers between members of the proletariat, and the proletariat has a duty to overthrow the ruling classes in each nation.”

When the proletariat ruled, the following would happen:

-         No private property

-         Progressive tax

-         No right of inheritance

-         One centralized bank

-         Centralized credit

-         Centralized communication

-         Centralized transportation

-         Means of production owned by state

-         Equitable distribution of population density across the country

-         Free education (in the communist society I experienced, free education was rationed)

-         Combine education with production and agriculture

-         Industrial armies

-         Agricultural armies

-         Equal wages

As I sat in my high school class during Scientific Socialism lessons, with eyes glazed over by sheer boredom, I wondered how anyone could make such a deceptive ideology into a science. I could never say it, lest I went to a Gulag.

Stepping outside into our real world, there was no egalitarian society in communism, there were chronic shortages of food while the communist elite ate well and stuffed themselves.

We certainly had two distinct classes: the workers and the communist apparatchiks/the “intellectual proletarians”/the “cultivated proletarian artists.” Some had a fifth grade education, like the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, a cobbler, and his equally uneducated wife who presented papers at international forums, stolen from seasoned Ph.D.s who did not dare cross the “Mother of the Country” or challenge her faux credentials.

The common denominator of the communist rulers was that they were agitators and street organizers who had learned “how to be good commies” at brief seminars. For their servitude and help in oppressing the masses, helpful idiots and underlings received extra food, better housing, and comfortable professional jobs in spite of their lack of qualifications.

“Workers of the world” did not unite to overthrow capitalism as Marx wished, on the contrary, in 1989, the workers united and threw out communism in Eastern Europe as a failed ideology, economic, and societal system.

Our founding fathers believed in and respected private property as the cornerstone of our Constitutional republic. Belief in God and family were the keystones.

A majority of Americans today subscribe to the ideas that:

-         Character is the single most important attribute in a leader

-         Respect and honor are laudable traits

-         Entrepreneurs are our economic lifeblood and deserve what they make

-         The rich and entrepreneurs help enrich us all

-         American ingenuity promotes wealth

-         American generosity saves many nations in times of peril/need

-         Families are the building blocks of society

-         Guns prevent evil from taking over

-         Stoked class envy and hatred is un-American

-         Hyphenated labels are divisive and destructive

-         Illegal and unchecked immigration are dangerous to this country

-         Multilingualism is a divider

-         Global warming scare is junk science

-         Liberalism is a failed ideology

-         Military strength deters aggression (“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war, said the Romans.

-         National security is the first responsibility of the federal government

-         “Political correctness is the liberal version of fascism”

-         Quotas should not exist

-         Tax rates should be flat and everybody should pay taxes

-         Unions have outlived their usefulness

-         “Vigilance is the price of freedom”

-         “Welfare robs people of their dignity and is the poison of capitalism”

-         We are responsible for our own destiny, not government or society

-         Government is not the solution, out-of-control government is the problem

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shall not covet’ and ‘Thou shall not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable percepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.” (John Adams, A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)

“Negotiated in the 1970s, the Law of the Sea treaty was heavily influenced by the New International Economic Order, a set of economic principles first formally advanced at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in the 1970s and 1980s,” calling for redistribution of wealth to the benefit of third world countries.

President Ronald Reagan rejected the treaty in 1982 because it demanded technology and wealth transfer from developed countries to developing nations as well as adopting regulations and laws to control oceanic pollution.  Jurisdictional limits on oceans included a 12-mile territorial sea limit and a 200-mile exclusive economic zone limit.  The treaty would regulate economic “activity on, over, and beneath the ocean’s surface.”

In spite of the many pros and cons, in March 2004, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended by unanimous vote that the U.S. sign the treaty.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources’ Subcommittee on Water and Power, opposes the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) on several grounds, including the loss of National sovereignty.

In order to ratify a treaty, the President needs two-thirds majority vote from the Senate. According to Sen. Mike Lee, treaties must represent U.S. economic and security interests.  Our economy and navigation rights have not been affected by the fact that we chose to reject the treaty. He finds the loss of National sovereignty and mandatory dispute resolution included in the Law of the Sea treaty quite troubling.

The International Seabed Authority (“the Authority”) has the power to distribute “international royalties” to developing and landlocked nations. “So hypothetically, a U.S. company that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing clean and safe deep-sea mining machinery would be forced to give a portion of its profits to countries such as Somalia, Sudan, and Cuba – all considered to be developing nations by ‘the Authority.’” (Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah)

Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, supports the ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST). He believes that this treaty provides rules to handle future underwater minerals, gas, and oil exploration and shipping on new water routes opened by receding Arctic icepack. His support is predicated on the premise that the Arctic icepack melt will be a constant in the future.

According to Sen. Mark Begich, “The United States is the world’s leading maritime power. Only by ratifying the treaty can it protect freedom of navigation to advance our commercial and national security interests, claim extended continental-shelf areas in the Arctic – an area believed to be twice the size of California – as other nations are already doing, and use its provisions to protect the marine environment, manage fisheries and appoint Americans to help resolve disputes.” (The American Legion Magazine)

According to the Heritage Foundation, innocent passage through an area is already protected under “multiple independent treaties, as well as traditional international maritime law.”  Few countries deny passage to the U.S., given its naval superiority.  Under the Law of the Sea Treaty, “intelligence and submarine maneuvers in territorial waters would be restricted and regulated.” It is thus not in the national security interest of the United States to ratify this treaty.

The treaty requires policies that regulate deep-sea mining, requires rules and regulations to control and prevent marine pollution, and requires the control of corporations who cannot bring lawsuits independently. They must depend on the country of origin to plead their case in front of the United Nations agency.

“Some proponents of the treaty believe that it will establish a system of property rights for mineral extraction in deep sea beds, making the investment in such ventures more attractive.”

President Reagan objected to the Principle of the “Common Heritage of Mankind,” which dictates that marine resources belong to all mankind and cannot be exploited by one nation.

To spread the wealth, the UN “Authority” must regulate and exploit mineral resources by asking companies to pay an application fee of half a million dollars, recently changed to $250,000, and to reserve an extra site for the Authority to “utilize its own mining efforts.”

A corporation must also pay an annual fee of $1 million and up to 7% of its annual profits and share its mining and navigational technology. Mining permits are granted or withheld by the “Authority” which is composed of mostly developing countries. (Heritage Foundation)

Any kind of maritime dispute, fisheries, environmental protection, navigation, and research, must be resolved under this treaty through mandatory dispute resolution by the UN court or tribunal which limits autonomy. Disputes should be resolved by U.S. courts. (Heritage Foundation)

The United States provisional participation in the Laws of the Sea treaty expired in 1998. Should we consider the ratification of another treaty that has the potential to further chip away at our National sovereignty?

The GOP has recently passed (January 14, 2012) a resolution exposing United Nations Agenda 21 as “a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control that was initiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).”

“According to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, National sovereignty is deemed a social injustice.” United Nations treaties and programs want to force “social justice” through socialist/communist redistribution of wealth from developed nations like the U.S. to third world countries.