America still has her fruited plains, purple mountains majesty, amber waves of grain all from sea to shining sea. None of that has actually changed and America can still feed herself even if that would mean no morning coffee, or just for the few who could afford Hawaiian coffee. America has grand rivers and a highway system and trains and everything that made her great yet she stands about to fall. America has been missing one set of elements which had kept her great, justice, equality before the law, religion, unique sense of morality, seeking goodness over wealth, doing that which is right, foregoing expediency and a government under control. All these things which all of America had in great abundance such that it ruled even in the highest levels of business and governance are now no longer prevalent. Sure, these are still the watchwords ruling many an American household in the area the political elite call flyover country. Sure many, but insufficient, numbers of political representatives have these qualities and hold them dear initially but the coasts of America hold an allure that is all but irresistible which will wear-down all but the most stalwart of men and Washington D.C. is the epicenter of this corruption. This is where the force which tempts and eventually shoves forcefully to press all political souls into compromise on their principles, and almost all fall in the end tiring of making the good fight. That is the truth which should frighten all.
Today America selects their next President and determines the make-up of the government with which said President will be made to work with. Many have claimed that this is by far the worst of all possible outcomes which placed Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as the top candidates who won the primary selection process of the two main parties, the Democrat and Republican Parties respectively. Many a person has been baffled that these two were who were chosen from amongst the three-hundred-thousand potential Americans where at least two-thirds, a whopping two-hundred-thousand, were eligible to take the nomination. What we additionally learned was that Hillary Clinton was as much anointed by the Democrat Party as she was chosen; and that, contrary to the recent coverage, the media played a huge role in making Donald Trump the eventual victor for the Republican Party. Since selecting these two less than perfect and potentially unacceptable candidates the American electorate have come to a dazzling set of potential solutions, each more viable in the long run than the one before, and these are;
1) Just boycott the election altogether,
2) Write in any name from Daffy Duck to John McCain to Bernie Sanders,
3) Vote for a third party such as the Green Party, Constitution Party, Libertarian Party or other such party recognized by the Federal Election Commission (FEC),
4) Vote against the less desirable candidate by supporting the other party’s less than perfect but probably less problematic than the certainty of their opponent.
5) Brainwash oneself into honestly believing one major candidate is exactly what the party ordered and the party knows best.
After today comes the first of four years of tomorrows where the nation will live with whatever result is voted into the Presidency this today, be it through honest representation, voter fraud, illegal immigrants utilizing drivers’ licenses to vote using National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (Motor Voter Act), foreign interference or any other acts which affect the Electoral College outcome. This is where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Should America and the world be fortunate, then we should have a tabulated and verified result and the Electoral College delegates be set and promised to perform their duties honestly and as required by law; thus setting in stone the winner and next President of the United States and Leader of the Free World by default and by definition. This Leader of the Free World position was left largely vacant for the past eight years just as planned by President Barack Hussein Obama from the outset as he worked tirelessly to, in his own words at a campaign stop on October 30, 2008, in Columbia, Missouri where he stated, “Fundamentally Transforming the United States of America” as if the nation suffered from some debilitating disease from which the world need be protected from contracting through any form of American contact (see actual excerpt video below). At this point one can extrapolate from campaign statements, past actions, candid statements allowed to slip out either as an intentional plan or one of those rare moments where a politician or person of perceived importance actually says something they honestly feel deeply within themselves and is a defining principle, we have heard that most actually do have such guiding limitations and are often items the politician does all in their power to keep suppressed in case it might adversely affect voters, especially potential supporters. No matter how successful a politician may be, their actions, deeds and votes on the little or seemingly items of lesser importance are where their true and hidden side is often revealed. These telling moments will be either concealed by the mainstream media for their favored darlings or exploited and maximized in importance for those they desire to depose come Election Day. This is just one more deceit from which America currently suffers, a bent and twisted media which acts more as if they were the propaganda arm of the one party and an attacking beast for all others.
How long America survives as the spine and supporting strength of the free world is difficult to ascertain. One need remember that despite the fall of Rome as the ultimate power for much of Europe, Roman laws, currency, ethics and attributes remained as the guiding path down which the surviving states which had vanquished Rome would adopt as their own. Roman roads remained in use until approximately fifty to one-hundred years ago and their water systems are still in use, especially for some vineyards across Europe. To this day some of the concepts which were the basics of Rome, the ideas expounded by the Greeks and Torah and the words of the Prophets of the Temple Periods all remain as valid and necessary to Western civilization as one could imagine. These are the precepts, philosophies, tenets and arguments which form the framework of the modern state and are set in stone in the Ten Commandments and in Torah plus understood and lived through such historic documents which brought about the freedoms, independence and liberties enjoyed by many across the planet today. Such documents as the Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence and numerous treatises, essays, journals and various other political and even some science fiction writings expound the necessary state for humankind is exercising their incontrovertible and indisputable rights which were defined in the Declaration of Independence as “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The insurance and unassailability of said rights was to be the first and foremost demand of government. It was to buttress, protect and preserve these rights, freedoms and liberties that government was to be tolerated. Government was intended to be weak and solely in support of the people and it was with the people that the bulk of the power was to be vested. This is the opposite as is had today and this concept and its principles are exactly what will save America for our grandchildren and their children and grandchildren but only if we and our children make the ultimate sacrifices today that such can be assured of preservation.
As American election results roll in tonight and over into Wednesday we should each take some time and research our Representative and two Senators our votes have placed in Washington D.C. and evaluate how they measure up to a high standard of cutting the power out of Washington D.C. and returning it to the most local governance if not simply empowering the family and the individual trusting that those closest to the problem, dilemma, opportunity, selection and actual activities are the ones best capable of making things work and work well. Such representation would be working on all but eliminating the Department of Education limiting it to evaluating school systems or simply abolishing it altogether. That would be but a start. They would probably assist in writing legislation which would freeze if not decrease spending by 10% per year computed annually until such time that a sizeable surplus permitted paying the debt down to zero and then setting up a savings institute where the excess would be deposited such that there would never be a catastrophic event for which borrowing would otherwise be required. The cuts should be strived for every year and cuts in taxes should always be the first and prime effort of business in Congress. Further the congress should look into all regulations and determine if they serve a purpose of the people’s or serve granting government more power. If the regulation simply serves the government in any manner other than assisting the military, it should then be repealed; while otherwise it would still need review to improve the efficiency and assure it will not place an undue strain or demands on the people. A final review should be committed on all laws, regulations and requirements and test them to ascertain if they run afoul of Amendment X. Amendment X reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Amendment X is a simple, short, concise spelling out of what has become the most trampled and hollowed out and ignored of the Bill of Rights. Reinstating and reinforcing this one short Amendment from the Bill of Rights could and would honestly rid the nation of America of so much red tape, so many regulations and minimize the Federal Government so honestly and completely that its application alone might save the nation. There should be one last little alteration to the means in which Washington D.C. need change, every regulation must be reviewed and spelled out before the Congress every five years and be validated to continue being enforced. All legislation too would receive the same treatment of a full review every ten years in order to remain enforceable. Such requirements would tie up the Congress thoroughly setting a strong limitation on the amount of regulation they could review thus limiting the damage and interference they could enact and retain in use. Forcing items to be constantly reviewed guarantees the laws remain arguably necessary. An example might be:
CFR › Title 27 › Chapter I › Subchapter A › Part 4 › Subpart D › Section 4.39
(a) Statements on labels. Containers of wine, or any label on such containers, or any individual covering, carton, or other wrapper of such container, or any written, printed, graphic, or other matter accompanying such container to the consumer shall not contain:
9) Any word in the brand name or class and type designation which is the name of a distilled spirits product or which simulates, imitates, or created the impression that the wine so labeled is, or is similar to, any product customarily made with a distilled spirits base. Examples of such words are: “Manhattan,” “Martini,” and “Daquiri” in a class and type designation or brand name of a wine cocktail; “Cuba Libre,” “Zombie,” and “Collins” in a class and type designation or brand name of a wine specialty or wine highball; “creme,” “cream,” “de,” or “of” when used in conjunction with “menthe,” “mint,” or “cacao” in a class and type designation or a brand name of a mint or chocolate flavored wine specialty.
All right, we can understand how many of these forbidden words could be used as misleading but why “Zombie”? Sure there is a drink called a Zombie which most certainly would never be confused with any wine. The standard manner to mix a Zombie is as follows:
Zombie Recipe
Blend all ingredients with ice except Bacardi 151 proof rum. Pour into a Collins glass. Float Bacardi 151 proof rum on top. Garnish with a fruit slice, sprig of mint and a cherry.
Because of this drink we cannot use the word Zombie in the name of a wine, and I hoped someday to ferment grapes with their skins included in the wine and call it “Zombie Blood,” Well, guess that how to get rich quick scheme is dead as research showed New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco as the best places to market such a brew. Bummer, guess this proves that almost, if not, everything is illegal somewhere in the regulations just to stop everyone from committing an unapproved action. We think we best stop here and check the regulations and see if words being forbidden as we would not desire to be askance and standing in offense of the laws and regulations now, would we. Remember to vote unless in Chicago, then we advise as the old city bosses back in the day said, “Vote early and vote often.”
In the most recent times there has seemingly been a war waged over who is responsible for raising children. This battle was best epitomized when Hillary Clinton came out and stated at the 1996 Democrat National Convention as if it were established fact, “It takes a village to raise a child,” (Full Speech Below). The entire speech may have been her best presentation despite her almost Al Gore like metered cadence throughout the entire speech though once in a while she appeared almost attached to or excited by what she was proposing and her meter increased briefly. But the advice that the village, a euphemism for the government, is vitally interested in the raising of the child is a direct threat to the stability and autonomy of the family. This has become the watchword for the school teachers who receive additional training through approved courses which instruct that the teachers and school nurse or other medical officer and the principal are the first line of defense against improper ideas and concepts from being introduced to children because parents have been known to introduce archaic religious “indoctrination,” their phrasing, not ours, which must be instead replaced with the new age socialized concepts where the whole society teaches that which is beneficial to the society instead and above that which is beneficial to the family. The society is known by another name, another reference and that is government. But before we can even address the war against parents and government as the first parent of every child, we must first look back at an earlier conflict between science and religion which morphed into a battle between government and religion and has brought us to the world we have today.
The first concept required is to realize that all relationships whether private, public, familiar, governmental, religious and whatever; can be studied as living entities where the healthy and most adaptable grows in scope, influence and power and the lesser entities wither and eventually die. The earliest times in human existence, even before Homo Sapiens appeared, the basic unit was the family. This was because most of the groupings were clan based and one could tell your stature, standing, history and almost everything else about you by your name as it was an indicator of to what clan from which you arose. Different clans would have cooperative agreements often sealed with the exchange of women to show good faith and create and actual binding between the two families. This also served genetic diversity thus avoiding to some extent the genetic failings such as hemophilia and other disorders. With time clans merged to forge stronger and more capable collections which would supersede the family or clan unit. These groups were the first tribes which granted greater genetic diversity. All of this arose before the first modern man but was instrumental to development of complex society. The tribes grew to include numerous clans with some better at hunting and others at gathering knowing what was and was not edible while still others showed aptitude for healing and tending the young. In these more primitive conditions there were those whose task was the care of the youngest children but as they grew they would be trained in the skill they showed the best attributes by others such as a huntsman would train the young hunters, the gatherers would train the next generation of gatherers and so on. Tribes also began the concept of history, then simply known as the story. The story was one which was uplifting and always made the hunters as great warriors defending the tribe and the gatherer who risked life regularly trying new untested fruits and vegetables and if they survived and approved the tribe would add another plant to their diet which could have allowed the tribe to use previously unexplored lands. Such a person who would live to old age was likely rare but one who had along with the oldest hunters who reached an age where their use became telling of the stories. These positions evolved to become the job of an entire group who were to be the first priests who would eventually weave a set of codes which made the first religions.
With the onset of herding and farming, the time of city-states appeared and by now the tribal leaders were chosen by some method of testing or perhaps a single family’s eldest surviving son at the time of their father’s demise became the next ruler and the age of government had begun. It is important to note that the family was the initial and earliest defined obligation followed by clan and then tribe. With tribe we had the loosest governmental forms but religion grew into an actual class with priests who may have also been a warrior class which led the defense or assaults taken on by the tribe. Finally, about the time of the first cities, which would soon become city-states, did actual government take root amongst mankind. This was the first time that there would be actual laws enforced with proscribed punishment or at least delegating the one who proscribed the punishment for a particular crime. There came formalizations with religion already having led the way in this and they were followed by government. There came positions assigned with likely the first being the close guards who protected the ruling figure, then the ranking members of an enforcement group, the forerunners of modern police and judicial system. Often times the judicial system was also run by the clerical priest class as they were also the most learned class. This started the initial conflict between religion and government, even when a wise leader tied religion and government, blurring the difference and thus granting themselves the highest position in governance and religion. This was exactly what the Pharaohs of Egypt did when they proscribed for themselves a godly aura and was closely imitated by the Caesars of Rome.
There were a few exceptions to the basic complete authority of the governing leader or even the governing and clerical leaders which we have discussed a few times before, and that was the Torah which was the founding document for the Israelites who became over time today’s Jews. The rules given approximately three-thousand to three-thousand-five-hundred years ago were the framing of some of the ideas used by the Founding Fathers when drafting the United States Constitution leading to the proposed tight restraints on the Presidency. Such restrictions such as a President being withheld from granting themselves property or wealth derived from their knowledge of government workings nor could they simply invent and apply laws without the consent of Congress and were made answerable to both the Congress or the Supreme Court should they stray from the defined limitations of their office. These concepts along with the right of a state to leave the Union if they would so choose and do so in a prescribed manner and other limitations on a President were badly damaged or destroyed by Abraham Lincoln who basically became the government during the Civil War as he all but declared formally a State of Emergency permitting the President all but unopposable powers. Still, the limitations which were first set in Torah, the laws given at Mount Sinai in the book of Deuteronomy 17:14-17 which found their way even presumably to the present day in limits on the President of the United States and were placed as the very first laws limiting the powers and impositions of Kings where it read:
14 When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,”
15 you may indeed set over you a king whom the Lord your God will choose. One of your own communities you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who are not of your own community.
16 Even so, he must not acquire many horses for himself, or return the people to Egypt in order to acquire more horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You must never return that way again.”
17 And he must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself.
Meanwhile, somewhere between the gathering at Mount Sinai where the Israelites responded to the coming giving of “The Law” said, according to many translations, “We will obey and we will listen,” and today in much of Europe and the developed world where the people would not even listen to the religious codes and laws, let alone obey them as religion has been supplanted by government and the new priests are the lawyers who believe themselves the ultimate interpreters and applicators of the law twisting it to their will and whim. At some point around the rise of Persia and the rise of Rome religion and government became permanently separated in what would become Europe and much of the rest which came under either Greek or Roman rule. This began the contest between the two main centers of power outside the family unit. At that time the two still crossed boundaries with government infringing on religion for their advantage and religion infringing on government very much to their advantage. A sign of both comes as part of the Inquisition. Where it was an obvious usurpation of prosecutorial powers taken into the hand of the Church striping that power for the priest class who acted as judge, jury and often executioner, their prosecutions were also abused by government to destroy adversaries or other challenges to the throne or regional power structures. At the same time King Philip II of Spain used the purification edicts from the Church in Spain to raise and launch the famous invasion fleet of the Spanish Armada against England and Queen Elizabeth I which ran afoul of vicious storms and the fleet of English gunboats which were smaller, faster and more maneuverable capable of passing between the huge troop carrying Armada frigates who when firing at the English fleet had their shot pass over the top of the low slung English ships and simply blasted the other Armada ships in their own fleet. Almost all of the Spanish ships sunk and the remainder limped home and that ended this threat to England and its Church of England, a Protestant Church closely tied to the Tudors after being created by Henry VIII. The creation of the Church of England was another perfect example of religion out of the needs of the ruling monarch. Henry VIII needed a divorce which the Pope refused him; so he made his own Church after he went home.
Spanish Armada of Giant Frigates Holding Hundreds of Troops and Cannon Ports Only capable of Shooting Over the English Fleets Comprised of Sleeker and Low Slung Ships with Deck Cannons and by the Hand of G0d Seen as the Weather
Over the ensuing years as science explains more and more of the unknowns and all appears to be explainable, the place of religion has diminished in the developed world. The need for religion to explain those things we did not understand had been greatly diminished but the final understanding is just as far out of the grasp of science now as it has ever been. The question surrounding the why, what and who caused the explosion which science has named the Big Bang is unknown and seemingly will remain unknown for the foreseeable future. Using Einstein’s equation of E=MC2 where ‘C’ is the speed of light which is times itself and multiplied just by the weight of the objects in our own little solar system and one gets a very large number and should that computation be done for all of the presumed objects just in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and that number almost becomes unimaginable and finally, if we add the viewable estimated number of Galaxies which the Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope took of a postage stamp piece of the sky thought to be virtually empty by all previous observations and that number is unimaginable by the average physicist, let alone the rest of us (see image below).
Ultra Deep Field Hubble Telescope Picture Each Smudge and Pinprick of Light is an Entire Galaxy
Using science as a weapon of ultimate destruction, government in the developed world has assailed religion attempting to make any religious belief or system presumably archaic, its practices the equivalence of a rain dance, the prayers comparable to a voice at a séance, and its commandments, covenants, decrees or other rulings as the equivalence to Ouija board revelations. Concurrently government has replaced religion as the determiner of right and wrong, the provider of charity, the reason for a Sabbath renamed weekend, collector of alms as an integral portion of taxes and slowly rendered any expression of religious observance unacceptable in public. About the only suppressive action government has yet to take concerning religion has been to make religion illegal. The reason is likely because should they actually make religion illegal, religion would likely make a comeback just because it was outlawed. Especially any reference to Judaeo-Christian ethics,codes, holidays, prayer, deity, prophet or Bible passage, the government put the final clasp subduing even the slightest religious thought from the marketplace of ideas. Meanwhile, ignoring the dangers, those in governments are permitting Islamic religious teachings claiming that it is study of culture and comparison of governance and civics. This plus an extra-judicial importance placed on a statistically insignificant threat posed by anti-Islamic acts which have remained relatively constant since 2002 after a noticeable rise in the second half of 2001 while anti-Semitism acts are rising in some locations many folds but these acts are minimized or completely ignored. There have been those who have theorized the governments’ in the developed world preferences for Islam stem from the Islamic anti-Semitic and anti-Christian ethos and actions. This may also be behind the initial rush for European and developed nations taking in of “Syrian refugees” while not considering taking in Christian refugees facing persecutions in the Sudan and other nations in the Middle East and North Africa.
Finally we get to the family and the initial start of governmental infringements on the family unit. One of the initial assaults on the family used the equality for women fight to weaken any male claim of being better suited at any particular field of employment due to the differences which were previously thought to differentiate men and women. The most ridiculous of the denied differentiations was the strength requirement as it was agreed that strength requirements for men had to be restructured for women such that they required a similar percentile for women to be passed. One of the first to be altered was the strength testing to be a firefighter. The requirement for men to carry a full body double along with his fire suppression and breathing gear including wearing the mask down two flights of stairs and out of a building under fire simulated conditions had to be scalable. They had to take the weight of the dummy and scale it to meet the same percentile as women as it took for men to pass as well as scaled gear weight and so forth. This required new sized dummies and smaller breathing apparatus and other expenses just to train and test women applicants. The argument made by one Fire and Rescue company in court that in an actual fire the size of the person who may need be carried would not be scalable was rejected when they had a number of fire squad captains admit that they often set an order of people entering a building or if inside chose the largest and strongest to be tasked with such carries and thus the test really was not about actually carrying a real person from the building but actually a strength test and thus would meet those requirements for scalable testing. This argument was also the initial scaling of military combat arms testing including for Ranger, Green Beret, Seal and other special forces testing and training. The real aim was just as much blurring differences between men and women and removing any male dominated jobs from having such as their label. This blurring has continued that there exist work environments where the surname for all employees has been simplified to the unisex denotation using the letter ‘M’ for both genders. Then came the real punch to the gut, when some schools began to use a new picture book titled “Heather Has Two Mommies,” to depict that a family was not the conventional one of a Mom and one Dad. Such attacks were later continued with any combination which desired the status of a ‘family’ to be so denoted.
The gender wars and war on conventional definitions continued and we even saw women enter the military training at all levels until today women have been cleared to serve in any combat role even in actual combat condition, though this has not been tested to the best of our knowledge, not even in Europe where such equanimous ideas go to be tested. There was the court challenge against the classical definition of the family in a number of states establishing the right for other than heterosexual couples to adopt children. Eventually, we suspect, that multi-coupled relations will also seek equal rights in adoption as well as tax codes dealing with deductions for married couples where communal communities will be permitted treatment as what will likely be referred to as a ‘greater family’ or a ‘communal family’ and demand they receive treatment equal to a traditionally defined family. Eventually, through whatever means are required, the definition of what constitutes a family will be so weakened such that a person suffering from having multiple personalities will be able to be granted status as a family. Then, as with religion, the government will claim that they are the ultimate family and thus children will be raised by a licensed individual who will soon become a government employee much in the manner that teachers are now government employees. In an age gone-by, some name it the frontier age but really was anywhere a town was small enough and in an unpopulated area where there is no overseeing governance, when the citizens, particularly parents, desired a teacher who was knowledgeable in what was called the three ‘R’s (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic, they were very adaptable) the wealthy peoples or person would hire a teacher and the one-room schoolhouse would be erected by the townsfolk and that was how early schooling was accomplished. Eventually the town would grow where grades by age groups, usually the young, middle and advanced groups, and multiple teachers were required, where in some fortunate places the wealthy people still provided the salary for the required teachers but eventually the entire community would jointly provide the teachers’ salaries with each parent paying their share according to the number of children they placed in school. This would eventually become some form of taxation collected by the governing body who also hired teachers and this will eventually become the department of child-rearing with the law eventually requiring all children to be raised from birth by the government.
Caring, educating and making every individual dependent on the state for everything from birth to death, cradle to grave care, thus makes everyone completely comfortable with doing exactly what the governing bodies demand. Just pray that by that time some overseeing the governing has been taken over by a self-repairing computer system and not by very fallible human politicians such as the wonderful and kind imbeciles who are elected or appointed in far too many societies for such to become all-powerful. Still, it is the nature of any organism, be it an individual organism, a collection of similar organisms, a collection of differing mutually beneficial organisms, a collection of balanced organisms, a collection of prey and hunter organisms, an organism composed of a collection of organ or any other imaginable system of organisms as such as today’s political class where they are dependent on others on which they prey (we are somewhat unsure which class they fall into to be honest) which exist in the many strata which we find defined in our modern society. The government grows by replacing existing and often very functional systems by meddling and regulating until they have subsumed the entire system and then they start to lower the expectations such that they are able to claim by the lowered standards how government run programs are superior. They will always point to the area where by their own defined criteria they prove to be superior. Often the criteria they point to first is inclusion as they will find groups which was at the margins or preferably outside the margins of the private run systems were capable of including and claim superiority due to the sheer numbers served. This has been evident most often with schooling where minorities of students are able to afford private school and the public education system serves all including those who would be unable to afford private school at the current cost. What they hide is that should they give parents a voucher which can only be used for attending private schools, that the very students they point to would easily be able to afford private school education. The truth is that there would be an entire market of schools which would educate children for less. The same would very likely be true in other government run institutions, but government has two basic advantages; first is they accomplish the assigned tasks with the minimal amount of effort from the people served and, even more importantly, they can make their providing of the assigned services required to be provided by government trained and licensed individuals thus making only government the sole provider by law/regulation.
The last thing which is an evil by which government grows and makes the government the beginning and the end in all places government desires to control is the power of laws made by fiat and without review by elected officials. The Federal Government is the most guilty of this intrusion and dictation over the people without review by the people’s elected representatives. This mechanism is known as regulations. The House of Representatives and the Senate will all too often pass legislation which sets goals and not mechanisms and then assign the flushing out of the how to accomplish these goals to a cabinet or department within the government to figure out who, what, where, when and how these goals will be defined and met. They do this without any input beyond the vague and often amorphous set of goals even leaving the final definitions of the goals and then formulate regulations. http://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10871/Sunstein/ target=blank>Cass Sunstein was appointed by President Obama to be his Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Regulatory Affairs and assigned to review existing Federal Laws and find those laws which would allow for new and varied regulations to be fashioned in order to complete desired acts, actions, positions and requirements desired by President Obama and his team of Czars so that they could accomplish policy goals without involving Congress. Many of the regulations which Cass Sunstein wrote will lay waiting for complimenting laws and regulations to be passed or written and then they will also be applied. Very few if anyone other than the President and his former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs actually know all of what was found, written and sitting waiting for the appropriate time that these regulations will be required for government to accomplish another expansion of its powers. The regulatory route is what is most vital for government to grow and expand into new and various areas.
Sometimes one is required to look back centuries and research deeply into cultures and societies in order to see that which has changed. One area where this is particularly true is printing. There have been some radical advances in printing made because of computers but that is more in preparation as when printing mass numbers of items such as newspapers and books, the methods used have remained very constant since the invention of moveable type which was where each letter of the alphabet and each number from 0 to 9 along with spacers and punctuation were made on individual pieces as blocks and thus could be arranged in any order. With enough of each particular block one could print many pages of the same letters very quickly. Before that invention printing was done by a specialist carving out a master copy reversed often in wood and it would be used but had a limit on how long they lasted. Additionally, the letters carved into the master were permanently in place and could not be used in another page. A whole new master would need to be made. Before this method, things were even slower as the only people making books were a few crafts-people known as calligraphers and specialist Monks trained in calligraphy. Books in these times as well as anything else we would print today and requiring more than one copy were all made each copy by hand individually. The Monks trained in calligraphy would spend their entire lives on one book if many, many copies were required and those who had the finest styling and abilities would be permitted to make copies of the Bible. Making a Bible was the highest form of calligraphy. There are still some who are studied in this art who are hired to make such books and these books are rare, often one of a kind, and are extremely expensive, some priceless. There are still books and scrolls made today by hand. Torah scrolls are one such example and are written by trained Rabbis who often spend years making a special Torah scroll and months making normal Torahs. Just for the record, the government used to hire private companies to make their respective printed material such as pamphlets, maps, tourist informational material, records of Congressional actions and other necessary items. Today most of these are printed by the government with a vast number done at their Pueblo, Colorado printing facility. Of course all money is printed by the government at the mint. Thus far, schoolbooks are written and printed by private companies often following set guidelines set by, you guessed it, regulations. These regulations are changed at intervals as the government, the Department of Education, change their requirements or decide to emphasize different concepts. From some of the most recent textbooks we have read, it appears that much of what we were required to learn in school has changed drastically and not necessarily for the better. Concepts such as whole word recognition which replaced phonics and sounding out worlds, new math or newer new math, and history as well as civics texts have changed drastically. There is a reason so many college educated students know so little about history and government which may make for great fun on the Lettermen Show but is less funny when these same people vote. The lack of making informed choices was made, if one follows the news, obvious to many ‘informed experts’ by the two choices made as the candidates for President by the two major parties. We believe it could have been worse, but it might have been better. Our closing remark is a quote from Thomas Jefferson. It may be a reference to Jefferson’s comment to his nephew Peter Carr, “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.” As noted in Jefferson to Peter Carr, Paris, August 10, 1787, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 12:15.
Trump is running a campaign empty of substance, which are the claims from the Establishment and the other Republican candidates opposing him. Trump getting red faced and frustrated when attacked simply feeds the everybody is out to get him, the same exact feeling which much of the populace also feels as their health costs have tripled, the coverage is so limited that it is the cause of much of the increased health costs because the system is not designed to deliver healthcare but to transfer funds to the lower third or even half of the population, the people on public support and who pay no taxes. Even if Trump or a Republican President with a Republican Congress redesign Obamacare into Republicare, the system will still become cumbersome and loaded down with regulations and impossible hurdles to get proper care because government does not do healthcare. Government does regulations and compartmentalization all of which is the antithesis of good healthcare which requires everyone to have access to one another and their opinions. Government had proven to be very poor at interfacing differing areas of every agency and healthcare will end up being no different. The lack of interconnectivity is a large part of the problem in Veterans Healthcare and the public version will be even worse as there will be that many more patients to tangle up in forms, requests and what we from the military knew as SNAFUs, Situation Normal All Fouled Up.
One of the main reasons that Donald Trump has won three primaries in a row and might well outperform his rivals today, Super Tuesday, has much to do with the Republican Party deciding that it was best to front-load many of the primary elections when states clamored to place their voting as early as possible. This was seen as important because everyone wanted their race to be the one which put the candidate over the threshold thus making their state appear to be the important and pivotal primary state. It was the race to the front a number of years ago which pressured the parties to change their primary as nobody wanted to have their state primary elections after one candidate had necessarily won making their election results meaningless. This has allowed Donald Trump to make a grab for delegates a viable stratagem by simply playing to the crowds as the one being ganged up and mugged by his apparent closest rivals, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Their tactic to reveal Trump as an empty suit would have had far greater effect had they started earlier and had the time to reveal his lack of any form of plan, as Trump has basically made a campaign around his phrase of, “I’m going to make America great again.” He is basically running a campaign as this election’s Hope and Change candidate offering change we will all hope will change the stuff needing change or the people will lose all hope. The other candidates would have served themselves far better had they come up with a theme around which they actually built their argument as that would have given them a rivaling theme and one with substance and not relying on hot air, something which has lifted Trump like a hot air balloon. The other two main rivals attempting to poke a hole in Trump’s balloon has left them standing on the ground while he soared to apparent victory.
Trumps Vehicle to the White House A Hot Air Balloon Filled With Hot Angry Rhetoric
Again, it is really possible that there will emerge a winner by the Ides of March and the United States will be left fearing two-thirds of a year of Trump being Trump. What is even more astounding has been the Republicans and not so insignificant number of Democrats who have claimed they want a president with substance and grit with an actual and explained plan to move the United States back to its preeminence in the world, and Donald Trump has captured their minds and left them giddy filled with some intoxicant. The intoxicant is a slogan which expresses the electorate’s desires which claiming “I’m going to make America great again,” fills that need and many believe that there is a real plan behind the slogan. The frightening thing is that President Obama had a plan to go along with his “Hope and Change” and “Yes We Can” sloganeering in 2008 elections. Those slogans and electing the first Black United States President simply intoxicated the American public and here we are two terms of Hope and Change later. The one thing many Americans are now claiming is that those Changes were not what they had Hoped they would be. Eight years ago nobody challenged President Obama to define the Change we were presumably Hoping for so that left it up to each individual to define the Change and that gave them Hope. Here we are eight years later and it appears that the presumed thinking party had fallen for a phrase and no plan, which may prove just as intoxicating as President Obama’s sloganeering. The question the Republicans need to ask themselves is will “I’m going to make America great again,” as a campaign slogan last through to the elections or will the balloon burst and the Republican hopes of taking the White House dwindle and completely blow away on the wind, the same wind they had hoped would change the ownership of the White House.
We have been hearing an argument that we do not need another sloganeering campaign despite its appeal and they have claimed that nobody has won based on a slogan before President Obama attempting to pin his election on Hope and Change as an illusion the nation cannot afford another such President. The sorry thing is there have been numerous Presidents elected simply due to an inspirational catch phrase, though often also filled with actual plans and positions deeper than “Make America great again.” President Eisenhower had a slogan which was festooned across the country and it proved accurate that, “I Like Ike,” won the nation’s hearts. The fact General Eisenhower managed the victory in Europe during World War II probably aided his run for the White House. There were cryptic slogans such as Theodore Roosevelt whose single word slogan, “Bully” both won him the White House and redefined that word to mean a winner, a successful achiever and to have the advantage in speaking giving us the terminology “Bully Pulpit.”
Through American history there have always been slogans, some of which proved memorable enough to outlast the campaign and even the candidate such as: ‘Don’t Change Horses in Mid-Stream,’ ‘All Power to the Imagination!,’ ‘Better Dead than Red,’ ‘Four More Years,’ ‘Vote for a Change,’ ‘Remember Pearl Harbor!,’ ‘Remember the Alamo!,’ ‘He Kept Us Out of War,’ ‘Think Globally, Act Locally,’ ‘We are the 99%,’ ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’ ‘Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,’ ‘The Buck Stops Here,’ ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch,’ ‘Workers of the World Unite,’ and one which sounds eerily applicable to one of the current campaigns, ‘No War but Class War.’ The idea of finding a catch phrase which resonates is as old as politics and even predates elections as slogans can be used to start or end revolutions or can be used to win wars and get the public roused. Rosie the Riveter was used to sell war bonds along with an entire and ongoing campaign which came from an actual advertising agency contracted by the government. Without slogans much of politics would simply be dry rhetoric stating facts, lying about facts, stretching and mutilating facts leaving at least a shred or two of truth in them and the other things as old as politics, mud-slinging. During the 1796 elections between Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, Jefferson supporters described Adams in an article run in Philadelphia as, “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” In 1828 Presidential election Andrew Jackson was described in a Cincinnati newspaper by John Q. Adams supporter wrote, “General Jackson’s mother was a COMMON PROSTITUTE brought to this country by British soldiers. She afterwards married a MULATTO MAN, with whom she had several children, of which General JACKSON IS ONE!!!” and lastly from the 1800 Adams-Jefferson campaign we get this gem describing John Adams as a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” The name-calling today is tame and respectful compared to the early years in politics where anything was fair game including big whoppers of lies.
The way to prevent sloganeering of winning the primary campaign in a single burst of well-planned buffoonery would be to spread the primary elections out with the states with sizeable numbers of delegates evenly spaced with them slightly weighted towards the middle to end of the season as they are the likely states where the fight will be the most revealing as we really need to know which candidate has the right stuff to survive an attack calling them a, “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Such a lengthening of the campaign such that it represents a solid four month campaign where the people could really get to compare and contrast the candidates and they will be pressed to give greater insight and depth, not that such things tend to actually matter any longer. Now the elections are decided by the media and the operatives with the people caught in the middle. “I’m going to make America great again.” That is a great slogan and would be even better if we knew how. With President Obama who won not just one but two Presidential campaigns on little if any substance we do not need another sloganeer. The first was sold as Hope and Change. Well, we all hope for better days to come and change is inevitable as the laws of physics explain all too muddled in the math for many of us to understand. Who doesn’t understand this Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann formula from Analytic Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory shown below?
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann formula from Analytic Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory
The problem is obvious; most of us will start to pay attention to the primary elections in our respective states, if we even bother to vote, about a week, maybe two, before the election is held. Then we see who our equally clueless friends are supporting, maybe look up something on-line and then as all too many people too busy to take the time and carefully analyze each candidate’s positions and other pertinent items, not like all who read articles here as they obviously have done and followed since the first person announced over a year ago, thank you Dr. Ben Carson, and finally turn on the radio to hear the news and vote for whoever is ahead in the polls as they want to vote for the winner (yes, I knew somebody who voted with that exact reasoning, voted for the winner). This election in the United States, and if everything does not collapse, or worse, implode, then also the next few Presidential and Congressional elections will decide the fate of more than the United States. They may decide whether the world enters World War III before the United States has redeployed her military so as to have them dispersed and thus many surviving a preemptory strike which simply destroys the power generation grid leaving the people to die a slow death of starvation and Americans shooting each other over a piece of bread or a jar of peanut butter, chunky, of course. That also might decide where the remnants of Europe escape to as the tensions in Europe begin to boil over and fighting breaks out in the streets. What is important for all in the free world to remember was a one singular shameful event where people stood and watched and some shot pictures but nobody stepped forward to lead and prevent this gruesome event from the afternoon of May 22, 2013, a British Army soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was attacked and killed by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London and beheaded.
Fusilier Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Honored Posthumously in Parade
That a crowd watched and did nothing will be the critical moment when many of us discovered that the world we thought we knew was dead and soon a critical question will be imposed on the Western World, the question of will you stand for your privilege and way of life or will you as well surrender before the coming storm, before Islam. So, which will it be? We and many fear the answer might just be silence, the worst kind of silence which comes right before the storm, and it will be a storm like has been unheard for a very long time.
Beyond the Cusp 