Herding People

Maybe I'm slow. This has been going on for decades, but not long enough that I can't recall days when things were different.

It suddenly hit me as I watched a tv news show, observing Barry Hussein Obama walking across the pavement toward an aircraft, where he walks up a staircase to the doorway of the plane. We've all seen this repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times for as long as there've been passenger planes.

If you've been around for a while, you might remember walking across the pavement from the terminal (interesting choice of appellations) building to the movable boarding staircase leading up to the aircraft. Otherwise, well, the ritual can be seen in any of several older movies. Or whenever an upper-level politician arrives or leaves by plane.

They used to say that when any three Californians get together, they instinctively form a line. It's still true. At today's airports, anywhere within any of the various United States, one spends virtually his entire time in one line or another. Cars line up to enter parking lots. One has to line up to check one's luggage. To confirm one's ticket. To show your federally-approved id (papers, please?).

It's been a few years since I've visited an airport, and even more years since I've flown, so I might not have the drill quite right. Some of it's from hearsay from folks who've flown more recently than I.

One must line up to have his belongings searched and scanned, as well as his person. Randomly chosen items are confiscated, from knitting needles to bottles of shampoo, for no discernible reason. The federal thugs don't allow weapons, assuring that anyone sly enough to sneak a weapon on board can do anything he wants. If the passenger's not lucky, he might be pulled out of line to have a more complete search and/or questioning. Unless he's middle eastern in appearance, of course. We wouldn't want to accidentally offend any member of an islamic murder cult.

Penn Jillette tells of a TSA thug having played with his jewels during a search in the Las Vegas airport back in 2002. He carried his complaints through to a point in which he really had some of the federal TSA thugs worried. Now, we know for sure that Penn Jillette has a pair. Seems like we all should do that. Not only would we show that we haven't lost ours, but it'd probably put an end to this naziness once and for all.

Next, there's the line at the boarding gate. As one passes the gate, one finds himself inside of a dimly-lit cavern, seemingly being herded along toward the gates of hell. I always imagined an arched gateway with the sign "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."

1st class lines up first and boards. Strange, since 1st class is forward. When the rest of the poor schlubs line up, they enter and must pass through the forward cabin. Time and grace is lost by the 2nd class passengers having to make their way through the 1st class cabin, whose members are stowing their carry-ons and finding their seats, and generally acting like rules of politeness don't apply to them, as regards to the "little people." Meanwhile, those selfsame little people are scanning the faces of the 1st class elites for celebrities. Deliberately planned confusion.

This, to me, is herding. Placing cattle prods into the hands of the TSA thugs to keep the line of cattle moving, is the small next step.

Meanwhile, the American aristocracy still walks out 'pon the taxiway, in the crisp morning air to the stairway that leads up to an aircraft the luxury of which most of us can only imagine.

Now, I wouldn't gripe if these elite were industrialists, builders and creators--men of self-created wealth. They deserve all the luxury they can afford.

These counterfeit aristocrats are parasites, men and women who've accumulated their wealth and status by having fleeced the productive people of America. Often never having held an honest job in their lives. And, 'tis they who've set up the rules thusly, so that the victims of their system know their place.

American life should be rethought, placing status in degrees according to an individual's creative and productive ability, not his ability to victimize others.

People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

.....And The Winner Is.....

So, does anyone actually care who this year's mediocre candidates for President select as Vice-Presidential running mates? Apparently some do, since there's currently another one of those media firestorms on precisely this subject. Every news program, every commentator, every pundit includes the question of who Barry Hussein or John McCain (odd that no democrat has come up with a clever putdown name for McCain yet!) will select for his running mate. Barry has even fanned the flames to the degree that he's made public that he has made his decision--but not telling yet.

I find this year's selection to be one of the most mundane ever--only rivaled by those including both Bush's, Bob Dole, John Kerry, Algore and Adlai Stevenson. And, as I've mentioned, the length of what they're calling "the campaign season," two full years, is worse than disturbing. They seem to be trying to place the political campaign season fully on a par with the hockey season. It'll never work. Hockey is life. Politics is anti-life.

Face it: there is no value, at this time, in knowing who will be the two vying Vice Presidential candidates. The parties' respective conventions, mercifully coming up very soon, will be soon enough. The only good that could ever come of it would be if the placed California Guber Ahnold Schwarzengroper's name in nomination. That'd start me seriously rooting for a McCain victory. It'd get Schwarzengroper out of the Stalag for a full four years! We could get the very-frugal-by-comparison Davis-the-Grey back into the Gubermansion.

Forgive my tendency to dream.

I could dream even more by way of remembering that in the original founding documents, not only were Senators selected by the State Legislatures of the various states, but the Vice President was the loser of the Presidential election. The winning Republican would have the losing Democrat as his VP, or vice (shudder) versa.

Oh, did I tell you I'm on the Florida Ballot Design committee again? It just gives me butterflies!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Georgia Wasted Its Dime

I'm not fully informed as I'd like to be about the situation in Georgia, but what I've heard/read from various sources seems to indicate that USSR Russia is conducting a program of genocide maybe not quite as bad as that going on in Darfur. How dare the Georgians aspire to freedom? How dare they attempt to set their own path?

I'm not going to argue over the situation between Georgia and the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, because I don't know enough about it, and don't care. If those regions want to throw away (relative) freedom to become a part of communist Russia, let 'em.

The President of Georgia is looking for help, but the US President was in Communist China, watching the Olympics. The 3am call went unanswered. Where is Hillary when we need her?

Now, I'm fully opposed to the idea of sending troops to protect Georgia, just as I'm opposed to sending troops to Darfur. The US military's job is, by Constitutional mandate, only to protect the United States and its interests. It's difficult to construct a logical path that brings either Georgia or Darfur under the umbrella of US interests. Just as it remains difficult to construct a similar path with regard to Iraq.

It's long been known by freedom-loving people that a country possessing a large standing military will find excuse after excuse to use it. Russia's actions of the past couple of weeks is an excellent case in point, as are many others in the past century and in the first few years of this one.

The Bush Administration blathers on about diplomatic penalties that may be imposed 'pon Russia if it doesn't pull back--but Russia isn't pulling back and the sanctions remain mere threats. The Administration has also been unable to impose sanctions against the islamo-nazi countries, so far.

The art of diplomacy is utterly wasted when placed in the hands of government. Those who fill the suits of leaders are unprincipled fools of the worst sort, incapable of applying logic to any situation and unable to render even the most simple decision.

Traders should be the diplomats. Those who make deals with individuals in other countries for the commodities to be imported into the US and exported out would be far more capable of straight talk and benevolent interaction than indecisive, cowardly politicians thinking more about their retirements and legacies than about the problem at hand.

Until Americans force government out of areas in which it does not belong, and cannot function for the purpose of securing and protecting our rights. we'll have these emergencies and near emergencies that place us all in danger. That, followed by a lack of ability or desire to describe either the problem or a likely solution. Followed by further problems which are the unintended consequences of the prior flawed "solutions." Followed by conflicts in which many young people are killed and maimed, yet nothing is settled.

Those who can, do; those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, become bumbling bureaucrats.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Uncommon Sense in a Texas Children's Prison District

Dozens, nay hundreds of children, teachers and bystanders have been killed, actually by crazed murderers, but with anti-gun, anti-self defense politicians as accessories before the fact. It might even be said that these self-same politicians are accessories after the fact as well, for their attempts to minimize punishments for these psychos. Now, there seems to be a small island of sanity in the northern plains of Texas.

According to a story on the Chron.com web page, a small school district in North Texas--Harrold, Texas--has adopted a policy of allowing school teachers and staff to carry concealed firearms in classrooms, the better to help protect the inmates, should one of these demented individuals decide to pick one of their campi to make his final stand.

There will be a small number of qualifications staff must pass in order to carry on campus, but they should be fairly easy for anyone to satisfy. Unless he is one of the aforementioned psychos.

Here's hoping this tiny ray of intelligence can be multiplied before any more schools, churches, shopping centers and restaurants become shooting galleries.

Gun free zones are free fire zones.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Memo to Fuhrer Bloomberg: The Attack Already Happened

The Mayor of New York City, not to be outdone by George Bush, has a plan to turn a once-great American city into a virtual prison. Since technology has almost outstripped the need for traveling papers, there's not really much need for "papers, please" checkpoints any more.

Second most scary phrase in the American lexicon: We're from the government, and we have a plan.

According to this story, the NYPD and police in the boroughs and in surrounding cities within 50 miles of Manhattan will be using radiation detectors to find nuclear weapons, illicit x-ray machines and old radium wristwatches. I'll be watching for the first time they send SWAT in smashing down the doors of a dentist's office.

NYPD will also be monitoring and recording the license plate numbers of all cars and trucks that enter lower Manhattan. They'll be installing more and more cameras all over the city so as to be able to track vehicles as they go about their business.

And....get this! They plan to place 3000 cameras below Canal Street--in the area surrounding the location of the World Trade Center.

Second memo to der fuhrer: They've already destroyed the World Trade Center. There's no point in protecting it anymore. And they didn't do it with anything that a camera in every square foot of Lower Manhattan, with a half-dozen cops watching each monitor could've stopped.

They're already rousting selected subway riders (being careful to never offend any islamic terrorists) to see if they're carrying any nunchuks or brass knuckles. They've already, decades ago, stripped New Yorkers of their right to self defense.

Here's the ultimate solution: Place a wall around New York City and dozens of machine gun towers at intervals atop the wall. Let no one in or out on pain of death. NYC will be safe, as will the ghost of the World Trade Center. It worked well in the movie.....Just make sure fuhrer Bloomberg remains inside! Y'know, I used to like New York.

Goose stepping toward totalitarianism.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

First, Kill All the Dogs

Looking through my handy dandy copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the accompanying Bill of Rights, I'm unable to find the clause that states that government has the mandate to regulate what one ingests. I've looked several times. Yet, the illegal War on Drugs, more properly called the War on Americans' Rights, continues unabated.

It's an oft-asserted fact that 'pears to even the casual observer, that this government's ongoing assault on individual rights costs far more, in any manner of measure, than does the kind of rampant drug use imagined by the evil federal government, even in its most loony fascist's worst imaginings.

The tales of police brutality against the guilty are only exceeded by their atrocities against the innocent. A casual search will turn up hundreds of instances in which due process is ignored, not only by police, but by elected officials, the news media and the courts--especially the bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court, every member of which should (and no doubt does) know better.

The most recent case of crime-by-police took place in Berwyn Heights, near College Park--itself just a few miles east of Mordor. The victims of this outrage were the Mayor of this little slice of suburbia, one Cheye Calvo, his wife and her mother. And, of course, the real victims were the family's two black labs, Payton and Chase, who were given an on-the-spot execution under the guns of this gang of thugs, merely for being dogs.

The sordid tale, starting in Phoenix as a convoluted cross-country movement of a quantity of marijuana to the area. Rumors that the mules were two scruffy guys riding Harleys proved to be untrue.

Arizona police learned of the drug movement and alerted the police agencies in Maryland that the pot was to be delivered in several packages, to various addresses in the area, including Calvo's. Before the packages were delivered, they were to be picked up by the local sellers with the addressees none the wiser.

The plot thickens. Prince George County cops caught the delivery boys and confiscated the drugs. Undercover cops delivered the packages to the addressees, not knowing that they were merely names picked out of a phone book (or the like).

Prince George County's finest then staged the raid 'pon the Mayor's home, killing the dogs, then tying up the Mayor and his mom-in-law on the floor beside one of the bleeding dogs. All the facts got sorted out, as the Mayor's wife came home to find the house covered in blood (the cops tracked all over the place) and torn apart.

Maryland has no law allowing no-knock search warrants by the cops, except they can if they feel like it.

Read the entire sordid story here. Also, see Balko's fine commentary here.

Oh, the County Mounties have not, and apparently will not apologize.

The FBI has been called in to investigate the matter which, if the Ruby Ridge murders are any guide, means the thugs involved in this atrocity will be given promotions, awards for valor and new squad cars.

And, for the capper, guess who has to clean up the Mayor's house (Hint: it won't be anyone with a badge).

People shouldn't be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Treat Your Prostate Well

"Men over the age of 75 should no longer be screened for prostate cancer....." is the first sentence of a story in the Aug 5th, 2008 Los Angeles Times. A front page story. Above the fold. It must be important.

Seems a federal panel (uh, yeah, another one of those!) says that the potential psychological and physical harm of seniors learning they have prostate cancer outweighs the benefits of treating it. Some doctors argue against treating prostate cancer in those over 75 because they might die from something else anyway. Think of the many and sundry implications of that mindset!

Anyone can die anytime from any of hundreds of causes, but if a guy gets shot in the leg do you just let him bleed because he might get hit by a car tomorrow?

Other doctors, fortunately, take the opposite view, saying that this is a ploy by HMO lawyers to save their firms' money, and that it's a form of ageism. It'd also be easy to make a case (since it was a "federal panel," that they want to exclude the elderly from treatment to save medicare money.

My view is slightly different. Many doctors, especially the federal ones, look forward to a fully socialized, nationalized medical industry. The realistic ones already realize that under socialized medicine, service to the public will and must deteriorate and ultimately be rationed. "Important people--politicians, and industrialists and businessmen who toe the line with them, will continue to get the best medical care. The rest of us will wait in a line. The only way the line will move forward, is when the dead are pulled out of the line in front of you.

In time, as medicine deteriorates, even medical care for the elites will slide, but the elites don't think that far ahead. It won't occur to an ex-President, for example, that after age 75, or 70, or however bad it gets, that he's just another old man.

Waiting in line.

"Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything--except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.' That a man willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards--never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind--yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on the operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he's the sort of man who resents it--and still less safe, if he's the sort who doesn't." --Ayn Rand

People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

Another Open Letter to Congressman Howard L Berman (D-Calif.)

As I suspected, Congressman Berman didn't see my previous letter, or at least, didn't see any need to answer it. His staff did, however, find the time to add my email address to those to whom he sends a monthly e-flier detailing his visits to senior centers and shopping malls.

So, here goes:

Attn: The Honorable Howard L Berman

Dear Congressman Berman:

After House Democrats embarrassed themselves Friday (8-1-08) by cutting off debate and calling for adjournment at the point of a debate and subsequent vote on the single most important issue of the day, an end to the ban against petroleum drilling in areas controlled by the Federal government, I’ve decided that House Democrats have far more interest in maintaining a flawed, self-hobbling debilitating policy that helps keep more and more Americans dependent ‘pon government at the expense of America’s greatness. I particularly viewed Speaker Pelosi’s act of turning off the lights and cameras to be one personally embarrassing to me as a Californian. Ok, she’s from Frisco, and they’re pretty crazy up there. But still!

I might add I regard any involvement in these areas of free market capitalism to be unconstitutional and morally wrong. Indeed, who was it that forbade men like J D Rockefeller making oil available to the world and improving the lives of all of us immeasurably? In a different time, it might have been people like those in today’s Democrat party. We’d still have to step around road apples as we walk to work on muddy streets.

Going through this kind of dramatics simply to keep from doing one’s job! Really!

Democrats, slaves to the pronouncements and edicts of fascistic environmentalist crazies, have been wrongly asserting for more than ten years that drilling for oil in ANWR, off our coasts and in the Midwest will not help the energy problem. Yet, the President’s merely having mentioned the possibility of our exploiting those areas caused the price to drop by over $15 per barrel in only three days.

It’s very clear that elected Democrats are pursuing a path that will lead to an impoverished America. As a constituent of yours, a voter and a possible activist (who has yet to receive an answer from my first letter to your office), I have to tell you that this is folly and it’s keeping many Americans from achieving their potential. People around the world have been looking to America as a shining light for over two centuries. Your party is throwing mud at that light by placing the barricades of draconian regulation and taxation in front of productive Americans. Friday’s tantrum is an example of the hysteria by which Democrats say, “No, you can’t” to those who want to make America a better place.

Thanks very much.

Sincerely,

Now, I don't for a second exempt Republicans from these very same criticisms--they've done little (collectively) to resist the Democrats' sabotage of American capitalism--in fact, many of them stand at the forefront of the destruction of America as a free country. It just happens that, unfortunately, my local Congressman is a Democrat, and seemingly one who is looking for a free ride by floating with the currents and not rocking the boat.

He'll probably be reelected (though, not with my help) because most of his constituents are Hollywood leftists and philosophical airheads, or am I repeating myself?

Remember! VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT!

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California