On December 22, 1944, the 101^st Airborne was surrounded by German troops in Bastogne.  A German surrender party, showed up carrying a white flag.  The message was as follows:

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.

If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours’ term.

All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.

The German Commander

General Anthony McAuliffe responded with the following reply:

“To the German Commander, ‘Nuts!’ The American Commander”

The 101^st Airborne didn’t surrender then and they didn’t surrender later.  The weather started to clear and on December 23, Allied air force units were finally able to attack and also drop desperately needed supplies of medicine, food, blankets, ammunition and even volunteer surgeons who flew in by military glider.  On December26, Patton’s Third Army arrived ending the siege.

Last night, the Republicans in the House of Representatives sent a similar message to Speaker Boehner and President Barack Obama.  They said “Nuts.”  They weren’t sent to congress to surrender on their core principles.  It is ironic that this happened almost exactly 68 years after the siege of Bastogne.  Obviously, there is no comparison with the incredible courage of the 101^st Airborne standing up to the German Army and House Republicans standing up to President Obama, but it may be an equally important moment in defending our country.

To those brave men and women who ran for congress with a vow to stand up for their core principles we all owe a debt of gratitude.  More importantly, we owe them our support.  For the first time, in a very long time, real leaders have surfaced and they said “Nuts” to more taxes.  They said “Nuts” to more spending and they said  “Nuts” to business as usual.  They will pay a severe price, in the short run for this decision.  They will be painted as naive and irresponsible fools who put politics above principle.  Republicans in the House will get the majority of the blame for going over the fiscal cliff.  They will also be assaulted and insulted by RINOs in their own party who believe that the courage to compromise is the highest form of valor.  But ultimately, I think that if they stay the course, they are the ones who win, and by winning they will change history.  Even those who disagree are ultimately impressed with those who stand up for what they believe.   Real leadership and courage is never out of style.

TDM

For weeks we have been watching Speaker of the House John Boehner negotiate with President Obama to no effect.  It seems like every day Boehner caved a little more.  It was becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between his plan and the most liberal Democratic proposal.  But yesterday, John Boehner was on his game.  He called a press conference and made the following statement:

Tomorrow, the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American,” Boehner said. “Then the president will have a decision to make. He can call on the Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

The Republican proposal will raise taxes on only people whose income is above $1 million.  The Bush tax rates continue for everyone else.  He proposed no spending cuts.  No deal on the debt limit.  No new stimulus spending.  The only thing being proposed is what Obama said was his principle objective:  increasing taxes on the rich.  It is identical to what Nancy Pelosi proposed last year.  Then he challenged the President to either sign that bill or let the Bush tax cuts expire.  Suddenly, the only person in a position to stop us from going over the fiscal cliff is the President of the United States.  The only action he is required to do is sign a bill doing exactly what he proposed in the first place.  

Boehner sure looks like a man who is fed up.   It is going to be extremely difficult for President Obama to veto that bill.  It is also going to be difficult for Harry Reid to block that bill.  This is a brilliant political move.  Boehner called the President’s bluff.

Boehner just put Obama between a rock and a hard place.  I don’t know if we got here because of a brilliant strategy on the part of John Boehner, or mere incompetence on the part of the President.  Perhaps it doesn’t even matter.  What matters is that John Boehner just made the President an offer he can’t afford to turn down.  It’s a beautiful thing.

TDM

Most people remember Kenneth Starr as the man who investigated Bill Clinton with regard to the Monica Lewinsky fiasco.  They conveniently ignore the other things that Starr investigated.  In order to understand Hillary, you need to look at her record through the Hubbell telescope.

Following is the link to the Wikipedia.org article on Webster Hubbell.  This appears to be consistent with other reports about him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_Hubbell

I will summarize some of the “interesting facts” about Mr. Hubbell.

Webster Hubbell was a close friend of the Clintons.  He was a partner in the Rose Law firm that also included Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster.  He was appointed by Bill Clinton to be the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.  He was later appointed to Associate Attorney General.  Hubble was also one of the key people responsible for vetting Clinton Cabinet appointments.

In December, 1994, Hubbell pled guilty to federal mail fraud and tax evasion charges in connection with his position as partner of the Rose Law firm.  The same firm which had Vince Foster and Hillary Clinton as partners. In March, 1995, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison.  As part of his guilty plea, Hubble signed an immunity agreement with independent counsel Kenneth Starr in exchange for his cooperation in the Whitewater Investigation.

During the 16 months after Hubble resigned, he received more than $450,000 in consulting fees from 17 consulting contracts.  An amazing coincidence!  The independent counsel found that Hubble did little or no work for the consulting fees paid under these contracts but not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the money was intended to influence Hubbell’s testimony with regard to Whitewater.

Part of Hubbell’s plea deal was that he would testify before a grand jury regarding the production of 11 categories of documents regarding Whitewater.  Instead, Hubbell invoked the Fifth Amendment.  Ultimately he did release some documents and the result was a second indictment.  Hubbell appealed to the Supreme Court and won.  The second indictment was thrown out.

On November 14, 1998, Hubbell was indicted a third time for fraud and lying to the House Banking Committee and federal banking regulators.  On June 30, 1999, he entered a new plea agreement with Kenneth Starr, pleading guilty to two charges.

On May 22, 1998, the New York Times released excerpts from the tapes of Webster Hubbell’s prison phone conversations from 1996.  While you read these, you will note frequent references to the 1996 Presidential election:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/02/us/excerpts-from-the-tapes-of-webster-hubbell-s-prison-phone-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Ironically, Hillary gets heat from the far left and the far right.  The following link to Progressive review gives an example.  I could easily provide numerous conservative blogs with similar information:

http://prorev.com/legacy.htm

This is a lot of smoke if there is no fire.  Obviously the media knew all about this, and they knew it stunk to high heaven.  Yet they did nothing.  Now Hillary Clinton is mysteriously ill, just when it was time to answer some hard questions, under oath, with regard to Libya.  Once again, an amazing coincidence!  Once again, the main stream media will probably yawn and keep promoting Hillary as the most popular and respected politician in the world.  I suspect most people know very little about Hillary’s personal history.  But if you look at her record through the Hubble Telescope, the picture becomes a lot clearer.

TDM

Eventually, the truth overwhelms all spin.  My dog, Molly, is not a climate scientist.  She never made it that far in school and her research skills are pretty spotty.  But Molly figured out something that the global warming crowd seemed to miss.  It is warmer in the sun.  Molly follows the sun around our house, and where ever there is sunlight, she goes and lays there to get a little warmer.  Molly figured out that it is warmer when the sun shines.

There is a new article explaining that “some” scientist have now learned that sun impacts our global temperature more than carbon dioxide:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100194166/man-made-global-warming-even-the-ipcc-admits-the-jig-is-up/

Of course this is after the global warming crowd spent BILLIONS trying to convince themselves it was CO2.  Since CO2 is about .04% of our atmosphere, I have always been more than a little sceptical.  This is like believing that if you put a dime on a football field, it will slant the field in your direction.

At a time when we desperately need to cut spending in Washington, I have a simple suggestion.  Let’s all recognize the obvious fact that it gets warmer when the sun shines and refuse to spend one more dime studying global warming.  If the government needs more research, I will “loan”them Molly.  They can watch her on any day when the sun shines and she will show them the way.

Here comes the sun!

TDM

The wise voters of Washington State voted to legalize marijuana.  The law went into effect last Thursday at midnight.  There were the predictable news reports of people blissfully smoking away.   It is now legal, in Washington State, to possess up to an ounce of useable marijuana, 16 ounces of marijuana infused product in solid form or 72 ounces of marijuana infused product in liquid form.  The state intends to regulate and TAX the sale of marijuana.  The tax will be used to fund substance-abuse prevention, research education and health care.   It seems as though they are wisely trying to prefund the predictable problems created by encouraging more pot smoking.

In addition, laws prohibiting driving under the influence will be amended to include maximum thresholds for THD blood concentration.  Some activists are concerned because if this is set too low medical marijuana users will be at risk of a DUI charge.  The logic escapes me.  It really doesn’t matter why you are taking a drug.  If it impairs your ability to drive, you shouldn’t drive.  Apparently activists think we should be more tolerant of dangerous drivers if they are smoking pot for a good reason.

Marijuana is still illegal under federal law and subject to federal prosecution.   The federal government does not need the state’s permission to prosecute for a federal crime.  Nice!

It is still illegal to grow your own marijuana in Washington, other than medical marijuana, and it is illegal to sell marijuana to the public because no rules have been established and no licenses have been issued. Technically, it is still illegal to use marijuana publicly, even in Washington State.   So I guess you can smoke pot, in your own home, but only if you don’t purchase it or grow it.  This seems more than a little confusing; but I suspect most marijuana users are used to being confused.  If this makes sense to you, you probably work for CNN who considers this law to be a model for other states to follow.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I suspect that the end result will be pretty similar to the status quo.  All that really happened here is that the state is going to step and compete with drug dealers.  A 25% tax is going to tempt a lot of people to find a way around the problem.  Since marijuana smokers already know how to get the stuff illegally, the black market is already up and running.  In the future drug dealers in Washington State will probably still go to jail, they just will be charged with tax evasion.

Of course Washington State also became the first state to vote to make gay marriage legal on the same day they voted to legalize marijuana.   I, for one, am really sick of all the gay marriage stuff, from both sides.  They can change the definition of marriage, but that won’t change the laws of nature.  It doesn’t take a lot of research to learn that marriage has always been about a man and a woman joining together to create a family.  Children are part of the deal.  That is why it is still illegal in most states to marry if you should not have children.  That is why they used to require blood tests to rule out syphilis before you could get married.  So my message, to both camps, is they can have the word.  Let’s just stop calling marriage, “marriage” and call it something else.  There are several choices:  wedlock or matrimony would be good.  Then, in the end, gay couples get the word, but nothing else changes.  We keep the institution of marriage, they get the word.  Problem solved and we can all move on.

TDM

Jim DeMint is resigning from the U.S. Senate to become President of the Heritage Foundation.  Almost everyone has a strong opinion about this.  Some of the comments are very illuminating.  The following article from the Washington Post is an example:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/06/jim-demint-and-the-death-of-think-tanks

“He’s not known for bridging the worlds between academia and politics, the way Reps. David Price (a former political scientist) or Rush Holt (a former rocket scientist) are.”

(Both Price and Holt are extreme left wing liberal democrats)

A bridge between “academia and politics,” is actually a bridge between nonsense and reality.  Academia is incapable of actually solving problems.  George Bernard Shaw explained this in “Man and Superman.”  He writes about a man who was discouraged because his writing teacher said his novel was hopeless.  The response was:  “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” 

The cultured elite are often too blinded by their own arrogance to recognize true brilliance.  Abraham Lincoln was despised by the intellectuals of his time. When Lincoln was, grudgingly invited to make a few remarks at Gettysburg, he was politely informed that the “Oration” would be delivered by a far more capable man, Edward Everett:  Everett spoke for over two hours with a 13,607 word oration.  A short example follows:

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; — grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”^[

Lincoln needed no more than 270 words to give one of the most famous speeches in history.  Few people even know the names of those who considered him to be so inferior.  True brilliance is not in the eloquence of words or the sophistication of academic research.  It rests with the man who figures out what to do and then does it.  The really brilliant man is the one like Ronald Reagan who summed up the cold war in one sentence:  “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War:  We win, they lose.”   Reagan was too busy defeating the Soviet Union to realize that people much smarter than him were trying desperately to explain why this could never work.  .

Our economic problems are not nearly as complex as academia and the Washington Post would have you believe.  They do not require political scientists to develop carefully nuanced and sophisticated programs that strike the perfect balance to keep the world in harmony.  What the academic world fails to understand is that if something is perfectly balanced it doesn’t actually move.  You can’t accomplish anything if you can’t move.

Jim DeMint is no an academic, but he gets it.  There is probably no elected official who understood the core principles of the Tea Party movement better than DeMint.  He had no patience with moderate Republicans and they had little patience with him.  I suspect he has accepted this new position for one obvious reason.  He knows that one of him in the Senate can accomplish very little, but if he can help get conservatives elected all over the country, he can have a major impact on this country.

I hope he is right.  We could use a little more cream DeMint in congress.

TDM

Economists disagree about a lot of things, but there is one basic law of economics that is pretty much the foundation for all others:  People respond to incentives.

We all know that incentives work.  Some incentives are positive, some are negative.  Any parent knows that there are two basic ways to affect children’s behavior.  You either reward them when they do something good, like wash the dishes, or you punish them if they do something bad, like staying out after curfew.

Now it seems like our country is determined to raise taxes on the rich.  The goal is to get more revenue by socking it to the rich, who have more than enough.  If that actually worked, it would appeal even to me.  After all, I certainly don’t qualify as rich.  But the problem is that we are actually taxing success.  Sometimes, when you tax success, the only result is less success.  That appears to have happened in Great Britain.  They raised taxes on millionaires and now they have about half as many millionaires.

Some of them just moved out of England.  Perhaps that explains why so many obnoxious liberals with British accents now live in the U.S.  Others don’t appear to have moved, but they are reporting less income.  It is hard to tell if this is because these millionaires are no longer millionaires or they just stopped declaring income.  Either way, if the intent was to raise more tax revenue, it failed miserably.  England actually lost tax revenue with this brilliant strategy.

Sometimes if you are successful in taxing success, you succeed only in getting less success.

TDM

Exploring caves in the United States is called caving or spelunking.  In the United Kingdom and Ireland it is called potholing.  Since Republicans are clearly caving with regard to the fiscal cliff, potholing seems to be a really good definition of the process.  The proposal from Speaker Boehner is close to the worst case scenario for the country and the GOP.  It really doesn’t fix anything and it starts us on the path toward raising taxes, in the worst possible way.  This pretends to avoid raising taxes by keeping rates the same and “reforming deductions.”  Please!  Any proposal that increases the amount of tax paid is a tax increase.  It would do less damage to just raise tax rates in the first place.

Part of the problem is that Republicans are buying into the argument that we can solve all our problems by only taxing the rich.  This is been tried elsewhere and the only measurable result is fewer rich people.  England raised tax rates on millionaires and actually lost tax revenue.  The very rich can always find a way to avoid paying income tax.  Our problem now is not that the rich aren’t paying their fair share; it is that half of the population isn’t paying any income tax at all.  It is only when taxes impact everyone that everyone becomes interested in cutting expenditures.

A better alternative is the so called “doomsday” strategy proposed by some Republicans.  The ABC blog explains this:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/12/republican-doomsday-plan-cave-on-taxes-vote-present/

It’s quite simple: House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the President nothing more: no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes. Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling.

The Obama negotiating strategy is to dare Republicans to do something he knows they do not want to do.  Then he can blame Republicans for refusing to compromise.  This would be calling the President’s bluff big time.  He has often said he will sign such a bill “tomorrow.”  At first it will look like a big victory for Obama, but ultimately he will totally own the results. Republicans can avoid the blame for raising taxes on the lower and middle class.  It eliminates Obama’s only talking point.

Republican can then put the heat on Obama to come up with a real proposal to fix the deficit.  Ok Mr. President, we just gave you the ball, let’s see if you got game!  We gave you the tax increase you wanted, now what are you going to cut.

This is not a solution to our fiscal problems.  It is not even a smart economic move.  But it may be a very smart political move.  Tax rates are going up and Republicans cannot stop that from happening.  What they can do is make sure that Democrats get all the credit they deserve.

TDM

There are numerous reports that Syria may be preparing to deploy chemical weapons.  Sarin gas is made by combining different ingredients.  These ingredients are typically kept apart, because Sarin gas is extremely dangerous and because a lot of it can be made in a very short period of time.   There are several reports that Syria is mixing the ingredients to weaponize Sarin.   Following is a report from CNN:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/03/syria-combining-chemicals-used-to-make-deadly-sarin-gas-u-s-official-says/

CNN reported on Sunday that U.S. intelligence is concerned about the Syrian government’s intent regarding its vast chemical weapons stockpiles after what one senior U.S. official described as “worrying signs” of activity in “the last few days.”  The revelation that the Assad regime is mixing chemicals underscores why the rising concern.

Once again we seem to be dealing with a Middle East tyrant who may have “vast chemical weapons stockpiles.”  Doesn’t this seem eirily similar to Iraq prior to the second Gulf War?  Remember that everyone believed that Saddam had WMD in Iraq.  In case some of you question that, consider the following from UN Security Council Resolution 1441 which was passed unanimously by the UN Security Council, including China, Russia and France:

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/1441.pdf

Recognizing the threat Iraq’s noncompliance with Council resolutions and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long range missiles poses to international peace and security.”

Both Russia and China have vetoed UN sanctions against Syria.  There are numerous “unconfirmed” reports that Russia helped move the WMD out of Iraq into Syria shortly before the second Gulf War.  That certainly would explain why we didn’t find those weapons in Iraq and why everyone is so certain they are in Syria today. 

President Obama warned Syria not to use chemical weapons.  No one in the media seems to be the least bit curious with regard to where Syria got these weapons.  I have not seen a single article in the media questioning whether Syria has WMD.  Of course there were very few people questioning whether Iraq had WMD in 2003 either.  Most of the “second guessing” came after the fact. 

This is a time when we desperately need a strong and credible leader in the White House.  Instead we have Barack Obama.  This is not likely to end well. 

Sarin Dippity.

TDM

It is impossible to overstate the impact Obamacare will have on this nation.  The following article from the Mail Online should be a real wakeup call:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240075/Now-sick-babies-death-pathway-Doctors-haunting-testimony-reveals-children-end-life-plan.html#ixzz2DcUKj73D

In Great Britain, where there is free government sponsored health care, a great new idea called the “Liverpool Care Pathway” was developed.  Officially, this is a best practices guideline to be used in determining the care of dying patients.  It was developed by Royal Liverpool University Hospital and Liverpool’s Marie Curie Hospice.

This is a program where dying patients are given happy pills, instead of curative treatment, to ease their passage into the next world painlessly; and, more importantly, quickly and cheaply.  Liberals say this is just a more humane option for doctors when patients request it.  But hospitals appear to have quotas for using it.  They certainly are rated higher the more they use it.  This means that if hospitals can convince more dying patients to forego expensive curative treatments and opt for an early and cheap exit, they get more money.  One should hardly be surprised to learn that some people have allegedly been put on the Liverpool Care Pathway without the patient’s knowledge or consent.  In at least some cases the patient wasn’t actually dying, which is obviously inconvenient.  This is similar to how President Obama viewed the death of four Americans in Libya as a road bump.

Now we learn that this wasn’t just limited to old folks, someone decided what was good for the grandma was good for the grandson.   Incredibly there are reports of doing this to newborn infants.

You either care about the sanctity of life, or you don’t.   Once you start down the path of treating life casually, where does it end?  Are some lives just worthless?  This is the logic that has already resulted in the routine abortion of the fetus when the baby tests positive for Down syndrome.  It is also the same logic that tells young girls that an abortion is a harmless solution to an inconvenient pregnancy.  That is why there were about 750,000 abortions in the United States last year.  Earth to liberals:  Very few of them were because of rape, incest or the health of the mother!   Ironically, the same people who don’t have a problem with any of this are the ones most likely to protest the execution of an obviously guilty serial killer.  In the deluded mind of the liberal left, killing an adult, convicted in a fair trial, is the height of evil.  But, euthanizing grandma because she is sick, and it is expensive to treat her, is just common sense.  Like I said, you either care about the sanctity of life, or you don’t.

The government that gives you everything feels totally justified in taking everything away.  When you have free health care provided by the government, that government ALWAYS starts making decisions on who does and does not get care.  There are numerous governmental studies out there that already express concern about the high cost of dying.  They know that the last six months of life are often the most expensive.  That is why things like the “Liverpool Care Pathway” appeal to socialists. It is why this, or something similar, is coming to America unless people wake up.   If you want to know what the future will look like under Obamacare, the answer is pretty easy.  There will be plenty of money for important things like transgender surgery.  There will also be money for happy pills, but not quite enough to try and cure grandma.

For whom the “Liverpool Care Pathway” tolls?  it tolls for you and me.

TDM