REFLECTIONS

In this issue:
1. ObamaCare 2. EPA 3. Wolves
4. Bunning 5. Utah 6. Debt

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –

1. ObamaCare. Captain Ahab, oops, I mean President Obama and congressional leaders have decided to launch yet another assault on our liberties with another try at the Great White Whale of ObamaCare. Last week, we saw the Kabuki dance around the use of reconciliation. But this discussion was a complete ruse, a head fake, intended to distract and annoy while the real game is afoot in the House. If Pelosi’s democrats in the House pass the senate bill, Obama will sign it and it will become law. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. The only good news is that Pelosi is short of votes – anywhere from a couple to as many as 100. And as we have seen with Ben Nelson in NE, what democrats say is not what they end up doing, for after all, they are democrats. Last week, democrat house leadership leaked results of an ethics investigation against a single-term democrat from who voted against ObamaCare in the House because it wasn’t sufficiently left wing. Massa did the Mark Foley routine, going after his male staffers in sexually suggestive ways. Because he was a no vote, the House leadership is forcing him out. Obama nominated the brother of a Utah democrat House member as a federal judge. No bribery here. Nothing to see. Move along; move along. They are going to continue to clean house, continue to bribe House members until they have enough votes to pass this thing. This is not yet in the bag for the left, but they are closer than they have ever been.

2. EPA. Congressional action on a resolution prohibiting the EPA from issuing regulations against carbon dioxide and other components of the atmosphere as pollutants continued percolating through congress. And this action is completely bipartisan, with congressional Republicans joining up with rust belt and coal state democrats to push back against the EPA. At this point in the discussion, if passed this will at a minimum place a two-year moratorium on any EPA rule making regarding carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.

3. Wolves. The Alaska Board of Game repealed a no-trapping buffer zone surrounding Denali National Park last week. The buffer zone was supposed to help protect Denali wolves, which are not sufficiently intelligent to stay inside their assigned boundaries. The Board of Game rightfully observed that it was not up to the State of Alaska to manage animals just because the feds choose to manage animals in a particular way. These hearings were particularly caucus, with the head of Connecticut’s Friends of Animals, a long-time opponent of both the Iditarod and our wolf control / predator control programs making the trip to the meeting to put in her two cents worth. Now here’s the fun part: Wildlife managers in Denali have done such a terrible job managing their animals, that predators in the park have killed everything in sight, and are now in the process of eating one another into oblivion. The entire park has only 70 or so wolves left. Park management, which supports the trapping buffer zone, blames the crash in total numbers of wolves on the trappers. Congratulations on the Board of Game. They got this one right.

4. Bunning. Senator Jim Bunning threw a wrench into the democrat wheels of progress last week by objecting to a unanimous consent motion. The way unanimous consent works, is that any single senator can object and then the Majority Leader can schedule a vote on the legislation. The legislation was yet another extension of unemployment benefits, yet another $10 billion that we don’t have in the budget. The congressional leadership and the Obama administration had passed a few weeks ago the Pay-Go legislation. Pay-Go basically means that congress has to pay for new spending by either cutting the budget elsewhere or raising taxes. Bunning was simply holding congressional leadership to the law they passed a couple weeks ago. Democrats went nuts, both on the floor of the senate and in the state controlled media. Rather than immediately scheduling a vote on the legislation – which passed with more than 70 votes later in the week – the senate leadership went into full starving women and killing little children mode. Bunning was excoriated for four sold days and got little public support from his cohorts in crime on the Republican side of the aisle. The deal cut with passage of the legislation simply kicks the can down the road for a few weeks a month or two. We will hope the rest of the Republicans in the senate have a better argument in opposition to this extension when it comes up again.

5. Utah. The last three democrat presidents – Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama have stolen or are considering stealing lands from the many states via the 1906 Antiquities Act, turning them into national monuments. Jimmy Carter used the threat of using the act widely in Alaska to force passage of the 1980 ANILCA legislation that transferred over 50 million acres from state control into national parks, wilderness areas and monuments. Bill Clinton stole over 10 million acres, most notably locking up superb coal and natural gas prospects underneath the Grand Staircase – Escalante Monument in Utah. Obama is rumored to be considering a similar action, locking up the trillion-dollar Pebble Prospect and vast portions of the NPR-A here in Alaska. The Utah House last week passed legislation that fights back. The legislation suggests using the state’s power of eminent domain against the feds. The logic here is that the infamous Kelo decision allows states to use their eminent domain powers against the feds. At the very least, this will force land management into the courts, which will make a greater hash out of them than they already have done. Good luck to Utah. May they be incredibly successful in this. LA Times, Weds.

6. Debt. Dr. Jack Wheeler’s To the Point web site is a subscription site that I joined a year or so ago. It claims to be the home of rational conservatives and the conversation and ideas are pretty good. For example, their approach to the out of control federal spending is the Triple D strategy: defund, disobey and default. They suggest defaulting on the foreign debt that is held by China and other nations as a solution to the external debt. While I am not a great fan of default as a solution, I do understand its power to defund the voracious beast. But it got me thinking about the internal debt – the debt we Americans owe ourselves, the National Debt. What do we do about that? What collateral does the federal government, now operating without the consent of the governed have that may be used to defease that debt? The feds have tens of thousands of square miles that they have stolen from the states in the form of wilderness areas, national parks, national monuments, national forests, critical habitats and military reservations. Every single square inch of that property ought to be returned immediately to the many states to pay off that debt. The only property the feds ought to retain would be the military reservations as they sit today. Once the land is transferred, the feds abrogate the debt. This will impact the western states a lot more than the eastern states, as the feds didn’t get into thievery until about a century or so ago. For the coastal states, the feds can give drilling rights to the outer continental shelf to each state. Such a transfer must come along with repeal of federal laws prohibiting use of those transferred lands, for they aren’t going to have any value unless we can actually do something with them.

More later — AG

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.

Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.

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During the 80’s Newsweek and NOW praised China’s One Child Policy.   I remember that well because I was leaving the liberalism I was raised with and that praise helped me realize the way of the left is the wrong way.   The left’s secret love of totalitarianism led to where it always leads, the slaughter of the innocent.   Instapundit linked to this story of those logical repercusions http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15636231&fsrc=rss  I couldn’t get past the first paragraph without crying.

I am astounded at how wide spread the problem is.  Far away from China’s absolute tyranny, the people of South and East Asia are choosing to mimic this most horrific practice.  The new lady’s Olympic Champion Yu-Na Kim is revered in So. Korea.  She is their highest paid spokesperson, even before winning the Olympic Gold Medal.  How can a country adore this daughter while throwing away so many others?  I really can not comprehend.   But once again the Western Left’s love affair with “multiculturalism” crumbles in the face of cold, harsh reality.

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Michael Eisner was given the name genius for bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars to the Walt Disney Co. and bringing it back from the edge of a hostile takeover.  How did he do it,  by coming up with new ideas, and new talents, new movies?  Not so much.  There were two actual geniuses, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, who gave us The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast.   But mostly Eisner made money off of Walt’s genius by simply releasing all of Walt’s classic films on videotapes.  Eisner didn’t save the Disney Co., the VCR did.

But while selling off Walt’s genius and raking in the big bucks there was one movie Eisner never released.  In fact he buried it so deeply in the vaults it hasn’t seen the light of day in almost 30 years.  The hated and despised and “racist” Song of the South.

Now don’t ask how because I refuse to reveal my sources even under the threat of water-boarding but I have seen Song of the South.  I had to go to a secret rendezvous in the dead of night, password “Freedom of Speech.”  But I’ve seen it and can tell you about its “racism.”   Almost all of the white people in the movie are stupid or evil or cowardly or all three.  Uncle Remus is courageous and wise and helps the poor white child through difficult times.   The film is about as racist as an Obama ad.  Nevertheless a long time ago the PC police deemed it racist and so there is sits in the vault never to be seen.

On the other hand there is Lady and The Tramp which I watched with my son this morning.  There lo and behold two of the most racist characters to ever slink across the silver screen, Si and Am, the stereotypical, devious, cunning and cruel Oriental cats.   Wise old Uncle Remus must be shunted off into hiding, but not the anti-Chinese stereotypes children of all ages have enjoyed for decades. 

Alas now that I have written this future editions of Lady and The Tramp  will edit out  two of Disney’s most entertaining villains.   Instead of seeing this as a call to end the mindless hypocrisy and hysteria of political correctness, I assume the slaves of the PC Police will see this as a call to dispense with two of my favorite Disney cats. 

But don’t I worry that such stereotyping will give my son a negative idea about Asians?  Of course not, because my son isn’t stupid.  The first thing he sees every day when he comes downstairs is a life size poster of Michelle Kwan.  Burkeanson knows that Asians are people like all other people, some are good, some are bad and some are figure skaters.  My son is not stupid enough to imagine a pair of cartoon cats is a true representation of a couple of billion people.  He is also not going to let Uncle Remus’ accent make him think that black people aren’t smart.  Especially since Uncle Remus is the nicest, wisest person in the whole movie. 

 Free Song of the South, and give Si and Am  a big hand.    http://www.songofthesouth.net/home.html

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As always Professor Hanson knows exactly what ails our native state.  Anyone know how to start a draft Hanson for Governor committee. 

This recession has really brought out the dichotomies: We spend billions of scarce cash on imported food, fuel, and manufactured goods, but have acres of idle farmlands, vast untapped deposits of natural gas and oil, and millions of feet of unused factory space. Bread and circuses seem to be the answer for the angst of the underclass.

As the saying goes read the whole thing. http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/dronism/?print=1

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