When I was young, my father and I went 'round and 'round in the evenings. I wanted to watch Channel Six. I considered it more reliable in terms of news than the other stations. My father wanted to watch Don Woods. You see, he considered Mr. Woods more reliable. When Don forecast rain for the weekend, we were off to the lake. When Don forecast fair weather, we canceled the picnic and kept the galoshes close to the front door. It was an odd sort of "reliability", but it worked for Dad. Now, I see from last night's broadcast, you are playing for the same sort of "reliability". You seem to believe that we will tune in, secure in the knowledge that when you say it's day it will assuredly be night, and when you say it's night it will unquestionably be day. You said that Nathan Dahm's website was "misleading". Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't say that; you said it was "MISLEADING". Well, I still don't have it right; I seem not to have huge red letters at my disposal. I guess I have a long way to go to become a proper propagandist. So what was it that was "MISLEADING"? It seems he mentioned that John Sullivan voted for the TARP bailout, and provided one link that proved the assertion (and proved the same about Mary Fallin) and one that showed he voted for something else. So, you pronounced that one link of two "MISLEADING". You didn't, I see, even mention that a link which proved his claim and was in no way "MISLEADING" was right below it. So this raises the question--is it more "MISLEADING" for a candidate to provide a link which is what he says it is, and another link just as a bonus, or is it more "MISLEADING" to jump on this one link in the finest "gotcha journalism" style in an effort to make people believe that no such bailout vote occured? For, you see, there is no question that Sullivan (and Fallin) voted to rob from the poor and give to Goldman Sachs (and others). The only questions that remain are, who do you think you're fooling, and is it really a good idea to sacrifice your reputation as a news organization for a piece of Good Advertiser Sullivan's "War Chest"? Our founding fathers believed that a vigorous and free press was necessary for the maintenance of a democracy. I sincerely hope they were wrong. For if they were right, then there is no hope for democracy in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I don't know what else to say, except that I hope the fine reputations of Doug Dodd and Clayton Vaughn are in no way tarnished by the fact that the news organization they once worked for has degenerated into a "news organization" and an outlet for pure propaganda. As sincerely as a heart attack, Anthony Platt of Tulsa.
cc: KTUL KJRH FOX23 OETA UTW The Nathan Dahm campaign The Randy Brogdon campaign libertyforest.com Anyone to whom any of the above care to forward this.
In response to your column on the rise of the "Tea Party", or Through the Looking Glass and What Ted Saw There:
We are pleased to see you announce that the "Tea Party" matters. I presume we may proceed now.
I don't know who appointed you the thought police, but as a libertarian I saw RonPaulForums.com the day it was decided to call that regional get-together (I think it was in Montana) The Tea Party. The people who did it did indeed want to take America back from white C.E.O.s, and from C.E.O.s of various other colors too. Along with this they had a burning desire to take back America from the arms merchants of death, including the ones who infested the White House at that time (and were lily-white), and from the media moguls who had already developed the habit of libeling us with false charges of racism because we dared to be vocal antiwar conservatives. Who is it, again, that you work for, Mr. Rall?
The "Tea Party" movement is indeed something we have seen before in this nation. It's a populist movement. The last one was in the early years of the Twentieth Century, was liberal in nature, and led to the rise of labor unions for both better and worse. This current populist movement is simply a long overdue swing of the pendulum.
Robert O. Paxton said fascism blah blah blah "...abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." Libertarians in 2008 disdained to vote for the awful McCain/Palin ticket because we wanted to preserve, protect and defend democratic liberties and limit the preliminary effort at internal cleansing the neocons were engaged in. We also dared to speculate aloud as to why the neocons didn't stop the unethical "redemptive violence" (what an oxymoron!) of September 11, 2001, which led to imperialistic wars.
And all the way the elites of business, government and the media ignored us as they were able and smeared us unremittingly as we tried to run the only honest conservative in all of Congress at the time for president (don't get smug, Mr. Rall. There's only one honest liberal, too--Rep. Kucinich of Ohio--and he fared no better). Now, of course, we are attracting several "conservative" has-beens from the "elites". What do you expect? That all opportunists will suddenly retire from politics?
The vast majority of "Tea Partiers" do indeed support our troops. No libertarian supports wars for pipeline territory or against oil producing nations who abandon the petrodollar.
If "The Right" seems to suffer from ideological imprecision at the moment, one logical explanation is that the libertarians are trying to teach our rank and file friends what it really means to be conservative. It isn't easy to compete with oddballs like Glen Beck. But rest assured, libertarians can be, and have been, specific to a fault. And are famous for "turning off" neocons.
You said, "Tea Partiers deserve praise for having gotten 'off the couch.' They've shown up. That's what matters! never mind that they're stupid. Never mind that many--[I]those who get quoted in the media, anyway[/I] (a telling phrase)--are painfully ignorant and uneducated." And I agree. If libertarians can't rub elbows with them, we can't educate them on just what the Constitution means. And if we don't, who will? So, we leave it to the arrogant liberals to chase the stupid liberals back home to the couch. No wonder you got us ex-Monsanto C.E.O. Tom Vilsack for a Secretary of Agriculture and four more years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, as a libertarian of long standing and a "Tea Party" attendee, I reject your blanket and gross mischaracterization of me. I do, however, welcome the opportunity to warn my fellow crumpeteers against the evils of following neocons and other false prophets.
And I would advise you, Mr. Rall, to stop lobbing stones until you get your own glass house bricked in. Because, as Will Rogers (gone seventy-five years this August 15th) once said, "The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal--they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats." And if conservatives learn how to listen to their constituents before the Democrats do, lunch will be served.
And no, lying your ass off about me is no substitute for listening to the American people.
How, exactly, are libertarians so culpable in the termination of Helen Thomas' employment that we deserve to be singled out for special condemnation in your latest brainless rant? Oh, that's right. We aren't, and once you get past the big, bold headline, you even admit it. No, libertarians didn't fire Helen Thomas. Libertarians wouldn't have fired her as libertarians agree with her. No libertarian is thrilled by the prospect of giving Israel money so they can pass it along to the arms merchants of death. That would be the so-called liberal media for whom you are shilling.
So, what did libertarians do to draw your wrath this time? We gave you a much needed social studies lesson. We told you how the law of your land works, and did it in a civil, succinct, and (by your own admission) correct manner. Just damn. Tar and feather us and ride us out of town on a rail.
You don't know how to tell a friend from an enemy, Rall. I'll give you another civics lesson--the Constitution does not allow for the current top heavy Federal semi-socialism, but nothing in the Constitution prohibits the individual states from being as socialist as their voters want them to be. So, what is the advantage to heeding the law of the land and doing things the Constitutional way? Simply that the federal government will have no opportunity to skim kickbacks if they don't handle the money along the way, and the states and cities will not only be able to tax their citizens more if the federal government is taxing them less, but will be able to spend less on jumping through federal hoops and, therefore, more on actually helping people who need it. This is our position, and if you liberals were to go along with us in regards to the federal government, the local governments can do a better job without the interference.
In other words, Rall, true liberals don't know who their real friends are and yellow "journalists" like you are the reason why. Obviously you didn't listen to Shirley Sherrod when she said what Bob Dylan said in his song "Pawn in Their Game"--it isn't about race, race is just what the rich use to distract us while they pick our pockets. The same can be said for any other hot button issue that seperates Americans into ANY two groups except poor sufferers and robber barons.
Why are you shilling for the rich, Rall? You expect them to reward you for it? I've got news, dude. You're trashing your credibility so fast that you will become worthless to them before they even discover you exist. So good luck with that.
Will Rogers once spoke of a starving mountain lion that killed a bull. He was so hungry he ate almost all of it, then got such a bellyache that he just roared and roared. He roared so much that a hunter was able to track him and shoot him.
The moral? Those who have a belly full of bull should keep their mouths shut.
Libertarians, the fiercest defenders of free speech this millenium has yet seen, must be waging war against the First Amendment because we informed Ted Rall that if he hired me as a personal assistant, and I told everyone who called or emailed him that Rall peddles the same line of tripe as William Raspberry, but far, far less eloguently, no judge in the world would force him to keep paying me for it. Which is not an opinion, but a solid gold fact.
Ah, I see in the Dec. 30th letters column that my friend J. Ray Hunt is at it again. Before he contended that everyone registered Republican is a spawn of the devil incapable of doing good, and now I see he's arguing that all liberals are angels of God incapable of doing harm. Interesting theory.
Mr. Hunt says that liberals '...make no laws that represents [[I]sic[/I]] the rights of the poor', do '...not elevate the power of the rich over the poor', and ensure that 'no parties or corporations shall have any power over our people.' Yet we now have an inheritance tax that classifies struggling family farmers as rich. This almost guarantees that when there's a death in the farmer's family, part of the land will have to be sold to Monsanto. Yet it is now a federal offense to bake a cake in your non-stainless steel kitchen and sell it to a friend. The federal government might let you decorate a Sarah Lee cake for him or her--maybe. Yet we are now required to buy health insurance from private corporations. Insurance which, oddly enough, became less affordable the moment it became mandatory.
He further claims that liberals '...provide for the welfare of children, old, disabled and unemployed.' Federal meddling in state child welfare programs, however, has a miserable track record of taking children from loving parents and leaving children in abuse, or putting them in worse abuse than they had to endure before. Many people did a better job of providing for their own old age before the Social Security Pyramid Scheme began taking a huge chunk from their paychecks. And unemployed people (whether disabled or not) are often discouraged from working even when they can. Did you know that taking a temporary job that lasts two months, or going to school, will end your unemployment benefits? Give a man a fish, don't teach him to fish. Otherwise, he might gain some self-respect.
So, liberals are keen to see that 'all jobs shall be kept here for American workers', '...workers must be given liveable and honorable wages', and that 'no Americans shall be denied healthcare when they are sick.' Thus it is that liberals remain in bed with their allies the labor unions and help them lower the productivity of American workers--and if you don't think labor unions ever do that, you [I]are[/I] a babe in the woods. Thus it is that liberals demand that the borders be porous but keep citizenship dear. This, of course, creates a permenant underclass to take 'the jobs Americans don't want' (because they pay less than minimum wage and illegally offer no benefits whatsoever). And thus it is that the liberals create massive beasts like Medicare, then punish doctors for charging less to cash customers who don't require ten reams of paperwork per visit.
So, 'all workers must be given respect and justice' and 'no Americans shall be denied legal rights when accused.' This about the people who passed so many federal statutes that no professional lawyer can claim to be expert in more than a fraction of them, yet still maintain that ignorance of the law is no excuse. This about the people who throw workers in jail for signing contracts with other companies when those other companies do something illegal (despite the fact that corporate trade secrets are better protected these days than individual privacy). This about the people who turn a blind eye when states convert fines into 'fees' and thus deny the accused their day in court.
Isaiah 32:7 says, 'The scoundrel's methods are wicked, he makes up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.' The liberal keeps us working eighty hours a week just to pay our federal taxes. This, of course, leaves us no extra time, energy or resources to use in giving our neighbors a 'hand up'. But, self-styled heroes that they are, they're always ready with a government hand[I]out[/I]--provided, of course, there's something left over after the graft and corruption is properly financed. And while liberals are happy to look after our souls via James 1:27 and Matthew 25:31-46, I don't see anything there that suggests Robin Hood saved the souls of the rich by forcing them (at the point of a sword) to give to whomever Robin of Loxley considered poor and deserving.
As for the Constitution, Mr. Hunt, I frankly don't know why you would go there. The Founding Fathers knew that a federal nanny state would be less than half a step away from tyranny, and the proof is in the Tenth Amendment. And the proof that they were right is all around us. The working poor have a piece of their meager wages pulled, then must renounce their privacy to a nosy government in order to beg for food stamps to replace dollars they had actually already earned. This is your dignity and justice?
So, the bus overheated, here we are by the side of the highway, and we have figured out by dead reckoning that we are on the road to Hell on Earth. And you, Mr. Hunt, don't want us to take another road because this one is so beautifully paved with good intentions. God loves you, sir, and so do I, but please spare me. Fifty years of federal liberal experimentation has brought us more workers in poverty, more homelessness, less liberty for most and less privacy for all. So, if you were thinking of making a resolution for the new year, may I suggest you be more careful what you wish for? We don't mean to complain, but we just keep getting it in the end.
There was a huge sale back when the Mayo was first closed in about 1981 or so. Have an endtable from one of the rooms for my chess set. So, I'm sure all that stuff's long gone. Unfortunately.
Thank you, Mr. Lowry, for your respectful and thoughtful discourse. I agree that accountability is at the core of the issue. But I believe that the question you flirt with, but don't properly address, about which level of government should and should not provide specific services goes to the heart of it. If everything were run out of Washington, and we had a problem with our local sewers, we'd have to convince twenty million people that our sewers are more important than gay marriage, abortion and their own sewers combined. This is represenative democracy?
'Our country is too large to have all of its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and [out] from under the eye of their constituents, must... be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and at the same circimstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. And I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force [throughout] the United States..., it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.'--Thomas Jefferson
Well, now, what a commentary. First we get a 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Republican Galaxy' which invited me to get my towel and tour the Grand Old Party in the modern day. Hoo boy, neocons trying to explain how Dubya got both our fists and both our feet in the Tar Baby Wars, libertarians coming home to roost, evangelicals realizing that libertarians don't lie as much as neocons, moderates realizing that libertarians are right when we say decentralization of power will cause power-brokering corporations to have to buy up fifty state legislatures instead of one massive federal government, and that will be harder--what fun! But no. Grab your towel was no reference to Douglas Adams, but a warning that we weren't going to tour the Republican galaxy at all, but instead be treated to a Hitchhiker's Guide to Democratic Crying Towels.
And the mantra is, conservatives and Republicans are all the same. Then comes the head of NPR, right on message, saying we're all the same. Every single registered Republican is exactly identical to our lowest common denominator. So, I am grateful to Mr. Hunt for his insightful satire. God couldn't have fashioned a more perfect satarist than this wonderful man.
All Republicans agree about freedom of information and federal standing armies vs. state militias. I will concede that the day Republicans fail to march in lockstep on these issues will be the day pigs fly. By this, of course, I mean that back in 1909 when J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon attached a basket to his Short/Wright biplane and put a piglet in it, Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moosers quarreled on these subjects with Harding, Coolidge and the crowd who would jump start the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties after the war by suddenly and unceremoniously ending the wartime socialism. And when refrigerated transport planes first appeared half a century ago to transport frozen pork, the Nixonians and the Goldwater Wing quarreled over these issues. And even now, as undoubtedly there's a pot-bellied pig in a doggie carrier in the belly of some jetliner somewhere, neocons and libertarians disagree vehemently and in public. Such a rich way to point out how silly the current rhetoric really is.
Then to pronounce us universally evil, and then turn around and chide us not to sow discord among our American bretheren. A finer irony I cannot imagine. Truly, Mr. Hunt, your satire is as rich, fine and subtle as anyone could hope for. I think you have done more to prevent mischief and turn aside the false witnessing than you know. Keep up the good work!
Well, I had a fine adventure on Tulsa Transit this morning. I got on a 105, bus number 2015, which said route 101 over the windshield. Fortunately, I was on Peoria, not downtown, so I wasn't fooled--yet. Then I got on a bus marked 251 Fasttrack downtown, and it proceeded to cross Cincinnati on Second and turn north on Detroit. Now, this would either mean it was taking a major detour--like a different highway--to get to the 'midtown' station out on the east side, or it was really a 203 masquerading as a 251. Either way, it wasn't going to help me catch the 318, which runs about once every hour and a half, so I was without any hope of making my appointment. I got off the bus and walked back to the Denver Ave. station, and in came a 105 South which would in theory get me back home, with a dollar and a half and an hour's worth of time wasted.
But I was in no mood to take chances--especially since it was bus number 2013. So, I asked the driver if this was really the 105 South. He nodded. I then told him I had been on a 105 claiming to be a 101, and a 203 masquerading as a 251, and joked that it seemed to be April Fool's Day and maybe he didn't get the memo. He promptly threatened to throw me off the bus if I didn't shut up. So I sat down and shut up. He then proceeded to turn right at Second and Boulder from other than the right lane, and stay in other than the right lane until he had bypassed the stop by the Hyatt and made an elderly woman walk halfway to City Hall to get on. Shortly afterwards he lied to a man on Second east of Elgin about whether he could catch the 210 there--the poor guy may still be waiting for that bus as you read this--griped at a woman for using a marked and shelter-equipped stop in a construction zone, and let a man on with a lit cigar. Good enough for government work, I guess.
Also good enough for government work was the Dallas consultant who told the city a while back that the railroad line in the middle of the Broken Arrow Expressway would make a fine light rail commuter line, and recommended that a park and ride lot be set up at either 42nd and Memorial or 36th and Sheridan. They got millions and millions of dollars for this. Service cutbacks occured shortly afterwards, and nothing more in the way of light rail development has come along. Millions of dollars to Dallas when any idiot who was actually born and raised in Tulsa could tell you that the same rail line crosses 51st Street right underneath Highway 169, and a park and ride lot at that location could actually share a traffic light with the 169 on- and off-ramps.
Mass transit is a laudable goal. But it's abundantly clear that if this city is ever to have a viable system, we're going to have to make up our minds that mass transit is much TOO GOOD for government work.
Well, had a fun evening. Got out of the old second shift sweatshop and rushed to catch the 9:32 East Nightline--the one running clockwise. I was right on time but it was nowhere to be seen. So, having nothing better to do than to get myself a little exercise, I took a little stroll.
I wandered along the route for nearly two hours, feeling like a lost tribe only smaller, and finally succombed to by blisters and had a nice little rest at Eleventh and Kingston. And, presently, I was rewarded by the sight of the Nightline rounding the corner at Eleventh and Sheridan at 11:42 p.m.
He was only two minutes ahead of, as they used to say in the railroad business, The Advertised at that point. But, apparently, he was early enough to have beaten all of the other second shift refugees, as he was running old L903 quite empty. And, apparently, he didn't consider himself early enough, because upon entering the westbound lanes of Old Route 66 he immediately tried to run the automobile in the right lane off of the road, and when he thought better of that, tried to out-drag it. Upon seeing me calmly waving like a semaphore, he graciously and to my undying devotion condescended to forfeit his drag race and stop for me.
He then did me a great favor. He took off down Eleventh like greased lightning, extending his commendable two minute lead on The Clock by enough to pass Yale at 11:45 and to cross Utica at 11:50, when he was supposed to be crossing Yale. He certainly succeeded in relieving us of the inconvenience of having to stop for other passengers, instead leaving them struggling to their stops unfortunately over-secure in their belief that Tulsa buses NEVER run early, and got me home only an hour and fifty-three minutes late rather than a full two hours.
One wonders why they don't just run the Nightline in the Afternoon...
P.S. And I'm extremely gratified to see Tulsa Transit scrupulously using their new hybrid buses on the 251 FastTrack route. Never mind that they have all those batteries on the roof, making them awfully topheavy for those curves at each end of the Broken Arrow Expressway. And never mind that their twelve foot high profiles makes them the least aerodynamic of all buses, a condition that manifests itself most in the highway speeds that the 251 almost exclusively operates at.
No, the most astoundingly wise part of all is that the hybrid, as everyone with a lick of sense knows, gains efficiency in spite of itself by reclaiming braking energy and reusing it. And since the 251 sees an application of the brakes twice or maybe three times per expressway jaunt, I expect figures will show that these units won't need new service brake shoe replacements until eight or nine years after they're retired and scrapped.
I'm so pleased to know that, no matter how many areas of life the government insists on taking over, there still isn't a single lick of sense to be found in a position of authority outside of the private sector.
Ted Rall is so bizarre. Yet, I think I almost have him figured out. Almost. I've narrowed him down to one of two agendas. Either way explains the method to his madness.
First he says that the federal government needs to be scrapped before we can start over and rebuild it in his glorious image of what it should be. But he doesn't mention Ron Paul at all, despite the fact that dismantling the federal government is just what the man wants to do. I mean, if you want to dismantle something, and someone else wants to dismantle something, wouldn't that put the two of you on the same side, and mean you should work together? But no. Apparently Rall is afraid that once we get it dismantled, Ron Paul will say, 'See how much better off we are without it?' And people will.
Then he says the following week that Romney, Gingrich and Paul are interchangeable. So, Romney says we are ordained by God to kick the world's ass, Gingrich says we should be living in a police state, and Rall can't see the difference between them and the man who voted against the PATRIOT Act. Well, Rall, just because you wish the Democrats had produced someone with sense enough to vote against the PATRIOT Act doesn't mean that this other guy with an R next to his name doesn't deserve credit for doing so.
And now he admits Paul is 'the weird Republican', but refuses to admit that he's different in any way other than being 'weird'. Even though he addresses our economic issues and our lack of upward mobility in this nation the proven way--by cutting the centralized power of the federal government and making corporations that would buy influence go to the trouble to buy it in fifty-seven territorial and state legislatures instead. Ron Paul would let enterprise thrive by eliminating the federal regulations that force small businesses to buy the same dozen lawyers that corporations have to buy these days--and can more easily afford. Simple. Also effective.
I can only see two possible motivations for Rall's campaign to paint Paul as weird, yet identical to the other Republicans in the field. One is, he's carrying water for the corporations, and so he doesn't want us to look at an anti-corporatist any more than Rush Limbaugh does. The other is that he actually wants to have a fat government in Washington because he's hoping we make him Czar Ted the First.
Either way, I don't think I want to play, Ted. No offense.
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COMMENTS
Posted by: acptulsa
12 comments total
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Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
When I was young, my father and I went 'round and 'round in the evenings. I wanted to watch Channel Six. I considered it more reliable in terms of news than the other stations. My father wanted to watch Don Woods. You see, he considered Mr. Woods more reliable. When Don forecast rain for the weekend, we were off to the lake. When Don forecast fair weather, we canceled the picnic and kept the galoshes close to the front door.
It was an odd sort of "reliability", but it worked for Dad. Now, I see from last night's broadcast, you are playing for the same sort of "reliability". You seem to believe that we will tune in, secure in the knowledge that when you say it's day it will assuredly be night, and when you say it's night it will unquestionably be day.
You said that Nathan Dahm's website was "misleading". Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't say that; you said it was "MISLEADING". Well, I still don't have it right; I seem not to have huge red letters at my disposal. I guess I have a long way to go to become a proper propagandist.
So what was it that was "MISLEADING"? It seems he mentioned that John Sullivan voted for the TARP bailout, and provided one link that proved the assertion (and proved the same about Mary Fallin) and one that showed he voted for something else. So, you pronounced that one link of two "MISLEADING". You didn't, I see, even mention that a link which proved his claim and was in no way "MISLEADING" was right below it.
So this raises the question--is it more "MISLEADING" for a candidate to provide a link which is what he says it is, and another link just as a bonus, or is it more "MISLEADING" to jump on this one link in the finest "gotcha journalism" style in an effort to make people believe that no such bailout vote occured?
For, you see, there is no question that Sullivan (and Fallin) voted to rob from the poor and give to Goldman Sachs (and others). The only questions that remain are, who do you think you're fooling, and is it really a good idea to sacrifice your reputation as a news organization for a piece of Good Advertiser Sullivan's "War Chest"?
Our founding fathers believed that a vigorous and free press was necessary for the maintenance of a democracy. I sincerely hope they were wrong. For if they were right, then there is no hope for democracy in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
And I don't know what else to say, except that I hope the fine reputations of Doug Dodd and Clayton Vaughn are in no way tarnished by the fact that the news organization they once worked for has degenerated into a "news organization" and an outlet for pure propaganda.
As sincerely as a heart attack,
Anthony Platt of Tulsa.
cc: KTUL
KJRH
FOX23
OETA
UTW
The Nathan Dahm campaign
The Randy Brogdon campaign
libertyforest.com
Anyone to whom any of the above care to forward this.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
In response to your column on the rise of the "Tea Party", or Through the Looking Glass and What Ted Saw There:
We are pleased to see you announce that the "Tea Party" matters. I presume we may proceed now.
I don't know who appointed you the thought police, but as a libertarian I saw RonPaulForums.com the day it was decided to call that regional get-together (I think it was in Montana) The Tea Party. The people who did it did indeed want to take America back from white C.E.O.s, and from C.E.O.s of various other colors too. Along with this they had a burning desire to take back America from the arms merchants of death, including the ones who infested the White House at that time (and were lily-white), and from the media moguls who had already developed the habit of libeling us with false charges of racism because we dared to be vocal antiwar conservatives. Who is it, again, that you work for, Mr. Rall?
The "Tea Party" movement is indeed something we have seen before in this nation. It's a populist movement. The last one was in the early years of the Twentieth Century, was liberal in nature, and led to the rise of labor unions for both better and worse. This current populist movement is simply a long overdue swing of the pendulum.
Robert O. Paxton said fascism blah blah blah "...abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion." Libertarians in 2008 disdained to vote for the awful McCain/Palin ticket because we wanted to preserve, protect and defend democratic liberties and limit the preliminary effort at internal cleansing the neocons were engaged in. We also dared to speculate aloud as to why the neocons didn't stop the unethical "redemptive violence" (what an oxymoron!) of September 11, 2001, which led to imperialistic wars.
And all the way the elites of business, government and the media ignored us as they were able and smeared us unremittingly as we tried to run the only honest conservative in all of Congress at the time for president (don't get smug, Mr. Rall. There's only one honest liberal, too--Rep. Kucinich of Ohio--and he fared no better). Now, of course, we are attracting several "conservative" has-beens from the "elites". What do you expect? That all opportunists will suddenly retire from politics?
The vast majority of "Tea Partiers" do indeed support our troops. No libertarian supports wars for pipeline territory or against oil producing nations who abandon the petrodollar.
If "The Right" seems to suffer from ideological imprecision at the moment, one logical explanation is that the libertarians are trying to teach our rank and file friends what it really means to be conservative. It isn't easy to compete with oddballs like Glen Beck. But rest assured, libertarians can be, and have been, specific to a fault. And are famous for "turning off" neocons.
You said, "Tea Partiers deserve praise for having gotten 'off the couch.' They've shown up. That's what matters! never mind that they're stupid. Never mind that many--[I]those who get quoted in the media, anyway[/I] (a telling phrase)--are painfully ignorant and uneducated." And I agree. If libertarians can't rub elbows with them, we can't educate them on just what the Constitution means. And if we don't, who will? So, we leave it to the arrogant liberals to chase the stupid liberals back home to the couch. No wonder you got us ex-Monsanto C.E.O. Tom Vilsack for a Secretary of Agriculture and four more years in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, as a libertarian of long standing and a "Tea Party" attendee, I reject your blanket and gross mischaracterization of me. I do, however, welcome the opportunity to warn my fellow crumpeteers against the evils of following neocons and other false prophets.
And I would advise you, Mr. Rall, to stop lobbing stones until you get your own glass house bricked in. Because, as Will Rogers (gone seventy-five years this August 15th) once said, "The difference between a Republican and a Democrat is the Democrat is a cannibal--they have to live off each other, while the Republicans, why, they live off the Democrats." And if conservatives learn how to listen to their constituents before the Democrats do, lunch will be served.
And no, lying your ass off about me is no substitute for listening to the American people.
Anthony Platt of Tulsa
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
How, exactly, are libertarians so culpable in the termination of Helen Thomas' employment that we deserve to be singled out for special condemnation in your latest brainless rant? Oh, that's right. We aren't, and once you get past the big, bold headline, you even admit it. No, libertarians didn't fire Helen Thomas. Libertarians wouldn't have fired her as libertarians agree with her. No libertarian is thrilled by the prospect of giving Israel money so they can pass it along to the arms merchants of death. That would be the so-called liberal media for whom you are shilling.
So, what did libertarians do to draw your wrath this time? We gave you a much needed social studies lesson. We told you how the law of your land works, and did it in a civil, succinct, and (by your own admission) correct manner. Just damn. Tar and feather us and ride us out of town on a rail.
You don't know how to tell a friend from an enemy, Rall. I'll give you another civics lesson--the Constitution does not allow for the current top heavy Federal semi-socialism, but nothing in the Constitution prohibits the individual states from being as socialist as their voters want them to be. So, what is the advantage to heeding the law of the land and doing things the Constitutional way? Simply that the federal government will have no opportunity to skim kickbacks if they don't handle the money along the way, and the states and cities will not only be able to tax their citizens more if the federal government is taxing them less, but will be able to spend less on jumping through federal hoops and, therefore, more on actually helping people who need it. This is our position, and if you liberals were to go along with us in regards to the federal government, the local governments can do a better job without the interference.
In other words, Rall, true liberals don't know who their real friends are and yellow "journalists" like you are the reason why. Obviously you didn't listen to Shirley Sherrod when she said what Bob Dylan said in his song "Pawn in Their Game"--it isn't about race, race is just what the rich use to distract us while they pick our pockets. The same can be said for any other hot button issue that seperates Americans into ANY two groups except poor sufferers and robber barons.
Why are you shilling for the rich, Rall? You expect them to reward you for it? I've got news, dude. You're trashing your credibility so fast that you will become worthless to them before they even discover you exist. So good luck with that.
Will Rogers once spoke of a starving mountain lion that killed a bull. He was so hungry he ate almost all of it, then got such a bellyache that he just roared and roared. He roared so much that a hunter was able to track him and shoot him.
The moral? Those who have a belly full of bull should keep their mouths shut.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Asinine.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Ah, I see in the Dec. 30th letters column that my friend J. Ray Hunt is at it again. Before he contended that everyone registered Republican is a spawn of the devil incapable of doing good, and now I see he's arguing that all liberals are angels of God incapable of doing harm. Interesting theory.
Mr. Hunt says that liberals '...make no laws that represents [[I]sic[/I]] the rights of the poor', do '...not elevate the power of the rich over the poor', and ensure that 'no parties or corporations shall have any power over our people.' Yet we now have an inheritance tax that classifies struggling family farmers as rich. This almost guarantees that when there's a death in the farmer's family, part of the land will have to be sold to Monsanto. Yet it is now a federal offense to bake a cake in your non-stainless steel kitchen and sell it to a friend. The federal government might let you decorate a Sarah Lee cake for him or her--maybe. Yet we are now required to buy health insurance from private corporations. Insurance which, oddly enough, became less affordable the moment it became mandatory.
He further claims that liberals '...provide for the welfare of children, old, disabled and unemployed.' Federal meddling in state child welfare programs, however, has a miserable track record of taking children from loving parents and leaving children in abuse, or putting them in worse abuse than they had to endure before. Many people did a better job of providing for their own old age before the Social Security Pyramid Scheme began taking a huge chunk from their paychecks. And unemployed people (whether disabled or not) are often discouraged from working even when they can. Did you know that taking a temporary job that lasts two months, or going to school, will end your unemployment benefits? Give a man a fish, don't teach him to fish. Otherwise, he might gain some self-respect.
So, liberals are keen to see that 'all jobs shall be kept here for American workers', '...workers must be given liveable and honorable wages', and that 'no Americans shall be denied healthcare when they are sick.' Thus it is that liberals remain in bed with their allies the labor unions and help them lower the productivity of American workers--and if you don't think labor unions ever do that, you [I]are[/I] a babe in the woods. Thus it is that liberals demand that the borders be porous but keep citizenship dear. This, of course, creates a permenant underclass to take 'the jobs Americans don't want' (because they pay less than minimum wage and illegally offer no benefits whatsoever). And thus it is that the liberals create massive beasts like Medicare, then punish doctors for charging less to cash customers who don't require ten reams of paperwork per visit.
So, 'all workers must be given respect and justice' and 'no Americans shall be denied legal rights when accused.' This about the people who passed so many federal statutes that no professional lawyer can claim to be expert in more than a fraction of them, yet still maintain that ignorance of the law is no excuse. This about the people who throw workers in jail for signing contracts with other companies when those other companies do something illegal (despite the fact that corporate trade secrets are better protected these days than individual privacy). This about the people who turn a blind eye when states convert fines into 'fees' and thus deny the accused their day in court.
Isaiah 32:7 says, 'The scoundrel's methods are wicked, he makes up evil schemes to destroy the poor with lies, even when the plea of the needy is just.' The liberal keeps us working eighty hours a week just to pay our federal taxes. This, of course, leaves us no extra time, energy or resources to use in giving our neighbors a 'hand up'. But, self-styled heroes that they are, they're always ready with a government hand[I]out[/I]--provided, of course, there's something left over after the graft and corruption is properly financed. And while liberals are happy to look after our souls via James 1:27 and Matthew 25:31-46, I don't see anything there that suggests Robin Hood saved the souls of the rich by forcing them (at the point of a sword) to give to whomever Robin of Loxley considered poor and deserving.
As for the Constitution, Mr. Hunt, I frankly don't know why you would go there. The Founding Fathers knew that a federal nanny state would be less than half a step away from tyranny, and the proof is in the Tenth Amendment. And the proof that they were right is all around us. The working poor have a piece of their meager wages pulled, then must renounce their privacy to a nosy government in order to beg for food stamps to replace dollars they had actually already earned. This is your dignity and justice?
So, the bus overheated, here we are by the side of the highway, and we have figured out by dead reckoning that we are on the road to Hell on Earth. And you, Mr. Hunt, don't want us to take another road because this one is so beautifully paved with good intentions. God loves you, sir, and so do I, but please spare me. Fifty years of federal liberal experimentation has brought us more workers in poverty, more homelessness, less liberty for most and less privacy for all. So, if you were thinking of making a resolution for the new year, may I suggest you be more careful what you wish for? We don't mean to complain, but we just keep getting it in the end.
acptulsa
Re: Return to Glory
Re: Guest Editorial
'Our country is too large to have all of its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance and [out] from under the eye of their constituents, must... be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens, and at the same circimstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite the public agents to corruption, plunder and waste. And I do verily believe that if the principle were to prevail of a common law being in force [throughout] the United States..., it would become the most corrupt government on the earth.'--Thomas Jefferson
Re: Love Letters/Hate Mail
And the mantra is, conservatives and Republicans are all the same. Then comes the head of NPR, right on message, saying we're all the same. Every single registered Republican is exactly identical to our lowest common denominator. So, I am grateful to Mr. Hunt for his insightful satire. God couldn't have fashioned a more perfect satarist than this wonderful man.
All Republicans agree about freedom of information and federal standing armies vs. state militias. I will concede that the day Republicans fail to march in lockstep on these issues will be the day pigs fly. By this, of course, I mean that back in 1909 when J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon attached a basket to his Short/Wright biplane and put a piglet in it, Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moosers quarreled on these subjects with Harding, Coolidge and the crowd who would jump start the economic boom of the Roaring Twenties after the war by suddenly and unceremoniously ending the wartime socialism. And when refrigerated transport planes first appeared half a century ago to transport frozen pork, the Nixonians and the Goldwater Wing quarreled over these issues. And even now, as undoubtedly there's a pot-bellied pig in a doggie carrier in the belly of some jetliner somewhere, neocons and libertarians disagree vehemently and in public. Such a rich way to point out how silly the current rhetoric really is.
Then to pronounce us universally evil, and then turn around and chide us not to sow discord among our American bretheren. A finer irony I cannot imagine. Truly, Mr. Hunt, your satire is as rich, fine and subtle as anyone could hope for. I think you have done more to prevent mischief and turn aside the false witnessing than you know. Keep up the good work!
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
But I was in no mood to take chances--especially since it was bus number 2013. So, I asked the driver if this was really the 105 South. He nodded. I then told him I had been on a 105 claiming to be a 101, and a 203 masquerading as a 251, and joked that it seemed to be April Fool's Day and maybe he didn't get the memo. He promptly threatened to throw me off the bus if I didn't shut up. So I sat down and shut up. He then proceeded to turn right at Second and Boulder from other than the right lane, and stay in other than the right lane until he had bypassed the stop by the Hyatt and made an elderly woman walk halfway to City Hall to get on. Shortly afterwards he lied to a man on Second east of Elgin about whether he could catch the 210 there--the poor guy may still be waiting for that bus as you read this--griped at a woman for using a marked and shelter-equipped stop in a construction zone, and let a man on with a lit cigar. Good enough for government work, I guess.
Also good enough for government work was the Dallas consultant who told the city a while back that the railroad line in the middle of the Broken Arrow Expressway would make a fine light rail commuter line, and recommended that a park and ride lot be set up at either 42nd and Memorial or 36th and Sheridan. They got millions and millions of dollars for this. Service cutbacks occured shortly afterwards, and nothing more in the way of light rail development has come along. Millions of dollars to Dallas when any idiot who was actually born and raised in Tulsa could tell you that the same rail line crosses 51st Street right underneath Highway 169, and a park and ride lot at that location could actually share a traffic light with the 169 on- and off-ramps.
Mass transit is a laudable goal. But it's abundantly clear that if this city is ever to have a viable system, we're going to have to make up our minds that mass transit is much TOO GOOD for government work.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I wandered along the route for nearly two hours, feeling like a lost tribe only smaller, and finally succombed to by blisters and had a nice little rest at Eleventh and Kingston. And, presently, I was rewarded by the sight of the Nightline rounding the corner at Eleventh and Sheridan at 11:42 p.m.
He was only two minutes ahead of, as they used to say in the railroad business, The Advertised at that point. But, apparently, he was early enough to have beaten all of the other second shift refugees, as he was running old L903 quite empty. And, apparently, he didn't consider himself early enough, because upon entering the westbound lanes of Old Route 66 he immediately tried to run the automobile in the right lane off of the road, and when he thought better of that, tried to out-drag it. Upon seeing me calmly waving like a semaphore, he graciously and to my undying devotion condescended to forfeit his drag race and stop for me.
He then did me a great favor. He took off down Eleventh like greased lightning, extending his commendable two minute lead on The Clock by enough to pass Yale at 11:45 and to cross Utica at 11:50, when he was supposed to be crossing Yale. He certainly succeeded in relieving us of the inconvenience of having to stop for other passengers, instead leaving them struggling to their stops unfortunately over-secure in their belief that Tulsa buses NEVER run early, and got me home only an hour and fifty-three minutes late rather than a full two hours.
One wonders why they don't just run the Nightline in the Afternoon...
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
No, the most astoundingly wise part of all is that the hybrid, as everyone with a lick of sense knows, gains efficiency in spite of itself by reclaiming braking energy and reusing it. And since the 251 sees an application of the brakes twice or maybe three times per expressway jaunt, I expect figures will show that these units won't need new service brake shoe replacements until eight or nine years after they're retired and scrapped.
I'm so pleased to know that, no matter how many areas of life the government insists on taking over, there still isn't a single lick of sense to be found in a position of authority outside of the private sector.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
First he says that the federal government needs to be scrapped before we can start over and rebuild it in his glorious image of what it should be. But he doesn't mention Ron Paul at all, despite the fact that dismantling the federal government is just what the man wants to do. I mean, if you want to dismantle something, and someone else wants to dismantle something, wouldn't that put the two of you on the same side, and mean you should work together? But no. Apparently Rall is afraid that once we get it dismantled, Ron Paul will say, 'See how much better off we are without it?' And people will.
Then he says the following week that Romney, Gingrich and Paul are interchangeable. So, Romney says we are ordained by God to kick the world's ass, Gingrich says we should be living in a police state, and Rall can't see the difference between them and the man who voted against the PATRIOT Act. Well, Rall, just because you wish the Democrats had produced someone with sense enough to vote against the PATRIOT Act doesn't mean that this other guy with an R next to his name doesn't deserve credit for doing so.
And now he admits Paul is 'the weird Republican', but refuses to admit that he's different in any way other than being 'weird'. Even though he addresses our economic issues and our lack of upward mobility in this nation the proven way--by cutting the centralized power of the federal government and making corporations that would buy influence go to the trouble to buy it in fifty-seven territorial and state legislatures instead. Ron Paul would let enterprise thrive by eliminating the federal regulations that force small businesses to buy the same dozen lawyers that corporations have to buy these days--and can more easily afford. Simple. Also effective.
I can only see two possible motivations for Rall's campaign to paint Paul as weird, yet identical to the other Republicans in the field. One is, he's carrying water for the corporations, and so he doesn't want us to look at an anti-corporatist any more than Rush Limbaugh does. The other is that he actually wants to have a fat government in Washington because he's hoping we make him Czar Ted the First.
Either way, I don't think I want to play, Ted. No offense.