http://blog.heritage.org/2009/09/15/metro-delivers-hundreds-of-thousands-to-912-rally/

I took a drive at sunset and listened to George Jones.  Driving without any serious purpose is something I rarely do but after running on adrenalin all day Saturday I needed to relax.  Ballads by George Jones relax me.  I popped in the CD and watched the pink sky slip into history.  It strikes me many would view me as out of touch.  I waste gasoline, I listen to old George Jones songs and I listen to CDs.  My generation was the last listening to records and now I hang on to a technology made obsolete in less than two decades.  The day will soon come when you can think about what you want to hear and the implants in your skull will respond.  It’s a bit like being nuts but you’ll still be required to pay for the download. 

My analog TV is on in the background.  The Packers still wear green and gold, Brian Urlacher hits like Butkus and tomorrow Buffalo will lose in New England.  The seams which stitch together a life remain the same.  I just get older.  My neighbor, Denise, died this past week.  Sweet lady with a quick wit.  Paramedics paid her a visit one morning and then all was quiet.  For two days no one heard from her and then it was realized she was gone.  I spent some time talking with her son today and realized it was four years ago this weekend my mother passed away in her sleep.  Mom came into a world mauled by depression and not yet by global war.  Bob Hope was on the radio and most people had never heard of television.  She grew up happy in Black Creek, New York, population one hundred fifty.  Life is finite and it isn’t the toys which make us whole. 

As I quickly approach my own half century mark I grow older and grayer but also better at spotting political “spin”.  Today I happened upon a column by the New York Times writer, Maureen Dowd, no stranger to old age and lost hopes.  Dowd is apparently auditioning for a job currently held by Linda Douglas, formerly of ABC News, now a White House propagandist.  It’s no secret the Obama agenda is floundering, therefore according to Dowd, it’s because opponents are racists.  She cites South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson.  Last week Wilson pinged the national sonar during an Obama sales pitch.  Wilson was vilified by the left because its members claim he doesn’t respect the office of President.  On the other hand, if you’re like Dowd there isn’t any need to respect the office of any member of the House of Representatives.  Dowd reasons Wilson is from South Carolina.  Fort Sumter was in South Carolina.  Secessionists fired upon Fort Sumter.  Secessionists were from the south.  There were slaves in the south.  Slaves were the color of Obama.  Wilson is therefore a racist.

Meanwhile, David Broder writes in The Washington Post our President may not be completely upfront about the cost of a new national health care system.  Broder isn’t a racist because he works at a large liberal paper.  He also called the President a liar and didn’t actually use the word liar.  Is that like saying bondage is different because it isn’t spelled slavery? 

Wilson, meanwhile, may be “Censured” by Nancy Pelosi.  A friend told me today it will still allow Wilson to keep his job and pay.  A spanking would be worse.  From what I understand about Pelosi as a young woman in Baltimore, she liked a good paddling. 

Driving down the back road tonight listening to George Jones I was reminded of being young and simpler times.  Then the sun set and it was dark.  In the blackness of night I drove home.  Oops, I said blackness, time to discredit any logical political argument I might make. 

First, don’t put a den of Marxists in an office in Georgetown, Delaware.  Two, don’t pretend you didn’t notice.  Three, opening the window at your office and shouting, “Go away”; in the direction of 108 North Bedford Street isn’t an effort at distancing yourself.  Four, don’t go on the radio and label yourself an independent when you can’t even tell your own party a den of communists in the district won’t help your cause.  Five, don’t throw stones at your opponent unless you’ve a set of your own. 

Are they afraid to count the people?  Saturday I attended the vast right-wing Woodstock on the greens at a place called Washington, D.C.  In advance of the event there were even right-of-center people expecting no more than “tens of thousands”.  This is because only about 30-thousand people responded to an online registration.  At 5:00 A.M. Saturday morning an alarm clock started beeping and I got out of a strange bed.  I was staying a few miles from Washington in hopes of getting an early start.  While I was shaving and listening to a repeat of Friday night’s Hannity I heard the turnout prediction repeated.  Tens of thousands and it struck me he was being cautious.  For weeks I’d had a gut feeling about all of this.  It gets measured in telephone calls to my show in my small corner of the world.  A large element of the public has been pushed too far and for too long.  Most of us like to believe the corner of the world where we live is unique but I’ve long suspected the people where I live are pretty much the same as the people where you live. 

At the Largo Towne Center Metro station in Maryland I still didn’t see many large numbers.  As we started making additional stops it became apparent in this case something very unique was going on when it comes to conventional media wisdom, which I generally don’t trust.  Seriously, do you think Anderson Cooper and Keith Olbermann frequent the local pool halls?  These people haven’t a clue about what millions of Americans think. 

My hands were attached to a sign which carried just a few words.  “You lie” and “God bless Joe Wilson”, it read.  Two men came forward and told me they were from Wilson’s home state of South Carolina.  For a few years there were the GOP bosses telling people the next big thing in their party was from that state.  They were right but had the wrong man.  The next big thing is a mostly unassuming guy.  In just two words last week he summed the frustration of tens of millions, maybe even more of his countrymen.  When we came out from the underground and reached the Federal Triangle it was packed with a loud throng and the crowd was growing by leaps and bounds.  Someone in law enforcement made a command decision and opened the Reagan Building so that members of the crowd could use the facilities.  Then other buildings were opened.  First the officers checked identification before entry and then relented and allowed the line to move much more quickly.  Returning to the plaza after a trip to the potty I noticed the crowd was moving ahead of schedule.  It had to get going because there wasn’t any room left there and people were emerging from the underground in thousands.  My county’s former Sheriff telephoned me and explained his wife was on a bus entering the city and traffic had slowed to 5 miles per hour.  There were just so many, many busses.  After talking on my phone I started chatting with folks on Pennsylvania Avenue.  People from Idaho, Kansas and Utah and I saw flags from as far away as Alaska. 

When we finally made it to the grounds of the Capitol we were stunned to find friends we hadn’t seen since we ran off to find a toilet.  Somehow we connected among the masses.  And then we watched for several hours as a sea of humanity passed by.  Every piece of ground near us filled in.  I looked back at the reflecting pool and all I could spot were the thousands and thousands of flags and signs and at one point I reached some high ground and could see as far as the Washington Monument.  Before me stretched a sea of my countrymen and there were more on the move and coming from every direction.  A speaker called out over the sound system and reminded the audience Woodstock never represented salt of the earth Americans.  It also didn’t bring an audience of this magnitude and in such a short time.  My friend, retired Air Force Lt. Colonel Steve Hyle, spoke with some members of the Capitol and Park Police.  It was early and they offered him an estimate of 1.2 million.  Later they offered 1.5 million and still people kept coming.  My significant other spoke with a police officer, a woman of color, who joked she’d never seen so many white people in one place.  Whites and Asians and, yes, even some people of color joined us.  People who love liberty are bound by ideals and not the labels media uses to divide us. 

As I write this the mainstream media struggles to grasp what it has seen.  From The New York Times, “… the size of the rally took the authorities by surprise, with throngs of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill for more than three hours.”  The Times reports it can’t get an estimate from the government.  “The crowd surrounded the Capitol Reflecting Pool, spilling across Third Street and onto the Mall. The sound system was inadequate to the throng; speakers on stage, at the Capitol’s West Front, were too distant to be intelligible to anyone near the edges of the rally”, reports the Washington Post. 

Twenty years ago the Colonel was liaison from the Air Force to Congress.  He explained how crowd estimates are made.  When the numbers reach the Washington Monument you can safely go with 1.5 million.  He told me this as we were leaving and walking against a tide rolling forward and looking for deliverance from a government grown too large and a government until this Saturday unwilling to listen.  Glenn Beck gave an estimate of 2.1 million.  Beck may be biased but when it finally is called history he may be called accurate. 

The redhead’s mother reminded us by telephone tonight there were thousands of satellite demonstrations across the nation today.  This is our country.  For a time we lost it.  Today we took it back. 

Apparently Walter Cronkite died twice.  There was a second and belated funeral today.  Are we at all surprised?  The mainstream United States media now believes it not only is the arbiter of culture and political correctness but also knows best how to run this country.  When one of its icons passes there must be months of mourning.  Don’t believe the media is infatuated with itself?  Check out the coverage given to the rescue of a New York Times reporter captured by the Taliban last week in Afghanistan.  Front-page headlines and coverage splattered all over cable news.  Do the names of our dead soldiers and marines get the same ink?  Only if it’s particularly bloody and photographed in an effort to skew public opinion to adhere to the views of Bill Keller, Keith Olbermann and Anderson Cooper. 

This country is involved not only in a war against ideologues overseas we can’t afford to lose but as well in a battle for the soul of what it means to be an American.  In recent days you’ve heard the media nattering on about the resignation of admitted communist Vann Jones.  Yes, a confirmed communist was working in The White House and in charge of doling out stimulus money borrowed from China and the media is alarmed he was treated poorly by a handful of right-leaning commentators.  What kind of America are we living in?  This man wouldn’t have been allowed near The White House gate a decade ago.  It’s called being a security risk. 

Look, these people aren’t interested in saving the republic.  They despise the founding fathers and denounce them as racists, rapists and chauvinists.  They denounce fellow countrymen trying to make a living.  They denounce fellow countrymen trying to defeat foreign enemies.  They denounce fellow countrymen who refuse to trust a government promising cradle-to-grave medical coverage, which maintains it’ll get the job done on the cheap.  The mainstream media goons argue a great many of the American people don’t know what’s good for them and must be coerced into the program.  Really, what makes a magazine model reading a teleprompter on cable news any smarter than you or me? 

They accuse liberty-loving Americans of spreading myths and abusing a right to freedom of speech.  There are no death panels they insist.  Friends, I’ve been reading from a copy of an April edition of The New York Times Magazine for weeks on my radio program.  It featured an interview with the President of the United States.  He mused about the death of his grandmother, two weeks after she had a hip replacement and even after doctors said she was only expected to live another 6 months.  Then he offered this, “I think that there is going to have to be a conversation that is guided by doctors, scientists, ethicists. And then there is going to have to be a very difficult democratic conversation that takes place. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance.”  Today Sarah Palin, writing an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, is citing the same Times’ story.  Are you going to insist there are no “death panels”?  What historians called the Holocaust was known as “The Final Solution” by the government, which designed the program.  I’m familiar with semantics and slight of hand.

The republic is in danger because some seriously demented and amoral people have control not just of the levers of power but of much of the media.  They must be stopped.  I’m recommending some drastic measures because we can’t just idly watch it slip away.  Let me recommend Bill Keller, Keith Olbermann and Anderson Cooper take a plane ride.  We’ll drop them via parachute into Taliban territory, where they can offer propaganda services in exchange for food and their lives.  Once these threats are removed from the domestic front we can work on restoring some traditional values.  The American people need the truth. 

I say this is the most direct and peaceful approach because the lefties won’t like the other possibility.  They can’t win a civil war.  My side owns all the firearms.  Seriously, we don’t need any sort of death panels.  It’s time for the left to use what little wits its members have and stand down before things spin completely out of control.

The folks who founded my country were some very, very bright people. As I grow older my respect for their efforts and goals grows exponentially. Do schools still teach about the genius these men had in designing a constitution? When I was a boy my teachers often were old women who had endured the rigors of life on farms and suffered the deprivations of depression and war. Their lives hadn’t been easy but they so much loved their country and the ideals calling us to be good citizens. My definition of a good citizen is the neighbor who doesn’t attempt to restrain me in my pursuits to better myself and my family as long as I do him none harm.

Not long ago I penned a call to liberty. Days later I’m still getting responses so I reckon I touched some nerves.

Earlier this summer my church released its own definition of liberty and justice and I shared it with friends on Facebook. The American left labeled the Pope’s effort a condemnation of capitalism, however. Not from my reading. He simply suggested we play fair. Can you argue with him? Likely not.

Let me state right now I believe the United States of America to be an exceptional land, precisely because it was brilliantly designed and conceived. This is a view currently out of fashion as evidenced by the nation’s Apologist-in-Chief. While I don’t believe God favors me over my neighbor, the Eagles over the Redskins or the USA over France, I do believe the Lord respects the efforts of or founders.

Today I received a critique from a friend stating my call to liberty flawed because I didn’t offer the Roman Catholic view as an alternative. I’ll argue, and I think correctly, much of the historic anti-Catholicism in this country originates with fear the Church would attempt to influence our governance. I’ll also counter I believe the Church has made no such attempt but there are people who would lead us to theocracy and it won’t help the image of the Pope and his institution.

Render unto Caesar. Jesus offered the temporal world certainly wasn’t perfect. What He also promised is playing by the rules of God could bring you perfection on the other side of life. Of course the faithful and the leaders of the faithful should be vigilant and stress fair play. It’s an imitation of Christ. He also recognized free will. Forced conversions to Christianity are rare in modern times and I will offend even more people by agreeing on a rare point with President Obama. The United States isn’t a Christian nation. I won’t agree with his use of “atheist” land. Most of the founders were Christians, despite the arguments of the left to the contrary but they sought to offer choice, which I keep telling people is synonymous with liberty. I want no specific church or faith involved in government. I want liberty and when I make mistakes in my choices I’ll learn from them and be a stronger man and I would hope a better Christian.

Now you may level your personal attacks with one thought in mind; how can you enjoy liberty if you deny choice for others?

The television tells me this morning a bridge in San Francisco is cracked and is closed.  Glad I didn’t build the thing.  I did build a bridge Sunday afternoon.  Weeks ago the redhead bought a small bridge for her garden.  The box wouldn’t fit in the Jeep and I had to bring the parts from the store with a rope stretched around the gate and with her setting atop it and holding it in place.  The same day I also promised I would assemble it.  Then it leaned against her garage for weeks as we got bogged down with other lawn chores.  This summer I promised a lot in return for a pledge elicited from her.  On Sunday afternoons this fall I get to watch football.  She’s never been a “football widow” and I’m not at all sure how it’s going to be received.

I did know the bridge had to get finished before opening day.  This Saturday we’re going to a rally in Washington in hopes of scaring the bejabbers out of the liberals.  Which means the bridge had to be assembled no later than yesterday and I was somewhat postponing the project as I’m no longer a man with a great many lawn skills.  You must understand there was a time when I was alongside my ex-wife doing gardening.  In fact I did a great deal of landscaping on my own.  Yet for at least a decade I haven’t had many of those activities.

The redhead suggests the day will come when I can hire someone to handle the outdoor chores.  It’s what the wealthy do in these here parts. 

Let me discuss the wealth thing.  Primarily I’m a writer.  One very grammatically challenged writer.  You understand I went to English class to socialize and now I’m paying for my sin.  A few years ago my daughter told me she aspired to be a writer.  “And what do you plan to do for a living”, I replied.  My living comes from my work in talk radio and I think it’s clear unless your name is Savage, Beck or Limbaugh you’re going to have lawn chores. 

Sunday was my effort at assembling a garden bridge.  My surprise at the end was I finished and hadn’t lost any washers, nuts or bolts.  Somehow I finished with all the right parts in all the right places.  Some of the redhead’s well-healed friends from Fenwick Island arrived as I finished and they walked on it and it didn’t collapse.  I also finished with no cuts, scrapes or bruises on my knuckles.  No grass stains on my pants and not one insect had taken a bite from my hide.  Most surprisingly to me was assembly took probably less than an hour.

Yesterday I still found some minutes during the day to read both Washington papers.  I also had time to make dinner for two.  A combination of all these small things left me feeling a rare weekend sense of accomplishment.  There was even some time Sunday night for a movie and I was asleep by ten thirty.  This Monday morning I rose early to prep a Labor Day show.  Summer is unofficially over and it took me until the very end of the season to realize I’ve time for some old fashioned yard work.  Something to consider in February when the football season ends. 

By the way, I don’t bet on sports.  Anyone willing to wager I’ll get through the season without a few more chores at the redhead’s house? 

Twenty five years ago I walked out of college with a degree that didn’t exactly make me marketable.  Now I look back and wonder why I didn’t seek a degree in economics.  Oh, right, wanted to be a radio announcer.  Twenty five years later I get out of bed every morning, flip on the computer and read the economic talking heads.  Roubini, Kudlow, Wesbury and Samuelson, names I rarely gave much attention a few years ago.  I read of the reports they cite and then I search for the reports.

Today I can tell you off the top of my head the average growth of the U.S. economy over the last 75 years is an annual 3.9 percent.  It probably isn’t great cocktail party talk but I don’t go to cocktail parties.  I read histories and economics.  History is an old passion, economics a recent attraction. 

When I was a kid most of my peers hated history.  At school it was about memorizing dates and the names of great Americans.  We fail when we place the great and also ordinary people after the reading of the calendar.  History is about real people.  Economics is what guides their courses in their lives.  I’m really worried the end of economics would spell the end of history and I’m uncomfortable with what I’m reading. 

I started my adult political life as a libertarian.  In 1980 I voted the Libertarian Party.  Then I drifted into a socialist camp in hopes of finding a solution to human misery.  It morphed into an uneasy social liberalism as I watched the old Eastern Bloc collapse.  I watched friends defending utopian hopes and came to realize they were ignoring not only flaws but the human condition.  Life isn’t fair.  People die young.  Some are born physically and mentally flawed.  The innocent are sometimes falsely accused.  It strengthened my faith in God and the promise there is something beyond my temporal existence.  And I moved into a social conservatism.

Now it appears I’ve pretty much come full circle.  Government restricts liberty.  Liberty is choice.  We agree theft, murder and rape are beyond the social pale and we do our best to prevent and punish these offenses but historical evidence would suggest established social mores are more effective than larger government in preventing crime.  Aberrant behavior aside, an overwhelming number of Americans commit no crimes.  Larger government does far more harm in restraining “good” people than any good in restraining “bad” people. 

Large government is also expensive and from my readings of leading economists it’s sapping our productivity and our choices.  We’ve reached a historical and cultural turning point.  Either we greatly and rapidly reduce government and its historically unfulfilled promises or we face economic and cultural collapse.  The former promises pain and would force us to rely upon ourselves for solutions and perhaps restore a great many social and cultural bonds, including the family unit, while simultaneously offering us liberty.  The latter promises an empty treasury, debtor’s bondage on an international scale and an inability to respond to disasters.  The latter leads to continental chaos, warlordism and an end to personal liberty.  I’m reminded of when I was a boy and reading Pearl S. Buck and fear for the future of our children and grandchildren.  Eventually, after famine and suffering on a grand playing board we would find ourselves living under a series of strongmen and working as wage slaves begging for scraps for our starving families, which is possibly the best of the endgames. 

This is the choice we face.  Not sometime in the distant future or a decade from now but at this moment.  Liberty, like life, isn’t always neat.  Yet you rise each day with the expectation you may succeed because the only bonds you’re wearing are those you share with a free community and not the chains of despotism. 

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052970204731804574386952311239532-lMyQjAxMDA5MDAwMjEwNDIyWj.html

Curt Schilling, J.C. Watts, Jim Bunting, Steve Largent, Jack Kemp.  It isn’t just the ballplayers; it’s the coaches as well.  Why?  Hard work.  During the 1960s, Vince Lombardi dumped his allegiance to the Democrat Party.  “Gentlemen, you will find whatever success you have in life is directly proportional to the amount of effort you make”, he said. 

9/12 busses to D.C. in Short supply but some new seats are available from Delmarva. Received this today:

Reservations are being taken by ed nelson at ednelson@verizon.net or at 410-860-2824.