As Joanie (only took me like 8 hours to remember to link this…schwa!) pointed out in email the other day, things have been kinda quiet around here.  I could say that the kids’ schoolwork is to blame, or tons of work to do in the garden – and those things would be true – but the real reason is I’m just fucking pissed off…and there’s only so much freedom I can give to the Pissed Off-ness before it takes the bit between its teeth and bell-towers up.

MLG and I are not what you’d call “radical.”  Not by a long stretch.  Our views are more centrist than strictly Republican, more libertarian (please note the small “l”) than conservative.  For instance, we don’t give a shit what kind of god you worship, or what you do with your own body, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.  Yes, the latter makes abortion a HUGE grey area, but only for US.  No one has the right to tell anyone else what they will do with their body, or something growing therein, because really, that’s just another form of slavery.

I say again, we are not radicals.  We don’t have a huge stockpile of food/water/supplies in the garage.  We have guns because we enjoy shooting, both for enjoyment and to be able to protect our family/property should the need arise, but we surely don’t sit in darkened rooms, cleaning our rifles and fuming over the current pack of Washington imbeciles pissing all over our Constitution.  But don’t think because we’re not radicals that we’re not angry.  And don’t think even for a second that we’re not paying attention.  Don’t think we haven’t noticed that everything done since Jan. 20 is nothing more than a power grab.  Yes, the economy has issues – all of which would have sorted themselves out had bad mortgages properly foreclosed, weak banks/investment houses been allowed to fail, etc. etc. ad nauseum – but the hysteria being whipped up by our elected officials can trace its origins directly to the effluvia from the posterior of a male bovine.  

We. Are. Being. Scammed. 

From the demonization of Wall Street, to the reverse-elitism directed at AIG, our Dear Leaders are using false information and manufactured fear to further erode our Constitutional rights, solidify their power bases, and ensure that future generations never question any of it.  Well, as the man says, we will not obey.  And now you’ve REALLY gone and screwed up…you’ve motivated us to actually ACT.

We will be attending the nearest Tax Day Tea Party on April 15th.  We’ll be expressing our displeasure, and most importantly, meeting those of like mind who are doing the same.  

Find a tea party in your area, get out and get heard.

MLG’s been brainstorming lately, resulting in our Simon Jester t-shirts (and our Simon Jester site, in progress).  We’re keeping the prices low because we’re more interested in getting the message out than turning a profit.

For the Firefly fans out there, those of us who want nothin’ to do with the gorram Alliance.

Yet more versions on the way.

UPDATE:  Here’s all the tshirt designs (black t-shirts coming in all stores, only done right now for “I Aim to Misbehave.”):

Come April 1, the fed govt is going to start taxing us smokers like never before, with an additional $1.01 per pack. The old fed tax was 39 cents.  That is almost tripled.  The object of this higher tax:  to pay for the new  SCHIP program that covers “children” up to, what,  age thirty-something for health care insurance.

In the next breath, the fed says that new tax will make adults stop smoking and prevent kids from starting.

So which is it?

Does Uncle Sugar want to pay for the healthcare of people who should be getting jobs and paying for insurance themselves, or does Uncle Sugar want smokers to quit? And if smokers quit, what will the fed govt turn to to make up  for the lost revenues to pay for the damn program that shouldn’t be there in the first place?

Hey, just asking.

So, here’s what I’m going to do.  Since I refuse to pay a voluntary tax for a program that is completely communist in nature, I will quit on April 1, 2009.  I LOOOOVVE to smoke.  I quit both times when LG was busy making babies, and I stopped for a pack on the way to the delivery.  I quit for a year two years ago until I finally figured out it was the diabetes, not the smoking, that was making me sick.  I even quit smoking during boot camp, “A” School, and my first deployment.  But I wanted to smoke every single gottammed day during those times.  I know I can tough it out, but it ain’t gonna easy.  Nicotine is a pain reliever, and I deal with pain every day.  But getting anally violated everytime I buy a pack is painful too.  So, no thanks.

I have been thinking about this whole “Tea Party” thing in conjuction with the new cig tax.  Wouldn’t it have more impact, wouldn’t the “Tea” in “Tea Party” make more sense, if we actually, you know, threw something in the harbor?

Just asking.

The American Revolution was started by about one third of the population of the thirteen colonies. This one third encompassed the landed wealthy, the educated, the middle class, the yeoman farmers, and the illiterate.  Basically every strata of society in terms of money, education, prestige, personal or political power. But it was ONLY one third of the population. And the reasons theses thirteen colonies eventually revolted against England were what exactly? Come on class, I know you know.  Yes, the young lady in the back.  Correct. They rebelled because they were sick and damn tired of not being represented by their government, weary of abuses by that government, and convinced upon logical, moral, philosophical, legal, and spiritual reasons that their government no longer cared about the well being of it’s subjects.  After the war was over, the Loyalists were allowed to keep their homes, farms, businesses, and lives.  The loyalists went on to become citizens in a new country; free to engage in commerce, free to hold public office, worship how they wished, and be an integral part of their local and state communities.

The French Revolution was another animal altogether.  The French rebelled not just against their king, but their entire wealthy class.  The revolutionaries at this point were the poor and the scant middle classes. They were essentially used as pawns by figureheads. Figureheads who, after the revolution, engaged in bloody purges, expropriation of property, and let us not forget the systematic redistribution of wealth and lands.  The idea of Liberté, égalité, fraternité, took a while to really catch up when pitted against the public spectacle of watching your particularly boorish former landlord get his head whacked off.

And then there was the American Civil War.  To say that the Civil War was fought to end slavery in the southern states is to say that pushing the gas pedal makes the car go.  The complex myriad issues of that time cannot be recounted by anything less than a thorough study of American history and law since the founding of freaking Jamestown up through the actual night Fort Sumter was taken by the Confederates.  Over a deuce and a half centuries of uniquely American jurisprudence, legislation, taxation, bank failures, bitter fights in the new Congress, personal injustices and rivalries, philosophical antipodes of thought, and what exactly our own law (as embodied by our Constitution and Bill of Rights) stood for and exactly how much power our federal government had over local and sovereign rule of the individual states came to a head.  The argument over states’ rights verses federal power grabbing was lost in the emotional impact of the Emancipation Proclamation.   During that little revolution, innocent and apolitical people in the South were murdered and had their homes burned to the ground during Sherman’s march to the sea.  Outnumbered, outgunned, under financed, and with the moral low ground, the Confederacy still managed to stave off Federal oppression for the four bloodiest years in American history.  After losing their revolution, the Confederacy was subjected to punitive taxation, forced labor, direct violation of the Third Amendment for the only time in US history, it’s citizens were locked out of political power for over a generation, its wealth divided by fiat, and property rights trampled.  Aside from the question of the injustice of one person being able to own another person, every single OTHER aspect of the Union’s prosecution of the Civil War was illegal, immoral, and contrary to the very things this country was founded upon.  On the other hand, our country was still young enough that if it had been torn asunder, foreign powers would have looked at the pieces as just something else to fold into their own empires, which could have just led to the cycle repeating itself as in paragraph one.

So what’s my point?

Good question.

When I started writing this, I was thinking about how each time a vast revolution has occurred in the last couple centuries, the warfare has been bloodier and the victors more harshly treated the losers.  (I obviously left out most of the turmoil the world has witnessed as petty dictators and avowed socialists/fascists fomented revolution for their own ends. I left out the changes that happened as progressions of a political nature as well.  I was thinking more about a popular, democratic type of revolution rather than say, a communist one.) As I got to the part about the US Civil War, however, I realized that no fight is more bitter than a fight between brothers.  No one fights more fiercely than the man who knows, in his heart, that his enemy should be his friend and their goals should be toward the common good, not the good of one over the other.  No man, who has to face his brother, or his neighbor, or his friend, across a line of battle, is more aware of that voice in his head that says, “how could he be so wrong about this?”

So folks, pick your flavor. Choose your fate. Decide NOW if we need to keep heading towards civil unrest, disobedience, and outright rebellion.  Then decide what it will look like, based on history, and extrapolate out from there.  Decide if what you believe is true and right and good will keep being true and right and good if you have to go a-soldier for it.  I think I know my answer.  I hope I know what the people who hold public trust would answer.  I only fear that both they (and far too many of us) haven’t even thought about the question yet.

cross posted at The Line Is Here

Folks, we don’t usually link to Rush or Beck or Hannity or whoever else because we don’t want to sound like parrots, or mind-numbed robots, but mostly because we think those guys are still worried about losing their licenses and don’t really take things far enough when it comes to giving the whole story.  Today I am suspending that guideline to link to this.

What Rush doesn’t say it that there was more to that little fireside chat with Joe Scarborough.   ZB also mentioned that J. P. Morgan led the charge of the Rich in this country by essentially holding others of his ‘class’ in a locked library until almost 5AM one crisp morning in 1907 to fund “the banks” or they would all be reduced to mere millionaires instead of billionaires.  The Rich of that day were covering their own asses, hedging their bets, and trying to gain a little bit of control of the mechanics of government for themselves.

(Sound familiar? But that’s another show.)

So this dried up old failure from the Carter Era is trying to say it’s time that the Rich do this again, for their own good and for the good of the country?  And if they don’t, the Federal Government should do it to for them?  What the fuck?  I know that there are already “discussions” within our government to decide the feasibility of  nationalizing all of our 401K and IRA funds.  I know that the stimulus plan is going to shithammer the salaries and bonuses of private enterprises if they were stupid enough to believe the government when it said there were no strings attached to the TARP program. I know that GM and Chrysler are teetering on self-immolation due to interference from the Federal government and the immutability of the Mob’s the Union’s will.  I know that the Treasury is printing money, literally, like it has never been printed before to monetize the stimulus plan.  I even know that the Patriot Act has made US citizens liable for up to fifty fucking percent in taxes for any money they decide to put in an overseas bank, regardless of whether or not the citizen has already paid taxes on said money.   What I don’t know is what ZB thinks the government is going to do that it isn’t already doing to private citizens or corporations.  More importantly, what does he, as a former muckety-muck and current talking head, think the government should do? Raise taxes up to 90 percent for the richest of the rich? Or just make some electrons dance like Richard Pryor in “Superman III” and suck the money of the accounts of everyone who has more than million in the bank?  Maybe just pull a FDR and confiscate all the gold, after all,  surely only the Rich own gold, right?

As for the riots ZB predicts, I say this:  Let them come.

I know, I know, I can already hear it. “But MLG, surely you know how bad that would be for our country, don’t you?” Yes, I do. And don’t call me Shirley.  But exactly how in the hell can we, free citizens of a formerly free country, say that this is OUR country anymore when we allow horseshit like the stimulus bill, or any of that other shit up there, happen.  How can free men and women sell the future of our grandchildren like a mortgaged property in “Monopoly”?  Our grandchildren WON’T BE free men and women, goddammit!  They will be tax slaves, subjects under the rule of our governors.  So let the riots come.

We are allowing our freedoms to be sold at auction like Kunta Kinte.  We are giving away the power that our constitutional republic is supposed to be based upon. We are allowing our government to demand things OF us, rather than remind it that it is answerable TO us.  We write letters and emails and telegrams or call the bastards in DC on the phone just to get disconnected from voicemail boxes. They are not listening to our voices.  So let the riots come.

When the government tells an employer how much he has to pay his employees, or which doctor they can go see and get which medical treatment, the government then controls the workers. Let the riots come.

When they tell businesses what products they MUST produce, regardless of demand at the market, or which one they CAN’T produce, or who they are no longer allowed to import from or export to, the government then controls the very means of production. Let the riots come.

When the federal government owns or controls huge swathes of land and will not allow businesses to utilize that land for farms or livestock or mining or timber production, the government controls the food in our mouths and the ability for a private citizen to even build a home. Let the riots come.

These people in DC are trying to turn us into a socialist or communist state, shredding the Constitution in the process.  Let the riots come.

I was talking this out with Liberty Girl over the past few weeks.  We disagree on many aspects of the entire clusterfuck of a situation, but we are solid on this one: The system needs to be rebooted.

Let the mutherfucking riots come.

Let the snakes in DC see what happens when they decide that 535 of them know better than 300 million of us.  I want to see the fear in their eyes when they realize that they aren’t.  Let these 535 protazoa find out what happens when the host organism they are attacking from the inside finally call in the white blood cells to fight the infection.

These people are stealing our government, our way of life, and our future.

Let the riots come.