INTERVIEW WITH A SHEEPLE

Here at Benandbawb’sblog we managed to track down and corner an average American Sheeple in his native habitat, the shopping mall. In the interest of taking the pulse of the country, we conducted a short interview to see what the man in the street is thinking. Our conclusion is that he isn’t.


BBB: The whole point of this blog has been to illustrate the evils of the 2-Party Oligarchy. Basically, both the Republicans and the Democrats are nothing more than different rooms in the same whorehouse.

S: My side good! Other side baaaaaad!

BBB: But both sides have been ridden with scandals, dirty deals, broken campaign promises, shady practices and pork projects. Both sides lie like a rug.

S: My side tell truth always. Other side lie! Baaaaaaad!

BBB: It would seem you are playing right into the hands of the power mongers. That’s right where they want us. Have you ever considered a Third Party to break the deadlock of corruption and give us a chance at real change?

S: (Pause for long blank stare): Um, throwing vote away! Cannot be on winner’s side! Man on TV say so.

BBB: The programming seems to be working quite well. Um, OK. Shall we address some other issues. One of the few mandates actually given to the Federal Government by the Constitution is to secure our borders. Instead, they let in millions of illegal aliens and do very little to stop them or to punish those who employ them illegally.

S: They are just here to do the jobs Americans can’t or won’t do. Essential to American economy. Man on TV say so.

BBB: According to the LA Times, only 2% of illegals are picking crops while 29% are on welfare. Forty percent of all workers in LA County are illegals getting paid cash under the table and contribute zero taxes. Over two thirds of the births in that county are illegals on Medi-Cal, paid for by the taxpayers. Ninety five percent of murder warrants in LA are for illegals, 75% of the people on the most-wanted list are illegals, and half of the gang members are from south of the border. The cost of illegal immigration to the U.S. taxpayer by 1997 (Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University) was $70 billion.

S: Racist! Xenophobe! Bigot! Nazi!

BBB: Er, yeah. How about education then? Judged against scores of students from other industrialized nations, American students do very poorly indeed. Our colleges have begun teaching what used to be high school level subjects. Some people point out that the purpose of the American educational system is more to produce good worker drones who do not question authority, than to educate or teach independent thinking and critical reasoning.

S: Professor spout Party Line. Koko repeat Party Line back. Koko get banana. Mmmmm, banana goooood.

BBB: So you found your university education useful, then?

S: Me have Liberal Arts Degree, $80,000 in student loans, and JOB! You want fries with that?

BBB: Uh, how about current events? What item in today’s news do you find to be of the most concern?

S: Brad and Angelina fighting over living room décor! How terrible! Boo-hoo! Such tragedy! Woman on TV say so.

BBB: On the subject of economics…..

S: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

BBB: OK, never mind economics. The Second Amendment is near and dear to us here at BBB. What do you say to the fact that when England and Australia enacted draconian gun control laws, their violent crime rates skyrocketed? Or how about Washington, D.C. having the strictest gun control laws, yet the highest crime rates in the country? Conversely, where states have enabled ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons, crime rates drop.

S: Guns baaaaaad! Guns hurt people! Guns not needed in modern age! Man on TV say so!

BBB: If they are unnecessary, how come “Men on TV” like celebrities and politicians have swarms of armed bodyguards?

S: (Jaw goes slack, eyes glaze over, emits streamer of drool.)

BBB: Maybe we’ll get back to that later. The Middle East is a hotbed of crisis and has been for years. We’ll try to keep this simple. Can you name three Middle Eastern countries?

S: Iraq. (Long pause). Europe. (Very long pause, triumphantly) Guantanamo!

BBB: Super. How about neutral politics, no parties involved. What do you see as the role of government in our country?

S: Government gooood. Government my friend. Government give treats. Government take care of me and all my earthly needs from cradle to grave. Goooood. Woman on TV say so.

BBB: Where do you suppose all that money comes from to take care of you from womb to the tomb?

S: Simple. Government take from you, give to me. Goooood. Man on TV say so.

BBB: How about security issues, like terrorism? What do you think of the Patriot Act and law enforcement abuses and judges who have to answer to no authority giving government more and unlimited power to skate around all Constitutional safeguards and restraints in place to keep them in check?

S: Government good! Government protect me from everything. I not worry. They look out for me. Government always know best. They not abuse power. Man on TV say so.

BBB: So the likes of Hitler’s Nazi Germany murdering 21 million civilians, Stalin’s Soviet Union killing 20 million citizens, Mao’s sixty million…..

S: Stop talk! Must go! New episode of Survivor on tonight! Must see TV. Man on TV say so.

BBB: (Heavy sigh.) Bye-bye. Enjoy the Kool-Aid!

HOW TO DESTROY AMERICA

I know in the opinion of many of today's products of our so-called education system, of which a recent study found only 20% of high school grads could find the Pacific Ocean on a map, only redneck hicks from Fly-Over country still read the Bible. Other early writings, such as Herodotus' Greek history and Caesar's Gaelic Wars, of which maybe 8-10 original copies exist, are regarded by modern "experts" as the gospel truth. But the New Testament, which the ancients found important enough to make 5,000 Greek, 10,000 Latin and 9,300 other copies of, is just superstitious hogwash. Yet some of us rubes in the hinterlands still read it.

I was recently struck when perusing Genesis 11:1-8, the story of the Tower of Babel. When God wanted to dismantle that whole civilization and keep them from doing great things, all he had to do was scatter them and give them all different languages and ways.

Fast forward to modern America. I came across some information given in a speech by former Colorado Governor Dick Lamm at an immigration overpopulation conference he spoke at in Washington, D.C. His last point includes mention of a book by Victor Hansen Davis entitled Mexifornia, which explains how unchecked illegal immigration is destroying California already and spreading to other border states rapidly and will eventually destroy the American Dream nationwide.

So without further ado, here are Governor Lamm's steps guaranteed to destroy this country. All quotes are his.

"First, to destroy America, turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country."

Second: "Invent 'multiculturism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences. I would make it an article of faith that Black and Hispanic dropout rates are due soley to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out of bounds."

Third: "We could make the United States an 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort.....I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America enforcing their differences rather than, as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50% dropout rate from high school."

Fifth: "...get big foundations and business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology'. I would get all minorities to think that their lack of success was the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population."

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship, and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating eachother; that is, when they are not killing eachother. A diverse, peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent...'E. Pluribus Unum'; from many, one. In that historical reality, if we put the emphasis on the 'pluribus' instead of the 'unum', we will balkanize America as surely as Kosovo."

Seventh: "I would place all subjects off limits; make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity'. I would find words similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' and 'xenophobe' halt discussion and debate."

"Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

Liberal Indy?

I grew up watching Indiana Jones films, so I was excited to see that they are beginning work on a fourth installment. It has been said that they are going to use old-fashioned stunt work and camera tricks instead of computer-generated special effects, so that the film will have the same “feel” as the first three. I like the sound of that, but I’m worried that they might ruin the franchise anyway. You see, Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg has become increasingly liberal.

I think there’s something in the water in Hollywood (and Capital Hill) that makes you more of a liberal loony, the longer you’re there. When Spielberg released "E.T." on DVD he went back and digitally removed all those nasty, evil guns from the film. Now the federal agents that chase E.T. and Elliot are toting innocuous things like walkie-talkies, rather than guns. (By the way, Janet Reno has been toiling away in the studio for the last several years trying to do the same thing to the tapes of the Waco non-assault, digitally replacing agents' sub-machineguns with teddy bears, teargas canisters with cans of “chicken and stars” soup and replacing tanks with large, Seuss-looking “tickle-machines.” But I digress.)

Spielberg also recently released his much-heralded film “Munich” in which the Israeli agents sent to kill the terrorists who murdered the Israeli Olympics team are portrayed as being no better than the terrorists they dispatch. As I said, he’s been getting loonier and loonier.

So I thought I’d help Spielberg out and give him some ideas on how he could make the fourth Indiana Jones film more compatible with his liberal world view. I present(with apologies to David Letterman):

Ben’s Top 10
Ways Spielberg Can Liberalize Indiana Jones 4

10) Indy gets disemboweled by an Arab swordsman while struggling with the mandatory trigger-lock and bio-metric identifier on his pistol.

9) Short-Round insists on being called “Vertically Challenged.”

8) After jumping from a flying airplane in an inflatable raft, rather than landing on a snow-cushioned slope, Indy splatters into bare rock due to global warming.

7) Indy realizes that there are no such thing as “Good Guys” and “Bad Guys,” only cultural misunderstanding. Indy lays down his arms and tells the Nazis that he means them no harm. (In return, they torture him with a red-hot poker and shoot him in the head.)

6) When Indy finds himself in a fight, he “redeploys” himself in the opposite direction, just as fast as his legs will carry him.

5) Indy ditches his leather jacket in favor of a “Meat Is Murder” tie-dyed tee-shirt.

4) Indy and Sallah do it.

3) Instead of fighting the Nazis, Indy attempts to teach that little monkey sign language so he can ask it how to heal our Earth.

2) When government agents ask Indy to capture a religious artifact before the Nazis do, Indy refuses, explaining that there is a “wall of separation” between church and state.

And the number one way Spielberg can liberalize Indiana Jones 4 is… UP TO YOU. Post your suggestions below.

Judicial Tyranny; Why Your Vote REALLY Doesn't Count

"Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
Joeseph Stalin


I thought we had enough troubles as it was. A two-party oligarchy that does everything to screw with ballot access laws to keep Third Parties down and non-viable. A "mainstream" media that's about as impartial and unbiased as Joseph Goebbels. Massive voter fraud that never gets punished. Illegals voting. Touch Screen voting machines with no paper trail wide open to skilled hackers. The City of Chicago.

And now our beloved judiciary, aka The Men in Black, is getting into the game as well.

Here in Montana, there were six citizen initiaives and Constitutional amendmnets on the ballot for "we the people" to vote on, right there in black and white.

Constitutional Initiative 98 provided for much greater power for the people to recall (read fire) incompetent, out-of-control, or legislating-from-the-bench judges.

Constitutional Initiative 97 provided for a cap to the state increasing tax appropriations.

And Initiative 154 was in response to the disgusting Supreme Court Kelo Decision and would have put limits on government takings of private lands.

The votes for these citizen initiatives were never even tallied. You see, judges ruled them "unconstitutional" before they could even be voted on. It was too late to reprint the ballots, however. So the initiatives stayed there on the ballots for the citizens to see what might have been, except for judicial tyranny.

Modern judges, which, in case you haven't noticed, bear more resemblence to Moe, Larry and Curly than to wise King Solomon, usually at least wait until after the citizens pass an initiative or amendment before they over-rule it and spit in our faces. Now they aren't even going to allow us the facade of voting for them.

An old friend of mine once told me there were three "boxes" when it comes to changing things; the soap box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box. I am starting to think of him as my wise old friend, now.

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, FIX IT 'TIL IT IS

Well, the Libertarians did alright here in Montana, too, garnering over 10,300 votes in the hotly contested Senate race between (D) Jon "I Have a Flattop Haircut So You'll Think I'm Conservative" Testor and incumbent (R) Conrad "Look How Much Pork I Brought Home" Burns. Yes, I voted for Mike Fellows (L).

But recent experiences working for the Federal Government have set me to a-wondering. Even if we could get a Third Party with some brains and common sense and the Founding Fathers' intent in power, is it too late to ever significantly change the fat, bloated, inefficient, wasteful, asinine, self-perpetuating labyrinthine bureaucracy our government has become?

I won't even go into BATF abuses or the Patriot Act or the Army general who had 3 helicopters and two twin-engined executive planes at his personal disposal or even how in our vaunted Welfare System only 10 cents on the dollar goes to the recipients and the rest is gobbled up by the bureaucracy. I'll stick to some minor things in a minor agency I am personally familiar with.

Out here in the hinterlands of "Fly-Over Country", those who still follow the Forest Circus old motto, "Caring for the Land and Serving the People", are stretched increasingly thin on an ever-smaller budget. For instance, I know of someone (who shall remain nameless) who is currently attempting to clean, care for and maintain some 17 campgrounds, 10 fishing accesses, 6 picnic areas, 6 rental cabins, dozens and dozens of "dispersed campsites", and hundreds of road and trails signs, spread out over 3 Montana counties (and counties are pretty big out here...check the mileage from Wilsall to Cooke City, MT, all inside Park County) all by himself. Obviously a slacker, the powers-that-be cut his budget by 30% for Fiscal Year 07. Those in the Supervisors' Office, also known as the Ministry of Truth, want to lay off this last lone ranger for the winter and just close down everything he takes care of to the public. Who cares about the citizen and taxpayer, anyway? We got papers to shuffle and mandates to create and mandatory Civil Rights training to come up with.

I am NOT saying, however, that the Forest Circus needs more of your hard-earned tax dollars. I am saying that they need to spend what they have wisely and efficiently, but from personal experience I expect that to happen immediately after a pig flies past my window.

In a recent article, a retired FS whistle-blower pointed out that 85% of the $$$$ allotted to care for our National Forests never gets out of Washington, D.C. Of the remainder that trickles down, each National Forest's Supervisors' Office (which generally employs more people than all of the Ranger Districts and field staffs combined) automatically takes another 25% off the top for "administrative costs". Which leaves very little at the bottom of the totem pole to hire somebody to clean the toilet and pick up the garbage and paint the picnic tables in your favorite campground.

A recent clever budget-cutting measure enacted did away with the CSEP program. This program provided summer jobs for retired folks who did a great deal of good, hard on-the-ground work for the public and got paid a pittance. So the powers-that-be cleverly shit-canned the lowest paid personnel who did the most work. We just can't find any deadwood to cut in all the office-dwelling bureaucrats, you know.

I recall a recent audit of the Circus by the Government Accounting Office. They were literally millions of dollars, and numerous vehicles, and a twin-engined aircraft unaccounted for. This kind of fraud, abuse and waste obviously could not be tolerated, and with these vast amounts of funds involved the culprits must be at the bottom of the pay scale. Government inspectors really cracked down. The only example I am personally aware of in the big shake down was a guy who almost got fired for "using government property for personal gain". He took a beautiful landscape picture that got published in a magazine. Someone going over the photo with an electron microscope spotted part of a government canoe in the photo. Well, they spanked him but good, and that took care of the problem. Last I knew, though, the aircraft is still MIA.

I could go on and on and make this column approximately the length of War and Peace but blogs are designed for modern Americans with really short attention spans.

Just let me point out that the Forest Circus is just a teensy weeny tiny little fragment of the US Department of Aggravation (which employs 11 people for every farmer and rancher in the United States), which in itself is just a teensy weeny tiny little fragment of the Fed Gov as a whole. I recently read an article about the Department of Homeland Security unable to account for about $80 million, but government investigators decided it was not worth vigorously pursuing such a small amount of money.

That's just running the government here at home.Now toss in the billions each year we give in hand-outs to piss-ant Third World Hellhole nations who hate our guts. You're beginning to get the picture of what a huge, bloated, uncontrollable monstrosity our Federal government truly is.

Can anything stop or even slow down such a juggernaut? Even a Third Party rise to power? Is this the government our Founding Fathers intended? Does anyone even believe the government serves the people anymore?

More importantly, does the American public even give a rat's ass anymore? Oh never mind, I gotta run to the store and get a 12-pack and some smokes before Survivor comes on.

Election 2006 Postmortem

Here in Iowa, Republican Jim Nussle lost to Democrat Chet Culver by over 85,000 votes in the governor’s race. Libertarian candidate Kevin Litten received about 5,000 votes, which means each person who voted Libertarian could have voted for Nussle 16 times each and Nussle would have still lost. I would imagine that margins like that were pretty common across the country. So I don’t want to hear any Republicans whining that the Libertarians split their vote and cost them the election. The Republicans were perfectly able to lose this one themselves. But why?

Of course the elephant in the room is the war in Iraq. But we were in Iraq in 2004 and Iowa went to Bush, the Republicans retained their majorities in Congress, and South Dakota even gave Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle his walking papers.

So what changed since ‘04? Answer: The Republicans alienated their base. Back then the paleo-conservatives and libertarians in the party had plenty of bones to pick with the elected Republicans, most notably the fact that they were spending money like whores in a crack house. But in ‘04 many of us were willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iraq and give the Republicans one last chance to put their house in order. They did not.

If there was one moment when I slapped my forehead and realized that the Republican Party had completely abandoned its guiding principles, it was shortly before Hurricane Katrina hit. I remember driving home from work and hearing President Bush on the radio hailing the new waste-ridden monstrosity of a transportation bill he had just signed. This was the one with 6,371 pork projects tacked onto it, including the now infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. Bush said it was a good bill that would provide jobs. D’oh!

The conservative response to this is, “How many jobs would have been created if those billions of dollars had been retained by those who earned it, to buy manufactured goods from retailers or to save and invest?“ I had to wonder if it was F.D.R. or L.B.J. that I was hearing, but no, it was G.W.B. To add insult to injury, after Katrina struck, Bush said they would spend “whatever it took” to rebuild the Gulf Coast. This was the straw that broke the elephant’s back. Fiscal restraint, states’ rights, the 10th Amendment, and limited government all were gone from the Republican lexicon.

During the primaries heading into ‘06, the RNC actively slit the throats of conservative candidates in favor of moderates that they felt were more “electable.” (If you think being a moderate made you “electable” during this election, go talk to Iowa’s own incumbent wet-noodle-Republican Jim Leach, if you can find the Wendy’s that he’s working at now.) It was obvious that the RNC had been co-opted by neo-conservatives who didn’t care a whit about any constitutional or ideological issue. They only cared about one thing: consolidating their power. And now that power is gone.

It appears I picked a good year to come over to the Libertarian Party, the Republican boat seems to be sinking. They may have to throw some ballast overboard. I suggest they start with a few neo-cons.