I'm afraid that we've all been using the wrong terms to describe the governments we've had over the past eight to sixteen years (at least). They've been called socialist, communist, facist and just plain corrupt. I fact every type of "-ist" that I named is simply a form of a common type -- totalitarian. The President and the Congress and in many cases the support they receive from the Supreme Court is totalitarian in its nature and behavior. The MSM has become Pravda of America. And both major political parties are complicit. Their only area of disagreement appears to be which or them should be dictating (oops - I suppose I should say "governing") by unrestrained fiat.

We must be aggressive in fighting this destruction of our freedoms. Not violence, but not submission. The key is getting massive numbers of people to vote out the vermin in Washington. Right now I think we'd do better with 535 citizens selected at random!

A member of my 912 MeetUp group sent this to all the members, and asked me to share it with all of you. I can't speak to the absolute truth of the story, but I thought "Wouldn't it be great if it WAS true?"
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An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism.

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little.. The second test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that....

This morning I found an editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal ( http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/44634082.html) that discusses Nancy Pelosi's "amnesia" regarding being briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA and others.

One sentence leaped out at me and smacked me in the face like a dead fish:

"Congressional leaders were briefed dozens of times on the CIA's use of severe interrogation methods on al-Qaida suspects, according to new information released by the Obama administration Thursday."

Until now the Obama administration has not been shy about using the office of the President to deny information releases claiming national security. So why release this information? And why now?

It seems to me that Mrs. Pelosi must have acted in ways that Mr. Obama and/or Mr. Axlerod find counterproductive to their drive for unbridled power. I think that the administration is sending her a message to do what she's told, or they have the means of destroying her political base.

Do we really need even more evidence that the Obama administration is willing to do anything, throw anyone under the proverbial bus, and destroy whoever or whatever is in their path? It is obvious, to me anyway, that we need to get new representatives and senators elected in 2010 to act as a curb on the Obama administration. We're going to need people who cannot be intimidated, or silenced, or marginalized. Where do we find such men and women?

This morning I found an editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal ( http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/44634082.html) that discusses Nancy Pelosi's "amnesia" regarding being briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques by the CIA and others.

One sentence leaped out at me and smacked me in the face like a dead fish:

"Congressional leaders were briefed dozens of times on the CIA's use of severe interrogation methods on al-Qaida suspects, according to new information released by the Obama administration Thursday."

Until now the Obama administration has not been shy about using the office of the President to deny information releases claiming national security. So why release this information? And why now?

It seems to me that Mrs. Pelosi must have acted in ways that Mr. Obama and/or Mr. Axlerod find counterproductive to their drive for unbridled power. I think that the administration is sending her a message to do what she's told, or they have the means of destroying her political base.

Do we really need even more evidence that the Obama administration is willing to do anything, throw anyone under the proverbial bus, and destroy whoever or whatever is in their path? It is obvious, to me anyway, that we need to get new representatives and senators elected in 2010 to act as a curb on the Obama administration. We're going to need people who cannot be intimidated, or silenced, or marginalized. Where do we find such men and women?

Well, Harley, if conservatives fracture, then perhaps they're more interested in THEIR petty power games, as much as the Republicans and Democrats. Watching many existing groups, it's sort of like watching them campaign for the job of captain of the Titanic. We all have to throw a lot of cherished beliefs overboard that keep middle-of-the-road citizens voting for Progressive/Liberal/Democrat/wanna-be totalitarians.

That's sort of what I was thinking, Ejep. Not only 912ers though. There are many other groups that have similar ideas and ideals. We need to work together with them. And we need to do it now.

I couldn't agree more, Don. If you just look at the way the founders set it up, all they had in mind was a "temp" job. And as for cost of running? Well there are over 600,000 of us, right? I'd ante up $100 to fund 60 races. 600,000 of us would work out to about $1 million per race. I think that would be a bargain, to tell you the truth.

You're right, Biker. I wasn't suggesting that we could beat Nancy Pelosi, as much fun as that would be.

And, if it's not too rude to ask, just how are you going to "take back" the party? How are you going to convince registered Democrats to vote for whoever wears the Republican brand? How are you going to get Hispanic voters to support you candidates? Or black voters? They might agree with 90% of the Republican's platform, but things like welfare reform, and immigration reform are going to sink you with those voting blocks. I'm not saying it's not a worthy goal, and I'm sure there are conservative Democrats who'd like to do the same thing with their party, too, but the reality is that if Republicans nominated Jesus to run against a Democrat Hitler, there are a lot of Democrats who could not bring themselves to pull the Republican lever in the voting booth. And the same illustration works the other way as well. So, how do you overcome generations of partisanship. Even if you reclaimed the Republican party, would you be able to get a majority in Congress?

I've read a number of postings regarding a concerted effort to oust any and all incumbents in the 2010 mid-term elections. Great, terrific, wonderful! But even if we were to defeat every single one of the incumbents, that would only mean that we'd replace one majority of self-serving career politicians with another. Other than that, not much will change. Oh, yes, there will be some cosmetic changes, but deep seated, philosophical changes that all of us would like? I doubt it.

I know Glenn has said time and again that the 912 Project is not about politics. Well, I don't often disagree with the man, but in this case I believe that he's wrong. It's ALL about politics. And we need to do more than "throw the rascals out". We need to replace them with men and women who are not rascals, who really understand the basis of why our nation works, and why our culture is extraordinary. Our nation works because we don't provide everyone a "cradle-to-grave" set of protections. If you want to have more than the absolute minimum in terms of standard of living, you need to work for it. If it's given to you without effort, without even being a citizen or even a legal resident, why work at all? Why do something that earns you money and results in providing a good or service that helps other people improve THEIR standard of living? So as long as we have a Congress that believes that their major purpose is simply staying in office, it won't make any difference if it's Republicans or Democrats in the majority.

I believe with all my heart that we need a third party. Not one to replace either of the major parties, but one that can win 50-60 seats in 2010. Yeah, in 18 months. Impossible? I don't think so. Difficult? You betcha! But there are enormous numbers of disaffected voters, who don't believe that there IS a choice, no matter who's name is on the ballot. I live in the 20th district of New York, and we just had a special election to choose the replacement for Kirsten Gillibrand. Now both parties are working like mad to "spin" the result. Repubs are saying it was too close, it should have been a shoe-in for the Dems. The Dems are saying it's a referendum on how much the citizens agree with all that Obama is doing. It's all BS. In November, Gillibrand won re-election, and the total number of voters (for that House seat) was about 311,600. For the Murphy-Tedisco special election, the total vote was only about 160,000. Nearly half the voters in November didn't bother to show up because they really didn't have a choice. They could choose between a hack Albany politician, or a Wall Street type who'd never run for office before. Some choice!

We need a third party to offer people a REAL choice. We need to win 60 seats from Democrats. Not that I have anything particularly against Democrats more than Republicans, but that's who's got the majority, that's who's got the "Hey, we won, so shut up!" attitude. Well, do the math, if we could get a third party started, get 60 seats from Democrats in relatively conservative districts, they would lose their majority. But the Republicans wouldn't get it. It would be a three-way situation, and our 60 seats would make or break ANY legislation no matter what party proposed it. Not a majority, just 60, and the third party would effectively have a veto over all sorts of idiocy. Now, the steal a phrase from MSNBC, that REALLY sends a chill up my leg.