Calderon blames US for drugs and guns

Yesterday, I had completed and posted I'm a proud tea-drinking extremist based on the Homeland Security's assessment of the threat that many of us pose who hold different views on issues than those being rammed down our Bill of Rights throats by the current Obama-Pelosi-Reid cabal. And then, wham-o, some news came in during 'On the Record' with Greta van Susteren and I wanted to correct or modify what I had said about the Bush policy of allowing Mexican truckers open access to our highways. I thought that still existed. So here's what was said on Greta's show. It seems, like Vicente Fox, Calderon is our de facto Director of Gun Control Policy and foreign policy too. This is getting boring from our neighbors to the south especially when their citizens living here illegally are sending home billions of dollars and are getting free health care, free education, and in many cases buying homes and maybe even voting here and in Mexico too. Plus, allowing the illegal immigration flow to continue provides an alternative income source and drug moving source for the drug cartels. For Mexico, our policies seem to be a win-win. Did I mention that we are training their military and police in combating the drug cartels and we are supplying them with - mercy - assault weapons. Calderon comes out of the box and says:

• we are bad, bad, bad because we want all of these drugs; (some truth, our demand is large - it is an economic example of "supply and demand")
• we are allowing assault weapons into his country and he demands that Obama has to slap gun control laws on American citizens because we are bad, bad, bad;
• we are also VERY corrupt, very corrupt; (this from a nation that does know corruption) and
• we must control the guns coming across the border into his Mexico. But we cannot control the guns coming from China, Russia, and whomever else is supplying them.

The following was inserted into the "I'm a proud tea-drinking extremist" and has now been removed to this post: ** Tonight, at On the Record with Greta van Susteren at approximately 10:30PM EDT, Greta and her guest discussed that one of the "rubs" between Mr. Obama and Mr. Calderon in Mexico is that buried within the recent Stimulus Bill, the open access of Mexican truckers to American highways under the Bush Administration has been halted. As a result, Mexico has increased "tariffs" on some of our goods exported to Mexico so this could be a sticky issue. I have not checked this but if it is true, that may be a good thing - certainly for our American truckers whom I support and for our safety. I suggest you search on SPP - the Security and Prosperity Partnership - to see more about the roadways planned to slice across America. Also, Calderon wants to dictate our gun laws and pressure Obama to ban assault weapons. As with Vicente Fox, Calderon should not be allowed to dictate our internal policies and certainly have no say in controlling our Bill of Rights. To be helpful to our neighbor and to be sensitive to his concerns, we should immediately stop being "pantywaists" about this and do what we can to help our neighbor, keeping in mind we are not responsible for what other nations do and the Panama Canal is close:

• close our border with Mexico - period. Shut the border tight as a drum to protect the Mexicans from our bad, bad ways;
• stop training their federales and STOP selling or giving them military weapons which are getting into the wrong hands. We know positively that MANY of the weapons getting into Mexico are coming from their pals China and Russia;
• stop ALL illegal immigration going across our border in either direction; and
• start charging Mexico for the cost/financial burden of its citizens who are here illegally and draining needed resources away from our citizens - draining resources of our police, prisons, medical teams across the board, our educational systems, etc.

Calderon stays out of dictating our policies to us and we help by listening a bit to his blaming. And then put aside our selfish trolling for more voters and do what is BEST for America's interests, let's put Americans first. Now that would be a kicker... Calderon blamed us for the drug cartel wars in Mexico because of our demand for illegal drugs and he blamed us for them having assault weapons but I believe we are giving assault weapons to Mexico's police. Hmmm... Calderon seems better than to reduce himself to whining and acting like a "victim". Man-up for goodness sake. Calderon cannot blame us and then give us a hard time if we decide finally to implement the only common sense solution to what he blames us for - we have to close the border. We have another thing we can do and this may seem strange coming from me. I'm not sure I fully support it, not for all drugs that are "illegal" now. But we do need to look at the possibilities and give it a hard look. Then compare it with the costs of alcoholism, etc. Surely we have people smart enough who have the numbers, the figures, to do a real analysis to determine how much marijuana is being brought in from Mexico. The drug cartels are now growing it in our own national parks for goodness sake.

• determine how much marijuana is being brought in or grown and sold here;
• determine the street value of the marijuana;
• determine the outrageous cost in lives and dollars to our police and enforcement people in "fighting" just this one drug;
• determine how many people are in jail for possession of hardly any marijuana at all;
• determine the cost in crime and injury to innocent citizens now due to the drug trade only attributed to marijuana;
• determine how much money we could actually make if we controlled its sale and access and how much money we would save if we could use the resources used to "fight" it against the harder drugs;
• determine how many people we would put out of business;
• determine the possible cost/control benefit of legalizing the use of marijuana; and
• determine how we could legalize and control the use of marijuana in our country.

I know I can hardly believe I'm even thinking about this but William F. Buckley, Jr., may he rest in peace, advocated this for decades. He was a brilliant man. Let's take a look. We'd be decreasing the "demand" Calderon was crying about for one drug at least - why should the cartels get all the money, our kids are still going to use the drug and it would be better to control it than criminalize our children - and we'd be helping out our neighbor, Calderon. It is my understanding that meth, cocaine, and the harder drugs are big problems but would it help to take marijuana off the table in the "drug war" scenario? Marijuana is a "gateway" drug and we would be making it available but would that be removing it as a "gate" to the criminal element who feeds off of our kids? Just trying to find some solutions...

I'm a proud tea-drinking extremist

I read over the Homeland Security Assessment: Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment. I have a long post for you today but then an interesting observation occurred to me.

Reading the DHS assessment and making notes, it occurred to me that if you take yourself back in our history and imagine England mulling over the Boston Tea Party and the "taxation without representation" things, the assessment seemed like it could have been written by 10 - 12 Ministers in the Court of King George III of England opining about those pesky, irritating, up-start colonials who "do not know their place."

Then, washing dishes before sitting down to type this missive, it occurred to me that - oh my goodness - we may have a few Justices on the Supreme Court who could loosely fall under the ambiguous identifiers as "right-wing" extremists.

We have one who likes to hunt; one who believes in the role of the Supreme Court to interpret laws in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and what it says and not what European laws say; we have a few who believe in upholding the Second Amendment along with the First Amendment; and, oh my goodness, we have one great Associate Justice who has - dare I say it - black skin. If you recall his confirmation he was lambasted by the "left-wing" extremists because he was a strict constructionist when it comes to the U.S. Constitution. I know all about the "high tech lynching" stuff, just the other "extremists" in action.

So before I get into the body of this post, let me affirm that from our Founding Fathers who fashioned our nation's Constitution against tyranny at great risk of their own lives and fortunes to today's law-abiding citizens on the Supreme Court or those waving flags at the Tea Parties on tax day, April 15, 2009, we're all right-wing extremists now in some form or fashion but we're in extraordinarily good company - we fellow, proud, patriotic Americans.

Our "crime" - we speak out and express opposing views, and we believe in our founding principles. And our unforgivable sin is that we do not share the same views with our fellow Americans who cast themselves as progressives and don't know what to do with us except maybe put out reports that will shut us down.

I recommend to you: First they went after....

I urge you to read the assessment and print a copy for yourself because it is truly historical.

If you read the report and you take a look, you may have it sort of hit you, "Hey, this is a manifesto identifying all law-abiding Americans who believe in freedom, justice, the American way of free-market capitalism, the sacred nature of human life during all of its stages, and essentially every American across all political party-lines who believes in the limitation of the powers of the centralized government and the U.S. Constitution's direction that the limited powers not specifically enumerated to the central government constitutionally fall into the responsibility of the States and the people.

Again, we are a government of "the people, by the people, for the people" and if you hold that value, you are, according to the DHS assessment a "right-wing extremist." God knows you can't be a Conservative, a Christian, a Muslim, a Libertarian, a gun owner, and many other sub-categories. Actually, the assessment pretty much covers all of us even including that there are studies on "left-wing" extremists too. Look for your own links on that please.

But you have to read this particular assessment to get the full impact of the reach of the report. I know we have to fight "terrorists" but my goodness, this assessment is far-reaching.

As One Big Dog said his post, I Am A Right Wing Extremist, was written in honor of the Tea Parties... I urge you to read his post. I know you'll find yourself in there someplace and you may find a tear come to your eye for that honorable man.

Reading Federal agency warns of radicals on right again, I naturally just started making lists of law-abiding Americans that can loosely fall into the very ambiguous guidelines for being "right wing extremists."

Read the assessment so you can see how these lists of law-abiding Americans with common agreements - even single issues - can stand together as Americans setting aside the superficial differences we have been taught to believe separate us and stand together for one simple thing: to ask our central government to do its job in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and leave us alone. There I go fitting the description as a "right-wing extremist." In this case one to really watch as I believe in States' Rights.

Right-wing extremists:

1) value the protection of our borders, believe we are a nation of laws and illegal immigration violates our laws. Who are the "extremists" here:

• members of the Minutemen, assisting the Border Patrol,
• Congressman Tom Tancredo,
• law-abiding Americans who support legal immigration by people seeking citizenship legally respecting and following our laws;

2) believe in the value of human life at all stages and in the life of the pre-born (generally the pro-life choice Americans) which include - this is not an all inclusive listing:

• pro-life Christians including practicing Catholics and Mormons,
• all persons practicing spiritual Islam (I believe I'm correct on this one),
• and folks practicing Judaism although I am not as familiar with the Jewish stance on abortion or partial-birth abortion. [These are known in the assessment as single-issue people to keep a watch on. I will admit that there are some violent folks out there who need to be watched but 99.99% of us don't fit that category.]

3) Gun owners and those with military training: these folks believe in the right of law-abiding Americans to own guns. [As a note, "gun registration" is currently a matter of law left to the various cities and local governments of the several states. It is not a central government enumerated "power".] The NRA rightly has a motto: legislation, registration, confiscation. Hope I got that right.

In this category of right-wing extremists or potential right-wing extremists, I have included patriotic Americans who also have specialized military or paramilitary training. The DHS assessment does mention its own activities at Ruby Ridge and Waco so the folks who wrote the report indirectly did identify the several possible activities that led to some unrest among the general population.

So the folks who fall into this gun owner category and could be classified as right-wing extremists include:

• all law-abiding Americans who might own a gun or are gunless still belonging to the NRA;
• all Americans who have served in our combat or special forces;
• all Americans who may have specialized training in our clandestine services;
• all Americans who are actually serving or have served in the Border Patrol, our local and state police departments, those who serve in certain departments of Homeland Security, ICE, and all the alpha-bet soup groups who exist to protect us...and
• citizens who oppose gun-control and gun registration legislation

Look over the lists - which are not all-inclusive - of law-abiding American citizens across all political parties and look at some of the issues that bring all of us together as one people.

And finally, as One Big Dog said, I too write this as a proud American Conservative - identified in one way or another now as a right-wing extremist simply because I exercise my remaining constitutional rights of expression and assembly, not calling for violence but calling for our U.S. Constitution to be followed and upheld by those who have sworn to do so.

When reading the Homeland Security Assessment, including the footnotes, the words and charts of Ross Perot kept coming to mind. As he told us, jobs have gone south, Mexican trucks are flooding our highways carrying who knows what cargo.**Read update here. According to the MinutemenHQ, approximately 12,000 American citizens are killed on our highways every year by drunk drivers here illegally.

Another single-issue which again makes me a "right-wing extremist" is this: children are born here to illegal immigrant parents and those children have the right of American citizenship but I believe the constitution is being mis-interpreted. In any event, those children should be returned to the nation of origin of their parents to keep the families together and when the children reach the age of majority, they can choose their citizenship, not dual citizenship, but only citizenship for one nation. Families do not have to be separated but the common sense solution is to send to entire family home where the children's extended family lives, not import the extended family.

Back to my main point... The National Tea Parties

Law-abiding American citizens met together across ideological lines yesterday at Tea Parties across America. Perhaps it is the right time for us - greater mines than mine - to work to create a third political party that has staying power based upon the values and principles which brought us all together yesterday. Sure we may not win the first few elections.

Again, I leave that to greater minds but I would suggest the major unifying forces on April 15, 2009 centered around three common themes:

1) an all-powerful centralized government vs the U.S. Constitutionally defined enumerated or limited powers of the centralized government giving to them the main role of protecting us from invasion so that the various States and local governments, the people, could get about doing the business pertaining to "we the people". That should keep some of our money at home in our local cities. The powers and responsibilities of the centralized government were defined by our Founding Fathers - no accident there. The rights of we the people were not defined so that we would be free under the Bill of Rights designed to protect us. We've been non-violently striving to keep these protections every since.

One point here. The U.S. Constitution was written by men who never conceived of government-employed "elected" representatives/elected representatives and senators who act as lobbyists in some cases. Our Founders believed in citizen-statesmen who had by law, as a minimum, to meet only one day a year to do the nation's business. Yes, it is in the U.S. Constitution. I suspect a docket of 5,000 bills a year not to mention 1,100 page bills no one read before voting on it would astonish our Founders.

2) fiscal responsibility by the governments at all levels and let's not blame radicalization on citizens when this current crisis has been in the making since legislation passed in 1977 - the Community Reinvestment Act.

3) and broadly, the common thread of the Tea Parties seemed to be the basic difference in the ways of life found in a capitalist society vs a socialist, government-dependent society.

In the 1990s, we had the "Contract with America" set forth by the Congressional Republicans before many of them decided to play dress-up and imitate far-left liberal Democrats on the Hill. Perhaps the time has come for a greater, open public debate that does not shutdown debate through citizens being classified as "right-wing" or "left-wing" extremists. Yes, those reports exist too. Elections come and go; we have one of some sort every two years. But this is a debate we need, as a people, removed from emotions.

I propose that several "think tanks" such as Heritage and others get together and give the American people options for a third political party that will follow the U.S. Constitution. The Tea Parties demonstrated that we need change we can believe in and a central government that believes in us.

There is one tiny bone I would pick with Janet Napolitano and that is her use of the term, "man-made disasters" because I believe the use of that term weakens our acknowledgment of what happened to our nation and who did it. You'll see what I mean by example.

I am humbled to say:

• to all of you who lost loved ones in the "9/11 man-made disaster" (to quote Janet Napolitano's new phrase reclassifying the Islamic terrorists' declaration of war against our nation);
• to all of you who serve our nation fighting for our freedoms;
• to all of you who protect us as unsung heroes fighting those planning "man-made disasters" such as the "Oklahoma City man-made disaster";
• to all who serve as Border Patrol guarding our borders to protect us from kidnappings in Phoenix, AZ and other "man-made disasters" resulting from drug and human trafficking; and
• to my local city police who keep an eye on my home if I go on vacation and who risk your lives for me, may God bless you, your families, and keep you safe.

If I left any group out, I am sorry. I would suggest we all fit in there someplace. Since the founding of our nation, Hamilton and Jefferson are examples, the direction of how much power over our lives the federal government should have has been going on between the big federal government guys and the limited-power federal government guys who feared the growth of a centralized government and favored States' Rights and local governments accountable to the people so this is nothing new. It is just that it is happening once again and has been happening all throughout the 1900s. This time, however, the power grab seems to be happening very quickly with legislation being passed without being read and without discussion. That is worrisome to me. It should be worrisome to us all.