"Kings Speech" Wins BEST Picture

My wife and I watched the Academy Awards tonight and it was great that the "Kings Speech won Best Picture. It got my vote. Colin Firth was awarded Best Actor and it also got Best Director. Here is what I wrote on January 22:

As a movie buff every year you are lucky if you can see at least one or two movies that are exceptional.This is one. This is a quality movie to treasure and see again and again.

I have been wanting to see "The King's Speech" since before Christmas but it only came to Medford's Tinseltown last week. So today my wife and I went the 1:30 PM showing. Luckily we got there early. By the time the movie started the theater was almost full. It looked like they emptied out the nursing homes in Medford. It was a very old audience for this showing. I even felt young sitting with these folks! I do wish more young people had been there because this movie imparts the values that honor, duty and county are important values rather than the "do your own thing" value that became popular in the 1960"s.

The movie stars Colin Firth who plays the younger brother of King Edward VIII of England,who in the 1930's in the years leading up to the start of World War II, gave up his crown for the divorced woman, Wallis Simpson. When his brother gave up his crown "for the woman I love" his younger brother become King George VI of England and lead that country through World War II. The present Queen Elizabeth II, of the United Kingdom, is his daughter and is a young child in this movie. Unfortunately, King George VI had a speech impediment of stuttering that made it very difficult to give a public speech which kings are required to do in the modern age of radio and now TV. His wife hires an unorthadoxed speech therapist who helps him to overcome his speech impediment so he could lead the country.

Now, who wants to watch two hours of "speech therapy" not me. However, the movie is more about the development of a friendship between the crown prince, then King, and the speech therapist who is an Australian played by Geoffry Rush.

There are thus two story lines to this movie . The speech therapists story and the story of two brothers who are faced with choices in life and take different paths. What I find interesting is the different take on King Edward VIII. ( Duke of Windsor after he abdicated) In the past he has been portrayed as a man how gave up a kingdom for a woman he loved, rather than a man who deserted his country in it's time of need and thrust upon his younger brother responsibilities for which is was not prepared.

I also love the story of how a privileged prince, and later king, who has been raised in a world far removed from the common man develops a deep friendship with a commoner and in the processes develops the skills to lead.

Did I say that Winston Churchill is portrayed in the movie? It's like frosting on the cake.


This movie will be on my blu-rey list as soon as it is released. This is a keeper and you don't need to be an anglophile to enjoy it.

Click on the title for a link to the IMDB page for the movie.

UPDATE 1/25/11: NOMINATED FOR THE MOST ACADEMY AWARDS AT 12 INCLUDING BEST PICTURE & BEST ACTOR !

One advantage of having a Democrat in the White House is there are few if any political comments at the Academy Awards.

Franklin Roosevelt on Public Employee Unions

"... Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations ... The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for ... officials ... to bind the employer ... The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives ...

"Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of government employees. Upon employees in the federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people ... This obligation is paramount ... A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent ... to prevent or obstruct ... Government ... Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government ... is unthinkable and intolerable."

The War Came to Medford Today

The war that stared with 9/11/01 came to Medford,Oregon today when in the dead of winter, Sgt Matthew J. DeYoung of the United States Marine Corps was put to rest at the Eagle Point National Cemetery outside Medford. As the guns were fired and taps was played you could see the snow in the surrounding hills. In front of me there was a man in a gray civilian suite that matched the gray of his hair. Prior to the ceremony he had stood at parade rest with his hands behind his back. As the casket was taken from the hearse by the Marine Corps Honor Guard he came to formal attention where he stayed till the end of the ceremony. His back was ramrod straight, his hands cupped at his side. Two helicopters flew over in formation with Old Glory hung from one. A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" and the Marine Corps Hymn.

To most of the people in Medford, in our sheltered part of the world, the War on Terrorism seems so far away. Afghanistan, a front in the war, became a lot closer and more personal today for some of us.

However,as I drove to the cemetery, I passed the Rogue Valley Mall, which was full of cars, I thought of how a small number of volunteers and their families are bearing most of the burden of this war.

We are lucky that there are men and woman who answer the call when danger threatens. I am proud of every one of them.

UPDATE:

Click on the title for a link to the Mail Tribune news story and a picture that will break your heart.

Video of returning ceremony of a U.S. Marine at Jackson County International Airport

Click on the title for a link to the Medford Mail Tribune's website for a video of the return of Sgt. DeYoung USMC to Jackson County in a casket draped with Old Glory. He was met by friends and family along with a United States Marine honor guard at the Jackson County International Airport. His casket was then transferred from the charter airplane to a hearse from a local funeral home.

Here is what I posted last summer after watching the movie "Taking Chance" (2009)

Last night I watched the movie "Taking Chance" a movie I rented from Netflix. Taking Chance is a 2009 HBO movie that is a historical drama based upon the experiences of Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon) escorting the body of a Marine, PFC Chance Phelps (posthumously promoted to LCpl), back to his hometown in Montana from the Iraq War.

The film was selected for showing at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009 and is a very good movie. I recommend you have some tissue available when you watch it because it is very emotional.

The movie is based upon a detailed report written by Lt.Col. Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon)about his trip from Dover Delaware across America to a small town in Montana for burial. In his report he details the reactions he received from ordinary Americans. It makes you proud to be an American . Click on the title above for a link to his report

The movie has home videos of the real Chance Phelps in the "Special Features" portion of the DVD as well as interviews with his real parents and sister.

Services planned Saturday for Marine | MailTribune.com

Services planned Saturday for Marine | MailTribune.com

A Jackson County Boy Comes Home

Sgt. Matthew J. DeYoung of the United States Marine Corps, hometown, Talent Oregon, is coming home. Last Friday he died in combat in Afghanistan with the comrades he loved.

According to Medford's Mail Tribune:

Sgt. DeYoung, 26, of the 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., died Friday in the arms of his best friend, Sgt. Lee Harris of Medford, after DeYoung stepped on an IED during combat in Afghanistan.

He had just returned to his buddies after having receiving a concussion from another IED and spending two weeks in the hospital. While in the hospital he couldn't wait to get back to his comrades in arms. This was his third deployment. The first two were:

Iraq: February to August 2006;
Iraq: August 2007 to March 2008.

He graduated from Phoenix High in 2005 and was a championship wrestler.

A memorial will be held Saturday at noon at the old South Medford Gymnasium and burial will take place Saturday at 3:pm at the Eagle Point National Cemetery.

REQUIEM
by: Robert Louis Stevenson

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

**************
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

(Click on the title for a link to the Medford Mail Tribune story)

Liberals say the darnedest things !

From The Hill:

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.

"I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going," Capuano said, according to the Statehouse News. "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Can you say union thugs ! Good thing he is not a Tea Party member or all heck would break out in the media.

Click on the title for a link to The Hill news story.

Presidents Day 2011

In the winter of 1776 George Washington kept the American Revolution alive. Gen. Washington had a long and painful summer and autumn of defeats in 1776. His American Army had been defeated across New York -- in Brooklyn, Manhattan and White Plains -- and then driven across New Jersey and forced to flee across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. One defeat and retreat after another.

Washington's forces had dwindled until he had only about 4,000 effective soldiers left. There were another 6,000 men present, but they were so sick they were unable to go into battle.

Yet he conducted himself with honor. James Monroe, a future Precedent, described Washington during the retreat as follows:



"I saw him... at the head of a small band, or rather in its rear, for he was always near the enemy and his countenance and manner made an impression on me which I can never efface. A deportment so firm, so signified,, but yet so modest and composed, I have never seen in any other person"


Washington knew the end could be near. A majority of the citizens of the 13 former colonies were either pro British or felt the war for Independence was lost. The British were a mere 60 miles from Philadelphia. The Congress that had declared Independence only a few months before were ill or exhausted or absent. Jefferson had gone home to Virginia, John Adams was back home in Massachusetts and Ben Franklin had departed to France. At times there were not enough delegates for a quorum. Philadelphia was in a panic due to the advancing British. People in Philadelphia were getting out and taking all of the possession they could carry.

Thomas Paine who had volunteered to serve as a civilian aide to one of Washington's Generals wrote during the long retreat by the light of a campfire on a drum head:




"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

Faced with declining morale, rising desertions, the collapse of political will in the country at large and a sense of despair, Washington decided to gamble everything on a surprise attack on the Hussein garrison in Trenton New Jersey.. It would require a night crossing of an icy river against a formidable professional opponent.

But the most telling sign of Washington's mood as he embarked on the mission was his choice of a password. His men said "victory or death" to identify themselves.




One of the greatest speeches ever given in the English language:
Abraham Lincoln
Second Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1865

Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 1
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 2
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." 3
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Civil War Historian Bruce Catton

Historian Bruce Catton was to the Civil War in the 1960's what Stephen Ambrose was to World War II in the 1990's and generally what Douglas Brinkley is today. As posted below he gave me my first real introduction to the American Civil War during the Civil War Centennial in the 1960's. This is from wikipedia:

Charles Bruce Catton (October 9, 1899 – August 28, 1978) was an American journalist and notable historian of the American Civil War. He won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.

Catton was known as a narrative historian who specialized in popular histories that emphasized the colorful characters and vignettes of history, in addition to the simple dates, facts, and analyses. His works, although well researched and supported by footnotes, were generally not presented in a rigorous academic style. In the long line of Civil War historians, Catton is arguably the most prolific and popular of all, with Shelby Foote his only conceivable rival. Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him as editor of American Heritage magazine, wrote: "There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton's work that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age

Catton wrote many books on the Civil War but these three are my favorate:

The Centennial of the Civil War was memorialized from 1961 to 1965 and the publication of Bruce Catton's trilogy highlighted this era. Unlike his previous trilogy, these books focused not only on military topics, but on social, economic, and political topics as well.

The Coming Fury (1961) — Explores the causes and events leading to the start of the war, culminating in its first major combat, the First Battle of Bull Run.

Terrible Swift Sword (1963) — Both sides mobilize for a massive war effort and the story continues through 1862, ending with the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Never Call Retreat (1965) — The war continues through Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the bloody struggles of 1864 and 1865 before the final surrender.

To read more click on the title for a link to wikipedia.

"My Man Mitch"

Click on the title for a link to an interesting article on Mitch Daniels the two term Governor of Indiana.

As a Civil War buff who first learned about the Civil War from historian Bruce Catton during the Civil War Centennial in the 1960's I love this quote from a in depth news story in the Weekly Standard:

and Daniels left me with what he said was one of his favorite quotations.

“I remember it from a book by Bruce Catton,” he said. “It’s a Union general commenting on Ulysses S. Grant. He said, ‘There was no nonsense, no sentiment; only a plain businessman of the republic, there for the one single purpose of getting that command across the river.’

“I like that. I like that a lot.”

Ducks Win "Civil War" Part II

History was made today as the Oregon Ducks beat the Oregon State Beavers for the FIRST "Civil War" men's basketball game in the new Matthew Knight Arena, 82 to 63, to sweep the series.
The Ducks won earlier this season in Corvallis.

We left Medfrod for the 1 pm game about 8:15 am and made it to Eugene about 11 am. We had snow flurries from Medford to Canyonville. On the way up we listened to the sound track of the new True Grit movie. When we got to Eugene we parked behind Track Town Pizza for $10.00 and beat the crowd to Track Town Pizza and got the only window table looking across Franklin Blvd. to Matt Court. We could also see the window to my old dorm room. We figured it was 40+ years ago that Rich and I were roommates there. My wife made the mistake of asking me how Rich and I became roommates and that led to a lot of "funny" stories about our year as roommates. We were both from Coos Bay/ North Bend and were members of the Coos Bay chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).Yes, I was a conservative even then. As usual the pizza was good ("best in Eugene"). While eating we watched the fans line up at the gates waiting to get in the game. It was cold outside so we were happy to linger over our pizza and then walked across Franklin Blvd. just as they were opening the doors. There were quite a few Beavers there and you could tell they were impressed with the new arena as they walked in and we heard a number of complementary comments. We went to our reserved seats and watched a good game. Some older Beavers were sitting next to us but were OK and only cheered when the Beavers did something good on the court which was not often.Some one made up a card board cut out of Justin Beiber wearing a orange "Beaver Nation" tee shirt. I don't know why but many of us Ducks thought it was hilarious. The Oregon State coach is Michelle Obama's brother and so a student made a poster of him similar to the famous Barack Obama poster with the words "No hope for OSU." They showed it on the 4 big screen TV's and I had a good laugh.So good my wife pinched my leg to quiet me down. Mixing sports with politics.

After the game we drove home in light rain and we made it back to Medford just as it was getting dark. A real special day. Go Ducks !

Mitt Romney: Obama turns his back on Israel

The Obama administration has been seeking a way to avoid vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel. It has floated the idea of meeting Israel’s critics halfway with a U.N. “presidential statement” calling Israeli settlements “illegitimate.” Whether or not such a statement is actually issued, the very idea is a mistake. Indeed, we have here in this single idea a display of multiple foreign-policy failures of this presidency. Let us count the ways the administration’s proposed action has already injured Israel and the United States.

For one thing, the U.N. condemnation put forward by the president puts Israel, our closest ally in the region, in an untenable position. In exchange for peace, previous Israeli governments offered radical border concessions, surrendering most of the West Bank and even portions of Jerusalem. In 2005, the government of Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip, uprooting thousands of its own citizens. Yet all such proposals and steps toward peace have been met by Palestinian rejection, by intifadas, by suicide bombings, and by Qassam rocket fire. Isolated more than ever in the region, Israel must now contend with the fact that its principal backer in the world, the United States, is seeking to ingratiate itself with Arab opinion at its expense. Will an increasingly tenuous relationship with the U.S., at the very moment when it is becoming more vulnerable, encourage Israel to be as flexible as it has in the past, or the reverse? The answer is clear.

For another thing, even on its own terms of supposedly promoting the Arab-Israeli peace process, this is not a step forward but a step back. By taking up and embracing a core Palestinian demand, as the president has done repeatedly on this issue over the past two years, the United States is removing incentives for the Palestinians to parley with Israel at all. They are induced to believe that they can simply wait until their demands are handed to them on a silver platter by Washington. The administration’s contemplated compromise in the U.N. thus would punish Israel and reward Palestinian intransigence.

The harm wrought by the Obama administration’s diplomatic decisionmaking is doubly driven home by the fact that it is taking place in that chamber of double-standards, the United Nations. For decades the U.N. has been the epicenter of the worldwide campaign to delegitimize Israel, a campaign that has often devolved into naked anti-Semitism. Democratic and Republican administrations alike have long resisted this vicious business. It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1975 denounced the U.N.’s “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution as an obscenity, and it was Pres. George H. W. Bush who in 1991 won its repeal. The Obama administration is abysmally remiss in departing from our proud tradition of standing by a democratic ally when the world’s most unsavory regimes gang up on it.

Finally, the episode reveals a strategic failure that transcends mishandling of the Israeli-Palestinian problem alone. For its first two years, the Obama administration downplayed the importance of promoting democracy around the world. Reflexively shunning the foreign-policy approach of its predecessor, it sought to engage adversaries like Iran and North Korea, coddle autocratic allies, and distance itself from democratic friends.

True, over the last few days the administration has belatedly recognized that, in the wake of the revolutions sweeping the Arab world, supporting aspirations for human freedom might be important. It has finally, for example, issued strong statements condemning the Iranian ayatollahs for their violent suppression of the democratic opposition. But one step forward, two steps backward. President Obama’s decision to lean hard on Israel has the U.S. once again currying favor with dictators and distancing itself from democrats.

Putting forward a misbegotten U.N. statement as a compromise was a tactical, strategic, and moral mistake. The administration may conceive of its action as a low cost, split-the-difference gesture, but it has harmed an ally, sent a dangerous signal of inconstancy to allies and adversaries alike, and betrayed basic American principles. That’s three mistakes in one. I hope in the end the U.S. vetoes the anti-Israel resolution, but significant damage has already been done.

The Titanic Struggle in Wisconsin

( Outrageous placard from teachers union protest in Wisconsin against Republican Governor Walker)

The public employee/teachers protest in Wisconsin may be the beginning of the end or the "high tide" for public employees unions in this country. I have long been critical of the alliance between Democratic politicians and public employee unions and believe they are driving this county into insurmountable debt that threaten to destroy the United States through debt. For too long these public employee unions have had too much power and were a threat to our democracy. It works this way..... the public employee unions with a large block of voters and money an money from mandatory dues supports Democrat politicians who then seek to expand government creating more public employees and expanding their benefits at the expense of the private sector to a point the private sector and non public workers become the slave to the public sector. The public employee unions have become the Robber Barons" and Monopolies/Business Trusts of our past and we need a Teddy Roosevelt to bust* them. (*Break up their power... Roosevelt was known as the trust buster)

There of course is a need for unions but there needs to be balance between the competing interest in this country and when one group gets too much power to overpower other interest it hurts our economy and democracy.

Mitch Daniels boomlet for President

There seems to be a Mitch Daniels boomlet for President. George Will yesterday in his column and Peggy Noonan today in her Wall Street Journal column have both been promoting Daniels for President. Jay Cost in today's" Morning Jay" on the Weekly Standard website (Click title above) give a political historical reason why Mitch Daniels is the right person at the right time. There are also reports that former Florida Governor Jeb Bush has endorsed Daniels.

Students for Mitch Daniels

Have the Republican found their candidate ? Click on the title for a link to a website promoting his candidacy. I have made no decision on whom I am supporting but he looks very interesting. I also like Mitt Romney but he has a real problem with the health care law he helped pass in Massachusetts when he was Governor.

Oregon Duck BCS Season Scrapbook

With Super Bowl Sunday, come and gone, how do you get a football "fix" without any games forthe next three month waiting for the Oregon Ducks Spring Game at the end of April ?

Well this last weekend I put together a two volume scrapbook set of the 2011 Oregon Duck season and the trip to the BCS. During the season I collect game programs, pocket schedules, newspaper and Internet articles, ticket stubs, pictures taken by myself and the kids,and other game memorabilia and organize it into a scrap book consisting of a three ring binder and plastic page protectors. I use backing sheets of green and yellow. One binder covered the regular 12 game schedule of the Ducks and the second covered the BCS trip and game. It took all day on Saturday to find everything I had been collecting since August and organize it into chronological order on TV trays and chairs in our dinning room. Then Saturday night I started to put it into the binders and worked till after midnight and finished Sunday morning and afternoon.

The best part is the pictures taken during the football season. Each game has it's own section starting off with the date, final score and location of the game. Volume one started out with a program of last year's spring game and I worked my way through the Oregon State "Civil War" game in December. I had pictures of my kids trip to Tennessee as well as my daughters trip to U$C in the L.A. Coliseum. I had my road trip material to Cal. On road trips I include maps.
The second binder includes our trip to the BCS game in Glendale, Arizona with pictures of the Oregon Pep Rally as well as the game itself. The best page includes the pictures I took when when our daughter was able to get a ticket to the game in Glendale. She was so happy. We were all happy.

The preparation for the scrapbook starts at the beginning of the season each year as I start saving memorabilia. As the season progresses I am always on the lookout for more items.I don't do a scrapbook every year. At the end of a season I make the decision as to whether the season deserves a scrape book. This season was a no brainier what with a trip to the BCS and the National Championship.

When all is said and done the best part of the football season is the family journey together . My adult kids are in the Eastern time, zone one in Washington DC and the other in Kentucky; but, even though we are apart we experience the season together. We all watch the games either in person, on TV or through the Internet. The kids try and get together and take road trip when Oregon plays in the Midwest or South. We communicate with each other by phone Internet and even this blog.

How long till the Spring Game............ April 30th.

"Civil War Week"

Yes this is the week Oregon and Oregon State meet in a basketball game in the University of Oregon's new basketball arena, Matt Court at 1 pm Saturday. The first "Civil War" game to be played there. The teams met earlier in the season in Corvallis for their first "Civil War" game of the season and my Oregon Ducks won in an upset.

For a laugh click on the title for a link to Oregonian sports "reporter" Paul Buker's story on the game in today's Oregonian. Is it me, or does Paul Buker sound like a shill for the Beavers? Most "beat" reporters for a team try to maintain some semblance of neutrality, distance and independence but not Buker..... he hates the Ducks and writes like a blogger, like me. I make no pretense of neutrality and am a fan and not a "reporter." I have been reading Buker online for some time and he sounds like a typical Beaver. Jealousy is not an attractive trait and Buker is either jealous that he is not the "beat" reporter for the Ducks or he is a Beaver believer where jealousy of the Ducks comes naturally.

Oregon was picked this year to be the bottom team in the Pac-10 when we brought in a new coach and many of the old players,old coach. Ernie Kent had recruited left. However, new coach, Dana Altman has taken those players that stayed and gotten them to play above their talent with discipline and hard work. Buker has reported that the Beavers hoped this year to get a measure of revenge for football but in the first game between the schools it did not happen. The Ducks had better be prepared because the Beavers at this point are desperate. BTW, Oregon State is coached by Barack Obama's, brother-in-law (yes, Michelle's brother) and he is appears to be a nice guy !

Go Ducks.... beat the Beavers !

"The nation must be summoned to General Quarters in the cause of economic growth"

A new Republican candidate for President ?

Mitch Daniels the two term governor of Indiana and former head of the Office of Management and Budget gave a speech last night at the CPAC convention in Washington DC and I like what I read. He is not a charismatic person, but we have had charismatic, he is short, like me, but not as Conservative as me. Read what he said last night and judge for yourself.

I bring greetings from a place called Indiana. The coastal types present may think of it as a “flyover” state, or one of those “I” states. Perhaps a quick anthropological summary would help.

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we “cling” to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual – we spend less money than we take in.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer. When we do find it necessary, we feel a profound duty to use that dollar as carefully and effectively as possible, else we should never have taken it at all.

Before our General Assembly now is my proposal for an automatic refund of tax dollars beyond a specified level of state reserves. We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

We believe that government works for the benefit of private life, and not the other way around. We see government’s mission as fostering and enabling the important realms – our businesses, service clubs, Little Leagues, churches – to flourish. Our first thought is always for those on life’s first rung, and how we might increase their chances of climbing.

Every day, we work to lower the costs and barriers to free men and women creating wealth for each other. We build roads, and bridges, and new sources of homegrown energy at record rates, in order to have the strongest possible backbone to which people of enterprise can attach their investments and build their dreams. When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: “Make money. Go make money. That’s the first act of ‘corporate citizenship.’ If you do that, you’ll have to hire someone else, and you’ll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we’re so proud of.”

We place our trust in average people. We are confident in their ability to decide wisely for themselves, on the important matters of their lives. So when we cut property taxes, to the lowest level in America, we left flexibility for localities to raise them, but only by securing the permission of their taxpayers, voting in referendum. We designed both our state employee health plans and the one we created for low-income Hoosiers as Health Savings Accounts, and now in the tens of thousands these citizens are proving that they are fully capable of making smart, consumerist choices about their own health care.

We have broadened the right of parents to select the best place for their children’s education to include every public school, traditional or charter, regardless of geography, tuition-free. And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you’re as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here’s a voucher, go sign up.

Lastly, speaking now for my administration colleagues, we believe in government that is limited but active. Within that narrow sphere of legitimate collective action, we choose to be the initiators of new ideas or, as we have labeled ourselves, the Party of Purpose. In President Reagan’s phrase, “We are the change.” On election nights, we remind each other that victory is not a vindication, it is an instruction, not an endorsement, but an assignment.

The national elections of 2010 carried an instruction. In our nation, in our time, the friends of freedom have an assignment, as great as those of the 1860s, or the 1940s, or the long twilight of the Cold War. As in those days, the American project is menaced by a survival-level threat. We face an enemy, lethal to liberty, and even more implacable than those America has defeated before. We cannot deter it; there is no countervailing danger we can pose. We cannot negotiate with it, any more than with an iceberg or a Great White.

I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic. No enterprise, small or large, public or private, can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be.

Need I illustrate? Surely the consequences, to prosperity, world influence, and personal freedom itself are as clear to this audience as to any one could appear before.

Do I exaggerate? I’d love to be shown that I do. Any who think so please see me in the hallway afterward, and bring your third grade math books.

If a foreign power advanced an army to the border of our land, everyone in this room would drop everything and look for a way to help. We would set aside all other agendas and disputes as secondary, and go to the ramparts until the threat was repelled. That is what those of us here, and every possible ally we can persuade to join us, are now called to do. It is our generational assignment. It is the mission of our era. Forgive the pun when I call it our “raison debt.”

Every conflict has its draft dodgers. There are those who will not enlist with us. Some who can accept, or even welcome, the ballooning of the state, regardless of the cost in dollars, opportunity, or liberty, and the slippage of the United States into a gray parity with the other nations of this earth. Some who sincerely believe that history has devised a leftward ratchet, moving in fits and starts but always in the direction of a more powerful state. The people who coined the smug and infuriating term – have you heard it? – “the Reagan Interruption.”

The task of such people is now a simple one. They need only play good defense. The federal spending commitments now in place will bring about the leviathan state they have always sought. The health care travesty now on the books will engulf private markets and produce a single-payer system or its equivalent, and it won’t take long to happen. Our fiscal ruin and resulting loss of world leadership will, in their eyes, be not a tragic event but a desirable one, delivering the multilateral world of which they’ve dreamed so long.

Fortunately, these folks remain few. They are vastly outnumbered by Americans who sense the presence of the enemy, but are awaiting the call for volunteers, and a credible battle plan for saving our Republic. That call must come from this room, and rooms like it.

But we, too, are relatively few in number, in a nation of 300 million. If freedom’s best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come. Or rather, big change will come, of the kind that the skeptics of all centuries have predicted for those naïve societies that believed that government of and by the people could long endure.

We know what the basic elements must be. An affectionate thank you to the major social welfare programs of the last century, but their sunsetting when those currently or soon to be enrolled have passed off the scene. The creation of new Social Security and Medicare compacts with the young people who will pay for their elders and who deserve to have a backstop available to them in their own retirement.

These programs should reserve their funds for those most in need of them. They should be updated to catch up to Americans’ increasing longevity and good health. They should protect benefits against inflation but not overprotect them. Medicare 2.0 should restore to the next generation the dignity of making their own decisions, by delivering its dollars directly to the individual, based on financial and medical need, entrusting and empowering citizens to choose their own insurance and, inevitably, pay for more of their routine care like the discerning, autonomous consumers we know them to be.

Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery. The perverse presumption that places the burden of proof on the challenger of spending must be inverted, back to the rule that applies elsewhere in life: “Prove to me why we should.”

Lost to history is the fact that, in my OMB assignment, I was the first loud critic of Congressional earmarks. I was also the first to get absolutely nowhere in reducing them: first to rail and first to fail. They are a pernicious practice and should be stopped. But, in the cause of national solvency, they are a trifle. Talking much more about them, or “waste, fraud, and abuse,” trivializes what needs to be done, and misleads our fellow citizens to believe that easy answers are available to us. In this room, we all know how hard the answers are, how much change is required.

And that means nothing, not even the first and most important mission of government, our national defense, can get a free pass. I served in two administrations that practiced and validated the policy of peace through strength. It has served America and the world with irrefutable success. But if our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won’t have much strength and, eventually, we won’t have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a “robust strategy.”

I personally favor restoring impoundment power to the presidency, at least on an emergency basis. Having had this authority the last six years, and used it shall we say with vigor, I can testify to its effectiveness, and to this finding: You’d be amazed how much government you’ll never miss.

The nation must be summoned to General Quarters in the cause of economic growth. The friends of freedom always favor a growing economy as the wellspring of individual opportunity and a bulwark against a domineering state. But here, doctrinal debates are unnecessary; the arithmetic tells it all. We don’t have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration. Every other goal, however worthy, must be tested against and often subordinated to actions that spur the faster expansion of the private sector on which all else depends.

A friend of mine attended a recent meeting of the NBA leadership, at which a small-market owner, whom I won’t name but will mention is also a member of the U.S. Senate, made an impassioned plea for more sharing of revenue by the more successful teams. At a coffee break, Mr. Prokhorov, the new Russian owner of the New Jersey Nets, murmured to my friend, “We tried that, you know. It doesn’t work.”

Americans have seen these last two years what doesn’t work. The failure of national economic policy is costing us more than jobs; it has begun to weaken that uniquely American spirit of risk-taking, large ambition, and optimism about the future. We must rally them now to bold departures that rebuild our national morale as well as our material prosperity.

Here, too, the room abounds with experts and good ideas, and the nation will need every one. Just to name three: it’s time we had, in Bill Simon’s words “a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.” And the purpose should be private growth. So lower and flatter, and completely flat is best. Tax compensation but not the savings and investment without which the economy cannot boom.

Second, untie Gulliver. The regulatory rainforest through which our enterprises must hack their way is blighting the future of millions of Americans. Today’s EPA should be renamed the “Employment Prevention Agency.” After a two-year orgy of new regulation, President Obama’s recent executive order was a wonderment, as though the number one producer of rap music had suddenly expressed alarm about obscenity.

In Indiana, where our privatization of a toll road generated billions for reinvestment in infrastructure, we can build in half the time at two-thirds the cost when we use our own money only and are free from the federal rulebook. A moratorium on new regulation is a minimal suggestion; better yet, move at least temporarily to a self-certification regime that lets America build, and expand, and explore now and settle up later in those few instances where someone colors outside the lines.

Finally, treat domestic energy production as the economic necessity it is and the job creator it can be. Drill, and frack, and lease, and license, unleash in every way the jobs potential in the enormous energy resources we have been denying ourselves. And help our fellow citizens to understand that a poorer country will not be a greener country, but its opposite. It is freedom and its fruits that enable the steady progress we have made in preserving and protecting God’s kingdom.

If this strikes you as a project of unusual ambition, given the state of modern politics, you are right. If it strikes you as too bold for our fellow Americans to embrace, I believe you are wrong. Seven years as a practitioner in elective politics tells me that history’s skeptics are wrong. That Americans, in a vast majority, are still a people born for self-governance. They are ready to summon the discipline to pay down our collective debts as they are now paying down their own; to put the future before the present, their children’s interest before their own.

Our proposals will be labeled radical, but this is easy to rebut. Starting a new retirement plan for those below a certain age is something tens of millions of Americans have already been through at work.

Opponents will expect us to be defensive, but they have it backwards. When they call the slightest spending reductions “painful”, we will say “If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?” And “If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.” When they attack us for our social welfare reforms, we will say that the true enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who defend an imploding status quo, and the arithmetic backs us up.

They will attack our program as the way of despair, but we will say no, America’s way forward is brilliant with hope, as soon as we have dealt decisively with the manageable problems before us.

2010 showed that the spirit of liberty and independence is stirring anew, that a growing number of Americans still hear Lincoln’s mystic chords of memory. But their number will have to grow, and do so swiftly. Change of the dimension we need requires a coalition of a dimension no one has recently assembled. And, unless you disbelieve what the arithmetic of disaster is telling us, time is very short.

Here I wish to be very plainspoken: It is up to us to show, specifically, the best way back to greatness, and to argue for it with all the passion of our patriotism. But, should the best way be blocked, while the enemy draws nearer, then someone will need to find the second best way. Or the third, because the nation’s survival requires it.

Purity in martyrdom is for suicide bombers. King Pyrrhus is remembered, but his nation disappeared. Winston Churchill set aside his lifetime loathing of Communism in order to fight World War II. Challenged as a hypocrite, he said that when the safety of Britain was at stake, his “conscience became a good girl.” We are at such a moment. I for one have no interest in standing in the wreckage of our Republic saying “I told you so” or “You should’ve done it my way.”

We must be the vanguard of recovery, but we cannot do it alone. We have learned in Indiana, big change requires big majorities. We will need people who never tune in to Rush or Glenn or Laura or Sean. Who surf past C-SPAN to get to SportsCenter. Who, if they’d ever heard of CPAC, would assume it was a cruise ship accessory.

The second worst outcome I can imagine for next year would be to lose to the current president and subject the nation to what might be a fatal last dose of statism. The worst would be to win the election and then prove ourselves incapable of turning the ship of state before it went on the rocks, with us at the helm.

So we must unify America, or enough of it, to demand and sustain the Big Change we propose. Here are a few suggestions:

We must display a heart for every American, and a special passion for those still on the first rung of life’s ladder. Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts. Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

We should address ourselves to young America at every opportunity. It is their futures that today’s policies endanger, and in their direct interest that we propose a new direction.

We should distinguish carefully skepticism about Big Government from contempt for all government. After all, it is a new government we hope to form, a government we will ask our fellow citizens to trust to make huge changes.

I urge a similar thoughtfulness about the rhetoric we deploy in the great debate ahead. I suspect everyone here regrets and laments the sad, crude coarsening of our popular culture. It has a counterpart in the venomous, petty, often ad hominem political discourse of the day.
When one of us – I confess sometimes it was yours truly – got a little hotheaded, President Reagan would admonish us, “Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents.” Good advice, then and now.

And besides, our opponents are better at nastiness than we will ever be. It comes naturally. Power to them is everything, so there’s nothing they won’t say to get it. The public is increasingly disgusted with a steady diet of defamation, and prepared to reward those who refrain from it. Am I alone in observing that one of conservatism’s best moments this past year was a massive rally that came and went from Washington without leaving any trash, physical or rhetorical, behind?

A more affirmative, “better angels” approach to voters is really less an aesthetic than a practical one: with apologies for the banality, I submit that, as we ask Americans to join us on such a boldly different course, it would help if they liked us, just a bit.

Lastly, critically, I urge great care not to drift into a loss of faith in the American people. In speech after speech, article upon article, we remind each other how many are dependent on government, or how few pay taxes, or how much essential virtues like family formation or civic education have withered. All true. All worrisome. But we must never yield to the self-fulfilling despair that these problems are immutable, or insurmountable.

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That, addressed as free-born, autonomous men and women of God-given dignity, they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy.

History’s assignment to this generation of freedom fighters is in one way even more profound than the tests of our proud past. We are tasked to rebuild not just a damaged economy, and a debt-ridden balance sheet, but to do so by drawing forth the best that is in our fellow citizens. If we would summon the best from Americans, we must assume the best about them. If we don’t believe in Americans, who will?

I do believe. I’ve seen it in the people of our very typical corner of the nation. I’ve seen it in the hundred Indiana homes in which I have stayed overnight. I’ve seen it in Hoosiers’ resolute support of limited government, their willingness, even insistence, that government keep within the boundaries our constitutional surveyors mapped out for it.

I’ve always loved John Adams’ diary entry, written en route to Philadelphia, there to put his life, liberty, and sacred honor all at risk. He wrote that it was all well worth it because, he said, “Great things are wanted to be done.”

When he and his colleagues arrived, and over the years ahead, they practiced the art of the possible. They made compacts and concessions and, yes, compromises. They made deep sectional and other differences secondary in pursuit of the grand prize of freedom. They each argued passionately for the best answers as they saw them, but they never permitted the perfect to be the enemy of the historic good they did for us, and all mankind. They gave us a Republic, citizen Franklin said, if we can keep it.

Keeping the Republic is the great thing that is wanted to be done, now, in our time, by us. In this room are convened freedom’s best friends but, to keep our Republic, freedom needs every friend it can get. Let’s go find them, and befriend them, and welcome them to the great thing that is wanted to be done in our day.

God bless this meeting and the liberty which makes it possible.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/11/full-text-mitch-daniels-speech-to-cpac/#ixzz1DlY04ayS


I like so much of the speech but this line is a call to all Americans to join together to meet the challenge that threatens all of us:

"If a foreign power advanced an army to the border of our land, everyone in this room would drop everything and look for a way to help. We would set aside all other agendas and disputes as secondary, and go to the ramparts until the threat was repelled. That is what those of us here, and every possible ally we can persuade to join us, are now called to do. It is our generational assignment. It is the mission of our era"

In his speech he says he has tried to get four other people to run for the Republican nomination for President and has been unsuccessful. He won't make a decision till April or May but he would be an excellentaddition to the field.

American Exceptionalism

"I refuse to believe that America is just another place on the map with a flag." Mitt Romney, February 11, 2011.

Romney, a few weeks ago, pointed out a quote from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair that makes this point:

In Time magazine on September 13, 2010, Tony Blair wrote:

But America is great for a reason. It is looked up to, despite all the criticism, for a reason. There is a nobility in the American character that has been developed over the centuries, derived in part, no doubt, from the frontier spirit, from the waves of immigration that form the stock, from the circumstances of independence, from the Civil War, from the myriad of historical facts and coincidences. But it is there. That nobility isn’t about being nicer, better or more successful than anyone else. It is a feeling about the country. It is a devotion to the American ideal that at a certain point transcends class, race, religion or upbringing. That ideal is about values: freedom, the rule of law, democracy. It is also about the way you achieve: on merit, by your own efforts and hard work. But it is most of all that in striving for and protecting that ideal, you as an individual take second place to the interests of the nation as a whole. It is what makes the country determined to overcome its challenges. It is what makes its soldiers give their lives in sacrifice. It is what brings every variety of American, from the lowest to the highest, to their feet when “The Star Spangled Banner” is played.

Mitt Romney:"Liberals should be ashamed that they and their policies have failed these good and decent Americans!"

National Review has obtained a draft of a speech Mitt Romney is scheduled to make to the CPAC convention in Washington D.C. this weekend. It is a "barn burner" of a speech that leaves no doubt he is running for President. Part of the draft is as follows:

If I decide to run for President, it won’t take me two years to wake up to the job crisis threatening America. And I won’t be asking Tim Geithner how the economy works—or Larry Summers how to start a business.

Fifteen million Americans are out of work. And millions and millions more can’t find the good paying jobs they long for and deserve. You’ve seen the heartbreaking photos and videos of the jobs fairs around the country, where thousands show up to stand in line all day just to have a chance to compete for a few job openings that probably aren’t as good as the job they held two years ago. These job fairs and unemployment lines are President Obama’s Hoovervilles.

Make no mistake. This is a moral tragedy—a moral tragedy of epic proportion. Unemployment is not just a statistic. Fifteen million unemployed is not just a number. Unemployment means kids can’t go to college; that marriages break up under the financial strain; that young people can’t find work and start their lives; and men and women in their 50s, in the prime of their lives, fear they will never find a job again....


Liberals should be ashamed that they and their policies have failed these good and decent Americans!

The President is trying to show that he finally gets it—that he really isn’t a liberal after all. But his idea of conservative economic policy is to invite some corporate CEO’s to the White House for an evening of table-talk.

I’m sorry Mr. President, but that’s not a policy, it’s a dinner party.

We’ve seen the failure of liberal answers before. Liberal welfare policies condemned generations to dependency and poverty. Liberal education policies fail our children today, because they put pensions and privilege for union bosses above the reading scores of our kids. Liberal social policies have failed to protect the unborn. And now, the hollow promises of liberal economic policies have failed to provide millions of Americans with the dignity of work.

I love the line "Liberal education policies fail our children today, because they put pensions and privilege for union bosses above the reading scores of our kids."and the line:"Liberal welfare policies condemned generations to dependency and poverty."

Happy Birthday !!!

A shout out to that special person ! I can't believe you are turning #@ !!!! Wish I could be with you on your special day. Have a great day.

This Sunday Is A Day To Remember !

No, not for the Super Bowl, which I will be watching, but to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th Birthday. I miss him a lot. In his memory I re post his "The Speech" from the 1964 TV Broadcast for Barry Goldwater. It was true then and is true now:

A TIME FOR CHOOSING (The Speech – October 27, 1964)

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks.

I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines. Now, one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, "We've never had it so good."

But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend 17 million dollars a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 out of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last twelve months, and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have 15 billion dollars in gold in our treasury; we don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims are 27.3 billion dollars. And we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.

As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it's been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down—[up] man's old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

In this vote-harvesting time, they use terms like the "Great Society," or as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves; and all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print. These are not Republican accusations. For example, they have voices that say, "The cold war will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism." Another voice says, "The profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state." Or, "Our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century." Senator Fullbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the President as "our moral teacher and our leader," and he says he is "hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document." He must "be freed," so that he "can do for us" what he knows "is best." And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as "meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government."

Well, I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as "the masses." This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, "the full power of centralized government"—this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.

Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy over the last 30 years. Since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85 percent of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21 percent increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see, that one-fourth of farming—that's regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we've spent 43 dollars in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow.

Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as President, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm population under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress [an] extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books as prescribed by the federal government. The Secretary of Agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals. And contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil.

At the same time, there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the United States, and still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billie Sol Estes never left shore.

Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy, but how—who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up; the price of wheat to the farmer goes down.

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan. The latest is the Area Redevelopment Agency.

They've just declared Rice County, Kansas, a depressed area. Rice County, Kansas, has two hundred oil wells, and the 14,000 people there have over 30 million dollars on deposit in personal savings in their banks. And when the government tells you you're depressed, lie down and be depressed.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they're going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer—and they've had almost 30 years of it—shouldn't we expect government to read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater; the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we're told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than 3,000 dollars a year. Welfare spending [is] 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We're spending 45 billion dollars on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you'll find that if we divided the 45 billion dollars up equally among those 9 million poor families, we'd be able to give each family 4,600 dollars a year. And this added to their present income should eliminate poverty. Direct aid to the poor, however, is only running only about 600 dollars per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

Now—so now we declare "war on poverty," or "You, too, can be a Bobby Baker." Now do they honestly expect us to believe that if we add 1 billion dollars to the 45 billion we're spending, one more program to the 30-odd we have—and remember, this new program doesn't replace any, it just duplicates existing programs—do they believe that poverty is suddenly going to disappear by magic? Well, in all fairness I should explain there is one part of the new program that isn't duplicated. This is the youth feature. We're now going to solve the dropout problem, juvenile delinquency, by reinstituting something like the old CCC camps [Civilian Conservation Corps], and we're going to put our young people in these camps. But again we do some arithmetic, and we find that we're going to spend each year just on room and board for each young person we help 4,700 dollars a year. We can send them to Harvard for 2,700! Course, don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting Harvard is the answer to juvenile delinquency.

But seriously, what are we doing to those we seek to help? Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very thing.

Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things—we're never "for" anything.

Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Now—we're for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we've accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem.

But we're against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments to those people who depend on them for a livelihood. They've called it "insurance" to us in a hundred million pieces of literature. But then they appeared before the Supreme Court and they testified it was a welfare program. They only use the term "insurance" to sell it to the people. And they said Social Security dues are a tax for the general use of the government, and the government has used that tax. There is no fund, because Robert Byers, the actuarial head, appeared before a congressional committee and admitted that Social Security as of this moment is 298 billion dollars in the hole. But he said there should be no cause for worry because as long as they have the power to tax, they could always take away from the people whatever they needed to bail them out of trouble. And they're doing just that.

A young man, 21 years of age, working at an average salary—his Social Security contribution would, in the open market, buy him an insurance policy that would guarantee 220 dollars a month at age 65. The government promises 127. He could live it up until he's 31 and then take out a policy that would pay more than Social Security. Now are we so lacking in business sense that we can't put this program on a sound basis, so that people who do require those payments will find they can get them when they're due—that the cupboard isn't bare?

Barry Goldwater thinks we can.

At the same time, can't we introduce voluntary features that would permit a citizen who can do better on his own to be excused upon presentation of evidence that he had made provision for the non-earning years? Should we not allow a widow with children to work, and not lose the benefits supposedly paid for by her deceased husband? Shouldn't you and I be allowed to declare who our beneficiaries will be under this program, which we cannot do? I think we're for telling our senior citizens that no one in this country should be denied medical care because of a lack of funds. But I think we're against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program, especially when we have such examples, as was announced last week, when France admitted that their Medicare program is now bankrupt. They've come to the end of the road.

In addition, was Barry Goldwater so irresponsible when he suggested that our government give up its program of deliberate, planned inflation, so that when you do get your Social Security pension, a dollar will buy a dollar's worth, and not 45 cents worth?

I think we're for an international organization, where the nations of the world can seek peace. But I think we're against subordinating American interests to an organization that has become so structurally unsound that today you can muster a two-thirds vote on the floor of the General Assembly among nations that represent less than 10 percent of the world's population. I think we're against the hypocrisy of assailing our allies because here and there they cling to a colony, while we engage in a conspiracy of silence and never open our mouths about the millions of people enslaved in the Soviet colonies in the satellite nations.

I think we're for aiding our allies by sharing of our material blessings with those nations which share in our fundamental beliefs, but we're against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world. We set out to help 19 countries. We're helping 107. We've spent 146 billion dollars. With that money, we bought a 2 million dollar yacht for Haile Selassie. We bought dress suits for Greek undertakers, extra wives for Kenya[n] government officials. We bought a thousand TV sets for a place where they have no electricity. In the last six years, 52 nations have bought 7 billion dollars worth of our gold, and all 52 are receiving foreign aid from this country.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments' programs, once launched, never disappear.

Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth.

Federal employees—federal employees number two and a half million; and federal, state, and local, one out of six of the nation's work force employed by government. These proliferating bureaus with their thousands of regulations have cost us many of our constitutional safeguards. How many of us realize that today federal agents can invade a man's property without a warrant? They can impose a fine without a formal hearing, let alone a trial by jury? And they can seize and sell his property at auction to enforce the payment of that fine. In Chico County, Arkansas, James Wier over-planted his rice allotment. The government obtained a 17,000 dollar judgment. And a U.S. marshal sold his 960-acre farm at auction. The government said it was necessary as a warning to others to make the system work.

Last February 19th at the University of Minnesota, Norman Thomas, six-times candidate for President on the Socialist Party ticket, said, "If Barry Goldwater became President, he would stop the advance of socialism in the United States." I think that's exactly what he will do.

But as a former Democrat, I can tell you Norman Thomas isn't the only man who has drawn this parallel to socialism with the present administration, because back in 1936, Mr. Democrat himself, Al Smith, the great American, came before the American people and charged that the leadership of his Party was taking the Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. And he walked away from his Party, and he never returned til the day he died—because to this day, the leadership of that Party has been taking that Party, that honorable Party, down the road in the image of the labor Socialist Party of England.

Now it doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed to the—or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property? And such machinery already exists. The government can find some charge to bring against any concern it chooses to prosecute. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment. Somewhere a perversion has taken place. Our natural, unalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation of government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

Our Democratic opponents seem unwilling to debate these issues. They want to make you and I believe that this is a contest between two men—that we're to choose just between two personalities.

Well what of this man that they would destroy—and in destroying, they would destroy that which he represents, the ideas that you and I hold dear? Is he the brash and shallow and trigger-happy man they say he is? Well I've been privileged to know him "when." I knew him long before he ever dreamed of trying for high office, and I can tell you personally I've never known a man in my life I believed so incapable of doing a dishonest or dishonorable thing.

This is a man who, in his own business before he entered politics, instituted a profit-sharing plan before unions had ever thought of it. He put in health and medical insurance for all his employees. He took 50 percent of the profits before taxes and set up a retirement program, a pension plan for all his employees. He sent monthly checks for life to an employee who was ill and couldn't work. He provides nursing care for the children of mothers who work in the stores. When Mexico was ravaged by the floods in the Rio Grande, he climbed in his airplane and flew medicine and supplies down there.

An ex-GI told me how he met him. It was the week before Christmas during the Korean War, and he was at the Los Angeles airport trying to get a ride home to Arizona for Christmas. And he said that [there were] a lot of servicemen there and no seats available on the planes. And then a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Any men in uniform wanting a ride to Arizona, go to runway such-and-such," and they went down there, and there was a fellow named Barry Goldwater sitting in his plane. Every day in those weeks before Christmas, all day long, he'd load up the plane, fly it to Arizona, fly them to their homes, fly back over to get another load.

During the hectic split-second timing of a campaign, this is a man who took time out to sit beside an old friend who was dying of cancer. His campaign managers were understandably impatient, but he said, "There aren't many left who care what happens to her. I'd like her to know I care." This is a man who said to his 19-year-old son, "There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start." This is not a man who could carelessly send other people's sons to war. And that is the issue of this campaign that makes all the other problems I've discussed academic, unless we realize we're in a war that must be won.

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.

We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender.

Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then—when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin—just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.

You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this—this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits—not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

Oh my, after rereading the speech I realize Ronald Reagan was the ORIGINAL Tea Party member. As a teenager I watched the speech on TV in my bedroom in 1964 and it moved me like no other specch. In college I had a friend who had the speech on a record and a group of us would all sit around on the floor of his apratment and listned to the speech over and over. Back then some of my "sophisiticated" friends and associates told me he was a "lighweight" but they were wrong then and the same types are still wrong today.

Happy Birthday Ronald Reagan and Go Packers!